Every second or third Thursday of the month, join us for our monthly online discussion for significant conversations with fellow bibliophiles 🥵
Drop by in-store to pick up the book or buy online HERE.
This book club is free for our members - if you'd like to receive The Common Press book of the month delivered to your door each month, explore our membership tiers here.
7PM - 9PM
Upcoming dates:
- Tuesday 23rd June - Online: Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes (& Mutual Aid)
- Thursday 16th July - In-person: The Future In Our Past: The General Strike, 1926/2026
About the books:
Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes
An outrageously witty tragicomedy-of-manners about a queer black teenager coming of age, introduced by Mendez, author of Rainbow Milk.
When a peacock’s days are over, they’re over.
Oliver is precocious, black and gay. He reads Baudelaire, plays with his pet peacock, eats smoked oysters and fends off the maid Della Mae whenever she gets the ‘Nasties’. He lives in rural Michigan with two elderly ladies: the white, wealthy Etta and her devoted housekeeper, Harry, his aunt. When a psychic warlock named Maurice LeFleur comes to stay, however, promising to contact the ghost of Etta’s dead son, their eccentric household starts to fall apart.
First published in 1965, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, this sparklingly witty debut novel is a radically hopeful vision of racial integration and sexual acceptance that was years ahead of its time.
Mutual Aid
As crises mount and multiply, governments fail to respond or exacerbate the problems. What are we to do?
Mutual Aid is a radical handbook for anyone who grasps the severity of the global poly-crisis and wants a community-based means to fight back. Dean Spade — lawyer, academic, writer, and activist — highlights the bold and innovative ways ordinary people have developed to share resources and care for those in crisis. Mutual aid isn’t charity. It is a form of organizing integral to all influential and successful social movements. Spade offers practical tools and advice to help with the challenges of working in groups, forming a decision-making process, and preventing and addressing conflict.
This book club is hosted by one of our amazing booksellers, Blake!
Blake is an MA student studying on the History of the Book course over at the School of Advanced Study, with a specialty in rare books and modernist publishing histories. Her favourite authors are Samuel R Delany, Ann Quin and Claire Louise Bennett; if you want to make her really excited, ask her about her collection of copies of Ulysses. Blake also started London's own trans climbing group, T-Climbing, so when she's not reading she's mostly up a wall (or on the dancefloor).