"The Silent Book Club is a global community of readers and introverts, with more than 800 chapters led by local volunteers around the world. SBC members gather in person and online to read together in quiet camaraderie. Find a chapter near you or a virtual meetup at http://silentbook.club."

My local chapter has gone dark. I think it happens a lot to groups like this. Someone gets inspired to start, works at making it go, then gets discouraged when it doesn't work as well or as fast as they would like. Some hang in there, a lot don't and move on to the next fresh inspiration. People don't understand, or don't want to know that nothing starts out big. The groups that hang in and trudge along are the ones with a chance to grow and become popular, or at least get a regular attendance.

I thought about offering to take up the local group myself, to re-start it. But, I pulled myself back and waited. Its so easy to take on a new challenge when its fresh and you feel enthusiastic. For me, I'm better to wait and see if I still feel that way a week from now. I'd rather wait now than have another project started and left unfinished/ unsatisfied.

There are times you make a go of something and then something else comes along to muck it up. Its not always in your control. But, some of it is. Know yourself and don't jump in with both feet right away. Make sure its really what you want before you commit to it.

I have written in a book. A book I owned not one borrowed from someone else or a library. Also, not a book I was going to trade in at my local secondhand bookstore for more secondhand books. So, I didn't feel it was defacing the book, but it still felt as if I were breaking some kind of cultural barrier.

Quoted from the Amazon book description of "The Reader in the Book: A Study of Spaces and Traces" by Stephen Orgel.

"One of the most commonplace aspects of old books is the fact that people wrote in them, something that, until very recently, has infuriated modern collectors and librarians. ... The underlying question is at what point marginalia, the legible incorporation of the work of reading into the text of the book, became a way of defacing it rather than of increasing its value-why did we want books to lose their history?"

I made notes about what I was thinking as I read the book. I made wonderful notes I wish I could read again now and be inspired by what I thought years ago when I first read the book. But, I gave the book to someone else to read and they didn't value it the way I did. It's gone. I don't even know if they read it cover to cover as I did, or just humoured me when I said how wonderful I thought it was.

Beyond that sad little story, I think people who write in a book are those who did find more inspiration, more to explore, in the book than the people who read it (maybe even loved it too) but did not leave any notes. Leaving a note, making that decision and acting upon it to crack into the pristine pages of a book... it takes guts, for lack of a better word. Writing in a book, leaving a mark is one thing, quite a thing for some. But, that's just the start. Your personal thoughts are there, exposed, for as long as that book is still around.

A book has to be burned to be destroyed. Throwing it into the garbage is not a final end. Someone could still pick it out, clean it up a bit and read it. Composting, is closer to an end, but that takes time. Quite a lot of time and you're not going to be there to guard the spot where its composting for as long as it would take for that book to break down. So, your thoughts will be there beyond the time it takes to jot them down.

Knowing and thinking about all of this, would you write in a book? I still do.

I've been having a lot of trouble seeing clearly when trying to read websites. The style seems to be small, pale grey fonts which are very hard to read. No problem for a computer, or other machines. I wonder if these sites which are hard to read just expect machines and not human being to read the information? Are they just looking for web traffic for marketing. Content doesn't seem to be very kingly when you can't read it. Anyway, that's a bit off topic but the issue really frustrates me, personally.

I found a way to change settings in Firefox to make websites easier to read. It seems to be working, so far.

Go into your settings, click those three stacked lines in the right top bar of the web browser. Then Settings. From there you should be able to find the Languages section. See images below. Just click the "zoom text only" to turn that feature on. Then go into Advanced and set a minimum font size which your web browser should stick to when it opens web pages. The minimum font size may not work 100%. Some web developers choose to force font settings rather than letting readers choose what works for them. Again, likely valuing cosmetic looks instead of a readable site.

The zoom text only is great and has worked every time for me. Instead of enlarging the entire site, images and all, only the text is made bigger. So sites are not warping as much when I want to read them. Of course, this means zoom will not work for images now if you have been using it that way. But, I find it works well to open images in a new tab. Most of the time the image file is actually larger than the one used on the web page.

Zoom is a feature which allows you to increase or decrease either the size of a web page or the size of the text. This article explains how it works.

Source: Font size and zoom - increase the size of web pages | Firefox Help

Do you remember BookCrossing? It's been years since I last logged in. Funny that I was thinking of the book which I had last read the last time I was at the site. I couldn't remember the author or the title, but there it was, first on my profile page.

"Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack."

• Virginia Woolf

A friend who joined the site with me, Skye Truheart, I have not heard from for many years. Each time I find something, a link to her somewhere, like her old Blogger account, or now this, I try again to find her. No luck. I'm sure I had her name and address to send a Christmas card but I've lost it long ago. I'd like to find her and know she is doing ok.

Can you buy and then read the last book in a series, knowing there will not be another. Once you read the final page all the adventures will be over. When you close the cover all those characters will become just memories.

This is The End for Rachel Morgan and the Hollows series of books by Kim Harrison

Letting go of a great book is hard. But, knowing this is the last book in what has been such a wonderful, readable adventure... that's really hard. Kim Harrison's series of books with Rachel, Ivy, Jenks and the rest of the group living at the old church in the Hollows has become my complete favourite in the urban fantasy/ horror genre.

Multi genre series: urban fantasy, alternate history or horror? Not always easy to find in a bookstore.

The Hollows is a location just outside of Cincinnati. Our current time line all changed when the existence of Others came to light. Tomatoes became deadly, for awhile. The people divided themselves into Others and humans/ everyone else. Rachel Morgan doesn't know it but she's a demon witch or witch demon depending on how you look at it. Long ago Rachel was saved from death due to her demon blood and this becomes an important part of her life as the adventure moves along from the world of paranormal bounty hunter, vampire culture bystander, a witch shunned and a demon who can perform dark magic but at the cost of collecting smut on her aura. The story covers 13 books so you don't need to know it all before you even begin, at the beginning.

The Misadventures of Rachel Morgan...

There are a lot of great characters in the Hollows

My favourite character (other than Rachel) is Ivy. Kim Harrison herself once wrote that Ivy scared her as she wrote the character even. That always stuck in my mind. The vampire culture and history was given a lot of focus as the Hollows series goes along. I liked the backstory evolving for Ivy and her vampire kin. I hope her story gets more attention, maybe a book of her own.

My other favourite is Algaliarept, most often known by the short form, Al. Rachel dated a few men (and Ivy) during the series but this was never the focus. It is all about the story, the adventure. But, of all the men in Rachel's adventures: Nick, Kisten, Glenn, Pierce, Trent, David and a couple others on the fringes, Al is the only one I really wanted her to care about and keep around. Al is more than just the character in the pages of a series of books. I really will miss Al because what other story could you find a demon who can be self serving, almost romantic, sometimes gentlemanly and old fashioned and yet kind of sweet in his own odd way. Al doesn't seem likely to be the guy who gets the girl at the end of the last book - but he is the one who has stuck by Rachel and been a faithful companion even in the beginning when he cursed her for his own reasons. Al is just complex and misunderstood.

How I Started as a Fan of Kim Harrison and The Hollows

I was so lucky! By luck and good fortune I found a blog the publisher was running to promote more of their books. All I had to do was request the book I wanted to read and the publisher sent it to me. Within a week or two I had a fresh, new hardcover book sent to my door. It had that great smell which only a newly minted hardcover book gets. I was so impressed, I even wrote about it in my blog before reading the book at all.

Then I did read the book. Great story. Not muddled by romance and dating and the endless drivel of boy/ girl stuff. Characters I loved and wanted to know more about. A real storyline which grew as each book came out. Every book could be read on it's own but... how could you read just one and not want to know what happened before and what happened next?

From the start I was a fan of Kim Harrison's writing, her story and her character, Rachel Morgan.