Serial Readers Book Club: "The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 6"

Some stories take more than one book. Join Sammi Snow as we read a series together, one volume at a time. New readers can jump in anytime!
About this Event

The Serial Readers Book Club is for stories that take more than one book to tell. Together, we'll make our way through a series from beginning to end, one volume at a time. You don't have to start with us or make it to every meeting—jump in whenever you'd like! This book club is led by the lovely Sammi Snow.
We're continuing Beth Brower's beloved The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, the charming, funny, and thoroughly addictive series told through the journals of an irrepressible young woman making a life for herself in Victorian London. This month, we're reading Volume 6, and by now, St. Crispian's feels less like a setting and more like a place we've been living alongside Emma.

Six volumes in, the pleasures of Emma's world are in the accumulation. We know the neighbors. We know the friendships, rivalries, family complications, and unanswered questions. We know enough to recognize when a seemingly ordinary detail might not be ordinary at all—and enough about Emma to know that whatever happens, she'll have something wonderfully particular to say about it.

In Volume 6, relationships continue to deepen, mysteries and secrets refuse to resolve themselves neatly, and the threads Beth Brower has been weaving throughout the journals become increasingly tangled. Emma, meanwhile, remains as observant, independent, stubborn, curious, and funny as ever, recording both the consequential and the wonderfully inconsequential with equal attention.

We'll talk about how far Emma—and we!—have come since Volume 1, which relationships have surprised us most, what questions we're still desperate to have answered, and the tiny moments and details we're filing away for later. Six books into a series, we're also in the perfect position to ask: What changes when we get to know fictional characters over hundreds and hundreds of pages?

New to Serial Readers? You're welcome to jump in here! Catch up on the earlier journals if you'd like, or simply join us wherever we are. We'll continue with the next volume at each meeting as we make our way through The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion together, one journal at a time.

Beth Brower is the author of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, The Q, The Beast of Ten, and the Imirillia Trilogy consisting of The Queen’s Gambit, The Ruby Prince, and The Wanderer’s Mark. She also writes the popular Substack ‘Beth Brower Scribbles Away’ https://bethbrower.substack.com/ and can be found on Instagram @BethBrower. She lives in Utah with her husband.