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 with 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.
For past books, peruse the archive.
Key: 📞 video meetups 🎧 podcasts
Apocryphaa’s Short Story Club
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• Last: Before The Law by Franz Kafka (August) • Next: A story by Jorge Luis Borges (tbc)The Audacious Book Club 📞
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• Last: The Sons of El Rey by Alex Espinoza • Now: The Rich People Have Gone Away by Regina PorterThe Big Read
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• Last: Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin • Now: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Aug–Oct)Cambridge Ladies' Dining Society
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• Current: The Rector's Daughter by F. M. Mayor • Next: The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von ArnimCams Campbell Reads
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• Now: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (May 2024 – Feb 2025)Close Reads HQ 🎧
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, , • Last: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset & Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor • Now: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (Sept–Jan) & Vipers’ Tangle by Francois Mauriac (Oct) • Next: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (Nov) & Jumping Jenny by Anthony BerkleyClosely Reading
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• Last: Passing by Nella Larsen (Sept) • Now: The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Oct) & lots of spooky options! • Next: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (2025)The Common Reader 📞
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• Last: Twelfth Night & Hamlet • Now: Troilus and Cressida & Anthony and Cleopatra (Discussion: 13 Oct) • Next: The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest (Disccusion: 10 Nov)Commonplace Philosophy
Host: Jared Henderson • Last: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (July – September) • Now: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Oct) • The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt (Nov)
Creative, Inspired, Happy 📞
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• Last: • Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert Now: Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman (October) • Next: No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister (November)The Crossroads Gazette’s Audio Book Club 🎧
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• Now: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis CarrollDeep Reads Book Club
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• Next: Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey (2025)Dostoevsky book club «Theta-Delta»
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• Now: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (July – Dec 2024)Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub
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• Last: Island Magic • Now: Green Dolphin Street • Next: The White WitchEmily’s Walking Book Club 📞
Host: • Last: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie (Sept) • Now: Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell (Oct) • Next: The Past is Myself by Christabel BielenbergEverything is Amazing
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• Now: On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra HorowitzFootnotes and Tangents 🎧
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• Last: Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel • Now: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy & The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel • Next: The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell (Jan-Mar 2025) & A Place of Greater Safety (May-Sep 2025) & Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Sep-Oct 2025) & The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald (Nov-Dec 2025)FrizzLit
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• Last: Persuasion by Jane Austen • Now: Flannery O'Connor • Now: Dune by Frank Herbert (Jan–Feb)Gentle Book Club
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• Last: Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love by Huma Qureshi • Now: Kokoro by Beth Kempton (Sep-Oct) • Next: Bone by (Nov-Dec)The Ladybird Purse
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• Now: The Financial Anxiety Solution by Lindsay Bryan-PodvinMelanie’s Frontal Lobe
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• Now: Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David GraeberNotes from the Town Hermit
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• Next: Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (September–December)Paper Knife
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• Now: A Year of Reading KafkaThe Paulo Coelho Read Along
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• Last: Veronika Decides To Die • Now: Eleven Minutes • Next: The ZahirPeak Notions 📞
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• Last: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (April) • Now: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (July)Personal Canon Formation
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• Last: Emma by Jane Austen • Now: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift • Next: Sir Gawain and the Green KnightPomus Aureus
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• Now: The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di LampedusaPoetry & Process
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• Last: A Hundred Bolts of Satin by Kay Ryan • Now: Love after Love by Derek WalcottRead the Classics
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• Now: The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Sep) • Next: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (Oct) & Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (Nov) & The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett (Dec)Reading Revisited
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& & • Last: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen • Now: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë • Next year: 2025 listReceipt from the Bookshop
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• Last: Tom Lake by Ann Patchett • Now: The Mission House by Carys Davies (Sept)The Recovering Academic
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• Last: My Ántonia by Willa CatherThe Selfish Bookclub
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• Last: Big Magic by • Now: Playing Big by Tara MohrThe Story Social 🎧
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& • Last: Boy Parts by Eliza Clark (July) • Now: Good Material by Dolly Alderton (Aug) • Next: The Lighthouse by Virginia WoolfTeacups & Tomes Book Club
Hosts: & • Now: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (Oct)True Stories Book Club 🎧
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• Last: Matrescence by Lucy Jones • Now: Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (Sept) • Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel (with ) (Oct)Virginia Woolf Reading Group
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• Last: Mrs Dalloway • Next: To the Lighthouse (next year)Baldwin, James: Giovanni’s Room
Brontë, Charlotte: Jane Eyre
Brooks, Sarah: The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wasteland
Coelho, Paulo: The Fifth Mountain, Manual of The Warrior of Light,
Felker-Martin, Gretchen: Cuckoo
Goudge, Elizabeth: The Scent of Water, The Little White Horse, Linnets & Valerians
Hammett, Dashiell: The Maltese Falcon
Harrison, Jim: The Creek
Ishiguro, Kazuo: The Remains of the Day
Lacy, Tim: Dream of a Democratic Culture
Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird
Mantel, Hilary: Wolf Hall
Mattei, Clara E: Capital Order
Melville, Herman: Bartleby the Scrivener, Benito Cereno, Billy Budd
Nezhukumatathil, Aimee: Bite by Bite
Nolan, Megan: Ordinary Human Failings
Oliver, Mary: The Journey
Shakespeare, William: As You Like It
Steinbeck, John: East of Eden
Thomas, Kai: In the Upper Country
Tolkien, JRR: Lord of the Rings
Ward, Jesmyn: Sing, Unburied, Sing
Wharton, Edith: The Age of Innocence
Yeats, William Butler: The Lake Isle of Innisfree