Welcome to my A Bookish Baker Book Club. A community celebrating cosy, fireside reads.
You can find it on Instagram at Instagram.com/abookishbakerbookclub. You'll know you’ve got the right one when you search on instagram when you see a chicken perching on a pile of books.
I’ve been wanting to launch a book club for so long but got so overwhelmed with the social media possibilities (should it be on Facebook, in a closed group, on twitter or Instagram) I shelved it in my brain for a while.
But like all good ideas they pop back when you least expect them and, over the weekend, I decided now the autumn equinox has passed that it’s the perfect time to launch a book club devoted to cosy, fireside reads.
With the aim of the book club being for people to share their cosy reads you might be thinking, what do you mean by a cosy fireside read, Helen? Well, I mean - essentially - books that don’t make you anxious. Books that don’t include gruesome descriptions of women being dismembered. For example!
I cannot read or watch psychological thrillers. In fact, let's make it broader than that. I cannot watch or read anything which has that stomach turning tension. Where your heart is pounding through your throat. (I explain a bit more here in five TV series that don’t make me anxious). That’s not to say that I think these books are bad - they’re simply not for me. And I know by the responses I had to my TV series post that many of the people I engage with on Instagram feel the same.
(If it’s domestic noir/suspense genre you’re after though in your book club then do check out Zoe Lea’s book club on Facebook called The Domestic Suspense Book Group.)
So this is a Book Club for books that draw you in and encourage you to sit by the fire on a chilly autumn afternoon. Contemporary, classics, modern classics, memoir, ghost stories (but not horror!) - a huge range of books are welcome. If it’s murders you’re after then in this book club it’ll only be a cosy one. (More than likely set in a large manor house with someone observing, say a Belgium detective or a little old lady knitting in the corner).
I’d love the book club to become a community. Where Instagrammers can recommend their current reads or favourite reads, where the monthly pick can be chosen by someone in the community so we get a varied choice, and where we discover other readers on Instagram.
It can be fiction or non-fiction. And I’d love to interview some of you on this blog where you share your favourite fireside reads.
The book pick for October is The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan. I deliberated about this. Should I go for a more recent release? But obviously this would cost more. Or go for an older one that people might have already read. But I’ve gone for this novel by Ruth because it was published last year and is currently on at a very reasonable price on Amazon.
I’d love it if you use the hashtag #abookishbakerbookclub so I can share you pictures either on the main A Bookish Baker Book Club feed or in the stories.
*deep breath*
Okay, I think that’s all the information. Give me a shout on Instagram if you have any questions.
