How the Magic Book Club began (and why it kept me up at night)

The first meet had barely enough people to fill a table. I remember worrying nobody would come back. Reading is such a private thing, why would anyone want to make it public?

But they did come back. And they brought friends. Somewhere between the third and the tenth meet, it stopped being a book club and started being a community, 50-plus readers and authors who now show up as much for each other as for the books.

The magic was never the books, really. It was watching a shy reader stand up one evening and share something they'd written themselves, and the whole room leaning in. That's the moment I built the club for, even before I knew it existed.

We meet on-ground and online now, schoolkids and CXOs in the same conversation. If you love books and suspect they're better shared, there's a chair with your name on it.