Five months ago, Emma Watson announced that she was starting a virtual book club called Our Shared Shelf on the literary social website Goodreads, and I literally jumped for joy.

The book club’s purpose is to educate readers and communicate with people around the world on the subject of intersectional feminist theory. She began with a classic, My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem, and continued with The Color Purple by Alice Walker, All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks, How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran, and The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson.

Ms. Watson curates Our Shared Shelf incredibly well, choosing books from a variety of women and a variety of perspectives that combine to create a well-rounded view of the human experience as it relates to women in the Western world. Each month I eagerly await the next book that will bring a whole new spectrum of ideas.

By beginning with My Life On the Road, we learned about the background of feminism and what the second wave looked like from a personal perspective. Ms. Steinem was influential in building the feminist movement into what it is today and her book details that journey and what influenced her to become an itinerant activist.

She uses personal stories and encounters to shape a message of equality and to praise the women who have walked before and beside her. Ms. Steinem is unique in that she acknowledges some of her most important predecessors to be women of color and understands the influence that women of color have had on feminist thought.

After gaining a general understanding of the road feminism has taken, Ms. Watson chose The Color Purple for February. A classic tale of African-American life in the South in the 1930s, the story follows a woman who grows up in an abusive home and is forced to marry an abusive man with abusive sons before meeting a woman who shows her what love and freedom look like and allows her to escape her caged life.

This pick reveals the increased struggle of being a black woman and introduces the complex element of lesbianism. The personal elements of the story cut deeper than Ms. Steinem’s narrative, rounding out the factual approach to feminism with an emotional one.

March’s book, All About Love: New Visions, just might change your life. The author bell hooks writes about the lack of love in today’s society and how we as individuals can change that lack to a healthy abundance. She examines the role of love in all types of relationships and uses her own childhood and adult life to illustrate the damage a lack of love can cause.

What may initially seem like a simple discussion of love quickly turns into a discussion on feminism, racism, spirituality, and psychology that reads like the words were written about you and your lifelong struggle with love.

April’s book, How To Be A Woman, was particularly successful because the author, Ms. Moran, used comedy to make her point about what life is like as a female human in Britain. She tells her story of growing up and how she slowly began to understand the need for feminism in her personal life, her work life, and her journey to motherhood.

Not only does she tell hilarious anecdotes, she gives advice on a variety of situations and provides directives for society in general. You’ll laugh, you might cry, and you’ll definitely think long and hard about what being a woman means.

This month, May, introduces the LGBTQ+ perspective with The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, a story about Ms. Nelson, her gender fluid partner, and their complex navigation of life and society. Ms. Nelson’s stream-of-consciousness style reads like her personal diary, and her extraordinarily high level of intellectualism is almost intimidating (I highly recommend you have a dictionary on hand). The story is shaping up to be simultaneously heartbreaking and redemptive, and I am positive I’ll be thinking about her theories and thoughts for weeks after I put it down.

Emma Watson struck gold when she decided to start Our Shared Shelf. The books she has chosen have broadened my perspective and my knowledge surrounding feminism and the female experience and have motivated me to learn more and to do more. The forum discussions build on the books, offering an even more diverse array of understanding, and the interviews and other supplements Ms. Watson provides are the cherries on top.

If nothing else, the books you read as part of this club will make you think about topics you might not even know exist. I highly recommend that you consider joining the club!