A book club for people who are inexplicably excited by letters
Apparently, we're the kind of people who read books about letters.
Welcome to the Calligraphy Chronicles Book Club.
It's free. It's online. And whenever possible, we don't just talk about the book.
We invite the person who wrote it.
Join the Book Club — it's free
What exactly is this?
This is not the kind of book club where someone asks what the blue curtains symbolized.
Unless, of course, they were in a medieval manuscript. Then we have questions.
The Calligraphy Chronicles Book Club is our excuse to read fascinating books about calligraphy, handwriting, lettering, creativity, art, history, language and the written word, and then gather curious people from around the world to talk about them.
Sometimes that's a memoir. Sometimes it's a deep history of the alphabet. And sometimes it's a novel that has nothing to do with calligraphy on the surface and everything to do with it underneath. We keep the niche loose on purpose. If it's a great book and letters are lurking somewhere in it, it counts.
Even better? Whenever we can, the author joins us. Which means you can actually ask the question you scribbled in the margin on page 83.
Join us
Read something wonderful. Then come talk about it.
There's no membership fee. No complicated commitment. No requirement to have finished the book. And absolutely no quiz.
Sign up and we'll tell you what we're reading, when we're meeting, and how to join us.
You bring the coffee. Or tea. Or wine. We are emphatically not policing beverages.
Takes about 20 seconds
Yes, I want inYou'll receive invitations to upcoming Book Club meetings, featured books and occasional bookish news from Calligraphy Chronicles.
Coming up next
Why Q Needs U
with Danny Bate
Why does Q almost always drag U along with it? Why do our letters look the way they do? And who, exactly, decided all of this?
This month we're reading Why Q Needs U by linguist and author Danny Bate, a wonderfully entertaining journey through the stories hiding inside the alphabet we use every single day.
And Danny is joining us. So bring the book. Bring your questions. And prepare to look at the alphabet slightly differently afterward.
Already down a few rabbit holes
We've already been down a few rabbit holes.
One of the great joys of Calligraphy Chronicles is talking to people who've spent years, sometimes decades, exploring subjects most of us didn't know we desperately wanted to know about.
Tim Brookes
Our conversation with Tim Brookes took us into the extraordinary world of endangered writing systems, and his work documenting alphabets and scripts in danger of disappearing.
It's exactly the sort of conversation this Book Club exists for. The kind where you arrive knowing almost nothing, and leave wanting six more books.
Watch our conversation with TimAnd there's more
And there are more authors coming.
We already have several wonderful writers lined up for future meetings. We aren't going to reveal everything quite yet, because where's the fun in that?
But expect books that take us into the history of writing, the lives of remarkable letter artists, the evolution of scripts, creativity, craftsmanship, and the enormous world hiding behind the marks humans have been making for thousands of years.
If that sounds like your particular flavour of rabbit hole, you should probably be here.
Join the Book ClubA permanent, growing shelf
The Calligraphy Chronicles Bookshelf
Warning: may cause unscheduled book purchases.
These are the books we've read, discussed, interviewed authors about, fallen down rabbit holes because of, or decided people who love letters really ought to know exist. Fiction included. Consider this our ever-growing bookshelf. Not an algorithm's idea of what you should read next. Ours.
Why Q Needs U
Linguist Danny Bate takes us letter by letter through the wonderfully strange history of the English alphabet — and why Q can't seem to go anywhere without U.
Shady Characters
Keith Houston follows the surprising histories of the ampersand, pilcrow, asterisk, @ symbol and other typographical marks hiding between our letters.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered
After discovering a trunk of century-old letters, Nina Sankovitch explores why handwritten correspondence still matters — a celebration of putting pen to paper and the human need to connect.
Type is Beautiful
Fifty typefaces, five hundred years of typography, and fifty stories about the people and ideas behind the fonts that shaped visual culture.
Dear Fahrenheit 451
Librarian Annie Spence writes candid, funny love letters and breakup notes to the books that have shaped her shelves — an irreverent, big-hearted ode to reading.
Word by Word
Lexicographer Kory Stamper takes us inside the daily, delightfully odd work of defining the English language at Merriam-Webster — proof that even the driest-sounding job can be a love story about words.
Letters to the Bookshop
A warm novel about books, belonging and the families we create, set in a bookshop where an uncertain relationship grows through a shared love of reading.
Endangered Alphabets
Tim Brookes travels the world to document endangered scripts and the cultures, histories and identities held within them — part art, part anthropology, part love letter to the written word.
More books coming soon
And yes, we fully intend for this shelf to become dangerously large.
You don't have to be a calligrapher to belong here.
You just need to be curious. About letters. About people. About history. About why humans have been scratching, carving, painting, printing and writing things down for thousands of years. And about the people who are still keeping those stories alive.
That's what we're here for. Come read with us.
Yes, I'm in — join the Book Club free