Have you lost track of the hours and days? Does the demarcation of weekday versus weekend perhaps have less meaning than it used to …?

Over these seemingly endless pandemic months, our silent book club group co-founder Jo and I have worked to schedule two zoom meetings a month for our members. We strive to balance keeping in much-needed contact with our bookish friends with not straining everyone’s already increased screen time. One meeting is on Saturday mornings, at the time every month when we used to meet in person at our local coffee/book shop Press. The other meeting is what we call a “pop-up”. We surprise members with a second date just a few days in advance, and it is usually scheduled for a weekday evening.

Weekday? What is that? Evening? The days are getting longer, but the day still gets darker early on … and some wintry days, it’s dark all day. But as disorienting and fatiguing as it might be, mixed in with all the other work and family and community reasons for being online, I know I snap to attention going in and emerge refreshed coming out of every silent book club zoom gathering.

Here is the latest, delectable combined reading list from our group. The titles featured in each of our reports combine print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks (which are indicated separately, with narrator/performer information where possible).

• Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib
• They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
• The Crown Ain’t Worth Much by Hanif Abdurraqib
• Kipling by Jad Adams
• We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• A Boy Called Bat by Elana K. Arnold
• The Florios of Sicily by Stefania Auci
• Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman, translated from Swedish by Henning Koch, narrated by Joan Walker (audiobook)
• The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
• The Perfection of the Morning by Sharon Butala
• Wild Stone Heart: An Apprentice in the Fields by Sharon Butala
• A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
• Phillis by Alison Clarke
• Officer Clemmons: A Memoir by Dr. François S. Clemmons
• Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias In A World Designed For Men by Caroline Criada Perez
• Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi
• Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ by Giulia Enders
• Ordinary People by Diana Evans
• Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan
• As You Were by Elaine Feeney
• The Searcher by Tana French
• The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020, edited by Diana Gabaldon
• Slough House by Mick Herron
• Those Who Are Loved by Victoria Hislop, narrated by Juliet Stevenson (audiobook)
• Scabby Queen by Kirstin Innes
• Love is an Ex-Country by Randa Jarrar
• The Age of Phillis by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
• Walking: One Step at a Time by Erling Kagge, translated from Norwegian by Becky L. Crook, narrated by Atli Gunnarsson (audiobook)
• Indians on Vacation by Thomas King
• knife | fork | book poetry chapbooks
• Nightshift by Kiare Ladner
• The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
• Rachel to the Rescue by Elinor Lipman
• Child of God by Cormac McCarthy (audiobook)
• The Art of Falling by Danielle McLaughlin
• Glamour in a Golden Age edited by Adrienne L. McLean
• Northeast Foraging by Leda Meredith
• Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, read by Marilyn Lightstone
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, narrated by Jennifer Lim (audiobook)
• The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine by Janice P. Nimura
• Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (audiobook)
• Animal Farm by George Orwell, narrated by Ralph Cosham (audiobook)
• All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny
• The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk
• Not in the Flesh by Ruth Rendell
• Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
• Jane Austen: A Companion by Josephine Ross
• The German Heiress by Anika Scott
• The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon
• Fortune’s Rocks by Anita Shreve
• The Stars are Fire by Anita Shreve
• Félicie by Georges Simenon
• The List of Things That Will Not Change by Rebecca Stead
• Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
• On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey by Paul Theroux
• Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas
• The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Sun is a Compass by Caroline Van Hemert
• The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman
• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
• Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

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.

Even if things get darker for a time, we can light our way and our spirits for now with reading and continued connections to our fellow readers.