Substack Book Group Directory
Please note that this list is no longer being updated.
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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: Roxane Gay
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: Plain Jane
Jul-Aug: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Sep-Oct: Emma by Jane Austen
Nov-Dec: Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Big Read
Host: Jeremy Anderberg
Jun-Sept: Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Book Club for Busy Readers 📷
Host: Jeannie Ewing
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: Jeff Rich
Feb-Sep: The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
Oct-TBC: The Mahabharata
Chasing Fog Book Club
Host: Laura Pashby
2025: Chasing Fog by Laura Pashby
The Classical Book Club
Host: The Freelance Writing Network
August: TBD
Close Reads HQ 🎧
Hosts: David Kern, Tim McIntosh, Heidi White
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: haley larsen, phd
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: Evelyn Skye
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: Kode
2025: Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Nov: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Deep Reads Book Club
Host: Matthew Long
Jul-Dec: Homer’s The Odyssey
The Eclectic Reader
Host: Chelsey Feder
Aug: Quicksand by Nella Larsen
Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub 📷
Host: Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub
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: Emily Rhodes
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: Sarah Stewart Holland
Aug - Sept: The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy & a secret modern spy novel
Footnotes and Tangents 🎧
Host: Simon Haisell
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: Heidi Fiedler
Feb-TBD: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
FrizzLit 📷
Host: Christopher Frizzelle
Jul-Sept: Joan Didion Book Club
Genius & Ink 🎧
Host: Vashik Armenikus
2025: Dante’s The Divine Comedy
Guerilla Readers
Host: Thyme, Place & Story
Sept: On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America by Abrahm Lustgarten
The Kindred Spirits Bookclub
Host: Briana Kohlbrenner
Aug: Rainbow Valley by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Sep: Rilla of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Love of Literature
Host: Maddie Dobrowski
Jun-Aug: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
Melanie’s Frontal Lobe
Host: Mel Tan Uy
Aug: TBD
More Magic
Host: Demi Utley
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: Emma Veritas
Jul-TBD: When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron
Personal Canon Formation
Host: John Halbrooks
Jan-TBD: Chaucer Reading Challenge
Pirate Seminar
Host: Eleanor Konik
Jun-Aug: A General History of the Pirates by Captain Charles Johnson
Pomus Aureus
Host: Ellie
Jun-Sept: Arturo’s Island by Elsa Morante
Autumn-Winter: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Read the Classics
Host: Henry Eliot
2025: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Aug: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
The Reader & the Writer 🎧
Hosts: Shari Dragovich & Rhea Forney
2025: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Aug: Phantastes by George MacDonald
Reading Revisited
Host: Jessica Risma & Kelsie Hartley & Hannah Suire
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: Katie Clapham
Aug: TBD
The Sixty-Minute Book Club
Host: Emma Kriskinans
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: To All My Darlings
2025: Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young
True Stories Book Club 🎧📷
Host: Katherine May
Currently paused
Well-Read Weekend
Host: Taylor D'Amico
Aug: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
