Mumsnet book club

How it works | Our book selection | Useful links

Illustration of mother reading and baby
Remember life before babies and children, when you read grown-up books, all the way through? If getting to the end of Burglar Bill or Angelina Ballerina without falling asleep is now a challenge, then revive your critical faculties, give 'being in the club' a new meaning and enjoy a satisfying natter courtesy of Mumsnet book club.

How it works

Join Mumsnet, if you haven't already, so you have a log-in username and password
Bookmark our Book of the month Talk board so you can see new threads about the current and forthcoming book club discussions
Each month we select roughly half a dozen books and give a synopsis of each one
You then have a week to cast your vote (we'll give you plenty of warning when the polls are shutting)
Once the book has been chosen, you've got four weeks to beg, borrow or buy and then read our book of the month before discussion night
This generally takes place on the last Tuesday evening of the month (with exceptions, if necessary, for Christmas/New Year/other holidays)
Please try to contain your opinions and insights for the book club discussions so we all get to talk about it at the same time and no crucial plot twists are revealed ahead of time
If the book of the month is by a contemporary author, we invite them to come on to Mumsnet for a live webchat at the end of our session, so if you've got burning questions about the characters' motivation, or just want to know what they're reading to their kids, stick around and get posting (or post in advance and we'll pass on your questions/comments)
Copious amounts of fine wine beside the keyboard are an optional extra, naturally

Our book selection

Our general aim is to select a range of books for you to choose from that are page turning and, hopefully, tell us something we didn’t know before, or make us laugh about something we did.

We won't pick any of the following: misery memoirs, celebrity biographies, yummy-mummy lit, books with more than 800 pages, books with no punctuation or capital letters.

All books will be priced under £13 (most will be well under) and readily available.

We're keen to focus on contemporary authors so they can come and do live webchats with us, but if everyone's longing to try Tolstoy or always wanted to give Nabokov a shot, then we'll happily go there too.

If you've any suggestions about what you'd like to see on the page, then don't hesitate to contact bookclub@mumsnet.com.

Happy reading.

Tilly (Mumsnet book club editor)

Useful links