I am always intending to join a book club but never quite get round to it. Here's one I'll be checking out come Sunday, though – the Not the TV Book Group, an online book club taking its name from Channel 4's new book show, being launched by a group of influential UK books bloggers.

Bloggers dovegreyreader, Other Stories, Reading Matters and Savidge Reads kick off what's going to be a fortnightly discussion on 7 February with Brodeck's Report by Philippe Claudel, in which a stranger is murdered in a village in post-war France. They will follow this up with titles including The Girl with the Glass Feet by Ali Shaw, The Illusionist by Jennifer Johnston and Skin Lane by Neil Bartlett.

Now, I didn't think much of the first episode of the new More 4/Channel 4 book show (others were also unexcited by it), in which Jo Brand and other celebrities spent about two minutes discussing Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger and the rest of the time smarming up to Chris Evans about his autobiography. But the bloggers insist that "while none of us were particularly impressed" by the first episode, they are not intending "to denigrate or mock or challenge the show at all".

"Though the TV programme prodded us into action, the inspiration came from the Guardian's Not The Booker which did something different without denigrating the efforts of the original," Lynne Hatwell, who blogs as dovegreyreader, tells me. "Sadly [there'll be] no prize as great as that Guardian mug being fought over, though we may perhaps take a vote on the book we've enjoyed the most at the end of the series,"
The bloggers decided that the series would focus on books published within the last five years, books previously unread by the chooser, and no "freebies" from publishers, Hatwell says, and response from readers has so far been "really positive".

"The fact that we haven't read any of the books in advance feels important (and not easy to achieve between four book bloggers) and will perhaps feel more like a real book group, plus we'll be saying if we haven't liked them but hopefully being constructive about that. We aren't interested in sales or marketing and have encouraged people to borrow from libraries if they can," she adds. "We've all proved that great, worldwide book debate can happen on blogs so each 'programme' will involve an intro and thoughts on the book on the host blog and everyone else can pitch in with the debate in 'comments' there."

Sounds good to me. I've left it too late to get through the Claudel by Sunday, but I'll be watching the discussion, and I'll definitely be there for the second meeting by which time I'll hopefully have bought and read the Shaw. A "magical fable of fate and resignation" set on a fictional northern archipelago – just my cup of tea.