Hey friends—today I’m delighted to welcome our MMD Book Club community manager Ginger Horton to the blog to share what’s happening in the MMD Book Club this summer. While the focus of today’s post is on our summer Book Club selections, we do briefly touch on what else we have in store for this summer. Another big perk MMD Book Club members receive is our 2023 Summer Reading Guide and live Unboxing access. Read on to find out if this sounds like a happy place for you this summer! -Anne
I’ll never forget the first time Anne announced the Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club. I knew I was traveling a lot that summer, but I could not sign up fast enough. For one thing, I’d read Anne’s blog for years and years, feeling like I had a friend out there through this “lifestyle blog for nerds.” But I also wanted to be a part of whatever special thing she was creating. I don’t think I even knew any words like “content” or “tastemakers” or “support creatives” but I had a sense through the blog comments and WSIRN guests that this Modern Mrs Darcy world drew a special kind of bookish person.
And boy did we have fun that summer! I remember logging hours and hours of reading—long, languid summer days meant sneaking in more minutes of reading from a short but abundant-feeling curated book list. Sometimes I’d finish up right before the author talk. Sometimes I wouldn’t and I’d log on to the chat from a family member’s house, or once on my phone from the passenger seat on a road trip, and then be inspired to pick up that book I now just had to read because the author was so great.
But what was really special were the conversations we had online with each other, and the friendships that formed because of that group. I’d never before met people who read quite as voraciously as I did. Not long after, I met up with half a dozen of those women at an informal bookish get-together (at Anne’s house!), and we’ve been friends ever since, taking road trips together, seeing each other through graduations and moves, marriages and divorces, holiday packages sent across state lines. And so much book talk.
But that’s a story for another day.
Our MMD Book Club summer lineup
The MMD Book Club is now in its seventh (!!) year. We do some things differently now than we did that first summer—like our dedicated member site and brand new app—but our community remains focused on community, classes, and conversations centered around the books we love. Typically we read one book a month (with an optional flight pick), but this summer will be similar to that first summer where we read five books from June to August. This year we’ll be reading six books in three months. So that’s two author (or translator) events each in June, July, and August.
May
June
July
august
In the MMD Book Club, you don’t need to read the book to participate! Author chats are one part of what we do in Book Club; we seek to give you options for your reading life, not assignments. These chats will be spoiler-free, like they would be at a literary festival or bookstore talk: we’d love for you to join us whether you’ve read the book, steward to read the book but haven’t yet, or want to learn more about writing and publishing (or just hang out with your book pals) without reading that particular title. These book discussions are also only a slice of what we do in Book Club.
Anne and Ginger would love to welcome you to Book Club!
More in store for this summer
In Book Club we say we’re learning to read better, together, and to that end we gather for classes, community, and conversation. We like to say Book Club is a buffet: take what you’d like and leave the rest, knowing you can always come back for more!
When you join, you’ll get an invite to our summer lineup of author chat above, plus events like Genius Moves for the Reading Life, our annual Best Book of Summer event, our week of watch parties and readalongs, Austen in August, meetups to chat with fellow members about the Summer Reading Guide books, and a members-only Readers’ Weekend.
Members also have access to our full library of past events like our Book School sessions, Book Journaling for Book Lovers, 25 Things Readers Should Know About Publishing, 1 Hour to a Better #Bookstagram, and 50+ past chats with authors including Emily Henry, Fredrik Backman, Tayari Jones, Brendan Slocumb, and more. Our new and free app makes participation even easier.
Anne, Ginger, and Shannan, together for Readers’ Weekend 2022. We host this weekend online for all our members, but we got to host together in person from the same screen last year, with a local in-person meetup for our nearby members !
Get set for summer
If “accessibly nerdy” education, tons of bookish chatter, and author talks galore sound good to you, come join us for our fun upcoming season in MMD Book Club!
And a reminder: this year our MMD Summer Reading Guide is a free perk for our Book Club members, along with our live Summer Reading Guide Unboxing event on May 18th. If you’re inclined to give Book Club a try, now is a great time to do so!
We’d love to have you join us. Click here to get started, and choose the option that works best for you: monthly, quarterly, or annual. We’ll see you in Book Club!
About the author
Ginger Horton is our Book Club Community Manager here at MMD. Her go-to genres are literary fiction and classics. You can find Ginger on Instagram posting as herself @gthorton or in the MMD Book Club account @MMDBookClub