How the Biggest Book Club on Goodreads Is Making a Real-World Impact

Actress and UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson has spent much of the last year learning as much as she can about feminism and women's causes, and she wants to share the learning journey. Goodreads covers their largest group: the books Watson and her book club friends worldwide are reading, and how the club is inspiring movements and clubs to organize around the globe. goodreads.com - When Emma Watson starts a book club, readers pay attention. On January 6, the British actress and UN Women Goodwill Ambassador announced her intention to start a feminist book club. It took less than 24 hours for Watson to turn her intention into reality. By January 7, Our Shared Shelf was up and running—and less than a month later, it became the largest group on Goodreads with 100,000 members (and counting).

"As part of my work with UN Women, I have started reading as many books and essays about equality as I can get my hands on," Watson wrote on Our Shared Shelf's group page. "There is so much amazing stuff out there! Funny, inspiring, sad, thought-provoking, empowering!" Her plan is to select one book a month to read and discuss with her fellow book club members. Her first pick was My Life on the Road, journalist and feminist activist Gloria Steinem's 2015 memoir. This month, the club is reading The Color Purple by novelist and feminist activist Alice Walker.

But Our Shared Shelf is more than just a place to find reading recommendations.

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Be a Part of the Smartest New Book Club, #WLClub

A movement that began on Twitter and has since expanded to Google groups, Instagram, and posts all over social media; writer Rachel Syme's book club promoting books about women, by women has taken off, spreading around the Internet and world. Read about the club and movement in this article by Amy Poehler's Smart Girls. Which biography of an extraordinary woman would you like to add to the list?  amysmartgirls.com - Lately in my Twitter feed I keep seeing the hashtag #wlclub and after a few days of dismissing it, curiosity finally won out and I clicked. What does it stand for? Women’s Lives Club—a virtual book club with participants all from all over the world. February’s book is Janet Malcolm’s The Silent Woman, a biography of Sylvia Plath.

It’s the brainchild of prolific writer Rachel Syme, where anyone interested in participating can partake in reading a biography of a notable woman each month. I tracked Smart Girl Rachel Syme down via Twitter and asked her all about how this club came to be.

“The funny thing was, I was just on Twitter and I was wasting time as one tends to do. I was writing about paying attention to women’s lives in general, and really casually in a tweet storm, I asked if I were to start a monthly book club about women’s lives, would anyone do it.”

That tweet launched a thousand readers. Or at the very least just over four hundred (the group’s total at last count), but it’s still growing every day. Rachel started a Google group, asking for interested people to email her to be added. And how do the books get chosen? Everyone makes suggestions and Rachel puts the ones that are repeatedly named up to a vote. Next month’s pick, Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Thurston by Valerie Boyd, won by a landslide.

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