During the pandemic I tapped into bookish podcasts and searched for a reading community because after living in my community for 18 years, book clubs to newcomers remain closed. So I opted to look beyond my bookisshh horizon for new communities and I found them by way of podcast, then platform, then IRL.

Beginning with bookish podcasts, most of the time there are two hosts whose opening tag lines message regional sentiments—“We’re two midwestern readers who are distracted by new releases” or using a sharp, peppy, Southern drawl,“We don’t get bossy around here but we may be a little bit snarky” or a soft, buttery-velvet-not-quite-so-Southern, “Just like Rainer Maria Rilke says: Ah how good it is to be among people who read…” If you’re like me you might have missed the memo also known as hidden message that brings to the center a certain group of people. People can’t help but be clannish I guess there’s something safe in that. However, I am not clannish and so I wandered in.

The first door to open to me led to the bookish podcast space. On book podcasts, there’s a lot of variety in opening intros and the subtext for each of them. The upbeat musical intro sets up the podcast’s parameters: they might be spoiler free or not spoiler free; the podcast may cover sensitive topics or be too graphic for little ears. Or for open-minded reader/listeners, the podcasts may not disclaim anything, so strap in, and be open to any potentially controversial current topic or one just about to be trending. In some digital book club communities that quietly message that some people don’t really belong here, likely they won’t be featured, but you random folks can stay quiet, give an 5 star review and maybe learn something. After finding my favorite podcasts, I looked for another door and these doors opened to joining a couple of digital reading communities—some free and some with a cost. It’s the “cost” part that becomes interesting… There’s the cost of money, time, freedom of speech, connection, disappointment among other costs. The only consistent cost is financial and once you’re locked into a subscription period you are locked in, so you’ll either be online more or less in a bittersweet sort of way…

Digital book club dialogues take place in different environments, however to participate in most them you will need to either subscribe directly, support via Patreon which includes ranges of membership. Free ones offer limited content and can be found on, Facebook/Meta, Instagram, TikTok, Discord, or via tracking services like: The Story Graph and Goodreads.

How the reading communities gather is interesting. Some digital gatherings occur on Instagram lives and others in Zoom or other similar gathering spaces. Sometimes participants can see each other and interact by way of moderator invitation while most often the participants remain anonymous but alive in the comment section. It’s an extremely rare moment for an un-vetted guest to be invited onto the live due to bad actors on the internet. At any rate, you’re there at the club but not really because hosts will gate keep and select comments that they want to respond to. In my view the live streams are deflating and keep people stuffed in their homes and soft clothes as the world changes outside those homes. People pay for this, a for the purpose of research, so did I. What did I get besides a ton of direct advertising that officially lands in my mailbox as my data is sold and/or traded to advertisers of all scale. At the very least, I have found products created by small businesses that are B Corporations that commit to ethical sourcing, reduced use of water and fossil fuels, no PFOLS—you get the picture…

Subscription based clubs often suffer sponsors and they try to be selective but please be wise dear reader and read the fine print and decide for yourself what is safe, healthy for you and loved ones because so much product sold through the internet is not FDA, FCC or FTC regulated and our congress is having a hard time catching up to the post 21st century via antitrust and other types of lawsuits forcing our legal system to evolve. Be a responsible consumer.

At any rate, subscription based digital book clubs do different things and the one that I joined, The Modern Mrs. Darcy offers her members a lot of things to do and ways to participate and connect. It takes some time to figure out if it’s a match and I elected to a quarter at a time— pending the impact the club has on my time and the quality of how I use my time. I will be dispatching from the digital book club to update you with events, pluses and minuses from my digital book club experience so please look out for this featurette: Dispatches From a Digital Book Club.

Just a little bit about The Modern Mrs. Darcy book club which was created by author, Anne Bogel who also host’s the podcast, “What Should I Read Next?” Anne has written several books all centered around reading and include wonderful resources for both adults and kids to discover themselves as readers and track the reading that they do through their lifetime. My personal favorite book authored by Anne is, “Reading People: How Seeing the World Through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything”. In her book, Anne uses 7 personality frameworks and how these frameworks can be adapted to choosing content that a reader finds comfortable and enjoyable. Anne is an optimizer when it comes to time/cost/benefit analysis.

The Modern Mrs. Darcy book club offers a lot to members. There are classes, guest speakers, meet ups, Postal Book Clubs, URL book clubs, newsletters, recommendations, life hacks, watch along movie dates, conversations and discussion forums. There’s always something going on and someone who wants to chime in, make a suggestion, send support, etc. There’s always something happening in the MMD book club for members to partake in. Subscriptions can be quarterly, bi-annually and annually. Obviously you save money if you just join for a whole year.

My first experiences…

Most people won’t believe it but I am kind of shy but I decided to ignore my shyness and get to it. On the club’s Conversations tab I introduced myself and right away people were gracious and welcoming. It was kind of a nice feeling even if it was words on a screen. Next, I watched a couple of uploaded prior events to get an impression of Anne and Ginger from pre-recorded live streams and they were positive, warm and mildly silly. These characteristics motivated me to see what smaller discussion groups I could join and maybe find a few bookish friends to read and discuss books with.

This brought me to seeing the word “FULL” over and over again. So I asked if there was room in a club and the organizer said she’d begin a 2nd group. It took some time but it worked out and 6 of us are doing a Pop Sugar reading challenge for 2024 for the Postal Book Club: Pop Sugar 2024 Reading Challenge. This is what it entails: We each choose a prompt, mine is writing from an animal’s point of view (you’ll find out the title in a later dispatch). After this you head out to the store and get a paperback journal, a copy of the book and, some media mail bubble mailers. You read your book, make notes, compose journal entries and send the journal and the book to the the next person on the list after you. Everyone does this until they get their book back. After this we meet likely on Zoom since everyone lives all over the country. MMD book club invites anyone to begin a Postal Book Club with whatever organizing principle that you want to share with others. I’ll keep you posted.

Lastly, I did my first read-along with the Modern Mrs. Darcy book club. Ginger, one of the co-hosts, does an annual re-read of Lillian Boxfish Takes A Walk by Kathleen Rooney. So how did the club do it?

On the MMD website there’s a homepage and there are tabs that can take you to whatever is public and that you want to participate in. To enter the discussion for Lillian Boxfish Takes A Walk all you have to do is either go to “conversations” and find the book title OR under “Books” you’ll find the cover of the current book discussed and click on that. Voila you are in. From there you can find topics of discussion you may wish to add to OR feel welcome to introduce one of your own as long as it relates to the book. Like all social media people can like or further comment to your response. It’s friendly.

So you read, read, read and there are other places on the website you can mention something about the book or any other reading issue or joy you wish to share. Someone is always there to respond and sometimes people just continue on with their own thread. Finally, there’s a live discussion about the book hosted on the MMD website hosted by Anne and Ginger. There’s live commenting and they choose to read things contributed by the members—though you never actually hear the members, but comments can show up in the chat or the post recording added transcriptions.

I actually don’t like this approach—it feels sort of empty, silent and disconnected. Anne and Ginger do all of the talking, smiling, head nodding and engagement with one another. If one hopes that they allow participants to use their mics (and not cameras) like radio call-ins this is not the case and one doesn’t learn this until you’ve paid and signed up. I’m not thrilled with having people read my comments, but it’s not my gig.

After the hosts signed off the thoughts I left with are: Is this really connection? Is this really social? Are these the brands of social connection and shared reading that I want to spend time and money on? We shall see. Since I didn’t attend and watched the replay, I thought that I missed something fun, but spending time in the city with our daughter was/is much preferred so no loss there and I won’t add this type of activity to my calendar in the future.

After reading about the hidden agendas of Facebook and other virtual “communities”, I’m always a little bit suspicious of virtual communities be them digital book clubs or not. There’s too many documentaries and stories about how virtual communities have quiet and hidden agendas while capturing personal data to later be more effective and conducting missions…

A funny thing happened at the end of the live stream… When the book discussion replay ended another video loaded and there before me was a priest, Anne and a group of women. The pastor was saying a prayer over the virtual meeting regarding discussing values and all were praying too. I thought it was kind of nice, but I didn’t think that I joined a religious community and there was no fine print stating that I was when I joined. I don’t observe any religion it simply is not my jam, but I do respect the right of others to practice their beliefs. However, I am a fan of truth or full transparency at the very least. The auto-loaded video kind of freaked me out because no where in the membership or community guidelines is it expressed that this is a religious/values based venue. I missed the messaging on this… Due to the unexpected video, I took a day or so away from the platform to rethink my membership. For now, I’ll stay, but I can’t promise how long.

Dear readers, please stay tuned for these Dispatches From the Digital Book Club. There’s a bunch of upcoming in-person and virtual events and I’ll share those next round. You can also look forward to hearing about the Postal Book Club where we take on the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge (at least part of it). If not this book club than maybe another. There’s plenty out there and I plan on exploring a few more. Until then enjoy!