Substack Book Group Directory
Book guides | Slow reads | Library | Chat | Notes
Find a book group on Substack…
Footnotes and Tangents is part of a growing community of book groups, book clubs, readalongs and slow reads on Substack.
This directory lists active newsletters hosting current and upcoming reads. Titles include fiction, nonfiction, plays, and poetry.
If you host a book group on Substack and would like to be included, message me with links to your most relevant posts/pages and start dates for current and upcoming reads.
This list is updated monthly and sent to all Footnotes and Tangents subscribers.
Substack Book Group Directory
Key: 📷 video meetups 🎧 podcasts
The Audacious Book Club 📷
Host:
Jun: Marsha by Tourmaline
Jul: Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin
Sep: Moderation by Elaine Castillo / Resting Bitch Face by Taylor Byas
Later this year: What If We Get It Right? by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson / We Survived the Night by Julian Brave NoiseCat
The Austen Connection Read-Along
Host:
May-Jun: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jul-Aug: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Sep-Oct: Emma by Jane Austen
Nov-Dec: Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Big Read
Host:
Jun: Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather / A Supposedly Fun Thing by David Foster Wallace
July: The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin / Confessions by St Augustine
Aug: Silas Marner by George Eliot / What Stands in a Storm by Kim Cross
Sept: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston / Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Oct: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (Oct-Dec) / American Scary by Jeremy Dauber
Nov: I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
Dec: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
The Book Club for Busy Readers 📷
Host:
Jun: On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks
Aug: Live Love Now by Rachel Macy Stafford
Sep: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
Oct: These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
Nov: All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Dec: One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp
The Burning Archive Slow Read
Host:
Feb-Sep: The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
Oct-TBC: The Mahabharata
Cambridge Ladies' Dining Society: The 20th Century Book Club
Host:
Jun-Jul: Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
Later this year:
At Mrs Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor
The World My Wilderness by Rose Macaulay
The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins
Cams Campbell Reads
Host:
May-June: Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
Chasing Fog Book Club
Host:
2025: Chasing Fog by
The Classical Book Club
Host:
June: TBD by vote
Close Reads HQ 🎧
Hosts:
, ,Feb-Jun: The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
Jun: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jul-Aug: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Aug-Sep: The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
Sep-Oct: A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Nov-Dec: Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare
Closely Reading
Host:
May-Jul: Middlemarch by George Eliot
Aug-Oct: The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
Oct-Dec: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
Commonplace Philosophy 📷
Host: Jared Henderson
Mar-Jun: Plato’s Republic
Jun: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Aug-Sep: Chuang Tzu
Oct-2026: Aristotle’s Politics
Creative, Inspired, Happy: Read Like a Writer Book Club 📷
Host:
May: Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
Jun: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
Creative, Inspired, Happy: Read Like a Writer Book Club
Host:
Jun: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
Jul: Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
Aug: The Incredible Kindness of Paper by Evelyn Skye
Sept: Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Oct: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley
Nov/Dec: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
The Creative Kingdom Book Club
Host:
Mar-TBD: Seeking Wisdom by Julia Cameron
The Cultural Diegetic
Host:
2025: Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Jun: Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu / Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin / Maurice by E.M. Forster / Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Nov: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Deep Reads Book Club
Host:
Jan-Jun: Homer’s The Iliad
Jul-Dec: Homer’s The Odyssey
Dostoevsky book club «Theta-Delta»
Host:
2025: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Eclectic Reader
Host:
Jun: Summer by Edith Wharton
Jul: A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
Aug: Quicksand by Nella Larsen
Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub 📷
Host:
Jun: The Joy of the Snow
Jul: The Valley of Song
Aug: Child from the Sea
Sep: The Middle Window
Oct: My God & My All
Nov: The Dean's Watch
Dec: I Saw Three Ships
Emily’s Walking Book Club 📷
Host:
Jun: Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark
Jul: Persuasion by Jane Austen
The First Books Book Club
Host:
June: Along Came a Spider by James Patterson
Footnotes and Tangents 🎧
Host:
2025: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Jan-Apr: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Jan-Mar: The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell
Apr-Jul: Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
May-Sep: A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
Jul-Dec: The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel
Sep-Oct: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Nov-Dec: The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
4,000 Ideas: The Oliver Burkeman Bookclub
Host:
Feb-TBD: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
FrizzLit 📷
Host:
May-Jun: A Farewell to Arms and Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway
Genius & Ink 🎧
Host:
2025: Dante’s The Divine Comedy
Guerilla Readers
Host:
Jun: Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post by Martin Baron
Jul: Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy by Brian Stelter
Interpreting the Great Artificer: Close readings of the works of James Joyce
Host:
May-TBD: Dubliners by James Joyce
The Kindred Spirits Bookclub
Host:
Jun: Anne’s House of Dreams by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Jul: Anne of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Aug: Rainbow Valley by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Sep: Rilla of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Love of Literature
Host:
Jun-Aug: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
Melanie’s Frontal Lobe
Host:
2024-2025: Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
More Magic
Host:
Jun: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by VE Schwab
Jul: The Web of Time by Flavia Brunetti
Aug: Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs
Sep: Water Moon by Samantha Sotti Yambao
Oct: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
Nov: Once Upon a Starlit Tide by Kell Woods
Dec: The Everlasting by Alix Harrow
Mystics Reading Society
Host:
Jun: Wanderland: A Search for Magic in the Landscape by Jini Reddy
Personal Canon Formation
Host:
Jan-TBD: Chaucer Reading Challenge
Pomus Aureus
Host:
Spring-Summer: Arturo’s Island by Elsa Morante
Autumn-Winter: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Read the Classics
Host:
2025: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
May-Jun: The Counterfeiters by André Gide
Apr-Feb: The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
Jun: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The Reader & the Writer 🎧
Hosts:
&2025: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
May-Jun: Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Reading Revisited
Host:
& &June: Trust by Hernan Diaz
Jul: Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
Aug: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Receipt from the Bookshop
Host:
June: TBD
Science Fiction Reads
Host:
Jun: Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
Jul: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
Aug: The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe
Sep: Gateway by Frederik Pohl
Oct: The Rediscovery of Man by Cordwainer Smith
Nov: Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
Dec: Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
The Sixty-Minute Book Club
Host:
Jun: Recitatif by Toni Morrison
Jul: The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield
Aug: Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl
Sep: Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler
Oct: A Small, Good Thing by Raymond Carver
Nov: A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel García Márquez
Dec: The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Arthur Conan Doyle
To All My Darlings
Host:
2025: Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young
True Stories Book Club 🎧📷
Host:
Currently paused
Well-Read Weekend
Host:
May-Jun: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
