Substack Book Group Directory
Book guides | Slow reads | Library | Chat | Notes
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:
Aug: Nice Girls Don’t Win: How I Burned It All Down to Claim My Power by Parvati Shallow
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-Sept: 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
Chasing Fog Book Club
Host:
2025: Chasing Fog by
The Classical Book Club
Host:
August: TBD
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-Aug: 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
Aug-Sep: Zhuangzi (romanised as Chuang Tzu)
Oct-2026: Aristotle’s Politics
Creative, Inspired, Happy: Read Like a Writer Book Club 📷
Host:
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 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
The Eclectic Reader
Host:
Aug: Quicksand by Nella Larsen
Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub 📷
Host:
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
Sept: The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Oct: Assembly by Natasha Brown
Nov: The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey
Dec: Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
The First Books Book Club
Host:
Aug - Sept: The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy & a secret modern spy novel
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:
Sept: On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America by Abrahm Lustgarten
The Kindred Spirits Bookclub
Host:
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:
Aug: TBD
More Magic
Host:
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:
Jul-TBD: 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
Aug: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
The Reader & the Writer 🎧
Hosts:
&2025: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Aug: Phantastes by George MacDonald
Reading Revisited
Host:
& &Aug: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Sep: Why Literature Still Matters by Jason M Baxter
Oct: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Nov: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Dec: A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver / The Ballad of the White Horse by G.K. Chesterton
Jan: The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
Feb-Apr: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undse
May: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Jun: Oedipus Rex and Antigone by Sophocles
Jul: The Good Death of Kate Montclair by Daniel McInerny
Aug ‘26: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Receipt from the Bookshop
Host:
Aug: TBD
The Sixty-Minute Book Club
Host:
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:
Aug: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
