LibGuides: .Virtual Book Club: Home

General Information about Virtual Book Club

Virtual Book Club [VBC] was founded in April 2020 in order to provide an engaging space for student book lovers to share in reading adventures together.

Weekly meetings are held virtually via Teams on TUESDAY nights from 7:00pm-8:00pm
Each book is broken up into manageable reading "chunks", which allow us to read a book in 4-6 weeks.
Students who wish to participate can sign up for a free book (funded by the Office of Student Engagement) during each sign up period.
Want to participate outside of the weekly virtual meetings? We have a Teams channel, Instagram account, GroupMe chat, and additional complementary programming!
Students can sign up anytime on BullsConnect!

Virtual Book Club: Impactful Library Programming at a Distance through Co-Curricular Collaboration (Szempruch & Hinds, 2022)
Read Jessica and Kati's peer-reviewed article about VBC!
Szempruch, J. N., & Hinds, K. I. (2022). Virtual book club: Impactful library programming at a distance through co-curricular collaboration. Journal of Library & Information Services in Distance Learning, 16(1), 77-89. DOI: 10.1080/1533290X.2022.2072047
2023 Florida Library Association Award Winners
Jessica and Kati won the Florida Library Association's 2023 Outstanding Scholarly Contribution Award for their article on VBC. Read more about the award here.
Virtual Book Club: Forging Towards the Future, Connecting Collaboratively at a Distance - Florida Library Association Annual Conference (2023)
View the poster Jessica and Kati presented at the Florida Library Association Annual Conference (May 2023)
Virtual Book Club: Transforming Library Programming Through Collaborative Partnerships - American Library Association Annual Conference (2023)
View the poster Jessica and Kati presented at the American Library Association Annual Conference (June 2023)
2020-21 Student Success Awards Regional Chancellor Award
VBC Coordinators were awarded USF's "2020-21 Student Success Awards Regional Chancellor Award" for the program. This link provides additional information about the award.
Video: Student Success Award ceremony presentation (9/13/2021)
LIB News article about VBC: Reading Together, Virtually (7/26/2021)

Currently Reading

Circe by Madeline Miller (Fall 2024)
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (Spring 2025)

Past Book Choices

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins (Summer 2020)
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (Summer 2020)
Scythe by Neal Shusterman (Fall 2020)
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (Fall 2020)
Stardust by Neil Gaiman (Fall 2020)
The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis (Spring 2021)
They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera (Spring 2021)
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (May-June / Summer 2021)
This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki (illustrator) (July / Summer 2021)
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin (Fall 2021)
The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass (Fall 2021)
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Spring 2022)
Normal People by Sally Rooney (Spring 2022)
Summer of Salt by Katrina Lino (June / Summer 2022)
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid (July / Summer 2022)
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (Fall 2022)
The Martian by Andy Weir (Fall 2022)
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (Spring 2023)
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint (Spring 2023)
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune (Summer 2023)
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab (Fall 2023)
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (Spring 2024)
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin (Summer 2024)

All of our previous VBC titles are available for loan via our Sarasota-Manatee campus Information Commons. Check out the list at this link.

Many of the titles are also available at the St. Petersburg and Tampa campus libraries for loan. Search for them in the USF Libraries catalog.