Hello!

The one aspect of being a chronically online reader that I have never particularly engaged with is being part of a book club – I’ve had my own book club reading books that we got as wedding gifts for nearly two years but whilst it’s meant to be a book club with my husband, it’s just me and I don’t get to discuss the book with anyone at the end. There is a fantasy book club in my town but I’m hesitant to join for several reasons.

1. Meeting strangers is scary and I’m not feeling brave in that regard right now.
2. I don’t really want the pressure of reading a book I haven’t picked for a certain deadline.
3. It feels financially irresponsible to be buying new books to be able to engage with a book club and simultaneously another reason to ignore the books on my physical TBR – I definitely don’t need any more excuses!

So when my sibling suggested starting a book club together next year so we can read books that are on both of our TBRs and actually discuss them when we finish reading them, it was a very easy yes!

So we then sat on the floor in front of my siblings bookshelves and made a list of books we both have and want to read and started to discuss what we could call our book club (because ‘book club’ isn’t enough, obviously).

That night, I was thinking about it and thought an acronym-based name could be a really fun way to name our club so I formally present: The D.A.D’s Book Club – Depressed, Autistic and Delusional Book Club.

Being depressed, autistic and delusional is not a crucial part of being part of our book club, but the name makes us giggle and is very relevant to us right now 😂

We recently met up in London and had a day out together which was basically planned around food and books but (trying to stay on topic) we spent a rather long time in Forbidden Planet in their basement library and, as part of their birthday gift, we decided what our January book club pick would be and I bought both of us a copy. The book we chose is She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan, which I have been thinking about buying for a really long time but the other books we considered were The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent and Until We Shatter by Kate Dylan, which I believe is quite a new release but it sounded so good!

The books that we’ve both got on our physical TBRs already are:

• Her Majesty’s Royal Coven – Juno Dawson
• Loveless – Alice Oseman
• Faebound – Saara El-Arifi
• Fangirl – Rainbow Rowell
• Dracula – Bram Stoker
• Eve of Man – Giovanna and Tom Fletcher
• Northern Lights – Phillip Pullman

My plan for every birthday or Christmas for the foreseeable future is to look at the books I have on my physical TBR, pick a book that I think my sibling will like and buy them a copy that we will read together at some point and I imagine they will do the same for me. This is me desperately trying not to add to my physical TBR whilst still having fun in a book club.

We’re both the kind that wouldn’t want to start randomly throughout the year, so we’ll be starting in January with She Who Became The Sun (with a cheeky bonus appearance by Onyx Storm, the third book in the Empyrean series by Rebecca Yarros) and I’m really looking forward to it!

Am I a little bit nervous about my monthly TBRs getting longer and not being able to keep up with how many books I need to read? Yes, but we’re going to pretend that I’m not.

Are they any books you’d recommend we try? Part of me wants to plan all 12 books for the year but I’m trying not to take the fun out of it!

Thank you so much for reading,

Sophie xx