What you need to know about the 2024 Summer Reading Guide, coming May 16

It’s that time of year: our THIRTEENTH annual Summer Reading Guide is coming Thursday, May 16. I am so excited about this year’s guide: it’s going to be forty-two books strong, chock-full of summer reading goodness, made with love and experience and nerdy enthusiasm and hundreds of hours of reading time and literary labors of love.

Here’s everything you need to know about this year’s guide! (Spoiler alert: the logistics will be very much the same as 2023.)

2024 Summer Reading Guide and Unboxing Party

We’re releasing the guide on May 16. Our 2024 SRG is an included perk for our community members in the Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club and What Should I Read Next Patreon communities, along with Unboxing access. Once again, we’re offering an a la carte option for our 2024 SRG + Unboxing access, for those who don’t have the time or inclination to join a community.

We will deliver the guide to all members and our a la carte readers the morning of May 16 (Eastern time), and will host two Unboxing Parties that day at 1:00pm and 8:30pm Eastern time. We look forward to our “Unboxing” event every year: in our 90+ minute live session, I share every title in the guide and why I chose it. Our conversation is casual and unscripted, filled with real talk about great books, in the presence of people who love books and reading.

While attending live is a blast and we highly encourage it if it suits your schedule, we make a replay available to all who opt in for the guide. In other words, if you can’t join us live, no worries—we’ve got you covered.

There are three ways to get the 2024 MMD Summer Reading Guide:

1. Join the Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club.
2. Support the What Should I Read Next Patreon.
3. Purchase the guide and Unboxing access a la carte.

We’ve rounded up more info and answered a bunch of FAQs right here. We hope you’ll choose the option that’s right for you.

What’s the difference between Book Club and Patreon?

Great question! If you’d like to listen to MMD community manager Ginger Horton and I talk about the difference, we made this Patreon bonus episode publicly available to all: By popular request: Anne and Ginger talk Patreon vs Book Club. It’s a fun and informative conversation.

Our communities have different scopes and emphases: we think of our Patreon offerings as being bite-sized, while MMD Book Club is more like a buffet. We encourage you to choose the one that best works for you and your reading life.

Our WSIRN Patreon community is an extension of the What Should I Read Next podcast, and offers Friday bonus episodes (e.g., One Great Book, Mini Matchmaking, Industry Insights), peeks behind the scenes, and additional curated book recommendations to our readers in that space. Patreon is audio-first, which means you can mostly participate when it’s convenient for you. We host two events each semester in Patreon: one seasonal preview (like Summer Reading Guide Unboxing) and one additional event like Ask Us Anything, Live Mini Matchmaking, or Trivia Night. Our patrons also influence the show by offering input on future episode themes and guests and voting on our episode titles.  

Our slate of MMD Book Club offerings is more robust, which is why we call it a buffet: we seek to offer lots of great literary content in this space, and don’t expect you to put everything on your plate! We host many live events in this space, including monthly book and author discussions, regular classes on literature and the reading life, and community events like our Readers’ Days and Weekends, Best Book of Summer, Reading Life Rehab, Readalongs, Join Us for Journaling, and more. Our live events are video-driven, but you don’t need to attend live to participate: much like Unboxing, we record our events so you can watch on your schedule. Our custom-built member site also sets Book Club apart: our 24/7 forums (and the app) makes it easy to enjoy all the book talk your heart desires, and connect with other readers who love books as much as you do. 

A la carte access

Once again we’re offering a la carte access for those who don’t have the time or inclination to join a community. Your ticket includes our full PDF guide, your invite to our live Unboxing sessions, and your Unboxing replay. Get your a la carte ticket here.

If you’re not able or do not wish to join one of our member communities or purchase the guide separately, please know that we’ll keep with our longstanding tradition of sharing our Minimalist Summer Reading Guide on the blog, and I’ll share many summer reading titles here and on What Should I Read Next all summer long.

Thanks so much for your support over the years. I can’t wait to share our 2024 guide and to hear how it shapes your reading life this summer. I’m so looking forward to the reading season to come, and I hope you are, too.

Thanks for reading, and most of all, for allowing me to be a part of your summer reading.

Anne