A silent book club meeting to make a pandemic-weary heart sing

The sun shines, at least figuratively, any day that includes a silent book club meeting. That the sun actually shone this morning as we all prepared for today’s meeting was every reader’s favourite example of pathetic fallacy. Even though the bulk of the meeting was, as it has been for a while, online … the fact that (yes, Ducks, Newburyport was mentioned briefly today!) the sun shone as a few of us in the neighbourhood met for a physically distanced catch-up outside Press, the book / record / coffee shop, our pre-pandemic (and we hope post-pandemic) meeting place.

You can’t see it, but I was grinning from ear to ear as I got ready for that visit.

Vicki gets ready to meet her silent book club friends

You also can’t see the smiles of our silent book club friends, but trust they were there as we enjoyed some neighbourly chat and showed off some of the books that are helping us through this challenging time.

Jo at the physically distanced silent book club meetup at Press

Kathy at the physically distanced silent book club meetup at Press

Catherine at the physically distanced silent book club meetup at Press

Sue at the physically distanced silent book club meetup at Press

While we’ve comisserated about the pandemic’s effects on our ability to concentrate and read, it’s been reassuring to see the tide gently turn over the course of our recent silent book club meetings to how our reading is influencing our thinking about current and future circumstances. One member talked about how he has been pondering his love of travel, how that is going to change post-pandemic and, interestingly, how a recent read has reframed some things for him. He described the children’s book The 79 Squares by Malcolm J. Bosse, in which an unlikely friendship develops between a troubled 14-year-old boy and an 82-year-old man:

“The old man introduces his new friend to the natural beauty and life of the garden in which he now spends most of his time. He instructs Eric to divide the garden into 79 squares, asking that the boy spend one hour a day in each square and watch life unfold — from the ant to the squirrel.” (from 1979 New York Times review)

Our silent book club friend commented on how that premise compelled him to consider the city block around his home, to travel it and examine it with the same attention as he would more far flung places. What revelations our reading provides us with, perhaps when we least expect it.

No matter how enthusiastic (or not) each of us is about technology, we all have misgivings about the amount of screen time pervading our lives. That said, I think all or most of us would agree that technology has helped to keep us in vital communication with each other, for business, community and personal reasons. As “zoomed out” as a lot of us are, we still don’t want to miss our family gatherings, yoga classes and book club discussions and even silent reading sessions.

What I’ve been delighted to discover is how we can “dial down” the technology, but still use it to allow people to stay “dialed in”, even blending in non-digital forms of communication to stitch it all together. For this latest zoom meeting of our book club, we invited participants in by good old landline phone – and I even extended the invitation to one participant with a handwritten note delivered to the mailbox on her front porch:

Handwritten invitation to a zoom book club meeting

After leaving her that note a few days ago, it felt like a special kind of magic to hear her voice during today’s zoom meeting.

The fleeting, distanced visits connect us. The zoom meetings connect us. And our eclectic, lovingly assembled book list connects us to each other and to all other readers out there, getting through all of what we’re all getting through right now.

You can always catch up on our previous silent book club meeting reports (our current online incarnation and our previous, lovingly recalled, much anticipated again in-person version) and book lists here.

We’re pleased and honoured to have been interviewed about the silent book club concept and how to start a club of one’s own. You can check out links to articles, CBC Radio interviews and more here – some with San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich, and some with us here in east end Toronto.

Under the current circumstances, this text I put at the end of each silent book club report isn’t entirely applicable, but I’m still going to repeat it with continued optimism anyhow:

If you’ve so far enjoyed the silent book club experience virtually, are you tempted to experience it firsthand? Via Guinevere and Laura’s Silent Book Club web site, you can find information on meetings happening around the world and close to where you live. If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, check out the resources on the Silent Book Club web site, or please feel free to contact me for more information.

And the sign-off from our recent reports is, I think, still very applicable:

We will wait until we can again fling open our doors, venture out and gather in our communities. A silent book club meeting with friends and neighbours, held at and in support of a local business exemplifies exactly the kinds of freedoms we are foregoing now to get through these unsettled and unsettling times … and is where we’re all going to want to be when we get through this. Read well where you are now, be well and let books buoy your spirits, put the current situation in perhaps new and fresh contexts, and make the time pass swiftly.

2 thoughts on “A silent book club meeting to make a pandemic-weary heart sing

  1. Larry Bone

    Thank you for posting this awesome reading group communication and including an awesome book list of summer reading that has a bit of everything. Especially I appreciate your including “Jinn Patrol on the Purple Line” by Deepa Annapara. Was afraid that book might get lost in the always continuing flood of newly published novels. I viewed this post on the Mookse website and am sure everyone who reads it will most likely very much enjoy your dispatch. It is thoughtful, hopeful and encouraging at a time when things of this sort are greatly appreciated especially when supposedly not very many are people are reading much, their reading co-opted by technologic content. Yet reading as a solitary or silent group activity during the current situation can be very incredibly restorative. You are so correct that technology has allowed us all to stay in touch and often it introduces us to amazing books we may have never met and then read but for the magic of technology be it in reading groups, readers websites or specific genre or literary websites introducing domestic books of all kinds, international books written in English or translated into English from a foreign language. Thanks again.
    Larry B.

    Reply
    1. bookgaga Post author

      Larry, thank you so much for your very kind comments. It’s so nice to hear from you, to know our group is inspiring others and to commiserate about reading challenges during these bewildering times. (And how cool to discover that our blog post was mentioned on the wonderful The Mookse and the Gripes site at https://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/!)

      You’ll be pleased to know that two different book club members mentioned that they’re reading Djinn Patrol. We’re fortunate to have a copy of it in our household (my husband has read it), so I’m now thoroughly convinced to move it up on my tbr pile!

      Thanks again for being in touch. Stay well and keep reading!

      Reply

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