Dear reader,

It was with some trepidation that we sat down to do our first ever virtual The Book Club earlier this week. What if no one joined? What if ardent East of Eden advocates were waiting online to berate Dominic about his poor tastes? What if fans of the Brontë sisters were lining up to tell Tabby how actually to pronounce Haworth?

Such worries were clearly unfounded. We had a wonderful time talking about books with so many of you from across the world.

We loved that some of you appeared to be listening to the event during your morning commute in the US, while others in Australia and New Zealand clearly missed some sleep to attend. We also spotted viewers as far afield as Tehran, Cambodia, Poland, Turkey and Peru. “I am guessing I am the only person linked in to your first live stream while on holiday in Rwanda,” Rebecca wrote in. Can anyone beat that one?

As in all good book club discussions, topics ranged widely, from our “must-reads” to leading literary heroines, as well as the best novels of the 21st century. We also covered what Hogwarts house we would both be in (which prompted quite a bit of debate) and discussed some of your great reviews before the conversation, somewhat inevitably, descended into The Lord of the Rings.

For those who didn’t manage to make it, you can watch the event back using the button at the bottom of this message. Do also email in and tell us what you thought at [email protected].

Back to this week on the show. The lonely protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s White Nights chooses to live in a dream world, avoiding daily life and the relationships it can bring. White Nights is a story about love – especially unrequited love – and loneliness, but we felt it lacked the mature prose and existential themes that the later Dostoevsky covered in novels such as Crime and Punishment. Yet our views are clearly in the minority amongst younger readers. The novella has become an extraordinary, unexpected success through TikTok, (some 180 years after publication) with White Nights the fourth best selling translated book in 2025.

When it comes to our assessment of its main character and his romantic credentials, it’s clear BookTok disagrees. We’re intrigued to find out on which side you fall.

After our callout, many of you wrote to tell us what makes the perfect villain. We shared some of our favourites during the live stream, but we couldn’t address all of them, so we’ve included lots in Reviewers’ Corner below. This week, we’d love to know who you’d put in a literary first 15 or first 11, depending on your sport of preference – we’ll share your best picks if you email them to [email protected].

Until next time,

Tabby and Dominic

“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can't help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.”

Dreamy or dreary? Where do you stand on the central question of Dostoevsky’s book – is it better to perfectly dream or imperfectly live? What quote stayed with you after you finished the book? Email us and let us know.

We’re taking recommendations here to share with the Book Notes community. Tell us what book fellow members should pick up next by sending two or three sentences about your choice and we’ll feature as many as we can in future weeks… Email [email protected].

We’re looking forward to your responses to White Nights. Write to [email protected] with ‘review’ in the subject line and tell us whether you’re team BookTok or team Book Club when it comes to your assessment of the short story.

For now, here are your thoughts about Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

Your polls

With so much of Plath’s biography weaved into her roman à clef, her tumultuous high profile marriage and her young death have left The Bell Jar inextricably linked to her as an author. So we asked if you liked to rely on biographical context when reading - and you overwhelmingly said yes, with 88% of the vote.

“I think knowing an author's background and headspace can really enrich the reading experience. So many times, I've gone into a book completely blind, knowing next to nothing about the author, only to end up regretting it,” writes Lucie.

Pauline trod a middle path, saying: “Without getting all Barthesian on you, it is of course necessary to restrain excessive zeal about seemingly evident connections between author and book. But your episodes would be much poorer without the author in the frame.” Julia, who agreed, wrote: “I think that great art should be able to stand on its own and speak to something beyond the author's own experience and understanding. The biographical context can add something, but ultimately what makes a book great to me is its ability to touch on something ultimately bigger and more universal than one person's lived experiences.”

Jean was one of those who said she preferred appreciating the art on its own terms. “I prefer to read fiction on its own merits,” she said. “The biographical context isn’t relevant to the author’s ability to write good descriptions, develop a good plot, create convincing characters and convincing dialogue. The author’s culture and era is relevant context for being open to and enjoying the work, but the specifics of the author’s life are not.”

When it came to ranking The Bell Jar, it was a mixed picture this week, with most of the votes ranging from 8/10 to 10/10. But a chunk of you also awarded the book a brutal 1/10.

“I wrote my Master's thesis on Sylvia Plath (and the Gothic) and had thus read The Bell Jar multiple times (as well as the poetry of course),” said Flavia. “Recently, a group of my ESL students chose it for their book club and I reread it for the first time in 20 years. It's aged very well, Plath's dry, detached style actually both mirroring her state of mind and rendering the content bearable for the reader but also making it so much more pressing than if the style had been larmoyant or self-indulgent. I found it interesting how all the characters are rather unlikable, most of all Esther herself. And I didn't remember that the book is very funny: I had to laugh out loud several times while reading it.”

Rebecca gave the book 10/10. She wrote: “Reading this almost felt like listening to the voicenotes of a chaotic friend studying abroad as they navigate situations that didn't end up as they had expected, yet still longing for the magic they had anticipated to reveal itself. I read this prior to knowing Plath's life story, and felt like a cheerleader through her final moments in Belsize. I truly believed she had overcome her demons and was only one interview away from the life she longed for. In learning of Plath's lived experience, sadly I do not know what becomes of Esther anymore. She went from being that far-away friend leaving delightfully insane voicenotes, to that friend-of-a-friend that everyone from high school talks sadly about, in hushed tones, when they see each other in the breakfast cereal aisle.”

In praise of Plath

Thank you to many of you who contacted us and described how Plath’s words had so accurately conveyed your own mental health struggles. One of those was Tim, who wrote in to defend the lack of emotional outbursts. “As somebody who was diagnosed with clinical depression, that is the whole point about depression - it doesn’t make you emotional, it strips it from you,” he says. “It’s a sense of futility, a sense of ‘lacking’. That is why The Bell Jar is so amazing. I don’t think any other book captures the whole sense of living with it. The feeling ‘fine’ to having little feeling other than futility. You never loose sight of your life and the people in it – but you feel unable to access them. Hence the bell jar: I can see, but I can’t feel or touch.”

Avoid at your peril

After Dominic admitted he’d avoided The Bell Jar, likely because of its marketing as a book for women, we asked which books you’d long dodged.

“I avoided Gone With the Wind for many years put off, I think, by the Hollywood pzazz (never saw the film); then read it recently as a ‘long books’ challenge and was gripped,” says Bob. “A really good depiction of the tremendous challenge to the Southern plantation owner way of life and moral certainties while the main characters were much more realistic and thrived.”

“I immediately thought of A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles,” says Elizabeth. “A book which I had picked up several times but gave up because I didn’t understand why I should care about a rich guy living in a hotel. When it was chosen for my book club, I gave it another go after doing a bit of research on the historical setting in which it was meant to take place. At that point something clicked and I was lost in the imagery of the Count finding friendship, beauty, and meaning whilst spending his days in a single place.”

Many people can probably relate to Jenifer, who wrote: “I avoided Moby Dick because of its length (slow reader, here), and also because so many people who read it at university complained so much about it. But it is the kind of book you are forced to read in school and are still talking about 15 years later. So I finally dove in. It was fantastic. Even the encyclopedic parts. Total joy.”

“Having recently joined a local book club whose members seem to be exclusively ‘ladies of a certain age’ and myself being also of a certain age but the only bloke in the melee, I have rather been forced to read a whole succession of what I would call ‘books by ladies for ladies about ladies’,” wrote Dave. “So far we’ve had A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins (OK-ish), Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (absolutely brilliant!) Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (hated the characters, the plot, the subject but somehow the writing style kept me reading), Murder by Definition by Susie Dent (utter tripe, failed to get past page 19) and now we’re on The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (hard going but just enough to keep me going).” Dave adds: “I am really enjoying the experience of having something different to read and being forced outside of my comfort zone."

You love a villain

As part of our Halloween preparations, we asked you for your favourite villains and what makes them so brilliantly dastardly. We were overwhelmed by answers. Here are a few of our favourites…

“Villains must commit to evil; but they must remain complex in their motivations,” said Mia. “My beloved villain would have to be the fascism-slinging Miss Brodie from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. A villain that takes no pleasure from their craft is a villain I’m uninterested in reading.”

Many of you wrote in with your hatred of Aunt Norris of Mansfield Park. “Oh, how I detest that woman,” said Kerry. “Her target for sustained nastiness is a vulnerable child and that, on its own, marks her out as a particularly horrible character… Her acts of cruelty are relentless and more repellent because she cloaks them in a pretence of caring for those around her. To me, she is the embodiment of sustained, petty domestic evil.”

You also found some characters we’ve covered on The Book Club chilling, like Mrs Danvers, Humbert Humbert and Count Fosco. Hannibal Lecter was also a regular in your correspondence. “Morally reprehensible, yet so intelligent, charismatic and complex that we find ourselves drawn to them despite their evil,” said William. Meri added: “He’s so polite he calls Clarice on her graduation day to congratulate her and promise not to eat her. The contradictions are glorious. Best villain ever!”

Some of the most feared villains come from our childhoods, many of you said. That’s the case for C. S. Lewis’s White Witch. “She tempts children to the dark side with sweets, can turn her enemies to stone and, most menacingly of all, sees to it that in Narnia it is always winter and never Christmas,” wrote Richard. “As a young reader, her destruction of Aslan seemed to me to mark the end of all hope. 40+ years later, I am still scared of her.”

Aja agreed, adding: “For me, the White Witch makes you realise that there is, like in Edmund, evil inside yourself that just might make you sell your family for a box of Turkish Delight and a touch of her furs. What a terrifying realisation for a child!”

This suggestion from Megan also tickled us. “Mrs March from Little Women: emotional blackmail, terrible role modelling, crushing young spirits, thwarting the women’s movement and a massive buzzkill. All while looking like a saint. Villainous indeed.”

See you next week for The Shining.

The Book Club Team