Athenaeum’s next read vote

Athenaeum Book Club is using a public vote to pick its next group read, with an April 28 discussion date already on the calendar. (substack.com) (x.com) The club’s current options include Plato’s *Symposium*, Dante’s *Purgatorio*, and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s *Crime and Punishment*, according to the vote post on its X account. The same account tied the poll to a scheduled discussion on April 28. (x.com) Days before the vote, the club posted a note about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1945 arrest, eight-year Gulag sentence, and later writing career. That post framed reading as a moral and historical exercise, not just a hobby. (substack.com) Athenaeum describes itself as “a digital book club dedicated to studying the great texts of Western Civilization.” Its main site says paid members can join a biweekly book club and access archives of essays, podcasts, and discussion recordings. (athenaeumbooks.com) The reading vote lands after a run of spring sessions on Homer and Virgil. The club archive lists discussions on *The Odyssey* in March 2026 and *The Aeneid* starting March 30, with a recap posted April 1. (athenaeumbooks.com) That sequence helps explain the new ballot. Plato, Dante, and Dostoevsky would keep the club inside the same canon-heavy lane shown on its website, YouTube channel, and recent newsletter archive. (athenaeumbooks.com) (youtube.com) The club’s public footprint has grown beyond a private reading circle. Its Substack page shows more than 27,000 subscribers, and its site says the publication has tens of thousands of subscribers. (substack.com) (athenaeumbooks.com) The next signal will be the vote result, but the shape of the project is already clear: a fast-growing online club is asking followers to choose which classic it reads together next. (x.com) (athenaeumbooks.com)