Meet Between Two Books: a book club for Florence + The Machine fans.
If you love reading and Florence + The Machine, then Flow's Book Club (also known as Between Two Books) is the place for you! If you're already a member of this club, no worries, this is just a refresher for you... but if you're new and just reading about this for the first time, then WELCOME!
Three years ago, the idea for a book club sparked up from a young Irish girl named Leah Moloney, which interested three other girls from around the world, including myself, to help create this club. We are: Heather Hale (Canada), Abbie Whitehead (England) and me (US). Playing around the Florence + the Machine song title of 'Between Two Lungs', Between Two Books was officially created on Twitter. Soon after our establishment, we tweeted to Florence, asking her for our first recommendation, and she replied with:
@BetweenTwoBooks @leahmoloney Gwendoline Riley's Opposed positions. X
— florence welch (@flo_tweet) July 24, 2012
What exactly do we do, you may ask? Well, every few months, we ask Florence for a new book recommendation, and from there, we promote the new read as much as possible so that everyone can be notified. Then, we give our clubbers about a month or so to read before we have a discussion about the book on Twitter. Occasionally, Florence will actively read with us and tweet to us her favourite lines or passages from books that we are reading.
Florence has been a huge help with our club, and all of our gratitude goes to her because if it wasn't for her, we probably would not be as successful as we are. Other than giving us recommendations, Florence herself has made an effort to promote BTB. On three separate occasions, Florence has given us shout-outs in between performances on stage to huge crowds - you can watch a video of one of her shout-outs below! BTB has gained a whirlwind of members, which include many great celebrities who follow us: Nicole Anderson, Natalia Kills, Lena Dunham, Emma Roberts, The Maccabees, Jessie Ware, Dan from Bastille, and many more! Check out an Insta post from Lena Dunham:
Florence has also been involved by interviewing Donna Tartt on our behalf while we were reading her novel, 'The Goldfinch', which you can read HERE.
Apart from reading and holding discussions, we like to keep our clubbers active through many projects. For example, our very first project was called the 'OPose' - inspired by a picture that Florence tweeted to us. We asked our clubbers to re-create that image, and we put them all into a collage, which I gave to Florence during my interview with her in September 2012. She also signed my extra copy of 'Opposed Positions' that we auctioned off and donated the $1,380 we raised to the Books For Africa literacy charity.
Other projects include our 'Between Two Books' book - a project where Leah compiled a large list of recommendations and letters from clubbers in a decorated book. Leah gave this gift to Florence before her last show on the 'Ceremonials' Tour.
We also created our own bookmarks, which you can purchase HERE. We held a contest for our clubbers to design what they thought our bookmarks would look like, and we sent the Top 10 submissions to Florence. She made a Facebook post, announcing the winner, which you can see below...
I am so happy to announce that the winner of the @betweentwobooks bookmark competition is Ava McEntee, well done @...
Posted by Florence + The Machine on Friday, October 24, 2014
We have a few more projects that are still works in progress, but will be coming soon. One is a 'FATM Lyric Book' which will be managed by Heather; it is a compilation of passionate pieces of literature written by our clubbers that express how inspirational Florence is to them. Another is a 'BTB Collection' of all of the books we've read in the club so far. We want Florence to sign them so we can auction them off and donate the proceeds to the same charity again.
So now you know who we are and you've got a taste of what we do, so you're probably wondering how you can get yourself involved, right? Well, that part is actually quite easy. All you have to do is follow Between Two Books on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to get the latest reads and get the dates for when the discussions will be held on Twitter. You're not obligated to read everything that is recommended, but it is encouraged! You can also contribute to any of our future projects, so follow us and get reading!
Here's the entire list of recommendations from Florence and other various celebrities:
'Opposed Positions' by Gwendoline Riley
'The Ice Age' by Kirsten Reed
'Why Not Say What Happened?' by Ivana Lowell (guest recommendation from Emma Forrest)
'Your Voice In My Head' by Emma Forrest
'Their Eyes Were Watching God' by Nora Zeale Hurston
'Songs About Dragons Flying To Heaven and Other Plays' by Young Jean Lees (guest recommendation from Jeremy O'Harris)
'A Confederacy Of Dunces' by John Kennedy Toole
'The Great Gastby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald
'The Marriage Plot' by Jeffrey Eugenides
'The Day Of The Triffids' by John Wyndham (guest recommendation from Isabella Summers)
'The Goldfinch' by Donna Tartt
'Not That Kind of Girl' by Lena Dunham
'Heartburn' by Nora Ephron
'I Will Never Be Beautiful Enough To Make Us Beautiful Together' by Mira Gonzalez
'Birthday Letters' by Ted Hughes
We have another recommendation coming really soon!
So grab yourself a book and get reading! Also, here's the video of Florence's shout-out to us in Indianapolis in 2012...
