📚 Read with Us in September!
In September, our monthly theme is, The Stories We Carry, so over the next five weeks we’ll begin exploring how books help us examine the stories that shape our identities, memories, relationships, writing, art, and understanding of the world.
Our weeks for reading books and posts run Saturday–Friday:
Week 1 (The Books That Changed Us)
Sat., Aug. 29 — Fri., Sep. 4
Week 2 (Memory & Storytelling)
Sat., Sep. 5 — Fri., Sep. 11
Week 3 (The Stories We Tell Ourselves)
Sat., Sep. 12 —Fri., Sep. 18
Week 4 (The Stories We Tell Others)
Sat., Sep. 19 — Fri., Sep. 25
Week 5 (What Makes a Story Last?)
Sat., Sep. 26 — Fri., Oct. 2
Whether you read one book, all five, or one of your own books in between some of our reading selections, I hope this month’s selections give you plenty to think about, and plenty to talk about with us.
ℹ️ HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR READING SCHEDULE
This book club is designed to fit your personal reading pace and schedule.
Here’s an overview of the suggested reading schedule options to choose from, to make joining this book club fit into your existing schedule and reading goals. Though you can, of course, always read whatever you want, however you want, whenever you want!
Feel free to adjust the option you want to follow based on whatever you’re reading outside the club, as well as what we’re reading and covering that month in other posts. There is no ‘right’ way to read with us, only the way that works best for you and your life in any given week or month.
👥OPTION 1: One Book Per Week Reader
Read with us week-by-week by reading one book per week. This schedule will align best with Tuesday’s check-in posts, in which we’ll cover our initial thoughts on the book we’re reading for that week and introduce any questions and topics worth exploring further as we continue reading the book.
This option is best for those who want to take their time exploring and discussing each work in tandem with the focus of other posts and conversations happening on Daily Drafts & Dialogues.
📚OPTION 2: The Poly Mood Reader
Weave all five books together throughout the month so that you can read two or more books at the same time while still staying close to the sequence of discussions we’ll have about each book on Tuesdays.
This is a great option if you want to alternate between denser prose and faster-paced plots in the same week, listen to one book on audio while reading another in print, or simply follow your reading mood from day to day.
It offers greater flexibility while still allowing you to join the weekly discussions by meeting the weekly benchmarks.
☀️OPTION 3: Daily Page Goal Reader
Keep a steady reading rhythm across the full 35-day reading period by following a daily page goal.
Because this month’s five-book stack is approximately 2,192 pages in the editions used for the estimates in this post, completing the entire stack in 35 days works out to roughly 63 pages per day. Your actual page count will vary by edition, font, format, and reading medium, so think of 60–65 pages per day as a guide rather than a rule.
This option is great if you just want to set your reading stack in the order you want to read each book and focus on the number of pages you read each day. It is also great for those who are building a reading routine, as well as those who already have an allotted hour or so dedicated to reading each day— those who read with their morning coffee, right before bed, or during their lunch hour or while they commute by train or bus or carshare most days.
⏳OPTION 4: One Book Per Month Reader
Choose just one specific book to read at a slower pace over the entire month with us.
This option is especially good for building a reading routine that will stick, or for readers who have several other books they want to read over the course of the month. You can choose the book that interests you the most and use the weekly targets below to give yourself plenty of room to read, reflect, reread, and participate in your selected book’s discussion.
🗣️ How to Join Book Discussions
You are welcome to tackle the entire list or jump into book discussions for individual picks.
👥 Each book selection will have a Buddy Read available. All Buddy Reads will be hosted in the StoryGraph app. This Buddy Read feature helps ensure you don’t encounter spoilers and never feel rushed, so you can read at your own pace.
Every Buddy Read will remain accessible in StoryGraph past its designated end date as long as you join it in the app before its designated end date—the end of our September reading cycle on Friday, October 2. This means you can continue logging your thoughts and chatting about the book at your own pace, no matter which reading schedule you choose or whether you’re following the Tuesday check-in posts here on Daily Drafts & Dialogues.
💬 You’ll also have the opportunity to discuss each book in the comments of Tuesday check-in posts and in chat threads in upcoming Daily Drafts & Dialogues Books posts.
📚 OUR 5 MAIN SELECTIONS FOR SEPTEMBER: THE STORIES WE CARRY
🌟 Week 1: 📕 Popular Pick: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
🌟 Week 2: 📗 Real World Application Pick: Educated by Tara Westover
🌟 Week 3: 📘 Diverse Perspectives Pick: Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
🌟 Week 4: 📙 Literary Dive Pick: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
🌟 Week 5: 📖 BONUS Pick: The Book of Love by Kelly Link
📅 SEPTEMBER READING SCHEDULE OPTIONS
👥 OPTION 1: The Weekly Buddy Read Schedule for Tuesday Reading Notes and Check-Ins
Use this reading schedule if you want to read all five books, one book at a time, one book per week.
Every Tuesday, a dedicated community check-in post will go live to complement that week’s main selection, featuring reading notes and discussion questions for a deeper look at that book’s specific angle on The Stories We Carry.
A note about page counts: Page counts below use readily available U.S. editions as a planning reference. Your edition may have a different page count, so feel free to use chapter/section progress rather than exact page numbers whenever necessary.
📕Week 1: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (~352 pages)
In the aftermath of a devastating pandemic, a traveling troupe of actors and musicians moves through the scattered communities of the Great Lakes region. Moving between the world before the collapse and the world after it, the novel asks what remains worth carrying forward when almost everything familiar is gone.
📆 Daily Target: August 29–September 4 — approximately 50 pages/day to finish in one week.
🔔 Tuesday Check-In Post: September 1
This week’s post will dive into The Books That Change Us. We’ll consider the role books, art, performance, and culture play in helping people remember who they were and imagine who they might become.
💬 Possible Discussion Questions:
What books, stories, performances, or works of art become especially meaningful to the characters after the collapse, and why?
How does Station Eleven suggest that the stories we encounter can change the way we understand our own lives?
What does the novel suggest we should preserve when we can no longer preserve everything?
📗Week 2: Educated by Tara Westover (~368 pages)
Tara Westover recounts growing up in an isolated survivalist family in rural Idaho without formal schooling before eventually making her way to college and Cambridge University. Her memoir explores the complicated relationship between memory, family, identity, education, and the stories we inherit about ourselves.
📆 Daily Target: September 5–11 — approximately 53 pages/day to finish in one week.
🔔 Tuesday Check-In Post: September 8
This week’s post will dive into Memory & Storytelling. We’ll explore how memory shapes memoirs, how our understanding of the past can change over time, and what happens when different people remember the same history or events differently.
💬 Possible Discussion Questions:
1. How does Westover’s understanding of her childhood change as she gains distance from it?
2. What is the relationship between memory and identity in Educated?
3. When does telling your own story become an act of reclaiming your life?
📘Week 3: Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (~288 pages)
Willis Wu is a background character in a fictional television procedural, perpetually trying to move up the hierarchy of stereotyped roles available to Asian-American actors. Through its inventive screenplay-like structure, the novel examines race, assimilation, family, ambition, and the stories society teaches us about who we are allowed to be.
📆 Daily Target: September 12–18 — approximately 41 pages/day to finish in one week.
🔔 Tuesday Check-In Post: September 15
This week’s post will dive into The Stories We Tell Ourselves. We’ll look at the identities we construct, the roles we perform, and what happens when the story we’ve been given no longer feels big enough to contain us.
💬 Possible Discussion Questions:
What ‘role’ does Willis believe he needs to play in order to be seen or valued?
How does the novel distinguish between the stories we create about ourselves and the stories other people create for us?
What does Interior Chinatown suggest about the possibility (and difficulty) of rewriting an inherited identity?
📙Week 4: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (~544 pages)
After the mysterious death of her sister Laura, Iris Chase reflects on her family’s history, her own life, and the manuscript Laura left behind. The novel layers memoir, family history, romance, political history, and a story-within-a-story to explore the distance between what happened, what is remembered, and what is told.
📆 Daily Target: September 19–25 — approximately 78 pages/day to finish in one week.
🔔 Tuesday Check-In Post: September 22
This week’s post will dive into The Stories We Tell Others. We’ll examine unreliable narrators, secrets, omissions, storytelling as power, and the ways people reshape the past when they tell it to someone else.
💬 Possible Discussion Questions:
Who gets to tell a story in The Blind Assassin, and whose version of events are we asked to trust?
What do the characters conceal from one another, and what does that concealment allow them to control?
How does storytelling become a way of protecting, manipulating, remembering, or reinventing the self?
📖 Week 5: The Book of Love by Kelly Link (~640 pages)
Three teenagers who disappeared, and were presumed dead, return to the small seaside town of Lovesend, Massachusetts, drawn into a supernatural mystery involving magic, death, love, and the balance between worlds. As they try to understand what happened to them, the novel encourages readers to ask questions about what we owe one another and what kinds of stories can survive across time.
📆 Daily Target: September 26–October 2 — approximately 92 pages/day to finish in one week.
🔔 Tuesday Check-In Post: September 29
This week’s post will dive into What Makes a Story Last? We’ll consider why certain stories stay with us, how stories are transformed when they’re retold, and what makes a narrative feel bigger than the moment in which it was created or encountered.
💬 Possible Discussion Questions:
What makes a story endure in The Book of Love, and what makes certain stories worth carrying forward?
How do love, grief, memory, and imagination influence the stories the characters create?
After reading this month’s selections, what do you think makes a story last?
📚 OPTION 2: The Month-Long Poly Reader Schedule with Weekly Benchmarks
If you’re reading two or more selections simultaneously but prefer to weave them together over the course of the full month rather than reading one book at a time, aim for these weekly benchmarks:
📕 End of Week 1 — Friday, September 4: Finish Station Eleven
📗 End of Week 2 — Friday, September 11: Finish Educated
📘 End of Week 3 — Friday, September 18: Finish Interior Chinatown
📙 End of Week 4 — Friday, September 25: Finish The Blind Assassin
📖 End of Week 5 — Friday, October 2: Finish The Book of Love
Reminder: The goal with this option isn’t to read only one book each week, but to reach the corresponding benchmark highlighted above by the end of each reading week. This way, if you’d rather read 20 pages of one book in the morning and 40 pages of another at night, you can do what works best for both your schedule and mood!
☀️ OPTION 3: The Daily Reading Schedule
Use this option if you want to finish all five books across our full 35-day reading period while maintaining a steady, structured reading rhythm. Rather than worrying about finishing one book each week, simply aim for your daily page goal and move through the stack in order.
✅ Your Daily Commitment: Aim for approximately 60–65 pages per day across the full stack.
📑 Your Complete Monthly Roadmap:
📕August 29–September 3: Read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
📗September 4–September 9: Move into Educated by Tara Westover
📘September 10–September 14: Continue with Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
📙September 15–September 23: Dive into The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
📖September 24–October 2: Finish the month with The Book of Love by Kelly Link
Reminder: Your goal is to read your daily pages and keep moving forward. If you read more one day and less the next, that’s completely fine. Just think of 60–65 pages as your average daily target rather than a hard rule to keep, especially if it ends up stressing you out.
⏳OPTION 4: The Monthly Schedule (Pick ONE Book for the Whole Month)
Do you want to focus on just one specific book for the entire duration of September that explores The Stories We Carry?
If so, use these relaxed weekly targets to space your chosen book across all five weeks and give yourself plenty of time to unpack all it has to offer.
📕If reading ONLY Station Eleven: Read approximately 70 pages per week (about 10 pages/day).
📗If reading ONLY Educated: Read approximately 74 pages per week (about 11 pages/day).
📘If reading ONLY Interior Chinatown: Read approximately 58 pages per week (about 8 pages/day).
📙If reading ONLY The Blind Assassin: Read approximately 109 pages per week (about 16 pages/day).
📖If reading ONLY The Book of Love: Read approximately 128 pages per week (about 18 pages/day).
Again, this plan is based on the editions referenced above, so use your own edition’s page count if it differs.
🏛️ Library & Reading Notes
There is no prize for finishing all five books, or a penalty for reading only one.
You can read ahead. You can fall behind. You can switch schedules halfway through the month. You can listen to the audiobook versions while reading the ebook versions, annotate every page in your printed copy, read in tiny bursts, or spend an entire afternoon disappearing into one of these books.
However you decide to read with us, the point is not to turn reading into another obligation. It’s to make space for the stories that stay with us.
So, pick the schedule that makes you want to open a book, then come talk to us about what you find there when you can. 📚✨
All book selections should be available through your local library. It will be incredibly rare that we have a book selection that is not available there. So, please support and use your library. That’s what they’re there for— free books! And the lovely librarians there will make it easy for you to get your card if you don’t already have one.
Check your physical library branch for copies of the books we’re reading. Or use the Libby app (which is linked to your library card) to secure your copies or place holds early!
💬Drop a comment below to let us know which reading schedule and book(s) you are choosing this month!
✨Stay tuned for Tuesday’s check-in post, which will include reading notes and discussion questions for Station Eleven. And don’t forget to join The Daily Drafts & Dialogues Book Club in Storygraph so you can join Buddy Reads!
I can’t wait to read with you in September and see how what we’re reading deepens our discussions!