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Book Club

Celebrating Māori, Pasifika, Asian, Rainbow and Oceania stories

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Welcome to the Club

Nau Mai!

Make new friends, be exposed to new ideas, get serious, or have a laugh.

Book clubs are an interesting and inspiring way to read, share, and connect with others in a relaxed way.

Book Discussion Scheme is proud to be partnering with Narrative Muse to bring you the Narrative Muse Book Club — a chance for you to ​enjoy a year of social reading with books that celebrate Māori, Pasifika, Asian, Rainbow and Oceania stories.

Simply gather a group of between 4 and 12 people, choose which books you’d like to read from our curated list, and register with BDS. We'll take care of all the logistics of the book club (like providing enough copies for everyone and monthly delivery) so you can focus on going deeper with your reading by sharing the experience with your book club buddies.

Join from anywhere in NZ, at any time of the year, and enjoy some sweet discounts exclusively for Narrative Muse Book Clubbers.

 Read on to find out how it all works, or contact us with your questions.

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What is the Narrative Muse Book Club?

The Narrative Muse Book Club is a combined initiative with Narrative Muse, a team working to uplift diverse creators and storytellers, and Book Discussion Scheme, New Zealand’s non-profit provider of services to book clubs. Together, we’ve created a reading list of in-common titles from Narrative Muse curations and the BDS catalogue that encompass one or more of the following subject streams: Māori, Pasifika, Asian, Rainbow, Set in Oceania.

If you register as a Narrative Muse Book Club, BDS will send your group ten books of your choice from the list, one a month for ten months, with enough copies for everyone to read the book at the same time. You then meet to discuss what you’ve read — so you benefit from the shared perspectives of your group and get to enjoy a fun monthly social event. Ka rawe! Awesome!

How do we join?

The first step is to get at least three mates to join you. After that, registering is easy and BDS takes care of all the logistics of running your book club — so you can focus on enjoying your books and meetings.

To participate, simply follow the five ‘R’s

Step One: Rally

  • Gather a group of between four and 12 members for your book club
  • Nominate a coordinator. They’ll be responsible for handing out and returning the books. If you’re outside of Christchurch* we’ll send your book sets to their address.
  • Choose a monthly meeting day that works for everyone

Step Two: Register

Complete the registration form ensuring you:

  • Choose 25** titles from our curated list of ​Narrative Muse Book Club titles
  • Include a name and email address for each member
  • Pay your discounted book club membership fee
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Step Three: Read

  • Books start arriving (or are ready for pick up) about seven days before each of your monthly meetings
  • Read one book each month
  • Meet to discuss each book with your group

Step Four: Return

  • Return each book set to BDS within seven days of your meeting. 
  • Overdue books may delay your next set, so make use of our convenient return courier bags which enable you to book a pick-up online. BDS HQ in Christchurch also provides an after hours dropbox for returns.

Step Five: Review

BDS invite your group to send us a rating and review of each title you receive. The coordinator can submit this online or fill out the feedback slip included in your book parcel and send it back to us with each book set.

By the way, the more reviews a title has, the easier it is for other book clubs to decide if it’s something they’d like to read — so by submitting a review, you’re also helping promote the stories that had the most impact on your group 💗

Really like reviewing?

  • Enquire about joining the volunteer BDS reviewers network, where you can read newly published books in return for submitting a review which helps us decide if they should be added to the BDS catalogue. In particular, we’d like reviewers for sci-fi and fantasy books that might have a wider appeal. Contact BDS if you’re interested.
  • You can also join Narrative Muse as a curator, submitting detailed reviews on — not only the books you’ve read — but the films and TV shows you’ve watched. Shine a light on the stories that resonate with you and help others discover them too! 

*Christchurch-based groups have the option of picking up and dropping off their books at BDS HQ in Sydenham

**Why 25 titles when we only receive ten? You can rank your titles in order of preference and BDS will dispatch from the top of your list first, as long as sufficient copies are available at that time. Book groups normally receive books from their top 15 picks, but due to the unpredictable nature of returns (think: COVID, floods, life), choosing 25 means we have an emergency buffer.

Visit our FAQs page for more information on how BDS book groups work

Narrative Muse Book List

When you register, you'll select 25 titles from this curated list for your book club. About seven days before your first book club meeting, you'll receive the first of your chosen titles, with enough copies for everyone to read the same book at the same time — reading is better when done together!

Featured

Purple Heart

Ta'afuli Andrew Fiu (NZ)

Straight Up

Ruby Tui (NZ)

Small Bodies of Water

Nina Mingya Powles (NZ)

How to Loiter in a Turf War

Coco Solid (NZ)

Mila and The Bone Man

Lauren Roche (NZ)

Auē

Becky Manawatu (NZ)

Faking It

Kyle Mewburn (NZ)

Disappearing Earth

Julia Phillips

Our Missing Hearts

Celeste Ng

Orlando

Virginia Woolf

From the Centre

Patricia Grace (NZ)

Girl, Woman, Other

Bernadine Evaristo

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Jeanette Winterson

Mad Honey

Jodi Picoult & JF Boylan

Double Helix

Eileen Merriman (NZ)

The Trauma Cleaner

Sarah Krasnostein

Ask the Posts of the House

Witi Ihimaera (NZ)

Heat and Light

Jennifer Haigh

Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings

Tina Makereti (NZ)

View all Narrative Muse titles
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