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The book: You can have a good book club discussion about a bad book, but it’s always more fun when members connect to the material (and in these times, who wants to invest energy in a book that feels like homework?). For your first meeting, start with an accessible novel — one with interesting characters, which are often more fun to debate than plot points. Despite this age of isolation, the New York Public Library has been strengthening its community of readers since April 2020, when it teamed up with US radio station WNYC to launch its online book club. Sometimes, the price point of popular new-releases (often the fodder of book clubs) can put off readers who would otherwise love to join. But all the chosen books for this virtual book club can be read for free through NYPL’s e-reader app, which makes it easy to read any eBook in your library’s collection. There’s such a thirst from queer women and nonbinary people and trans people to come together,” Pratoussy says. “I’m hoping that this type of virtual book club will break the boundaries, and that any type of physical barrier will be removed so that anyone can join.”

This wordless picture book starts with an image and continues to "zoom" out, showing that what you see could turn into something else completely. Six European publishing houses have teamed up to create this weekly Zoom series in which they take turns presenting a book from their catalogs. (The selected titles are sometimes discounted.) First up on March 26 is The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke, a family drama set before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Quarantini Optional sheet music is provided, although the rhyme also works perfectly well without its official tune. Small talk? No, thanks. Homework? Pass. Silent Book Club is all about enjoying books, company, and beverages — without having to think of something smart to say. Founded in 2012 by a couple of friends who liked to read in companionable silence, Silent Book Club now has over 240 “chapters” (that’s a group) who gather across 30+ countries to read together in silence.

Alternatively, you can create your own set of sequential images that tell a story. Each image should be on one sheet of paper (you can laminate them so that they last more than one session). The number of images should match the number of participants. Rebel Book Club is for bookworms and nonfiction junkies battling the curse of tsundoku — that’s Japanese for the growing pile of unread books next to your bed. They’re a fun, global community of curious minds looking to get maximum value from bad-ass nonfiction reads. The Literary Hub is virtually hosting the type of programming that would ordinarily take place in bookstores around the country: book tour events, readings and Q&As. The first episode featured Kevin Nguyen talking about his debut novel New Waves—a heist narrative set inside the New York start-up world. Translated Fiction Online Book Club Explain the activity: The group has to piece together a story from the set of the images that is handed out. Each participant is given an image but is not permitted to show it to anyone else. Without looking at each other’s images, the group must put the images in sequence.

Though this book club is ideal for introverts, that’s not to say it isn’t social. Silent Book Club is all about community. They think it’s important to put down our phones and be “real, live, breathing-the-same-air social”. Sure, nobody’s forcing you to make small talk over a glass of wine, but you can sit with a book and a friend in a cafe, and if you want to chat about what you’re reading — go for it! This activity is based on the picture books “Zoom” and “Re-Zoom” by Istvan Banyai which consist of 30 sequential “pictures within pictures”. The team is tasked with putting together a story from a set of sequential images. Each person is given an image but is not permitted to show it to anyone else. Together, the team has to figure out the correct sequence. The activity focuses on effective communication and problem-solving skills. Now, this book club is a vibrant online community with a beautiful aesthetic and over 130k members. The club has hosted guest recommendations from a stellar cast of artists, musicians, writers and directors; including Grayson Perry, who went for Praise of Shadows, Greta Gerwig, who gave The Argonauts her seal of approval, and Sally Rooney, who chose Daniel Deronda. This is a great activity that allows teams to display communication and problem-solving skills. The activity becomes more complex with a large number of participants as there are more pieces of the story-puzzle that they have to put into sequence. It also works well with smaller groups if you use the variations provided below. None of these book clubs may be right for you—or maybe you’d like to form your own community. Below, TIME books editor Lucy Feldman has some tips on how to get started and lead your own discussion.If you’re looking for the benefits of a popular online book club, as well as the intimacy of a local group to join with all your friends, then search no further than the Poppy Loves Book Club. Run by Eva of Poppy Loves London, this women-only club serves as an umbrella community, joining together hundreds of local book clubs from all corners of the world. Once the sequence of images has been agreed on by the group, they should be laid down on the table/floor in sequence.

If you don’t have a library card, you can still browse thousands of public domain classics, and tune in to the author discussions that are presented as part of Get Lit — the book portion of WNYC's arts-and-culture show, All of It. All of their past shows — including interviews with Brit Bennett and Colson Whitehead — are also available for catch-up. Typically, you may notice that one or more participants will step up and assume a leadership role to help guide the group. The Seattle-based publication The Stranger is hosting a reading and discussion of Albert Camus’ The Plague, a Nobel Prize winner written in 1947 in which an epidemic sweeps through a town on the Algerian coast. “Its relevance lashes you across the face,” Stephen Metcalf wrote in the LA Times on Monday. In the first week of the book club, dozens of readers from Mexico City to Ann Arbor sent in pictures of their reading chairs. The club will complete the book on March 30. Silent Book Club Ben Keene, the club’s co-founder, says that Rebel will continue hosting these monthly virtual book discussions, as well as a daily video chat called Rebel Book Pub, for the foreseeable future. Keene also says that 150 people have signed up for the club’s 14-day reading challenge, which set a goal for participants to finish a book in two weeks. Lit Hub’s Virtual Book Channel ZOOM by Istvan Banyai is a book that takes readers on an interesting and fun journey. It allows readers to zoom in and zoom out of the story and images and try to figure out what they are seeing and once readers think they know what they see, they have to guess again because nothing is as it seems and there’s nothing readers can do but hang on and enjoy the story.This is one of a series of nursery rhyme board books, all of which are quite simply perfect for a baby or toddler. Zoom by Istvan Banyai is a wordless picturebook that is a series of pictures that start very close-up and then zoom out. The first picture starts with an up close red object, which we find out is a rooster on the next picture. It then zooms out to two children looking at the rooster and then the house and town they are in. We then find out that this town is actually a model that a girl is playing with on a magazine cover. This pattern continues for the rest of book playing on the idea.

Guinevere de la Mare and Laura Gluhanich founded this club in 2012 as a potential outlet for introverts. “It provided a place for people to be able to get out of the house and meet up with a group—and not be forced to make awkward happy hour conversation, but to sit quietly for an hour and then chat about books,” de la Mare says. Since then, the club has grown to 260 chapters around the world in 31 countries. These chapters meet, read whatever book they’ve brought for an hour silently, and then share what they’ve learned. If you’re in a pinch, you may be able to find Zoom and Re-Zoom as images online, but if you’re planning for a later session, please support the author by buying his books!)

Online book clubs

For smaller groups or to increase difficulty, don’t let participants talk at all during the activity. Let them use gestures and actions to put the images in sequence. You can make the activity more competitive and measure team performance by the number of images that are in the wrong sequence. For the past two and a half years, the Lez Book Club has been meeting in groups of 12 in pubs in London, providing a space for queer women to meet and share literature. The pivot to virtual meetings in the wake of coronavirus presents both a challenge and an opportunity for founder Eleonore Pratoussy: she wants to keep the meetings safe and intimate while also opening up her community to women around the world.