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Dear Book Club Readers ---

You've been having an incredible reading year so far, and it would be so lovely to hear about the books you've been enjoying this month.

Your comments in these Book Club Discussion threads continue to reveal your deep love of great literature, and we would love to hear about how your reading is treating you at the moment.

So, tell us what your June has been looking like.

What are you reading at the moment?

Let us know anything that's on your mind, your literary loves, and anything you wish to share or sharpen your thoughts about.

  • Author details

  • Seasonal reads

  • Areas to explore

  • Your current Big Read

  • Complementary art forms

  • Questions about literature

  • Favourite lines and passages

  • Things you're finding difficult

  • Things that are giving you joy

  • Rewarding literary rabbit holes

  • Musings, notes, and marginalia

  • Things you want to recommend

  • Resonant character descriptions

  • General life updates (we're interested)

This is the place to put anything bookish you like, and get other readers weighing in on your thoughts!

Our wonderful Book Club community continues to be a literary oasis thanks to your thoughtful appreciations of the Great Books.

Reading through the recent book discussion threads, one can see what a truly special group of literature lovers we have here:

So thank you so much for being a part of the family, and I hope your month is filled with exciting bookish adventures.

Happy reading!

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Comments

David Prendergast

I’m just about to start the third book (“The Mirror and the Light”) of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy. I am not typically interested in historical fiction, nor royalty or court intrigue. So it was very surprising to me when I read “Wolf Hall” a couple of years ago and was completely drawn in. I DO like long reads.

Helen Lyons

I have not had the greatest month - for some reason I cannot get into my reading - started BNW and left it after a few pages. Hoping this will pass as I have never experienced a time when I cannot read. Any suggestions are welcome!

Victor Bieniek

Besides HCLBC reading, I also enjoyed On the Hippie Trail by Rick Steves who is one of my favorite people. It reminded me of my shoestring traveling days in Asia. I also very much enjoyed Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke, which was wonderful. I felt like he was speaking to me directly. It came available from my library and I have been wanting to read Rilke ever since reading "I am through you so i" by David Steindl-Rast (a great historical and spiritual memoir) who quoted him often.

Thomas C

I have been rereading all of Chaim Potok, starting off with My name is Asher Lev, and moving on to The Promise. I’ve also been reading some wonderful books printed out of a small exclusive press in Italy and am enjoying the tactile experience as much as the cognitive. Crazy, but one of the reasons I pick up Everyman editions or others that have high quality paper.

Bulkington

Greetings. David Brooks wrote an opinion piece today called When Novels Mattered. He would be happy to know about our book club. The article isn’t earth shattering, but it provides a nice perspective about how times have changed. It tracks with what I’ve experienced over time as I age. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/opinion/literature-books-novelists.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare Love David Brooks. He’s one of the only sane people left in the media.

Craig Mckissick

So late to the party here, but I’ve got the urge to comment so here we go. I’m feeling like I’ve fell away from the book club recently as I’ve had so many things I’ve chose to read (as I have went off on a Japanese literature tangent) that I’ve not been able to fit in the last bunch of books and the selections this year are so good that I’m getting serious FOMO! I’m jealous of all you people out there who can actually follow this and are even rereading most of the books with the club without going off down a rabbit hole. Never the less in the last while I’ve read East of Eden, The Trial, Hiroshima, Snow Country, No Longer Human (and the Ito Manga which is excellent), Tokyo Express, Kafka On the Shore, currently on The Pillowbook, Tale of Genji (again) and the Everyman Zen and Haiku Poems. I was hoping to have this wrapped for Homer with the book club but I don’t see it happening, regardless, I’ll have to catch up. The Iliad was what sent me on this literature journey in the first place and I have multiple translations on the shelf that I want to read through. I remember reading The Odyssey and thinking The Iliad was better but now The Iliad feels hazy in my memory like my mind didn’t want to remember all the bloodshed, I remember the plot well enough because it’s probably the deepest I’ve read through anything as I was battling with familiarising myself with all the names and places and general story but I must say these have been screaming at me to read them again. After having read so many other derivatives it’s just going to be like a glory lap and I can’t wait.

Josie Gimmestad

I finished BNW and 1984. I just started Pride and Prejudice and am putting off The Iliad for a minute! Sometimes you’re just not mentally prepared for Ancient Greek epic poetry, ya know?

Jack King

I’ve read and re-read David Brooks’ article but I came away feeling irked about it. Yes I grew up in the era most of the boomers who subscribe to this Patreon group and can remember how BIG novels were then. Someone like John Steinbeck ( who happened to be pretty socialist even communist ) and you could easily strike up a conversation with a stranger about East if Eden or other Steinbeck novels. That said I would hate to go back and not have access to this group or vast amounts of reading material online in PDF for free or used copies sold through Amazon, Powell books etc. We didn’t have Kindle, incredible YouTube documentaries about any author, Goodreads reviews, academic and bookstore readings on YouTube etc. I used to study Russian but Russian language materials were scarce. Nowadays I can spend days listening to “Booktube” conversations among Russian speaking intellectuals in St Petersberg, recorded philosophy lectures at all kinds of Colleges and universities from Yale , Harvard, Stanford, smaller liberal arts colleges and even Bible colleges of various denominations - Jewish scholars and so much more - speculative fiction as well as philosophy, lectures ( and online essays ) by Alice Munro, Ursula LeGuin, read introductions and chapter outlines of countless books sold by Amazon. The one thing I’ve noticed is that lesser known works by hugely popular authors like Dostoevsky are no longer in print - you can only get Kindle copies. Just in the past year an incredibly powerful software program called “Book Fusion” kind of took the reading public by storm because it’s incredibly easy to do your own highlighting electronically - organizing easy to use online “bookshelves” downloading all kinds of royalty free classics. Language learning today has improved by leaps and bounds. What’s more the language learning, reading and writing technical landscape never seems to stop developing and changing. Used bookstores are here to stay in all kinds of cities. People still prefer to get comfortable with books from various preferred publishers, over size picture, art, architectural and natural beauty books abound.

Tatiana

Rereading the magnificent Tale of Genji

Lisa Vehe

“It was books that were victorious in the fight. We should build a monument to books.” Sharing another NYT article here! The banning of books continues in the US and after recently reading 1984 and BNW it’s so top of mind for me. But the article highlights the use of literature to free people from repressive regimes in the eastern bloc. I didn’t realize how real and recent that had happened. The US sending 1984 and Brave New World to Poland helped to topple the regimes! “Adam Michnik, whose own works were promoted by the C.I.A., presumably without his knowledge, said: “It was books that were victorious in the fight. We should build a monument to books.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/opinion/1984-cia-book-ban.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare