How to make the most of your read-along

Friday Fireside #14 | A slow reader guide to Substack

Hi, Simon here. This is Friday Fireside, a warm and welcoming weekly newsletter for curious and creative readers. To read more and join our slow book groups, visit Footnotes and Tangents.

Today, I am here to make sense of Substack, the home of next year’s slow reads of War and Peace and Mantel’s Cromwell books.

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

So two weeks ago, I sent out an invitation to read War and Peace with me in 2024.

I had almost finished reading Tolstoy’s epic with a group on Instagram, and I was keen to do it again with more people next year. That post has been viewed 10.3k times in the last fortnight, leading to 1,069 new subscribers finding their way here. If you’re one of them, hello! You are so very welcome here.

It’s obviously fantastic to see so much enthusiasm for a slow read of War and Peace. I talked last week about what reading this book meant to me this year.

But that explosion of interest has also led to a lot of questions:

How is it going to work?

What do I need to do?

And what on earth is Substack?

To all these questions and more, I first want to say:

To take part, there are only two things you really need to do:

1. Subscribe. It’s free. And if you’re reading this, you’ve probably already done it.

2. Turn on notifications for your book group. If you’re reading Wolf Hall you’ll get an additional email from me on Mondays. If you’re reading War and Peace, a post will go out on Wednesdays.

And that’s it. Everything you need will be in these posts: where we are up to in the book, what’s going on and my thoughts on the story so far.

You don’t need to create a profile, download an app, or navigate a chat thread.

Relax, grab your book, fix your favourite drink, and enjoy. It’s that simple.

That’s great, Simon. But I want more. Tell me there’s more.

There’s more.

This email is also a post on my website. It looks like this:

This website is hosted by Substack.

OK. What is Substack?

Substack began as a newsletter delivery service but is now a powerful suite of tools for writers. It supports podcasts, videos, and chat, and now even has its own social media-style feed and app.

Can’t you just run everything on Instagram again?

There are compelling reasons why writers are migrating to this platform from traditional social media like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter X. Here, I own and control my content. I can do much more with it. I can communicate directly with all of you without a capricious algorithm getting between us. And fundamentally, I can keep writing, thanks to those generous paid subscriptions.

I recommend this short video by

Simon K Jones

. It’s a really smart and simple introduction to Substack and why more writers are using it.

Fantastic. So what about the read-alongs?

On my website’s navigation bar, you’ll find Chat, War and Peace, and the Cromwell Trilogy:

The second two headings take you to a portal for that book group:

War and Peace

Cromwell Trilogy

Absolutely everything relating to these two book groups can be accessed from these portals. Currently, you can see the reading schedules for War and Peace and Wolf Hall. But there will be lots more as the reading gets underway.

So, if you are ever lost, these portal pages are your map to the book groups.

Perfect. And how do I meet other readers and discuss the books?

There are two places where you can join the conversation:

1. Discussion in the comments

   For both Tolstoy and Mantel, you can comment directly in the weekly update posts. Click the read this post online button at the top of your email. Then join us in the comments section:

2. Hang out in the Chat

   Community is a big part of reading War and Peace, a chapter a day. If you click Chat on my home page, you will enter our subscriber chatroom:

Every day next year, I will start a new thread for the current chapter of War and Peace. This is where you can go to hang out with other readers and have an informal chat. It’s an inclusive and friendly space, so as long as people are polite and tolerant, you can talk about whatever you want. There’s only one hard rule: no spoilers!

The reading for the Cromwell trilogy is divided into weekly chunks, so there won’t be a daily chat for Mantel. However, paid subscribers can start their own threads in Chat if you want to create more space to talk about anything related to Wolf Hall.

Anything else I should know about?

I don’t think so.

Read-alongs have a tendency to take on a life of their own. If you want to write your own posts, make videos or podcasts related to the books, or maybe knit a tea cosy in the shape of Pierre Bezukhov or Thomas Cromwell, go ahead! I’ll do my best to share everyone’s content and creations in my weekly posts.

And if it is within your means, please consider becoming a paid subscriber so I can justify the silly amount of time I put into these book groups. It’s a labour of love, but sadly, our children’s nursery isn’t accepting love as payment at this time.

Finally…

Thank you everyone for being here. For subscribing. For reading. For joining in. For being brilliant and supporting me and the community. I sent out my first post in August to 89 people. Now, there’s (…checks…) 2,742 of you. It’s been a wild few months, and I don’t really know what happened. But whatever it was, I’m glad it did. And now I am immensely excited for 2024!

And if you’ve got any more questions or suggestions, leave me a comment or hit reply. I’ll answer you as quickly as I can.

Have a great weekend, and I’ll catch you all next week.

Simon