Yes, meetings … we enjoyed two silent book club meetings in one day today. Each in their way was the pleasurable sanctuary of deep, green shade on a brilliantly hot summer day.

We started – as many book clubs, yoga classes, family get-togethers, not to mention corporate meetings, seminars and more do these days – on zoom. Coffee cups dipped in and out of the screens as we shared our latest reading, from home offices and living rooms and, delightfully more and more, from sunny balconies and backyards. The collective book list is gradually blossoming as we increasingly vanquish the distraction many of us have been suffering these pandemic days.

(Glenn Sumi of Now Magazine recently offered these excellent insights into the science behind why it’s so hard to read a book right now. I was happy to commiserate with Glenn about this reading affliction as he was researching the article.)

With the warm discussions and connections of our zoom session still aglow in heads and hearts, a handful of us then made our way to the park for a cautious but eagerly anticipated in-person gathering for some silent reading under the trees. Packing for this outing was a little more complicated than usual …

… but with a mask and hand sanitizer in the book bag, that meant I could stop in at our much-missed book club venue, Press books. coffee. vinyl. to pick up an iced coffee on the way to the park.

It was modest, it was physically distanced but it was so very wonderful to gather some of our silent book club friends to finally, companionably, utterly luxuriously enjoy our reading on the grass, in the gorgeous shade, in each other’s bookish company once again. (I’m getting a little verklempt just typing these words …) Our future discussions and compiled reading lists will probably continue to happen in part virtually, but nothing can be compared to the in real life company of fellow booklovers and friends.

• Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Annappara (+ audiobook)
• Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball
• Whose Water Is It, Anyway? by Maude Barlow
• The Book of Runes by Ralph Blum
• Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
• Growing Up Greenpoint: A Kid’s Life in 1970s Brooklyn by Tommy Carbone
• True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
• The Skin We’re In by Desmond Cole
• Pulse Points by Jennifer Down
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans
• Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans (audiobook)
• Old Baggage by Lissa Evans
• The Swan Suit by Katherine Fawcett
• Poetry of Robert Frost
• The Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay
• Poetry of Allen Ginsberg
• The End of Me by John Gould
• Florida by Lauren Groff
• Loving Large: A Mother’s Rare Disease Memoir by Patti Hall
• All True Not a Lie In It by Alix Hawley
• Benediction by Kent Haruf
• Eventide by Kent Haruf
• The Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf
• The Devils of Loudon by Aldous Huxley
• Molly of the Mall: Literary Lass and Purveyor of Fine Footwear by Heidi L.M. Jacobs
• Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
• Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
• The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Berlin by Jason Lutes
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
• Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro
• Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
• Poetry of John O’Donohue
• The Overstory by Richard Powers
• Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
• His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
• Mrs. Simcoe’s Diary, edited by Mary Quayle Innis
• Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
• The Rovers Return – Coronation Street Official Companion by Tim Randall
• The Reader by Bernard Schlink
• My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner: A Family Memoir by Meir Shalev
• Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
• The Secret History by Donna Tartt
• The Witch of the Inner Wood by M. Travis Lane
• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (audiobook)
• The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
• Educated by Tara Westover
• Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

You can always catch up on our previous silent book club meeting reports (our online and in-person incarnations) 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.

The text I usually put at the end of each report still isn’t entirely applicable, but I’m still going to repeat it with continued optimism:

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.

The sign-off from our recent reports is, I think, evolving and still very applicable:

We will wait until we can again fling open our doors, venture out and gather in our communities. We’re starting to do that cautiously, but not without justifiable trepidation that warrants alternative ways of gathering. 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, gather in the ways that are safe and make most sense, including virtually. Be well and let books buoy your spirits, make our ever changing and challenging circumstances more tolerable, and make the time pass swiftly.