I regularly come away from our silent (and often not-so-silent!) book club feeling ready to burst: with book recommendations, with revitalized enthusiasm for my reading (when it has flagged or been kind of muddled in recent months), with sheer joy at connecting and sharing with such an amazing, generous and eclectically inclined group of booklovers.

I’m bursting again as I assemble this report. Just scroll down and you’ll see the brimming reading list resulting from our latest gathering, which was another two-parter: a well-attended and lively zoom meeting with new and longtime group members, followed a short while later by a small, brief but so vital meeting in the early winter sunshine at the nearby park where we’ve met in the past to read silently together under the trees. Utterly rejuvenating, on so many levels …!

Here’s that gorgeous reading list … and when you’ve spent some engrossing time in these digital stacks, keep going. There are more bookish delights overflowing from today’s gathering.

• Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• The Audlib Project, Giller Prize finalists (audiobook)
• Maggie and Me by Damian Barr
• You Will be Safe Here by Damian Barr
• Damian Barr on Instagram
• Lost Family – A Memoir by John Barton
• Trio by William Boyd
• Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown
• An Enduring Wilderness: Toronto’s Natural Parklands by Robert Burley
• Brain on Fire – My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
• Cape Breton’s Magazine (issues 43, 47, 48, 58, 59, 66, 67 and 71)
• Down North: The Book of Cape Breton’s Magazine, edited by Ronald Caplan
• The Sentinel by Lee Child and Andrew Child
• Waiting for a Star to Fall by Kerry Clare
• The Polished Hoe by Austin Clarke
• The Longest Evening by Ann Cleeves
• Letters from An American by Heather Cox Richardson
• The History of Great Things by Elizabeth Crane
• Love by Roddy Doyle
• Odd One Out by Lissa Evans
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
• War on Peace by Ronan Farrow
• The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde
• The Peripheral by William Gibson
• Mydas by Jon Goode
• The End of Me by John Gould
• We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib
• Beach Read by Emily Henry, narrated by Julia Whelan (audiobook)
• Squeeze Me by Carl Hiaasen
• Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes, read by Julia Whelan (audiobook)
• Just Like You by Nick Hornby
• The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
• The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
• Your Still Beating Heart by Tyler Keevil
• Fled by Meg Keneally
• Indians on Vacation by Thomas King
• Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson
• In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson
• The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
• The Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine
• Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
• The Malahat Review
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
• In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen
• L.E.L. The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated “Female Byron” by Lucasta Miller
• I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell
• Hamnet and Judith by Maggie O’Farrell
• Good Evening, Mrs Craven by Mollie Panter-Downes
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
• The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick
• Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce
• The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny
• Victorian London, The Tale of a City 1840-1870 by Lisa Picard
• Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-Benta
• The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz
• Children of God by Mary Doria Russell
• Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla Saad
• Prey series by John Sandford
• The Unwrapping of Theodora Quirke by Caroline Smailes
• Ash by Sharan Strange
• Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
• How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa
• Caligula by Aloys Winterling

In addition to that rich and intriguing selection of books, we shared some other book-related news and items of interest, including …

• Elena Ferrante names her 40 favourite books by female authors (The Guardian)
  At least one silent book club member – I’m guessing there will be more! – is looking at this list as reading inspiration heading into the winter.
• Hay Winter Weekend
  With such a wealth of online literary events these days – festivals, book launches, readings, fundraisers and more – it’s not surprising that avid readers might be double booked (ahem) at times, toggling from one event to another. One silent book club member arrived at our zoom meeting today breathless with enthusiasm about a William Boyd reading and interview, one of many fine offerings from the venerable Hay Festival.
• Nut Press, curated by book squirrels – blog by Kathryn Eastman
  Our east end Toronto silent book club was delighted to welcome reader, writer, book blogger, rugby fan (can you guess which of the pictures above came from her?) and lawyer Kathryn Eastman of South Wales, UK, to our latest zoom meeting, and we look forward to her joining us in future. Much as we miss our in-person silent book club gatherings, the move to online meetings means we’ve been able to fling the virtual doors open wider to wonderful guests further afield. Kathryn, thank you for your wonderful book recommendations – including Tyler Keevil, a Canadian author now living in Wales – and your warm presence in today’s virtual gathering.

‘Tis the season to think even more than we do the rest of the year about purchasing books, during a year when purchasing books has particular urgency. During today’s gathering, we discussed the importance of doing what we can to support independent booksellers, and we traded recommendations about businesses that offer online, curbside pickup and delivery options.

• Here is a Canada-wide map of Canadian independent booksellers that have been highly responsive to the pandemic and have been supplying books to eager readers.
• Some particular favourites local to Toronto-based booklovers are: Book City, Type Books, Queen Books and The Novel Spot Bookshop.
• Here is another resource for bookstores in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).
• In South Wales, two of Kathryn Eastman’s favourite booksellers are Griffin Books in Penarth and Book-ish in Crickhowell

Our group co-founder Jo paid lovely tribute on the occasion of our silent book group’s third anniversary.

Our previous silent book club meeting reports (online and in-person incarnations) and book lists are here.

You can also 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.

Learn more about silent book clubs 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. Some clubs are currently on haitus, but many are running virtual meetings in different formats. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

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.