(Photo by Maggie Macintosh, CBC Toronto)

We had the pleasure today of welcoming Maggie Macintosh of CBC Toronto to this month’s edition of our silent book club gathering. She spent the morning with us and has crafted a lovely account of our meeting … so I’m going to let her give the silent book club meeting report this time!

Nice, eh?

Here is the book list which sums up all the titles presented and discussed within the group this month. If you follow our book lists from month to month, you’ll notice that some titles are repeated, which happens when a book gets passed to a new reader or another reader reads and wants to discuss the same book. At some point, maybe I should create a master list of all books discussed – eliminating duplicates – to get a sense of how many unique books our group has discussed since its inception in October, 2017. We estimate it’s around 300+ titles.

When we go round the table before the silent reading portion of the gathering, each reader offers capsule reviews of what they have finished or are in the midst of reading – positive or negative, always constructive. Our list as I present it here has no rating system, just a link to either publisher information or generally positive reviews or informational pieces. The list is not inherently a list of recommendations, just a record of what we discussed. Mind you, I think it is a pretty good list of recommendations, as it continues to reflect a diverse and vibrant range of subjects and genres that might spark the interest of anyone keeping up with our club.

New to the list this month: two people recommended magazines, and several readers singled out audiobook versions of books they are reading, so I will do my best to annotate titles according if they are discussed as audio versions.

• Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• The Survivalist Series by A. American
• Jackson Brodie books by Kate Atkinson
• Not the End of the World by Kate Atkinson
• Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
• Transcription by Kate Atkinson
• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
• Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• Milkman by Anna Burns
• Brother by David Chariandy
• Outline by Rachel Cusk
• The New Middle East – The World After the Arab Spring by Paul Danahar
• Blue Nights by Joan Didion
• Faithful Place by Tana French
• Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller
• The Red Scarf by Kate Furnivall
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
• The Mare by Mary Gaitskill
• Seduction by Catherine Gildiner
• Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage
• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
• America: The Farewell Tour by Chris Hedges (audiobook)
• Various titles by Carl Hiaasen
• Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
• Can You Ever Forgive Me? by Lee Israel
• The Black Tower by P.D. James
• This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay
• Under a Cruel Star: a Life in Prague 1941-1968 by Heda Margolius Kovály
• Passing by Nella Larsen (audiobook)
• Independent People by Halldor Laxness
• Nirliit by Juliana Léveillé-Trudel, translated by Anita Anand
• I See You by Clare Mackintosh
• Don’t Tell the Newfoundlanders: The True Story of Newfoundland’s Confederation with Canada by Greg Malone
• On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
• The Quaker by Liam McIlvanney
• The Bookshop of Yesterdays by Amy Meyerson
• Modern Guide to Energy Clearing by Barbara Moore
• Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism by Joyce Nelson
• Becoming by Michelle Obama
• The Library Book by Susan Orlean
• I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
• Careless Love by Peter Robinson
• The Gown by Jennifer Robson
• Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
• Martin John by Anakana Schofield
• Take Us to Your Chief by Drew Hayden Taylor
• Keeper’n Me by Richard Wagamese
• One Native Life by Richard Wagamese
• Ragged Company by Richard Wagamese
• Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
• Embers by Richard Wagamese
• The Walrus magazine
• West End Phoenix magazine
• Educated by Tara Westover
• A Killer in King’s Cove, Death in a Darkening Mist + more by Iona Whishaw
• The Synchronicity Key by David Wilcock
• Reproduction by Ian Williams
• Red China Blues by Jan Wong

Enjoy our previous silent book club meeting reports and book lists here.

In addition to the coverage of this month’s meeting by CBC Toronto, our silent book club was included in a late 2018 feature about silent book clubs in the international news publication The Christian Science Monitor. Enjoy the article here. San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich are featured in the February 2019 issue of O, the Oprah Magazine, describing the club’s genesis and extolling its virtues (if we haven’t done that enough here!) as the concept and clubs spread worldwide.

If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, please feel free to contact me for more information.