I’m not in a book club, but my wife is in 2, and both of them are struggling in light of COVID. One of them was meeting outdoors in warmer weather, but a couple of members dropped, and I don’t know what they’ll do over the winter. The other one has met via Zoom, which my wife says greatly changes the dynamic in ways that makes it a less enjoyable experience. I think that Zoom has made it harder to avoid/ignore political discussions one disfavors, exacerbating the challenges.
Wondered how well your book groups were doing w/ the COVID restrictions.
My group went to net-meetings, which I’m not interested in, so I (politely) dropped out. (I don’t even have a camera or mic.) There’s some effort at round-robin emails.
Our book club was dinner with a book discussion afterwards. So we did read a book, but the getting together was a big part of the event.
So it’s not. And the people who often host, as they have the largest space, are the ones who are most at risk (age) and most knowledgeable (he’s a biologist) about the potential risks. They invited a common friend to their house for dinner for a special event and basically kept her as far away as possible at all times. She did not feel comfortable because she felt so concerned about the very low chance that she might infect them.
And now it’s getting colder, so even less chance of a get together. Zoom is okay for 2 people, can be expanded to 3 or 4 if they are already used to working together.
More than that? It’s everybody interrupting everybody else.
Not a book club but feels related, my Dungeons & Dragons group moved online since the store we used to meet at had to close its tables. Since then, we’ve lost two people and people canceling a session has definitely gone up. I think it’s in large part because the online experience just doesn’t replicate the same social interaction. I used to plan my evening once a week around getting out of the house and hanging out with those friends for three or four hours. It had a sense of event to it (since I’m usually in the other nights) that you just don’t get from sitting in your living room and looking at a screen. In fact, there’s been weeks that I’m forgotten it even was game night because I’m not planning around it the same way that I used to. You also miss body language and it’s impossible to have a side conversation with the person next to you since you’re either the person on mic or you’re listening to the person on mic.
We still enjoy it but I think a lot of us are just hanging in there hoping for a return to meeting in person, out of respect to the guy who put a lot of work into running the game and out of not wanting to cut ties.