Not Your Prof’s Book Club is a student-led organization that aims to connect book lovers across campus. Since launching in August 2024, the club has garnered around 35 members. The club is entirely student-led and meets twice a month for low-stress and lively conversations about literature.
The club started as two students’ simultaneous ambitions to create a book club on campus. Jimena Parra, junior accounting major, said that she would often chat with her favorite English professor about the books she was reading. These conversations inspired her to create a social club for students to discuss novels with each other, eventually leading her to post an advertisement in LeeRoy detailing her plans.
“I find solace with reading, it really de-stresses me, especially because Trinity is super intense with the school work and stuff. It was just an outlet,” Parra said. “I loved dissecting really deep into the books, and I wanted to find other people that were similar to that and loved dissecting books and just talking about them in general. So that’s kind of what I wanted to take out of it, which is kind of that community.”
At the same time, Alexandra Boza, junior English and Spanish double-major, was also planning to start a book club. After seeing Parra’s ad on LeeRoy, the two teamed up to launch Not Your Prof’s Book Club together. Today, they act as co-presidents of the club along with Liv Webster, junior history and Spanish double-major, who was brought on as vice president. The club’s faculty advisor is Shaj Mathew, an English professsor.
“So she [Parra] and I had, I think, similar ideas concurrently. And so at one point, I emailed her, and I was like, ‘Hey, I filled out all this paperwork. I heard you’re also interested in starting a book club. Why don’t we get together and do one book club?’” Boza said.
Not Your Prof’s Book Club usually meets once a month or every other month in Dicke Hall 308, though the actual day of the meetings changes. Given the meeting structure, members have about a month to read the assigned reading. This allows them to balance readings for the club and their classwork. The books are chosen democratically via a GroupMe poll. So far, the club has read Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt. Additionally, anyone is encouraged to attend meetings even if they have not completed the reading — as long as they do not mind spoilers.
“I’m a history major, she’s [Boza] an English major. We have to read a lot for classes,” Webster said. “We’re aware of that as well. We’ve told people, you have a month to read, and if you don’t get through the entire book, that’s okay.”
Students interested in the club can follow their Instagram, @nyp_bookclub, which posts updates about the club and upcoming meetings. Not Your Prof’s Book Club hopes to continue hosting meetings, which are open to all interested students. Eventually, Boza noted the possibility of creating smaller sections in the club that read different books if membership ever becomes too large for one group — though, for now, that is only hypothetical.
“Our main goal is just that people can continue their love and joy of reading because I know so many people who do really enjoy reading, but with school, it’s really hard, and they’re burnt out,” Webster said. “We know not everyone can read an entire book, and so that’s why we give people a month, and it’s kind of like, do what you can — have fun with it.”
*Parra is taking a temporary leave of absence as co-president to focus on academics.
