Book Club

In praise of ours

February 2026

Just days ago, someone from my book club passed away. I’d known Lizzie for more than two decades.

I loved her. She read doorstop epics, particularly ones sets in the East. She always wore red lipstick and always drank red wine, regardless of the season.

Liz mostly wore red and black. She was not one for small talk, and when she reviewed a book, she didn’t mince her words. She was not a fan of excessive lyricism, esoteric concepts or sex scenes. She liked exotic locations, strong plots and muscular writing.

Liz was no-nonsense about most things. She’d worked as both a bookkeeper and a nurse. I imagine that in her workplaces she was formidable. With her blow-dried hair, red nails and strong opinions, she was pretty formidable at book club too.

Everything changed when Lizzie got her first grandchild. She became someone who would pass her phone around to show pictures. She would tell us stories about this little girl. As she did so, Liz would move her hands in laughing disbelief. She grinned and tutted and giggled. Liz became someone who snuggled into a couch happily, who hugged her basket of books on her lap and made jokes.

Many years into knowing her, I discovered that Lizzie was soft on us too. When I moved here, she wrote me a long and loving message.

Before she died, Liz requested that the book club host her memorial. It was one of her only requests.

Book club can be an extraordinary thing.

In 2005, when I joined our group and met Liz for the first time, book clubs were a source of derision.

Book clubs, according to popular opinion, were havens for older women who sat around each others’ musty lounges sipping wine, picking at cheese and providing each other the opportunity to express outdated views or indulge in emotional reactions to “book club books”.

What fun to be a young mocker! Old women with books were hilarious – dithery and out-of-touch, thin-skinned and confused. These women did not seek to be challenged by literature. They were laughably outraged by things like shoddy church cushion tapestry or layout changes in the aisles at Pick’n’Pay.

Thankfully, things have changed.

Over here in America, book clubs are postively trendy. I’ve just had an email from Friends to Lovers, my nearest romance book store, inviting me to join not one but two romance readers book clubs.

I’m already a member of the East City Bookshop’s Really Reading Romance club.

Here are some facts and figures about US book club trends, gleaned from Book Riot, CNN and Eventbrite reporting.

• Millennials and Gen Z are increasingly gravitating towards book clubs as a means of socializing.

• Book club event listings grew 24% in the United States in 2023 from the previous year, according to ticketing platform Eventbrite.

• The trend is not confined to traditional home-based gatherings; book club organizers are innovating by hosting events at restaurants, and breweries, and even incorporating running groups like Read & Run Chicago.

• Niche book clubs, such as themed and silent book clubs, are on the rise, with queer book clubs experiencing an 82% attendance increase.

• A year ago, it was reported that silent book club attendance was growing by 23%.

• Silent book club members gather in public at bars, cafes, bookstores, and libraries simply to read – typically anything they choose.

• Celebrities Reese Witherspoon, Jenna Bush Hager, Emma Robert, Amerie, Dua Lipa, Emma Watson, Florence Welch, and Kaia Gerber all have book clubs. Jimmy Fallon restarted his book club last year, and Dakota Johnson introduced the TeaTime Book Club around the same time.

Our book club is neither silent nor celebrity-run. In terms of aesthetic, we conform to the stereotype. We drink wine and eat snacks. We are all middle-aged women. We socialise for a bit, and then we get down to talking about books. We read all sorts of titles. We do not limit ourselves by genre, identity of author, year of publication or media hype.

In winter, ponchos are worn.

Good. Practical.

I do not require celebrity endorsement, a brewery backdrop or a nod from Millennials and Gen Z to know that my book club has the power to change lives.

The fact that we meet every month to talk about books we’ve read is not incidental.

People who group together to share ideas – just that – are pretty evolved, in my opinion.

As someone famous once said, the worst thing to talk about is yourself; the second worst is other people; the best is things.

People form and join book clubs because they find different perspectives enriching, not threatening. There’s a humility in that.

It’s remarkable to me how competitiveness is simply not a part of our group.

Competition defeats the purpose of sharing opinions. We do not try to one-up each other with book knowledge or literary opinions.

That lack of competitiveness extends to everything else. There’s no competition around catering, outfits or personal news. It’s a relief. Lack of social competition is rare.

Consider also the commitment. The women in our book club commit not only to reading at least one book a month, they commit to meeting once a month.

Women in book clubs are often juggling commitments to other activities, interests, hobbies and networks of friends.

That might sound like a generalisation, but it ‘tracks’, as they say here. Women who are not willing to commit to a book club are unlikely to commit to pottery classes, babysitting or choir.

Similarly, have you noticed that women in book clubs are also generally the women who are taking primary responsibilty for the children and old people in their extended families? They are also generally holding down a full time job.

The women in my book club are people getting things done. All the time. They don’t require acknowledgement for getting things done. It’s just what they do.

Women like this are good friends to have. They are supportive, decisive and reliable.

That’s good because at least one of us is, every month, is “going through something”.

Women who love books, and love discussing ideas – and are discliplined enough to commit to things – are prone to changing course in life. They are willing to leave a partner or leave a job. When they are experiencing medical or financial difficulties, they do so consciously.

The women in my book club are not afraid to process.

In terms of our shared love of reading, I find our reading motivation quite pure. We read to be transported to other worlds. We read to feel more, and to gain greater understanding.

My book club mates do not read to strengthen a social arsenal in any way – not to support their own biases with someone else’s research, or to notch up trendy or must-read titles.

What we like most is each other. We’ll read a book if it’s recommended by others in the room.

A book club recommendation is the best kind, if you think about it. Anyone who recommends a book at book club has to feel pretty strongly about it. No-one wants to waste anyone else’s time.

Another thing about book club is the acceptance of differences. No one in a book club excepts everyone to have the same taste. One person loves thrillers, another loves epics. One person adores lyricism, another rates humour.

Even given these differences, in our book club we seem to have an unspoken agreement about what constitutes quality (in other words, what deserves a recommendation). We never use these words, but we tend to like books that have integrity, clarity, courage, empathy and authority. These qualities – the ‘vibes’ – can be demonstrated by the author, the plot, the characters or all of the above.

Those qualities are important to us, and in talking about them in the books we discuss, I think we set the ground rules for our own interactions. With each other we seem to try to be clear, brave, supportive and true.

When I joined this book club, I found role models.

Given the choice, I’d like my book club to run the world.

In some ways, these women do run the world – and have, for years. Their goodness has been rippling out from them since they picked up their first book.

Books suit them and they are suited to books.

I’m not surprised the WhatsApp message has already gone to the group. It says that Lizzie’s memorial, as per her wishes, will be at book club next month. She requested that it be at Gill’s, and next month is Gill’s turn.

That’s a nod from the universe.