Inside the elaborate, competitive L.A. book club taking immersion to the extreme
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They call themselves the Booked Babes.Tonight, the women are gathered in Anna Sokol’s kitchen, surrounding an oven-roasted duck stuffed with apples.
The dish is a Ukrainian delicacy from Sokol’s home country, where she was once a fashion designer and influencer.Now, she’s in Venice Beach.
Sunlight bleeds in from the window where the sun is setting over the Venice Canals.At the women’s feet, a mini Bernedoodle, Zipper, paces nervously, barking at arriving guests.
Screams echo from the upstairs bedrooms, where two husbands are in exile, watching a Green Bay Packers game with a newborn baby.Tonight’s book club is Eastern European-themed, prompting the women to wear red cardigans and dresses.The book under discussion is “The New Rules” by Russian-born TikTok influencer Margarita Nazarenko, who prescribes gender roles that Sokol recognizes as distinctly Eastern European.
Nazarenko is a best-selling author with more than 600,000 followers on Instagram, known for offering practical, blunt dating advice to women.“Her methodology feels very Eastern European in male and female relationships and dynamics,” Sokol explains as her guests pick at deviled eggs and brie cheese with manicured nails.
The guest list for the Booked Babes is small — only six women, with one of them commuting remotely from Miami; this time, she joins over FaceTime.The Booked Babes was founded more than two years ago at a holiday party as a New Year’s resolution to read more and forge new friendships.
Since then, the women have become best friends, and the book club meetings they host have taken on a life of their own —becoming more spectacular and competitive with each meeting.“It started off very normal in the beginning, very casual,” book club member Cassandra Leisz explains.“I don’t really know when the switch happened.” With each passing month, the book club became more elabo...