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, peruse the archive.

Key: 📞 video meetups 🎧 podcasts

Apocryphaa’s Short Story Club
Host:

M. E. Rothwell

• Last: Before The Law by Franz Kafka (August) • Next: A story by Jorge Luis Borges (tbc)

The Audacious Book Club 📞
Host:

Roxane Gay

• Last: The Sons of El Rey by Alex Espinoza • Now: The Rich People Have Gone Away by Regina Porter

The Big Read
Host:

Jeremy Anderberg

• Last: Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin • Now: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Aug–Oct)

Cambridge Ladies' Dining Society
Host:

Ann Kennedy Smith

• Current: The Rector's Daughter by F. M. Mayor • Next: The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

Cams Campbell Reads
Host:

Cams Campbell

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

Close Reads HQ 🎧
Hosts:

David Kern

Tim McIntosh

Heidi White

• Last: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset & Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor • Now: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (Sept–Jan) & Vipers’ Tangle by Francois Mauriac (Oct) • Next: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (Nov) & Jumping Jenny by Anthony Berkley

Closely Reading
Host:

haley larsen, phd

• Last: Passing by Nella Larsen (Sept) • Now: The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Oct) & lots of spooky options! • Next: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (2025)

The Common Reader 📞
Host:

Henry Oliver

• Last: Twelfth Night & Hamlet • Now: Troilus and Cressida & Anthony and Cleopatra (Discussion: 13 Oct) • Next: The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest (Disccusion: 10 Nov)

Commonplace Philosophy
Host: Jared Henderson • Last: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (July – September) • Now: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Oct) • The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt (Nov)

Creative, Inspired, Happy 📞
Host:

Evelyn Skye

• Last: • Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert Now: Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman (October) • Next: No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister (November)

The Crossroads Gazette’s Audio Book Club 🎧
Host:

Nicole Miras

• Now: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Deep Reads Book Club
Host:

Matthew Long

• Next: Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey (2025)

Dostoevsky book club «Theta-Delta»
Host:

Dana Oljós

• Now: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (July – Dec 2024)

Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub
Host:

Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub

• Last: Island Magic • Now: Green Dolphin Street • Next: The White Witch

Emily’s Walking Book Club 📞
Host:

Emily Rhodes

• Last: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie (Sept) • Now: Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell (Oct) • Next: The Past is Myself by Christabel Bielenberg

Everything is Amazing
Host:

Mike Sowden

• Now: On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz

Footnotes and Tangents 🎧
Host:

Simon Haisell

• Last: Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel • Now: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy & The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel • Next: The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell (Jan-Mar 2025) & A Place of Greater Safety (May-Sep 2025) & Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Sep-Oct 2025) & The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald (Nov-Dec 2025)

FrizzLit
Host:

Christopher Frizzelle

• Last: Persuasion by Jane Austen • Now: Flannery O'Connor • Now: Dune by Frank Herbert (Jan–Feb)

Gentle Book Club
Host:

Luisa Skinner

• Last: Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love by Huma Qureshi • Now: Kokoro by Beth Kempton (Sep-Oct) • Next: Bone by

Yrsa Daley-Ward

(Nov-Dec)

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

• Next: Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (September–December)

Paper Knife
Host:

Leonard Gaya

• Now: A Year of Reading Kafka

The Paulo Coelho Read Along
Host:

Colm Holland

• Last: Veronika Decides To Die • Now: Eleven Minutes • Next: The Zahir

Peak Notions 📞
Host:

Laura Kennedy

• Last: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (April) • Now: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (July)

Personal Canon Formation
Host:

John Halbrooks

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

Pomus Aureus
Host:

Ellie

• Now: The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Poetry & Process
Host:

Brian Funke

• Last: A Hundred Bolts of Satin by Kay Ryan • Now: Love after Love by Derek Walcott

Read the Classics
Host:

Henry Eliot

• Now: The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Sep) • Next: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (Oct) & Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (Nov) & The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett (Dec)

Reading Revisited
Host:

Jessica Risma

Kelsie Hartley

Hannah Suire

• Last: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen • Now: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë • Next year: 2025 list

Receipt from the Bookshop
Host:

Katie Clapham

• Last: Tom Lake by Ann Patchett • Now: The Mission House by Carys Davies (Sept)

The Recovering Academic
Host:

Joshua Doležal

• Last: My Ántonia by Willa Cather

The Selfish Bookclub
Host: