Bella's Book Club is a project of the @threebooksoneplot podcast. Join us once a month to read one of Bella Swan's favorite books and discuss it on Discord and Tumblr! Currently reading: The Count of Monte Cristo (volumes 1-2) by Alexandre Dumas! (Discussion date 06/13 8PM EST) Discord link: here
Bella's Book Club, (sometimes abbreviated to "BBC"), is an interactive virtual book club created by the Three Books One Plot podcast. Each month, participants read a selected book from the list of Bella Swan’s (really Stephenie Meyer’s) favorite books and authors as it appears in Chapter 13 of Midnight Sun, then come together to discuss it on Discord and other social media.
Where can I find Bella's Book Club?
We post most of our important information here on our Tumblr (check the Official Announcements tag), as well as in the #announcements channel of our Discord. You can also follow along on our Goodreads and join readalongs on our Storygraph (mainly used to keep track of past and present books we’ve read/are reading.)
Who can join Bella's Book Club?
BBC is open to anyone! You do not have to have participated in previous discussions, or even be a listener of the 3B1P podcast (though we’d love that, of course.) All we ask is that you be prepared to encounter mature themes and situations in some of our books (and discussions.)
How do I participate in Bella's Book Club?
BBC is designed to let you choose the level of participation you’re comfortable with. Most of the action (and fun) happens over on our Discord, during our monthly real-time discussions, but you're also welcome to share your thoughts or fanworks on a book by tagging us on tumblr or sending an ask/submission. We also sometimes post challenges, ask/tag games, and “scavenger hunts” to go along with our book of the month, and encourage each other to get creative. Past BBCers have made moodboards, fanbinds, playlists, shitposts, written fic and parodies, done scientific research, and even recreated recipes from the books we’ve read! The pressure is totally off, though—you’re welcome to read along and lurk from the cozy corner of your choice.
Who runs Bella's Book Club?
BBC is run primarily by bookworm nerds M (@gashousegables) and G (@volturialice) with occasional help from Shannon (@flowerslut).
M (she/they) is an Australian book nerd with librarian aspirations (eta: now a librarian!). From Animorphs to a Smeyer-adjacent Dragon girl phase, she's also the weeaboo in residence for the book club. When not feverishly promoting their Virtual Best Friend known as the Libby App they are swallowing pulpy Romances and mandatory sociological theory.
Favorite books: Imagica, the Locked Tomb series, Friday's Child, Picnic at Hanging Rock
G (she/her) is an American book nerd who grew up devouring like 3 high fantasy doorstoppers a week and considered the Scholastic Book Fair a national holiday. She enjoys reading gory Jacobean/Elizabethan tragedies for fun and has worked in Shakespeare education when she’s not stanning her local library.
Favorite books: Annihilation, The Bloody Chamber, the Locked Tomb series, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Shannon (she/her) is an American jock who read oodles of fic but thought books were mainly good for propping up wobbly tables until she had her own Reading Renaissance in 2022. Now she's on a quest to discover new favorites by seeking out recs and devouring every book in sight!
Favorite books: We Have Always Lived in the Castle, the Locked Tomb series, The Vanishing Half
When is Bella's Book Club?
Bella's Book Club runs September through early June, followed by a break for our summer reading challenge. Currently, during 3B1P's between-season hiatus, BBC is celebrating "Hiatuspalooza," ie letting the people vote on books of the month that aren't quite on Bella's list (see: next question.)
Books are announced one month in advance, and discussions take place once a month on Saturday nights at 8 PM EST (Sunday mornings at 10 AM AEST) during 3B1P’s off weeks. In the event of a postponement, we announce it on Tumblr and Discord.
The current dates for summer 2026 are:
June 1st - 12th (Summer Reading rec form open)
June 13th (Count of Monte Cristo vols 1-2 discussion)
June 14th - September 12th (Summer Reading Challenge)
September 26th (Count of Monte Cristo vols 3-5 discussion)
Typically, BBC hosts a live readalong of our book the weekend before the discussion and a movie night in the weeks after. Those dates are always announced on Discord and Tumblr.
What is Hiatuspalooza?
In 2026, while the 3B1P podcast is on hiatus, we've overthrown our dictators and handed control to the people! Once a month, we post a Discord-exclusive poll to decide next month's book. For Hiatuspalooza, we've ditched Midnight Sun and are pulling from a list of Bella-adjacent books in similar genres (gothics, fairytale retellings, coming-of-age-classics, works mentioned by Stephenie Meyer in interviews or blog posts, etc.) The top two runners-up from each poll move on to the next month's poll and get another chance!
How do your live readalongs work?
Our live readalongs (not to be confused with Storygraph readalongs) are basically Discord voice chats where we take 5-10 minute turns reading aloud from a specific chapter of this month's chosen book! (If you've never used Discord voice before, it's super easy—you just click on the designated channel, leave your camera off, and turn your mic off and on as needed.) Mods livestream the text, assign the reading order, time everyone's turn, and give the reader a 1-2 minute heads up when their turn is over so they can find a stopping point. It's a judgment-free zone perfect for practicing your silly accents! You're also welcome to tune in and just listen to everyone else read—no reading aloud necessary.
Do you do movie nights?
Yes! We sometimes take a break from reading to host Bella's Movie Club. Many of the books we read have been adapted for film and TV (and when no adaptation is available, we often watch a thematically similar movie.) We host movie nights on our Discord, scheduled according to demand and availability. We usually announce movie nights on Tumblr and Discord a week or so in advance, and schedule them on weekend nights (US)/weekend or Monday mornings (Australia) to accommodate the max number of time zones. If you’ve never watched a movie on Discord before, it’s super easy—anyone who wants to watch joins in via our voice channel, mutes themself (if you don’t know how to do this, the mods can do it for you), and then chats (mostly jokes) in real time via the #movie-discussion channel. It’s a rollicking time.
What books have you read in the past?
Full list
For our Season 1 (Twilight) lineup we read Jane Eyre, The Princess Bride, Sense and Sensibility, Tooth and Claw, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Little Women, and Northanger Abbey.
For our Season 2 (New Moon) lineup we read Emily of New Moon, Sunshine, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Blue Castle, Dragonflight, A Long Fatal Love Chase, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Persuasion, and Death on the Nile.
For our Season 3 (Eclipse) lineup we read Mansfield Park, Murder on the Orient Express, Wuthering Heights, Beauty (Robin McKinley), Anne of Green Gables, The Hero and the Crown, Till We Have Faces, Behind a Mask, Emma, Prince Caspian, Riders of the Purple Sage, and Lady Susan.
During Hiatuspalooza (3B1P's hiatus), we've read A Little Princess, Book of a Thousand Days, Seraphina, The Secret Garden, Magic Flutes, Othello, and The Count of Monte Cristo.
What’s the BBC Summer Reading Challenge?
The Bella's Book Club Summer Reading Challenge is our yearly summer break activity, usually designed to coincide with 3B1P’s hiatuses (though not this year! This year it's just back by popular demand.) Phase 1 of the challenge involves recommending up to 5 books through a Google form. In Phase 2, everyone’s recs are compiled into a list. Readers then choose 5 books from the list to read (and, optionally, review) during the summer months! You can find previous years' lists here (and reccer spotlights here.)
Why are the books on your list Like That?
The list we’re pulling from was made by a white Mormon woman for her Not Like Other Girls YA protagonist. (We’ve found that Stephenie Meyer’s taste in books varies from “a quality classic but uninspired as a rec” to “this is actually a pretty cool deep cut.”) But don’t let that put you off too hard—we love reading through a more intersectional lens and Queering The Narrative, for example. We also take summers off to read each other’s book recommendations, which can be of any genre and include more diverse characters and authors. Even when choosing our lineup of monthly books, we try to schedule so that we end up with diversity of genre, era, style, and subject matter.
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got more questions? send us an ask!
happy reading! (we'll see you at book club)
A free online book club by the Three Books One Plot podcast! Open to all.
Nobody lives forever, but a story can. Stories are how I survive. When I'm fighting to live, I think to myself: what a story to tell my sister. I will be her favorite story. I will be the greatest story she ever heard.
“If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heavens. No more damned magic. You hate me and I hate you. We’ll see who hates best. But first, first I will destroy your hatred. Now. My hate is colder, stronger, and you’ll have no hate to warm yourself. You will have nothing.”
Four weeks of the swooniest, swellest romance New York City has ever seen. And then, kaput. Over and out. Off the air.
The truth was, he was enjoying their cooked-up romance a little too much. Whenever Evie looked at him from across whatever room they were working, he got a feeling in his stomach like they were sharing the most delicious secret. It was fun and exciting—the two of them against the world. He dreaded the countdown to the end of it all. Was it too much to hope that he could change her mind along the way?
❝ Humans are capable of such wondrous things. Of cruelty, and war, but also art and invention. She will think this again and again over the years, when bombs are dropped, and buildings felled, when terror consumes whole countries. But also when the first images are impressed on film, when planes rise into the air, when movies go from black-and-white to color. She is amazed. She will always be amazed.❞
"I am only a country girl," said Vasya. She reached again into the blackberry bush, wary of thorns. "I have never seen Tsargrad, or angels, or heard the voice of God. But I think you should be careful, Batyushka, that God does not speak in the voice of your own wishing. We have never needed saving before."
Why does anyone do anything? Belief. A belief that they are right and just in their actions. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac, because he believed that God had commanded it. To kill your son is unthinkable. A crime. But if you are acting in the belief that your God, your supreme deity whom you must obey, has demanded it of you, is it still a crime?
read in 2025: mexican gothic by silvia moreno-garcia
You like a hint of danger, but back home they wrap you in gauze, to keep you from breaking. But you’d like to break, wouldn’t you? You play with people and you wish someone would have the guts to play with you.
Books I Loved in 2026: Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher
At thirty-five, I was more than old enough to know that evil could present a fair face, but I had never heard that it got tired. Quite the opposite, really. Evil is relentlessly energetic.
