As we observed – in Brady Bunch zoom formation – in recent online silent book club meetings, reading just doesn’t feel the same or offer the same solace and escape as it did before the world changed as it did. But by meeting and commiserating and try try trying again, we’re finding the words and the pieces and the books that are getting us back to what we love. And by getting back to what we love, we’re equipping ourselves to cope with whatever version of so-called normal comes next.

During our latest silent book club meeting, scheduled as a surprise “pop-up” outside of our usual schedule that everyone seemed to appreciate, we shared the ways in which we’re working to get back into satisfying reading grooves. One approach that seems to be working is rereading past favourites. Interestingly, it seems to be the comfort of the familiar, although not necessarily comfort reads per se that is clicking. For example, a couple of us coincidentally are rereading the short story collection The Progress of Love by Canada’s Nobel Prize-winning Alice Munro – and oh, what we’re discovering/rediscovering! Ms Munro is a truly wicked and incisive observer of human nature, and of the passions and frustrations that swim not far beneath the benign and mundane surfaces of the everyday. And oh, how bracing and energizing it is to return 20 (er, or more) years later to reread what captivated the first time with age and gained experience and, of course, wisdom.

Silent book club members have always touted the magic of certain magazines – particularly for long form pieces and journalism – for keeping up one’s reading momentum and enthusiasm. The New Yorker and The Economist are favourites, and others have mentioned and shared copies of West End Phoenix, Arc Poetry, The Walrus and Popshot Quarterly, among others.

Here’s a little bit of what and where our silent book club members are reading right now:

While we all remain a little concerned individually that our reading enthusiasm and tempo is not quite what it was (but hey, it’s never been a competition), our aggregate book list is still rich, formidable and gorgeous. Here is the latest:

• Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I by Peter Ackroyd
• The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol J. Adams
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
• Books by Inger Ash Wolfe (alias for Michael Redhill) (audiobooks)
• Bad Blood – Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
• The books of Agatha Christie
• American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
• Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• The Economist
• Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman
• The Girl Who Reads on the Métro by Christine Feret-Fleury (audiobook)
• The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
• Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith
• To the River: Losing My Brother by Don Gillmor
• Benediction by Kent Haruf (audiobook)
• Small Change by Elizabeth Hay
• The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox by Barry Hughart
• Always Look On the Bright Side of Life by Eric Idle (audiobook)
• A Noble Radiance by Donna Leon
• Dumpty by John Lithgow
• Of Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• I Am Woman by Lee Maracle
• The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey
• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
• The Progress of Love by Alice Munro
• Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
• The New Yorker
• Guantánamo’s Darkest Secret by Ben Taub (in The New Yorker)
• The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht (audiobook)
• The books of Louise Penny
• Sodom and Gomorrah, In Search of Lost Time, Volume 4 by Marcel Proust
• His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
• Ghostland by Duncan Ralston
• Salvage by Duncan Ralston
• Every Part of the Animal by Duncan Ralston
• Stiff by Mary Roach (audiobook)
• The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (audiobook)
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith
• The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J Ryan Stradal
• On the Plain of Snakes by Paul Theroux
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
• The Witch of the Inner Wood by M. Travis Lane
• The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
• 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam

As always, you can catch up on our previous silent book club meeting reports (from our current online incarnation and our previous and lovingly recalled and anticipated again in-person version) and book lists here.

We’re pleased and honoured to have been interviewed about the silent book club concept and how to start a club of one’s own. You can check out links to articles, CBC Radio interviews and more here – some with San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich, and some with us here in east end Toronto.

Under the current circumstances, this text I put at the end of each silent book club report isn’t entirely applicable, but I’m going to repeat it with continued optimism anyhow:

If you’ve so far enjoyed the silent book club experience virtually, are you tempted to experience it firsthand? Via Guinevere and Laura’s Silent Book Club web site, you can find information on meetings happening around the world and close to where you live. If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, check out the resources on the Silent Book Club web site, or please feel free to contact me for more information.

And the sign-off from our recent reports is, I think, still very applicable:

We will wait until we can again fling open our doors, venture out and gather in our communities. A silent book club meeting with friends and neighbours, held at and in support of a local business exemplifies exactly the kinds of freedoms we are foregoing now to get through these unsettled and unsettling times … and is where we’re all going to want to be when we get through this. Read well where you are now, be well and let books buoy your spirits and make the time pass swiftly.