may is the best month because it’s my birthday and this year it’s a big one…we’ve also never officially celebrated a CRC birthday and it’s been 7yrs since I started holding space for people to talk about books (true to this, NOT new to this) and 4yrs since we started calling ourselves the Casual Readers Club so in honour of ALL of that, we’re hosting something for our fave book lovers.

come join us for book swap social at one of our new favourite venues - we’ll have some prizes and books to give away so this isn’t one you’re going to want to miss!

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you can expect the following from the night:

‼️It’s a social, so come feeling social. ‼️

📕 book swap kicks off at 6:30PM SHARP, no excuses. if you’re late, you miss out, simple as that📕

🎀 we’ll also have some copies of SOUR FRUIT by Shana Verdi and HALF LIVES by Krystle Zara Appiah to take home🎀

🎲 board + card games to keep you occupied 🎲♟️

💿📀sounds on the night from @jackumstackum our fave 💿📀

🌀 come with a friend or come to mingle🌀

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🎟️The ticket price includes ~ access to the event.

👉🏽Respectfully, tickets are non-refundable and go towards organisational and facilitation costs. Please bear this in mind before purchasing.

👈🏽If you can no longer make it, join the WhatsApp group and organise a ticket swap. Alternatively, you can post on your story on Instagram and we’re happy to re-post it. Please give us as much notice as possible to avoid disappointment.

📽️Heads up. Photography and videography will be taking place during the event and will be added to our digital archive and may be used to promote future events.

📎Casual Reader’s first Library Pick of THE BEST MONTH OF THE YEAR, MAY is Sour Fruit by Ahana Virdi 📎

📆: Wednesday 6th May

📌: UNDR - 3 Thorpe Cl, London W10 5XL

may is my birthday month so we had to pick some super special reads for us to discuss - this book is RIGHT up my street and I know it’ll resonate with you all and make for a brilliant discussion AND we’re very lucky to have the author joining us for 1/2 way through our chat to answer any burning questions and hear us talk about the book. see you there?

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about the book:

Love can really eat you up

Avni is done with the meaningless carousel of tame sex. Tender women repel her. Clumsy men disgust her. She wants to make her flesh electric; to fill the chasm inside her created by her mundane job, her ex who died in a bizarre tragedy, and her sick aunt, whose diseased brain is swallowing memories.

Then there’s the sour fruit, the bad meat that she craves. She longs for something to make her feel full. Something beyond all the pointless sex and depravity.

When she is sucked into the orbit of a couple who seem as unstitched as she is, Avni thinks she may have found what she is looking for. But each time she fulfils her darkest needs her appetite grows, and she begins to spiral into obsession.

There’s that bone-deep ache again. Is it love? Or a different kind of hunger?

Uncompromising, unique and compulsively readable, SOUR FRUIT is the fearless debut of a major new talent.

we’re using CLYX - in order to grab a ticket you’ll need to click ‘sign up’, and enter their name, phone number + email to buy a ticket. if you do this once, you’ll then be able to use your email or number to login and purchase tickets + follow us to keep up with ticket updates.

you can sign up to the web/app to ensure smooth ticket purchase tomorrow, if you like! The link is as follows - Clyx

we will be trialing it for a month to see if we can make it work, so expect to see a clyx link for the next 3 events and refer to this message if you need a lil help whilst checking out.

📎Casual Reader’s third Library Pick of April is THINGS FALL APART BY CHINUA ACHEBE 📎

​📆: Thursday 23rd April at 6:30PM

​📌: SHOREDITCH

​it’s the time of the month where we get CLASSIC with it. this time, with a book that I know a lot of you will be deeply familiar with. I read this in secondary school as part of my english lit class and I hold that first reading experience very dear to my heart, it sparked something special for me and i’m so excited to read it again alongside you all. I also know A LOT of you have this sat on your shelf and you’ve promised yourself you’ll read it - so here’s your prompt.

As Toni Morrison said, African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe. So with that, are you ready to get into it?

​​-

​about the book:

​Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe’s critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa’s cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man’s futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.

📎Casual Reader’s second Library Pick of April is GOOD GOOD LOVING by Yvette Edwards 📎

📆: Thursday 16th April 2026 at 6:30PM

📌: ON ROAD - Hackney Downs

of course we’re not just hosting ONE book club discussion - we’ll actually be hosting THREE. this one is a bit more intimate, so do join if you love a good yap, smaller group and a chance to meet the author directly. we’ll be getting into this complicated family drama!

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about the book:

Ellen’s beloved, beautiful, complicated family are gathered around her hospital bed as she prepares to slip away, and boy, is she ready. You’d think she could finally get some peace and quiet, but instead her children have chosen now of all times to have a never-ending discussion about her failings. Every single tiny thing they think she’s done wrong over the years - and the one big thing too. After all the sacrifices Ellen has made for every last ungrateful one of them, they still take their father’s side. If only they knew the whole story.

Full of big personalities, big mistakes, burning love and quiet heartbreak, Good Good Loving moves backwards in time through some of the most dramatic turning points in the life of Ellen and her family. Their story is as heartrending as it is joyous.

📎Casual Reader’s first Library Pick of April is IT’S COMPLICATED by Philippa Found 📎

📆: Wednesday 8th April 2026 at 7PM

📌: UNDR - 3 Thorpe Cl, London W10 5XL

we’re finally book clubbing some non-fiction again….everybody say YEAH! I’ve recently been reminded of how STRICT we like to get in our book club discussions when the subject of LOVE comes up. A character is either too obsessive or NOT REALLY in Love or they show their love in strange ways and we as readers, do not approve.

I’m giving us all an opportunity to come and share our STRICTEST takes on this collected confessions of messy modern love. The strictest opinion wins, I personally will be providing an antidote and ensuring a safe space for the real lovers to be heard.

if you don’t secure a ticket and you’d still like to join us - make sure to read along and try and grab a resell ticket in the whatsapp group. not a member? drop us a DM and we’ll share the link with you.

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about the book:

A mosaic of human connections in all their sexy and shameless shades – from breaking up to making out, quiet contentment to agonising loneliness, sexting to ghosting, friendships to ‘fuckboys’, pregnancy loss to profound fulfilment.

If you’ve ever checked your ex’s social media at 2am – or their new partner’s LinkedIn (because it’s the only social profile you can access) – or if everyone thinks you’re the perfect couple but you’ve been drifting apart for years – then you’ve probably felt a smarting of shame. But let me tell you something radical: your darkest secrets, your most repulsively shameful thoughts, feelings, and behaviours: you’re not alone.

Featuring 250 real-life anonymous submissions, this book peels back the layers of modern relationships.

Casual Readers Theatre Club 🌟 ~ we’re off to the theatre, again! Saturday 28th March at 7:30pm we’re going to watch THE AUTHENTICATOR courtesy of our angels the National Theatre and you can join us.

​We’ve got 30 free tickets - we’ll be meeting at 7PM at the box office entrance, before security, to collect our tickets and make sure we can get to our seats and get cosy.

​If you’re late, we will leave your ticket at the box office at the entrance, you’ll need to say your name + casual readers club and you may be turned away if you’re too late.

​👉🏽💘👈🏽

​If you’d like to join us and can make it, express interest via the link in bio. We’ll let you know by this Saturday if you’re in.

​One sign-up = one ticket, so if you’d like to come with your friends, get them to sign up, too!

​—

​This house is full of secrets.

Soon after inheriting her family’s stately home, eccentric artist Fenella Harford discovers a stash of hidden diaries and enlists a young academic, Marva, to confirm their authenticity.

​Joined by Marva’s brilliant but overlooked mentor, Abi, the three women come together to seek the truth, soon realising that secrets at the heart of Harford Hall were darker than they could have imagined.

​A gripping gothic psychological thriller, The Authenticator reunites writer Winsome Pinnock (Leave Taking) with director Miranda Cromwell (Death of a Salesman) following their acclaimed production, Rockets and Blue Lights.

​EXPRESS YOUR INTEREST HERE

We’ve teamed up with the awesome Altitude Film and Regent Street Cinema to present this exclusive preview of Orwell: 2+2=5. We’re exploring classic works this year and what better way to celebrate our reading of 1984 with a follow up movie and discussion? 🎬🍿🎞️📕

Join us on Monday 16th March at Regent Street Cinema. Guests are warmly encouraged to stay afterward for an intimate, relaxed discussion in the foyer — no moderation, just a comfortable space to share thoughts and reflections.

George Orwell was one of the most visionary authors of the 20th century, whose novels 1984 and Animal Farm foretold a chilling, authoritarian future. BAFTA-winning director Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) interweaves clips, readings from Orwell’s diary, cinematic references, and modern-day footage to craft not only a portrait of the writer but a fresh take on how prophetic his work has become.

Casual Readers Club is a storytelling platform and an IRL reading community because reading is a communal practice. The Club celebrates storytelling in all its forms: from hosting regular book club discussions to theatre trips and from exclusive film previews to salon discussions. Their mission is to provide rich art and cultural experiences for the community — celebrating Black, Brown and traditionally underrepresented voices especially.

another month, another soirée.

​and this time we’ll be providing the vibes in hackney wick AND we’ll have some lovely reading material for you to take home - a curated selection of STACKS magazines. Stacks are an independent magazine club

​‼️It’s a social, so please do come feeling social.‼️

​🗞️arrive on time to get your hands on a magazine 🗞️

​🎲♟️we’ll have some board + card games to keep you occupied and to help break the ice 🎲♟️

​💿📀sounds on the night from @jackumstackum and @perryslimm 💿📀

​🍕pizza available to purchase from SLICE CLUB if you’re feeling peckish 🍕

​🌀 come with a friend or come alone ready to meet new faces 🌀

​please note there is no cloak room, so don’t be carrying all your load along with you. travel light! please!

​🎟️The ticket price includes ~ access to the event.

​👉🏽Respectfully, tickets are non-refundable and go towards organisational and facilitation costs. Please bear this in mind before purchasing.

​👈🏽If you can no longer make it, join the WhatsApp group and organise a ticket swap. Alternatively, you can post on your story on Instagram and we’re happy to re-post it. Please give us as much notice as possible to avoid disappointment.

​📽️Heads up. Photography and videography will be taking place during the event and will be added to our digital archive and may be used to promote future events.

📆 Thursday 26th March, 6:30PM 📌 SHOREDITCH

​Ok, so THIS is the book that everyone’s talking about. You ready to get in on the conversation? We can’t wait for you to join us.

​EVERYONE THINKS THEY KNOW WHAT HAPPENED . . .

​The Sharaf family is the picture of success. They arrived in America as refugees with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. And now, after years of hard work, they live in the most exclusive neighbourhood, their growing family attending the most prestigious schools. Zorah, the eldest daughter, is the apple of her father’s eye.

​But when Zorah dies in an unthinkable tragedy, the family is thrust into the court of public opinion. There is talk that the Sharafs’ happy household was anything but, and soon the veneer of the model immigrant family starts to crumble.

​Those who knew her best – and those who never met her – all have an opinion on who Zorah really was, and what really happened to her . . .

​Told through the chorus of voices surrounding the Sharafs, Good People is a riveting, provocative and unforgettable story of community, family and identity.

​—

​🎟️The ticket price includes ~ access to the discussion and light refreshments. grab a book from your favourite independent book shop

​​👉🏽Respectfully, tickets are non-refundable and go towards organisational and facilitation costs. Please bear this in mind before purchasing.

​​👈🏽If you can no longer make it, join the WhatsApp group and organise a ticket swap. Alternatively, you can post on your story on Instagram and we’re happy to re-post it. Please give us as much notice as possible to avoid disappointment!

​​📽️Heads up! Photography and videography will be taking place during the event and will be added to our digital archive and may be used to promote future events.

Join us for our second CASUAL READERS READING RETREAT this is going to be another life shifting trip and we’d love you to join us! We’re off to.......COLOMBIA and not just one, but TWO cities.

🌴 When?

September, 9th to the 16th 2026

📍Where?

Medellin AND Cartagena.

‼️Package includes‼️

international return flights to London, domestic flight from medellin and cartagena, breakfast, listed itinerary activities, boutique hotel stay for trip duration, pre-trip exclusive book club and a social event so everyone can get to know each other before we set off on our adventure.

🌀This is a super intimate experience and there are very limited spots, you can secure your place for £300, with payment plans available for the full total. 🌀

Can’t wait to read on the beach, eat delicious food, book club, book swap, laugh, soak up culture and enjoy our time away with zero other responsibilities. So, let’s go! 👉🏽👈🏽

How can you join us?

Express interest HERE - to make it fair we’re pulling names out of a hat to curate the list of people who will get the link to BOOK first and then each couple of days we’ll share it more widely until the spots are filled.

Already expressed interest?

No need to do it again!

📎Casual Reader’s second Library Pick in march is 1984 by George Orwell📎

​📆 Thursday 12th March

​📌 ON ROAD

​📖 1984 by George Orwell

​it’s the time of the month where we get CLASSIC with it. ahead of the release of Orwell 2+2 = 5, (more on this soon) we wanted to dive into 1984. I’ve personally never read it but know that it remains ever relevant, so let’s get into it.

​-

​about the book:

​The story of one man’s Nightmare Odyssey as he pursues a forbidden love affair through a world ruled by warring states and a power structure that controls not only information but also individual thought and memory 1984 is a prophetic haunting tale More relevant than ever before 1984 exposes the worst crimes imaginable the destruction of truth freedom and individuality.

​—

​​🎟️The ticket price includes ~ access to the discussion and light refreshments. grab a book from your favourite independent book shop

​​👉🏽Respectfully, tickets are non-refundable and go towards organisational and facilitation costs. Please bear this in mind before purchasing.

​​👈🏽If you can no longer make it, join the WhatsApp group and organise a ticket swap. Alternatively, you can post on your story on Instagram and we’re happy to re-post it. Please give us as much notice as possible to avoid disappointment!

​​📽️Heads up! Photography and videography will be taking place during the event and will be added to our digital archive and may be used to promote future events.

STEP ONE: Sign up to our substack mailing list, you’ll recieve updates on events and opportunities directly to your mailbox.

Subscribe now

STEP TWO: Grab a ticket to any upcoming event you like the look of. read the description in full, check the location, read the associated book and pull up open and ready to get stuck in!

STEP THREE: If you miss out on a ticket to one of our events you can join the whatsapp community here, to grab a ticket when someone can no longer make it. Join here

📎Casual Reader’s first Library Pick of march is THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST by Mohsin Hamed 📎

​📆: Wednesday 4th March

​📌: UNDR - 3 Thorpe Cl, London W10 5XL

​When Derek Owusu recommends a book for club it, we book club it with speed. This has been on my TBR for a minute and one I’d really love to deep dive into with you all.

​If you’re feeling extra fancy you can also watch the film and report back to us all! see you there?

​—

​about the book:

​At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with an uneasy American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful encounter . . .

​Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by an elite valuation firm. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his budding romance with elegant, beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore. But in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his relationship with Erica shifting. And Changez’s own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love.

​—

​🎟️The ticket price includes ~ access to the discussion and light refreshments. grab a book from your favourite independent book shop

​👉🏽Respectfully, tickets are non-refundable and go towards organisational and facilitation costs. Please bear this in mind before purchasing.

​👈🏽If you can no longer make it, join the WhatsApp group and organise a ticket swap. Alternatively, you can post on your story on Instagram and we’re happy to re-post it. Please give us as much notice as possible to avoid disappointment!

​📽️Heads up! Photography and videography will be taking place during the event and will be added to our digital archive and may be used to promote future events.

-

you can expect the following from the night:

‼️It’s a social, so come feeling social. ‼️

📕 bring a book to participate in our book swap - kicking off at 6PM📕

🎲♟️we’ll have some board + card games to keep you occupied and to help break the ice 🎲♟️

sounds on the night from @jackumstackum

💿📀if you’re a vinyl lover and have disco dreams of hearing your fave song whilst you boogie on the dancefloor then bring it along to contribute to the vibes (dw you can take it home after, we’re not thieves)💿📀

🌀 come with a friend or come alone ready to meet new faces 🌀

please note there is no cloak room, so don’t be carrying all your load along with you. travel light! please!

-

🎟️The ticket price includes ~ access to the event.

👉🏽Respectfully, tickets are non-refundable and go towards organisational and facilitation costs. Please bear this in mind before purchasing.

👈🏽If you can no longer make it, join the WhatsApp group and organise a ticket swap. Alternatively, you can post on your story on Instagram and we’re happy to re-post it. Please give us as much notice as possible to avoid disappointment.

📽️Heads up. Photography and videography will be taking place during the event and will be added to our digital archive and may be used to promote future events.

📆: Thursday 26th February 2026

📌: SHOREDITCH

welcoming in a new book club season, we’re getting into some CLASSICS. we LOVE a bit of Oscar Wilde at CRC, but i’ve never personally read The Picture of Dorian Gray and it’s constantly recommended and referenced so I want to know what all the fuss is about and I hope you’ll join me.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is widely considered a literary classic. It’s a Gothic horror, it explores themes of beauty… morality.. hedonism and philosophy, so it’s LITERALLY everything we love in a book and I think it’ll make for a glorious, glorious book club discussion. If you agree and you’d like to join us, you know what to do!

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about the book:

‘The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty’

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence.

The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succès de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins, and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895.

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🎟️The ticket price includes ~ access to the discussion and light refreshments. grab a book from your favourite independent book shop

👉🏽Respectfully, tickets are non-refundable and go towards organisational and facilitation costs. Please bear this in mind before purchasing.

👈🏽If you can no longer make it, join the WhatsApp group and organise a ticket swap. Alternatively, you can post on your story on Instagram and we’re happy to re-post it. Please give us as much notice as possible to avoid disappointment!

📽️Heads up! Photography and videography will be taking place during the event and will be added to our digital archive and may be used to promote future events.

there’s not a week that goes by that we’re not asked “ARE YOU PLANNING ANOTHER RETREAT?”, “WHERE NEXT?”, “WHEN ARE YOU ANNOUNCING THE NEXT ONE?” or a slightly more exasperated combination of the three. 🥹

of course the answer is a resounding YES. rest assured that another reading retreat is definitely in the works. our last retreat was life shifting and we’d be terrible people if we didn’t give those of you who had to sit through our fomo inducing wrap ups, an opportunity to get in on the retreat action. so, you asked, we’re delivering 🫡

we’re keeping our cards close to our chests for now, so we can’t say where we’re off yet…. but what we can say is:

📆save the date: 9th - 16th September
✍🏽 express your interest HERE
✅put aside some deposit money.

and now, breathe🧘🏽‍♀️

📆: Thursday 19th February

📌: ON ROAD

this was recommended at our Borderline Fiction discussion at ON ROAD and it was already on my TBR so it feels right to run it up sooner rather than later.

judging a book by it’s cover ✅

new york city, upper west side, the 1970’s ✅

sounds like JUST our kind of book.

before you book a ticket, know that this is an intimate book club, it’s for our casual readers who really enjoy participating and have lots of things to say. looking forward to discussing with you all v.soon.

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about the book:

Ellen is a single artist living alone on New York’s Upper West Side in the 1970s. She is beset by old boyfriends, paint pigment choices, and, occasionally, by ‘radiances’ - episodes of joyous, reckless unreality. Under the influence of ‘radiances’ she becomes Princess Esmeralda, and West 72nd Street becomes the kingdom over which she rules. Life as Esmeralda is a liberating experience for Ellen, who, despite the chaos and stigma these episodes can bring, relishes the respite from the confines of the everyday. And yet those around her, particularly the men in her life, are threatened by her incarnation as Esmeralda, and by the freedom that it gives her.

The Princess of 72nd Street is Elaine Kraf’s witty, dizzyingly inventive take on female liberation and mental health, a work of immense literary power and unbridled energy. Provocative at the time of its publication in 1979 and thoroughly iconoclastic, it is a remarkable portrait of an unforgettable woman.

📆: Wednesday 11th February 2026

📌: UNDR - 3 Thorpe Cl, London W10 5XL

in 2026 we’re doing more of the things that we enjoy and the one thing I love more than discussing books with you amazing people, it’s eating good food. so join us to book club this brilliant magical and haunting novel and EAT pure delicious Caribbean goodness

Each ticket includes a main meal + a soft drink - we’ll drop you a message with closer to the time of the event to lock in your food order, you’ll be able to choose from one of the following options:

• Jerk Chicken w/ a plantain dip, served with rice & peas, plantain, slaw

• Escovitch Fish, served with rice & peas, plantain, slaw

• Crispy spiced banana blossom, gungo pea daal, served with rice & peas, plantain

join us!

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about the book:

Ma Taffy may be blind but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew Kaia comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear through her. While they wait for his mama to come home from work, Ma Taffy recalls the story of the flying preacherman and a great thing that did not happen. A poor suburban sprawl in the Jamaican heartland, Augustown is a place where many things that should happen don’t, and plenty of things that shouldn’t happen do.

For the story of Kaia leads back to another momentous day in Jamaican history, the birth of the Rastafari and the desire for a better life. ‘Augustown’ is a novel about inequality and aspiration, memory and myth, and the connections between people which can transcend these things but not always change them.

—

🎟️The ticket price includes ~ access to the discussion and a main meal

👉🏽Respectfully, tickets are non-refundable and go towards organisational and facilitation costs. Please bear this in mind before purchasing.

👈🏽If you can no longer make it, join the WhatsApp group and organise a ticket swap. Alternatively, you can post on your story on Instagram and we’re happy to re-post it. Please give us as much notice as possible to avoid disappointment!

📽️Heads up! Photography and videography will be taking place during the event and will be added to our digital archive and may be used to promote future events.