The Next Chapter: “Educated” by Tara Westover
"To admit uncertainty is to admit to weakness, to powerlessness, and to believe in yourself despite both. It is a frailty, but in this frailty there is strength: the courage to live in your own mind, and not in someone else’s” - Tara Westover
September has always felt like the truest new year.
The fresh-notebook feeling, the sharper mornings, that old, involuntary pull to begin again: to learn something, become someone slightly other than who you were in August. Even years, even decades after the last time anyone made you go to school.
Most of us take that for granted - the classroom, the teacher, the assumption that, sooner or later, someone will teach us how to understand the world.
But what happens when the world you're taught to believe in is the only world you've ever known?
★
In our next gathering of The Next Chapter Book Club, we're stepping into Educated by Tara Westover - the extraordinary memoir of a girl raised off-grid in the mountains of Idaho, in a survivalist family preparing for the end of the world.
A girl who taught herself enough to sit an exam at seventeen, walked into a classroom for the first time in her life, and walked out years later with a doctorate from Cambridge.
Together, we'll explore the uneasy territory between belonging and becoming. The privilege of education. The power of belief. The ways families shape our understanding of what is right, possible, and true. And what happens when becoming your own person means creating distance from the people who taught you who you were supposed to be.
Because perhaps the hardest part of growing isn't learning something new.
It's discovering that you are allowed to change your mind.
So, take out your notebooks and prepare to answer the question: how much of yourself can you rebuild, and who do you become when you finally get to choose? ✨
★
📍Anne&Max | Domstraat 4, 3512 JB, Utrecht
September 27th, 2026
13:00-15:00 (2 hours)
Price: €14.99 (access to the meet up, drink + pastry of your choice**)
**vegan and gluten-free options included
What to bring: a curious mind and an open heart (physical/electronic copy of a book is a plus ;))
Cancellation Policy:
To ensure the smoothest experience for everybody, the meet ups have limited capacity.
If you are unable to attend, you are entitled to a 70% refund if cancellation happens no later than 48 hours before the event.
If cancellation happens after the set time, the ticket becomes non-refundable.
About the club:
The Next Chapter is not your typical book club.
We are an intimate Utrecht-based literary circle for curious and ambitious women who enjoy great books - but crave the conversations that keep going long after the final page.
Through carefully selected reads, thoughtful discussions, and immersive themed gatherings, we create an inspiring space for women to exchange ideas, challenge perspectives, and connect through stories that leave you seeing your own life slightly differently.
Think books worth staying up for.
Conversations with real depth.
And a room full of brilliant women who light each other up.
Because at the heart of it all lies the belief: ordinary life holds more magic than it lets on.
And the right book, in the right room, is how you find it.
Does it resonate with you?
If so, let’s start with your own Next Chapter.