Behind the Book Club: The hidden role of libraries in curating Radio 2's Book Club

We all hate them, those pesky “stickers” that are printed onto otherwise stunning book covers to tell us what awards the books have won or what book clubs they are part of. However unsightly they might be, they are an indicator of quality, letting us know that the books have been read, discussed, and judged as being fantastic reads. 

Here in the UK, a nationwide book club that we’ve come to know and trust is the Radio 2 Book Club. Previously hosted by Steve Wright and Zoe Ball, the club is now led by Sara Cox, certified book lover and host of Between the Covers on BBC2. But how do titles make the list? Join Inspire's Melissa as she shares all about the process of curating the selection...

Have you ever wondered how do the books that make it onto the Radio 2 Book Club get chosen? Are bribes involved? Does Sara Cox herself shut herself away like a hermit, buried under a mountain of new releases? The answer is in fact much simpler, and library staff from across the UK are a key part of the process! I've taken part in the book selection for the past three years, so here’s the inside scoop: 

Every three months, the Reading Agency send out a plea for library staff to get involved in the selection process for the next season of the book club. If you are accepted onto the panel, you will receive 6-8 advanced copies of books in a mix of physical and digital formats and will have approximately 6 weeks to read them all. These books are all sent in by the publishers for our consideration, so there’s a real mix of genres, upcoming titles from established authors, and lots of exciting debuts! In December 2024 I received my allocation of 8 books for the Spring season, with release dates of April-June 2025 - I’m sure you can imagine how excited and smug I feel when I get my hands on them! We do have to keep things under wraps of course, so as not to spoil the surprise!

After finishing the books there is an evaluation form to fill in with questions to make you think about how the book made you feel and if you think it should be part of the Radio 2 Book Club. This is the part that I find the most difficult - it could be the best book I’ve read all year, but ask me to put my thoughts into words can feel impossible! It’s also really important to try to be objective. Just because I thought a book was amazing doesn’t necessarily mean it is appropriate for a nationwide book club after all.

From the evaluation forms, the Reading Agency whittles the books down to the top 25-30. We then meet over Zoom, where we spend 4 hours discussing the books with each other, sharing opinions and sometimes having very heated debates! After the meeting, we each submit a “book club dozen”, the 13 books from the list that we think are the best fit for the Radio 2 Book Club, and this information gets gathered and calculated and transformed into the official shortlist.

At this point our work is done and we can put our feet up: Radio 2 Book Club staff members will read our shortlist and from there choose the 6 that they want to feature on the show! It made me so happy when I found out that my top pick from the Winter 2024 selection, Who Wants to Live Forever, made it onto the show.

It’s so great and so vital that people in library land are involved in this sort of thing. We have our fingers on the pulse of what our library customers are enjoying right now, so who better to help decide which books get picked?  

Melissa works at Inspire as one of our fantastic Assistant Library Managers, and has a particular love for adventure fiction.