Substack Book Group Directory

Jun 29, 2024

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 with 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

For past books, explore the archive.

Key: 📞 video meetups 🎧 podcasts

Apocryphaa’s Short Story Club
Host:

M. E. Rothwell

Last: The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

The Audacious Book Club 📞
Host:

Roxane Gay

Last: Women's Hotel by Danny Lavery
Now: The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Jan: Private Rites by Julia Armfield
Feb: Homeseeking by Karissa Chen
Mar: Back After This by Linda Holmes
Apr: The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
May: My Documents by Kevin Nguyen
Jun: Marsha by Tourmaline
Jul: Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin
Sep: Moderation by Elaine Castillo / Resting Bitch Face by Taylor Byas (Sep)

The Big Read
Host:

Jeremy Anderberg

Now: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens / Go As A River by Shelley Read / Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (November) / City of Thieves by David Benioff / The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford
Jan: The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham / Attention Span by Gloria Mark
Feb: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (Feb-Mar) / All About Love by bell hooks
Mar: Range by David Epstein
Apr: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain / Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain / When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
May: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain / The Infernal Machine by Steven Johnson
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 lliot / 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:

Jeannie Ewing

Jan: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
Feb: This One Will Hurt You by Paul Crenshaw
Mar: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Apr: Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
May: Finding Me: A Memoir by Viola Davis
Jun: On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks
Jul: Days of Wonder by Caroline Leavitt
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

Cambridge Ladies' Dining Society
Host:

Ann Kennedy Smith

• Past: The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (Oct-Nov)

Cams Campbell Reads
Host:

Cams Campbell

• Now: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (May 2024 – Feb 2025)

The Classical Book Club
Host:

The Freelance Writing Network

Last: Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier
Now: White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Close Reads HQ 🎧
Hosts:

David Kern

Tim McIntosh

Heidi White

Last: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen / Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Now: The Great Passion by James Runcie
2025 List:
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
• The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
• Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare
• O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Closely Reading
Host:

haley larsen, phd

Jan-Mar: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Apr: Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis
Apr-May: Yonnondio by Tillie Olsen
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
Now: The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt (Nov-Feb)
Mar: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Mar-May: Plato’s Republic
June: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Aug-Sep: Chuang Tzu
Oct: Aristotle’s Politics

Creative, Inspired, Happy 📞
Host:

Evelyn Skye

Jan: Deep Work by Cal Newport
Feb: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Mar: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Apr: One Two Three by Laurie Frankel
May: Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
Jun: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

The Cultural Diegetic
Host:

Kode

2025: Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Deep Reads Book Club
Host:

Matthew Long

Jan-Jun: Homer’s The Iliad
Jul-Dec: Homer’s The Odyssey

Dostoevsky book club «Theta-Delta»
Host:

Dana Oljós

Last: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
2025: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub
Host:

Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub

Last: A City of Bells
Now: Sisters of the Angels

Emily’s Walking Book Club 📞
Host:

Emily Rhodes

Now: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Jan: Tales from Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry
Feb: Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
Mar: Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald
Apr: Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski

Everything is Amazing
Host:

Mike Sowden

Last: On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz

Footnotes and Tangents 🎧
Host:

Simon Haisell

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 (Nov-Dec 2025)

FrizzLit
Host:

Christopher Frizzelle

Last: Flannery O'Connor / Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Jan-Feb: Dune by Frank Herbert

Genius & Ink 🎧
Host:

Vashik Armenikus

2025: Dante’s The Divine Comedy

The Ladybird Purse
Host:

Keris Fox

Now: The Financial Anxiety Solution by Lindsay Bryan-Podvin

Melanie’s Frontal Lobe
Host:

Mel Tan Uy

Now: Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

Notes from the Town Hermit
Host:

Tiffany Chu

Now: Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

Paper Knife
Host:

Leonard Gaya

Now: A Year of Reading Kafka

The Paulo Coelho Read Along
Host:

Colm Holland

Last: The Witch of Portobello

Peak Notions 📞
Host:

Laura Kennedy

Last: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Personal Canon Formation
Host:

John Halbrooks

Last: Emma by Jane Austen
Now: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Next: Chaucer & Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Pomus Aureus
Host:

Ellie

Now: The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Poetry & Process
Host:

Brian Funke

Last: Last Night As I Was Sleeping by Antonio Machado
Now: The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Read and Think Deeply
Host:

Ryan Hall

Jan-Apr: King by Johnathan Eig
May-Jun: Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
Jul-Oct: Douglass by David W. Blight
Nov-Dec: Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis

Read the Classics
Host:

Henry Eliot

Last: The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
2025: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Feb: Persuasion by Jane Austen
Mar: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
Apr: The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
May-Jun: The Counterfeiters by André Gide
Jun: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Reading Revisited
Host:

Jessica Risma

Kelsie Hartley

Hannah Suire

Last: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Now: Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
Jan: Othello by William Shakespeare
Feb: Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
Mar: That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
Apr: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
May: Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
June: Trust by Hernan Diaz
Jul: Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
Aug: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Rebel Readers Book Club
Host:

Charlene Storey

Last: Cassandra Speaks by Elizabeth Lesser

Receipt from the Bookshop
Host:

Katie Clapham

Last: The Mission House by Carys Davies
Now: White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

Sleuth Hero Alien 📞
Host:

Emma Veritas

Now: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Jan: The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst

The Reader & the Writer 🎧
Hosts:

Shari Dragovich

Rhea Forney