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By Javacia Harris Bowser | The Birmingham Times
I’ve gotten used to the funny looks people give me when I mention that I’m going to a Silent Book Club meeting. After all, isn’t discussing what you’re reading the whole point of a book club? So what is Silent Book Club, and what’s the point?
With Silent Book Club (SBC), there’s no assigned reading. You just show up with a book of your choice and read. Two San Francisco-based friends — Guinevere de la Mare and Laura Gluhanich — got the idea for Silent Book Club in 2012. For them, traditional book clubs, with the scramble to finish the assigned book, made reading feel like homework. So, they decided to meet at a neighborhood wine bar and just read together.
In 2015, they officially launched Silent Book Club as an organization with a mission to unite a global community of book lovers. Today, SBC has 2,000 chapters in more than 60 countries. More than a million members gather in person or online simply to read together and swap stories.
I attended my first Silent Book Club meeting back in 2019 and was instantly hooked. Despite the name, there is time for talking at SBC meetings. Usually at the start and end of each meetup, attendees chat about what they’re reading and about the books on their TBR (to be read) lists. Sometimes we exchange books too. It was a great way to connect with other people who loved words and storytelling as much as I do but without the pressure to read a specific book by a specific date.
The COVID-19 pandemic halted most in-person gatherings, including SBC meetups. But today the Greater Birmingham area has two SBC chapters — one that meets at Hoover Public Library and a North Birmingham that meets at various coffee shops in and around downtown Birmingham.
Birmingham Times Editor Javacia Bowser Harris, left, is part of a Silent Book Club. (Provided)Self-Care and Finding Community
Some may ask, why would you meet up with others to read silently when you can just do that at home? But for Laronica Conway, who launched the North Birmingham chapter in June of 2024, Silent Book Club is a form of self-care.
“When you are at home, you are always doing something other than, or in addition to, reading. The dishwasher is running, the washing machine is going and there’s a pile of laundry sitting on your bed waiting to be folded,” she said. “Silent Book Club allows you to get away and dedicate one to two hours to focus on your book and only your book.”
Conway hopes other book lovers will see SBC as a getaway, too.
“There are way too many distractions at home to truly find time to read,” she said. “And if you do carve out some time, you might feel guilty about sitting around with a book in your hand when the kids need to eat!”
But at Silent Book Club, avid readers can gather and get lost in a story — guilt-free.
Most of all, Silent Book Club is about building community.
“Not only do I get to meet others who enjoy reading, but I learn about other books, and we end up creating our own little community,” Conway said of SBC. “A couple of us meet up for local book events, and we share bookish stuff all the time. I think a book club is the easiest, least stressful way to meet people.”
And Conway is confident other Birmingham-area readers share her enthusiasm for the club.
“A while back, one of the SBC attendees told me that she had been looking forward to the meetup all week,” Conway shared. “How amazing is that! Sometimes we just need a little distraction from all that is going on and getting lost in a book with like-minded people is the best prescription.”
Reading Outside the Box
Conway says she’s been an avid reader since she got her first library card as a child. “And I’ve had a library card since I was a kid. Getting a library card is one of the first things I do when I move to the city,” she said.
She recalled the joy she felt as she left the library with a pile of books to take home and read. Conway’s father passed away recently, and some of her fondest memories of him center on books.
“Going to the library with my dad on Saturdays was our thing,” she said.
That giddiness she said she felt when she went to the library never went away.
“That feeling just continued to grow as I got older,” she said. “Reading allows me to think outside of the box, to visit new spaces and places, to learn about different cultures without spending money.”
And Silent Book Club encourages Conway to read outside the box, too.
Before SBC, Conway didn’t read science fiction.
“But it was a recommendation from someone at that first book club that made me branch out and try something different,” she shared. The book the attendee recommended was “Recursion” by Blake Crouch.
“I could not put that book down!” Conway exclaimed. “I think one of the best things about SBC is learning about new writers and genres I’ve never read.”
Conway has also added fantasy and young adult (YA) to her reading repertoire thanks to SBC, including books by YA writers like Tiffany D. Jackson and Angie Thomas and the “Children of Blood and Bone” series by Tomi Adeyemi.
More than once, I’ve shown up for a Silent Book Club meeting to find that another attendee and I are clutching the same book. For example, it happened when I was reading “Kin” by Tayari Jones, and it proved to be an instant icebreaker. And Conway and I are both big fans of all things by romance writer Kennedy Ryan.
Just as busy schedules can make it tough for people to steal away a couple of hours to read, Conway admits planning meetups can be challenging — especially during football season in Alabama. But she’s willing to do it because “meeting up with my reading buddies makes me happy and it gives me something to look forward to.”
Follow the North Birmingham chapter of Silent Book Club on Instagram @sbc_northbirmingham. Silent Book Club Birmingham, which meets at Hoover Library, can be found @sbcbhm.
A SBC meetup at Filter Coffee in downtown Birmingham. (Provided)
