Substack Book Group Directory
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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:
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:
Jul-Aug: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Sep-Oct: Emma by Jane Austen
Nov-Dec: Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Big Read
Host:
Jun-July: Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Book Club for Busy Readers 📷
Host:
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
Cams Campbell Reads
Host:
July: TBA
Chasing Fog Book Club
Host:
2025: Chasing Fog by
The Classical Book Club
Host:
June: The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
July: TBD by vote
Close Reads HQ 🎧
Hosts:
, ,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
July: 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:
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:
June-TBD: Floor Sample by Julia Cameron
The Cultural Diegetic
Host:
2025: Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Nov: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Deep Reads Book Club
Host:
Jul-Dec: Homer’s The Odyssey
Dostoevsky book club «Theta-Delta»
Host:
2025: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Eclectic Reader
Host:
Jul: A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
Aug: Quicksand by Nella Larsen
Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub 📷
Host:
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:
Jul: Persuasion by Jane Austen
The First Books Book Club
Host:
July: TBA
Footnotes and Tangents 🎧
Host:
2025: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
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:
Jul-Sept: Joan Didion Book Club
Genius & Ink 🎧
Host:
2025: Dante’s The Divine Comedy
Guerilla Readers
Host:
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:
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:
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:
July: When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron
Personal Canon Formation
Host:
Jan-TBD: Chaucer Reading Challenge
Pirate Seminar
Host:
Jun-Aug: A General History of the Pirates by Captain Charles Johnson
Pomus Aureus
Host:
Jun-Sept: 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
July: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
The Reader & the Writer 🎧
Hosts:
&2025: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
July: Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Reading Revisited
Host:
& &Jul: Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
Aug: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Receipt from the Bookshop
Host:
July: TBD
The Sixty-Minute Book Club
Host:
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:
July: TBD either Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie, or A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr