Postal Book Clubs

What are they and how to join one

Hey readers,

I love book mail. I get books from publishers, and I get books from my postal book clubs. I live in an apartment, so my mailbox is in a bank of dozens of other mailboxes. I love opening my mailbox and finding a package. And even better is finding a key to a larger box because I have too many parcels to fit in my small mailbox.

My first introduction to a postal book club was three years ago in the Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club. A book club member had participated in one in the past and requested permission to facilitate them as part of the community in the book club.

A group has six members, and each group has themes or genres such as historical fiction, armchair traveler, young adult, or any other theme or genre that someone wants to host. If you choose to host, you select the theme/genre and ask for five other people to participate, and the host coordinates the information and mailing schedule. Each person chooses a book fitting the theme/genre, reads their book, prepares a journal, and at the end of two months, mails it to the next person on the list. You have two months to read the book, journal, and then send it to the next person again, and so on. By the end of the twelve months, you have read five other books besides your own, and you have received your book and journal back after the other five members have done the same.

The journal is what makes this so fun. You set up your journal how you wish; you make it your own. It’s my third year participating, and about half of the members of the groups have written very thoughtful and interesting introductions, answers to questions, quotes, and overall thoughts about the book. I’ve seen some readers ask questions for the others to answer. Some leave room for introductions by all the group members, and others leave it up to the reader to write what they would like to when they have read the book. I enjoy reading about who the others in the group are and what they thought about my book.

If the postal book club inside the MMD book club interests you, click this link to join the book club, and once you have joined, you can join a postal book club. Most of them start at the beginning of each year, so to keep you busy until then, you can take advantage of all of the bookish goodness in the book club, including all past author chats, classes, and other club events.

Another Postal Book Club is a FB group run by Julie Blasofsel called The Book Hive Book Club. It works in the same manner except there are twelve members of the group, the mailing schedule is every month, and there is no set theme/genre for each group. Because there is no set theme/genre, all kinds of books are included in each group, which can be good or bad, depending on each person's ability to step out of their reading comfort zone. Julie facilitates the groups, so all a member has to do is read books. A new group begins every month or two and lasts for a year. It moves faster than the six-member group, but I like the one book a month format as it doesn’t allow for procrastination, which I’ll take advantage of any chance I get.

Journaling works the same in both groups. However, I have found in the Book Hive that there are some serious journalers here. Readers like to go into great detail about what they thought about the book, which gives such great information about different perspectives on the book.

If the Book Hive Book Club interests you, click this link, request to join the group, and send a private message to Julie asking for more information. There is an online form to fill out, and then she will slot you into the next available group.

Your family or friends would be another group to do a postal book club with. If you have family or friends scattered across the U.S., this would be fun to do, and then when all books have made the rounds have a zoom event to discuss the books that everyone read, have an online party. You could also do this in local groups like a book club or any other group where there are readers, and the best part of that would be no postage required. Plan monthly get-togethers to exchange books.

It’s fun to be involved in a Postal Book Club. I’ve read so many books out of my usual genres that I probably wouldn’t have read otherwise. Maybe this is something you would be interested in too. Let me know if you have any questions; I’ll be glad to answer in the comments below.