New book guide: Bring Up the Bodies

Endnotes July 2024 & Book Group Directory

Hello!

It is my birthday, and I am in a celebratory mood! Here’s a video:

Twelve months ago, footnotes and tangents was just a little side project on Instagram. A year on, I now work full-time on this newsletter, writing the book guides and running the slow-read book groups. Last week, I finished work on the guide for Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies:

To celebrate, I’m running a half-price sale on annual subscriptions! From January, the four book guides will be exclusive for paid subscribers, along with the Wolf Crawl and War and Peace read-alongs – both of which will run in 2025 for those who felt the FOMO this year. This offer expires at midnight tomorrow BST.

In the next few months, I’ll be finalising our books for 2025 and setting up Wolf Crawl as a podcast. I am enormously excited about the future of footnotes and tangents and look forward to sharing more great books with you soon.

As usual, you can scroll down for a list of other book groups hosted by readers and writers on Substack. I’ll see many of you in our book chats and discussions this week. Have a fabulous August, and I’ll be back next month with more details on next year’s reads.

Simon

Substack Book Group Directory

If you would like to update your details here or add your own book group, book club or read-along, please send me a message on Substack.

For past books, peruse the archive.
For the most up-to-date list, click here.

Key: 📞 video meetups 🎧 podcasts

The Audacious Book Club 📞
Host: Roxane Gay • Last: Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (June) • Now: Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin (Zoom: 30 July)

The Big Read
Host: Jeremy Anderberg • Last: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë • Current: Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

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: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee • Now: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset • Now: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward (July–Aug) & Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (Aug–Dec)

Closely Reading
Host: haley larsen, phd • Last: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

The Common Reader 📞
Host: Henry Oliver • Last: As You Like It by William Shakespeare • Next: Twelfth Night, The Tempest, and Hamlet

Creative, Inspired, Happy 📞
Host: Evelyn Skye • Last: Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (July) • Next: Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert (August)

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: The Little White Horse • Now:Linnets & Valerians

Emily’s Walking Book Club 📞
Host:

Emily Rhodes

• Last: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (June) • Now: Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb (July)

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: A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel (2025)

FrizzLit
Host: Christopher Frizzelle • Last: Herman Melville • Now: Persuasion by Jane Austen (July) • Now: Dune by Frank Herbert (August – September)

MakingHistory and Lifelong Learning 📞
Host: Dan Allosso • Last: Capital Order by Clara E. Mattei • Now: Dream of a Democratic Culture by Tim Lacy

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: The Fifth Mountain • Now: Manual of The Warrior of Light• Next: Veronika Decides To Die

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: Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien • Now: Emma by Jane Austen • Next: Jonathan Swift & Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Poetry & Process
Host: Brian Funke • Last: The Creek by Jim Harrison • Now: The Journey by Mary Oliver

Reading Revisited
Host: Jessica Risma &

Kelsie Hartley

&

Hannah Suire

• Last: East of Eden by John Steinbeck • Now: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen • Next year: 2025 list

Receipt from the Bookshop
Host: Katie Clapham • Last: In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas (June)

The Recovering Academic
Host: Joshua Doležal • Last: My Ántonia by Willa Cather

The Selfish Bookclub
Host: Sarah Raad • Last: Big Magic by

Elizabeth Gilbert

• Now: Playing Big by Tara Mohr

The Story Social
Hosts: Jodie Melissa Rogers &

Mollie Carberry

• Last: The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (June) • Now: Boy Parts by Eliza Clark (July)

Virginia Woolf Reading Group
Host: Tash • Last: Mrs Dalloway • Next: To the Lighthouse (next year)

Walking Away
Host: Jared Henderson • Now: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (July – September)

Photo by Anastasia Zhenina on Unsplash