This Is Your Nudge to Start an Article Club

Slow down, engage your mind, connect with your community, and enjoy

Post-article club last week and this week's reading spot

I have romanticized two ideas in my mind for a very long time: a Sunday spaghetti free-for-all and a weekly article club. The first one was inspired by a post I read on Cup of Jo over ten years ago--a woman living in Brooklyn (I think) would make spaghetti and meatballs every Sunday and everyone in the neighborhood and all of her friends were welcome to stop by. You didn't have to formally RSVP, different people would come through each week, sometimes there would be one person who showed up and sometimes fifteen, but she did it every Sunday regardless. I've never lived anywhere long enough or community-oriented enough to begin my own version of this tradition, but that might be changing now. Stay tuned ;)

The second idea's origin is a bit fuzzier. I think it was a passing comment made by someone in an article or interview, but it was another very simple concept: pick an article, grab a group of friends, read the article, then discuss it together. As many of you know, I'm an avid reader and go through a book every few days. I love and cherish the idea of a book club, but it would never work for me--partially because I read (and forget) books at a very fast rate and, this is not meant to be a humble brag, but I've read a lot of books! Most book clubs that I've toyed with the idea of joining didn't read anything I hadn't already read. Plus there's the other, more common, issue with book clubs which is that no one ever has time to read the whole book.

This is where the article club comes in! You have to read 5,000 words instead of 50,000, and the topic is usually very close to your everyday life. You feel like you're actively increasing your knowledge of the world and current culture (which I'd argue you do with books, too, but sometimes the connection is a little looser) and you can get through the whole thing in about an hour. And yet, despite how seemingly straightforward this is, I wasn't able to make this stick--until now. Now I do it every Thursday and it's a highlight of my week...and I really think it could be a highlight of your week, too. Here's how it goes down for me, and why I get so much enjoyment from it.

A few months ago I internet-met a woman who I thought was super cool. She's American but has lived all over the world (including in Australia, Egypt, and Morocco!) and now lives in Wales, where her husband is from. She runs her own brand and design studio and I love her aesthetic. I also love her happiness, positivity, and openness to the world--things that are rare to find these days! After a few months of following each other and talking a bit back and forth in the DMs, we decided to connect over Google Hangouts. At the end of our hour-long digital meet and greet, I had this impulse to ask her about doing an article club with me. To my great pleasure, she was totally game!

Our first article club selection

Now we have a standing article club date every Thursday at 11am, and each week we trade off choosing the articles. The first week I sent her a few to choose from, and she selected The History of Advice Columns is a History of Eavesdropping and Judging from The New Yorker. We talked about how surprised we were to learn about the origins of the advice column--an English man in London in the 1600s who doled out advice, often to women, about how to navigate love and relationships. As you might imagine, that prompted a whole discussion around all the ways in which men have been influencing the behavior of women, and made us wonder what sorts of ideals were brought about by this one dude who was giving advice to the ladies of 17th century London. The next week she chose a Substack post, Taste is the New Intelligence, which has been having a viral moment. With this one we had a really fascinating discussion around how we would define intelligence, if we're very judicious about how we curate our feeds, why taste matters, and the fact that the author was given a very helping hand by AI. In a couple of days we'll be talking about Is This The Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture? from The Atlantic. I already know I'll be dialing in from a rock that's shaped just like a little chair, in front of my new favorite swimming spot on the Mediterranean Sea.

View from aforementioned rock chair

Beyond the lively discussions that we have, the article club has a few important benefits for me. It compels me to sit down for at least 1-2 hours during the week and read a piece of long-form journalism; and, not only read but take notes on the piece. I can't remember the last time I read something and took active notes but it greatly increases my attention and presence, and it makes me feel like a student again (in a fun way). Long-form journalism is getting lost in our sea of reels and 500 word news stories, and it makes me feel like a more cultured and well-rounded person when I take the time to read something that it took a journalist months, sometimes years, to research and write. It has also given me a way to build and maintain a connection with someone I've never actually met in real life. We're learning tons about each other in a roundabout way. I'm not peppering her with questions about her upbringing or her career, but I'm learning so much about how she thinks and sees the world. And in that way, I'm learning from her. Lastly, learning how to communicate your own ideas about a topic is an art form that is also getting lost. Being able to dissect an idea, talk about why it matters to you, make someone else understand its importance, and respond quickly and in the moment to a thought someone else has is something we all need to know how to do in order to be effective in most areas of our life, but it's not something we get the opportunity to do often.

I urge you to text a friend--new or old--and see if they're up for spending a couple hours each week reading something interesting and talking to you about it. It's a way to slow down while also sharpening your mind, to connect with someone without the small talk and surface-level niceties. It's a way to read fabulous journalism and support writers who are doing great work.

If you've got any articles that you've read recently that you want to share for other readers' future article clubs, link them in the comments!