Evolving Bookworms. I belong to a small bookgroup. We provide ourselves with book sets loaned by Cornwall Library Service, we’ve just read our last book issued before libraries closed their doors as part of Coronovirus. The system is pretty easy, groups choose a years worth of book sets from a list on the Library website. The sets are then delivered to our local library once a month. The system is not foolproof and we don’t always get a set that we selected but every month there is a set of books waiting for us at the library. Unexpected books have given us the opportunity to read something none of us would have chosen, we always have lively discussions regardless of how much the book was enjoyed.

So that’s pre- pandemic book club, but now we are in Pandemic Bookworming.

We opted to use WhatsApp as our platform of choice, too many of us to use the video function but we could record voice messages and obviously write our opinions. We used it live for two hours during the time our actual meeting would have taken place. One unusual aspect for our group is that the book remains with us so I’ve been able to reread bits of the book with new insight provided by my bookworm colleagues. I can re listen to their comments and read the written notes. Normally we hand the book back.

Why did we never think of a WhatsApp group before? Bookworms unable to attend the meetings could have been fully involved even on months when attending a meeting was impossible.

For the next month the WhatsApp group remains open for bookish chat and for our next month two hour meeting we will bring a piece.of poetry to the group and talk about our individual literary adventures.

Initially I’m switching gear a bit. Swapping H E Bates Uncle Silas, a book that was not much to my taste despite some amazing descriptions of country ways.

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk was in my holiday reading pile until this morning. A pile that will sustain me for some time.

If reading about books is your thing I can really reccomend this blog.
https://dovegreyreader.typepad.com/dovegreyreader_scribbles

I’ve been reading it for years. This woman is single handedly responsible for my dreadful piles … Of books.

dovegreyreader lives on Dartmoor, not far from here. Her blog is based on books but roams on Dartmoor and ponders on a variety of stuff.