Celebrating Your Book Club Anniversary: Ideas Beyond Cake

Ten Years of Books

When our book club hit ten years, it felt significant. We'd read over 100 books together. Weathered life changes—marriages, babies, divorces, moves, job losses, job gains. Laughed until we cried. Actually cried.

Just having cake felt insufficient. So we planned a celebration that honored what the decade had meant to us.

Reflection Activities

The Book Map

We created a visual map of every book we'd read, arranged chronologically. Looking at it, we could see:

• Our genre phases (that year we did all mysteries)
• The book that caused the biggest argument
• The one everyone loved
• The one no one finished

This sparked incredible nostalgia. "Remember when we read that one? You were pregnant!" Memories attached to books surfaced that we'd forgotten.

Favorites Superlatives

We voted on categories:

• Best discussion ever
• Biggest surprise (book we expected to hate but loved)
• Book that divided us most
• Book we still talk about
• Most recommended to others
• Book we'd most like to erase from history

The results generated lots of debate and laughs.

Member Retrospectives

Each person shared:

• Their favorite memory from book club
• A book that changed their thinking
• What book club has meant to them

This got emotional. Some of us had been through hard times where book club was a lifeline. Saying it out loud mattered.

Special Activities

Reread a Favorite

We voted on one book to reread from our first year. Reading it with fresh eyes and discussing how our perspectives had changed was fascinating. We were different people than we'd been.

Host an Alumni

We invited people who had moved away or left the group to join for the anniversary meeting. Zoom made this possible. Old members reconnected, stories were shared, and it reminded us of our roots.

Create a Memory Book

Members contributed pages:

• Photos from past meetings
• Ticket stubs from author events we'd attended
• Funny texts and emails we'd saved
• Lists of our individual favorites
• Inside jokes explained for posterity

We compiled it into a book (online services make this easy) and each member got a copy.

Theme the Food

We assigned everyone a book from our history and asked them to bring food related to it. The resulting spread was eclectic and fun, with everyone explaining their book-food connection.

Gifts and Gestures

Matching Items

We got matching tote bags embroidered with our group name and anniversary year. Practical and commemorative.

Book Donations

In honor of our anniversary, we donated books to a local shelter's library. Each member contributed titles we'd discussed.

Member Appreciations

Everyone wrote a note to every other member about what they valued about having them in the group. Receiving a pile of heartfelt notes from your book club friends is... a lot. In the best way.

Looking Forward

The Next Ten Books

We made a "must read" list for our next phase—books we'd always meant to get to. Committing to them together gave the next stretch direction.

New Traditions

We used the anniversary to introduce new traditions we'd wanted to try—annual outings, different discussion formats, whatever felt fresh.

Setting Intentions

What do we want this book club to be in the next decade? More diverse reading? More social events? Author visits? We talked about it and made some goals.

Smaller Milestone Ideas

For one-year, three-year, or five-year markers:

Year One: Photo from first meeting, toast to surviving the first year, vote on your best book

Year Three: Review your book list, have members share how they've grown as readers

Year Five: Alumni invitation, favorites retrospective, small commemorative gift

Why Marking Milestones Matters

Book clubs take effort. They survive when people show up consistently, compromise on selections, accommodate schedules, and prioritize connection.

Celebrating that—acknowledging that you've built something real together—reinforces commitment. It's not just about the books. It's about the people who show up to discuss them.

Our anniversary celebration reminded me why I started this group and why I keep coming. That feeling of belonging, of being known through literature, of having this constant in my life for a decade.

That's worth celebrating.

Happy reading, and here's to many more years of great books with the people who make them matter.

Join Readfeed and start building your book club story. Every great ten-year anniversary starts with year one.