In praise of reading: Clubs that create the bibliophile

Lodhi Reads A silent reading community that meets in Lodhi Gardens every Sunday in New Delhi. The club meets up for about three hours towards the end of which, if people want, they may talk and mingle.

Cubbon Reads This is what inspired Lodhi Reads! They meet up at Cubbon Park in Bengaluru.

Delhi Reads Discusses books, cinema, Delhi, pop culture and more. Kanan Gill was a guest here once. Each meeting is centred around a theme or genre.

Bound Together, Mumbai Public bookclub with regular meetings in a cafe or bar. Meetings are often in Bandra or Colaba.

Sanskaari Girls Book Club From South Asia for the world. Largely an online reading community but also holds in person meetings. A feminist-intersectional fix from around the world.

Broke Bibliophiles Book Club They are perhaps one of Mumbai’s most active online and offline organisations. They arrange a number of gatherings where you may talk about writers, exchange books, analyse poetry or prose. They frequently post articles on their FaceBook page as well.

Jane Austen Book Club Anvita Budhraja started this bookclub in 2012 on Austen’s 237 birthday whilst she was only 16. It also wound up being a creative writing competition where participants had to rework Austen’s work with a twist- with culture ingratiate from the 21st century.

Dandelion Collective Book meetups, silent reads- on and off in Delhi. Hostess is an engineer.

Seedz Club Hosted by Delhi based influencer and Instagram sensation Noharika Gangaramy. Mainly includes cutesy romance books, but also some literary fiction. A lot of reading, meeting and networking. Even some clothes sales. Hosted some very successful book exchanges and even a ‘reading retreat’ in Kasauli.

The Polyglot A new book club to be hosted by independent journalist Swati Daftari at The Bookshop Inc in Delhi. This will have an emphasis on translated literature from across the world. She is also to host a book club solely devoted to 20th century classics.