By Kiara Tay
If you’re on Bookstagram, chances are you’ve come across @bookeddate, a London-based book account with a cosy autumn aesthetic. Boasting more than 200k followers, @bookeddate often shares thoughtful book reviews, niche bookshop recommendations and invitations to exclusive author events. They also run their own book club, @cosylondonbookclub, which has grown to over 50 active members.
Today, I sit down with the solo founder of @bookeddate, Ria Bhargava, to learn more about what it means to build a community around books (both online and in-person), and of course, to collect some book recommendations worth adding to your TBR!
Ria’s inspiration for @bookeddate
It was during Ria’s final year of university — deep in a dissertation on post-colonial conflict — that she picked up Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood based on an influencer’s suggestion. While this was a departure from the Western canon that plagued her literature studies in high school, she found herself charmed by vivid descriptions of the simplest things: food, scenery, quiet moments. “It was the first time I could actually imagine things from just reading.”
She also saw herself in the grieving main character’s journey, as she too was mourning a university life hollowed out by COVID. She finished Norwegian Wood and read four more Japanese fiction books that week before touching her dissertation again. “Procrastinating at its finest,” she laughs. But this tiny academic detour was not totally unproductive — it actually marked the moment her casual interest in books ignited into something more.
After graduating, she spent a summer bookselling at Waterstones, where she realised that she could connect with anyone as long as they were talking about books. This got her thinking — could she leverage this skill to create her own niche in the online book scene?
“At the time, on Booktok or Bookstagram, everyone was talking at their audiences,” she says. “Here’s my review. Here’s why you should read this. But nobody was sharing how they felt. Nobody was being vulnerable about what they resonated with.” Hence, Ria decided to create @bookeddate, a space built around what books make people feel, wrapped in a unique, cosy aesthetic. Clearly, her message resonated with many readers — @bookeddate gained 70,000 followers within just 7 months.
The Start of @cosylondonbookclub
But beyond sharing her love for books online, Ria realised that what she really wanted was to build an in-person community in London. After @bookeddate grew to more than 70k followers, @cosylondonbookclub was created. It started small, with just five or six people at the first session, reading Diary of a Void, a surreal Japanese novel about a woman who fakes a pregnancy to escape her office job. Then came A Little Life, a book infamous for its evocative and emotional nature. Ria recounts, “It was like eight of us just traumatised in a room. It was great.”
But as much as the emotionally heavy book choices draw people in, what makes the Cosy London Book Club stand out is its people. “I always get the feedback that ours is the most diverse book club,” Ria says. It is a place for people of colour, international transplants, Malaysians, and Singaporeans to gather and share their diverse perspectives. Ages range from 17 to the late fifties, and the male-to-female ratio, while still skewed, is better than the average book club. It has become, quite simply, a place where anyone who likes books and craves connection can show up and belong.
Ria’s Personal Book Taste
Running a book community has changed how Ria reads. She started with Japanese fiction — Mieko Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs, Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman — before branching into Korean literature, memoirs, and contemporary fiction she might once have dismissed. “I used to think that to be well-educated you should read classics,” she admits. “Especially when you’re reading in university, you think you need to read Atomic Habits to make sense of life. But I don’t think so. There are books for everyone, and I don’t think you need to read a certain book to be considered literate or educated.”
When I ask her which fictional world she’d like to live in for a week, she picks two Kawakami novels. Miss Ice Sandwich, for its portrayal of ice cream stalls and childhood innocence — images that remind her of growing up in Singapore, of buying slabs of Neapolitan ice cream from an ice cream cart by a hawker centre. And All the Lovers in the Night, for a dreamy lantern festival scene that evokes a rare sense of stillness and peace. “I’m just dying to go to Japan,” she says. “Just for the vibes.”
Her four must-reads for 2026: Hamnet, freshly relevant after Jessie Buckley’s award-winning adaptation; Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, the book club’s March pick; Booker Prize winner Douglas Stuart’s John of John, and The Book Thief, a choice inspired by her work with The Library of Lost Books, a project recovering volumes looted during wartime.
Finally, when asked for upcoming plans for @bookeddate, Ria tells me that as the book club grows and more opportunities come her way (with brands like Penguin Random House and Harper Collins), she’s starting to narrow the focus down to what matters most — the book club, author interviews, and meaningful collaborations.
Whether it’s a book walk through South Bank or a tear-filled discussion of literary fiction in a packed London café, @cosylondonbookclub is proof that in a world that feels increasingly fractured, a good book and a cosy corner might be all you need to find your people.
