Are you looking to join a book group but worry about keeping up with the reading? Maybe you love the idea of forming a bookish community but only want to read books in your preferred genre. Or perhaps you’re an introvert who’s interested in all aspects of a traditional book club except the actual discussion part. 

Let us introduce you to Silent Book Club, a global reading community that’s revolutionizing how we think of book groups. 

Since its launch in 2012 by co-founders Guinevere de la Mare and Laura Gluhanich, Silent Book Club has become a global phenomenon, with more than 800 chapters across 50 countries around the world. At each Silent Book Club meeting, friends and strangers join together in a public space to read, drink, eat, and socialize—or not. In contrast to traditional book groups, there’s no assigned reading or guided discussion. Instead, your only task is to sit back, relax, and read in companionable silence for an hour. Once the hour is up, members can opt to chat with those around them about the books they chose to read (meetings are BYOBook) or continue reading quietly. Every type of reader is welcome!

Silent Book Club emphasizes the importance of inclusion and community—that’s why Silent Book Club meetings are free to attend, and the purchase of food and drinks (if taking place at a bar or cafe) or books (if taking place at a bookstore) support local businesses. At its core, Silent Book Club is a place for readers to come just as they are, offering the unique opportunity to be social even in silence.

Want to see if there’s a Silent Book Club chapter in your area? The Silent Book Club website has an interactive map of existing chapters that allows you to search by continent, country, and city. If there’s already a chapter near you, you can click on the map for meeting details and instructions on how to join; if not, no worries! It couldn’t be easier to start your own Silent Book Club chapter. All you need is a friend, a comfortable public space to meet, and a book of your choice—that’s really all there is to it!

If you want to add your chapter to the Silent Book Club chapter map, there are just a few more simple steps:

1. Designate a chapter organizer who can commit to scheduling and attending monthly book club meetings. 
2. Find a public venue—you can get creative! Maybe you’ll decide to host meetings at your favorite bar or cafe or an independent bookstore in your area. Once you’ve decided on your dream space, talk to the manager to make sure they’re on board. 
3. Finally, submit your chapter info (including the meeting location and a link to event details) on the Silent Book Club website, and voila! Your chapter will then be added to the map so that you can start building your bookish community!

Visit the Silent Book Club website to learn more about the organization and how to join or create a chapter. We’re certain you’ll love this fresh and exciting take on the book club format. 

(Photo: SBC Seattle, Graduate Hotel. Credit: Danielle Shull)

The post Silent Book Club: Socialize in Silence appeared first on Reading Group Choices.

Reading Group Choices has been featured in the news recently! Catch up on all RGC updates below:

Reading Group Choices Releases Reading Group Choices 2023

Shelf Awareness, Feb. 28, 2024

The Book on Books: Reading Group Choices 2022

Shelf Awareness, March 14, 2022

A Madison Firm Has Made a Business Out of Helping Book Clubs Find the Best Reads

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Feb. 9, 2018

Writers Trade Coffeehouses for Quiet Space at 702WI

Madison.com, April 12, 2017

Annual Book Club Handbook a Rich Resource

Telegram & Gazette, Dec. 25, 2016

Book Club Exchange: Reading Group Choices & Giveaway

Booking Mama, May 12, 2015

Reading Group Choices: New Owner, New Approaches

Shelf Awareness, Feb. 9, 2015

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Paris, 2017: Two blocks from the Eiffel Tower you’ll find the rue du Général Camou, and there, at number 10, the American Library in Paris. The library has existed for nearly 100 years. It was established in the days of the First World War, when it served as a resource for Americans stationed abroad.

Today it opens its doors to anyone who wishes to join, and features the largest English-language circulating collection on the European continent.

Among the benefits of membership to the library is its book clubs. New groups run for four months at a time and tackle a variety of topics, whether a theme, region, social issue, or particular author. Options this fall include groups focused on the American healthcare system, World War II homefronts in the US and abroad, and a selection of classic Shakespeare plays.

Reading Group Choices caught up with the leaders of two groups—one on the Middle East, one on world voices—for an interview about how book clubs fit into French culture, challenges when leading a discussion, how to choose books, and more.

Maury Lanman and Laurie Calvet are currently running Readings on the Middle East. The group’s purpose is to “explore the mostly recent history of the middle east in order to better understand the region today… While it is impossible to cover such a broad and complicated topic in any comprehensive fashion in only four books, our selections should provide insight into the Middle East puzzle and help us understand in more depth the present challenges of the region.”

The group is reading these titles:

The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years by Bernard Lewis
All the Shah’s Men by Stephen Kinzer
A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS by Robert F. Worth
My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Ari Shavit

Maury has lived in Paris off and on since 2001, originally as a telecommunications engineer with Alcatel, but retired since 2012. His reading interests include physics, genetics, AI, neuroscience, and modern philosophy. Prior to moderating the group with Laurie, he had no previous experience with book groups.

Laurie is an American educated at Columbia, Yale, and Harvard. She came to France in 2004 and is currently a researcher in nanoscience/nanotechnology at the Université Paris-Sud. She originally joined the book group in 2012, when it was focused on technology topics, and has moderated for four years.

The other group we’re spotlighting is World Voices, led by Grant Rosenburg. Originally from Chicago, Grant has been the Programs Manager at the American Library since 2013, overseeing the evening speaker events as well as the book groups. This fall is the first time he is leading a group. The aim of World Voices is to “read a selection of books that have been highlights of the Library’s’ ‘Evenings With Authors’ series, from authors and/or protagonists who are not Western: a Libyan, a Guatemalan, a Kuwaiti, and a Liberian speak to us in these books.”

The reading list includes:

The Return, a memoir by Hisham Matar
The Polish Boxer / Monastery, two connected novels by Eduardo Halfon
The Hidden Light of Objects, a short story collection by Mai Al-Nakib
A Marker to Measure Drift, a novel by Alexander Maksik

Our interview was conducted by email with Maury, Laurie, and Grant.

RGC: There doesn’t seem to be much of a presence for book groups in France, and it’s not unusual to have to explain what a book group is to someone who is French. If that has been your experience as well, what do you think accounts for this difference?

Maury & Laurie: The education style in France is very different—discussion is not as encouraged as in Anglophone countries, so the notion of discussing a book in a group is unusual. In France after the bac [baccalauréat, taken after high school] few people study literature seriously. In prep schools in France, for instance, students view books they have to read as formulaic. French students tend to develop discussions of literature through writing rather than orally.

Grant: I grew up with family and friends in book groups as a part of American culture, though never took part in one myself. I didn’t realize they were not a part of French life.

RGC: What were your criteria for deciding which books to include on the reading list? Were there candidates that didn’t make the cut?

M&L: We organize our book groups in general around a nonfiction theme. Three starting criteria are: length (rarely over 300 pages), quality of book (for instance did it receive a prize or have a stellar review in the New York Review of Books or New York Times), and relevance to the theme of the group.

In general having two leaders helps enormously to find four good books. It is easy to find “a couple of really good books” on a topic but hard to find four…

G: I knew I wanted it to be authors who had been to the library so we could have the insight and personal connection to the books. I began to look at the ones I liked the most and I saw a pattern emerge. The first few were not White, Western voices or characters, and I decided that it was an interesting way to approach it—at least this first iteration.

What was even more interesting was how it became clear that it was less about ethnic background than it was the notion of home and exile, something of particular interest to those of us in the groups who are either living in a country that is not their native one, or having done so for years before returning to France. I also wanted each book to be different, so one is a memoir, one a kind of hybrid with what the French call auto-fiction, one a collection of short stories, and a novel.

RGC: What are any particular strategies you use to guide the discussion, or challenges you may have encountered?

M&L: The discussion is not really actively guided. We generally have an opening round where everyone gets a few minutes to give general impressions on the book (style, content readability, themes, etc). We may choose to follow up on interesting or controversial comments made during this round. We each also prepare a list of open-ended questions about the content, impacts, and themes of the book that we may (or may not) use to stimulate discussion.

A continual problem is off-topic or long comments. We try to direct the conversation back to the topic. Another problem could be critical personal remarks of one member towards the comments of another. We try to be positive about all comments, but debates on substance are always welcome! We watch for and try to be sure that the less-forceful folks can get their comments heard by occasionally directing the conversation toward them.

All of this certainly benefits from there being two of us!

G: Even though I oversee all the book groups, I’d never sat in on one for more than ten minutes, so I didn’t have a feel for a full 1.5 or 2 hours. Before our first meeting, I met up with two book group leaders who I see have good, engaged relationships with the members. I asked advice on how they handle certain things and how they get a feel for the dynamic of the group in terms of discussion. And yes, I had prepared some things I wanted to bring up in our discussion.

I think I have a little bit of a feel now for who wants to talk more than others and how our personal experiences affect how we talk about these books, particularly since we are discussing living overseas and the experience of migration or at least adopting new cultures.

​RGC: ​What is a book group you’d most like to join, given no boundaries or requirements or other practical considerations? (And of course this may be your current one!)

M&L: Our own! It seems that long-standing groups seem to cohere and have many repeat members regardless of the topic.  (E.g., for this session all but one of the 18 members had been in previous groups of ours.) We also encourage this coherence by having an informal “rump session” at a local cafe after the meeting for drinks and/or dinner.

GR: I’d love to be in a book group reading the most monumental books of various eras at the time they were published. To really understand what it was like when books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Story of O, The Jungle, Slaughterhouse Five, Catch-22, Portnoy’s Complaint, 1984, Lolita, to name of few, came out and had such an impact on the culture to the point of influencing government policy or social change. Today, when transgressive books (for reasons of politics or social mores or geopolitics) are read, they may seem less astonishing, but to really try to understand what it was like to read them at the time of their release would be quite something.

Visit the American Library in Paris website to learn more about the groups and access their reading lists. And consider how a theme or topic can guide your own group when selecting your next picks!

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Little Free Library, a wonderful organization that RGC has partnered with in the past, has just launched a new initiative. Action Book Club (ABC) pairs a love of reading with community service in an effort to strengthen both minds and communities. Any pre-existing book club (or new club!) can sign-up to get involved. Many of the books we recommend here at RGC are also recommendations of ABC so it’s easy to integrate your own group’s reading with an ABC service project. Margret Aldrich of Little Free Library took a few minutes to answer some of our questions about this exciting initiative and provide details about how to sign up.

RGC Group: Could you explain how the idea for Little Free Library’s Action Book Club came about? 

Little Free Library: Little Free Library is a nonprofit organization that inspires a love of reading, builds community, and sparks creativity by fostering neighborhood book exchanges around the world. We constantly see the good things that Little Free Library owners, who we call “stewards,” are doing in their communities. We also see that, for many of those stewards, their positive actions stretch beyond having a Little Free Library to other volunteer work—from organizing block parties to hosting story time for kids. We started to think about how books can inspire and accelerate good works, and how we could help facilitate this. From there, we developed the Action Book Club, which combines reading with positive community action.

RGC: How does Action Book Club differ from a traditional book club, if at all?

LFL: Like a traditional book club, the Action Book Clubs invites members to read a book and get together to discuss it. The twist is that an Action Book Club also carries out a positive group activity to benefit their community, then shares their experience with us at Little Free Library. Through trading stories, ideas, and successes, participants will contribute to a national conversation and inspire others to take action in their own neighborhoods. It’s a ripple effect of good works—and it all starts with a good book!

RGC: What are your initial goals in starting Action Book Club?

LFL: We believe that books can inspire people to make a difference, and we want to give shape to that. One of our goals is to catalog and share the positive outcomes from Action Book Clubs in an effort to amplify their good work and, in turn, inspire others.

RGC: Does Action Book Club recommend any books in particular for groups to read or can they pair any book with any service commitment?

LFL: Each year, the Action Book Club will feature two themes. Our current theme is “Good Neighbors”—which celebrates the power of community, kindness, and giving back—and we encourage Action Book Clubs to read books on that topic. We have a recommended reading list online that includes titles like A Man Called Ove, LaRose, The Revolution Where You Live, The Woman Next Door, and The Underground Railroad, but we welcome you to choose a different book that speaks to your group. We also include recommended reading lists for young readers and middle readers. All ages are invited to participate in the Action Book Club program.

RGC: Why did you choose to pair reading groups and community service? How do these inform or augment each other?

LFL: Reading groups and community service are a natural match. At its heart, every reading group cares about good books and making connections with each other (two tenets of Little Free Library). We want to help activate the reading groups who want to take their energies beyond their immediate circles to the broader community. Not only will a service project benefit the place where you live, it will enrich and enliven your reading group experience.

RGC Group: How can you help support reading groups who want to get involved with Action Book Club?

LFL: We’ve made it easy for reading groups to sign up to become Action Book Clubs with an online registration form. You can also find recommended reading lists, conversation starters, and activity suggestions on our website. Each group that signs up will get a welcome kit from Little Free Library, and we also provide a Facebook group where you can connect with other Action Book Clubs around the country.

RGC: How do you suggest reading groups come up with community projects and go about finding partners in their local communities in need of service work?

LFL: We provide a list of activity ideas, but we encourage groups to choose a project that fits their community’s needs. Remember that no project is too small—and remember to have fun! Our pilot groups had a great time with their projects: an elementary classroom in Louisiana collected more than 100 pairs of new socks for local shelters, while an existing book club in Minnesota joined a neighborhood bike patrol.

“This was such a rewarding experience where we all had an important part of the ‘action,’” says Alysson of the Louisiana group’s experience. “All the kids worked together to help the community in need, and the shelters were so thankful for the kind gesture.”

And Sage Dahlen and Will Wlizlo, the founding members of the Minnesota book club, reported that “By keeping eyes on the bike trail, we’re helping ensure the safety of other trail users and neighborhood residents. It is a great way to be a Minneapolis ‘good neighbor.'”

RGC Group: What are your main goals and hopes for Action Book Club over the coming year?

LFL: We want to see Action Book Clubs of all kinds sign up from all around the United States—and beyond. We’re off to a great start! In the first 48 hours of the Action Book Club, nearly 200 groups signed up to be Action Book Clubs. Sign-ups are coming from all over the country: Colorado, Iowa, California, New York, Texas, Tennessee, Minnesota, South Dakota, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Hawaii, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida, etc. And sign-ups are coming from all kinds of groups, like existing adult book clubs, Girl Scout troops, elementary classrooms, teenagers, friends, neighbors, church groups, programs for people with disabilities, mothers of young kids, intergenerational groups, business owners, teachers, and more. We are thrilled to see people of such different backgrounds excited to read books and give back to their communities.

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