Colourful, glowing neon hearts have been popping up in windows throughout the Greater Toronto area, including a burgeoning wave of them in the east end Toronto neighbourhood in which our silent book club has its roots. Not only are they beautiful and, dare I say, heartening, but they have a wonderful purpose, explained further here.

Here’s ours:

It would be beyond splendid to simply take a 10-minute walk through this neighbourhood – past many of the houses displaying these hearts – to the place where our silent book club used to meet in person to share our latest reading enthusiasms and then read together quietly and companionably. Till we can do that, though, the glow of our book-loving hearts in our online gatherings – which, delightfully, can welcome fellow readers much further away than this immediate neighbourhood – will more than sustain us.

Here is the latest, always generous, astonishingly rich 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).

• The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
• Dangerous Women by Hope Adams (aka Adele Geras)
• The Crossover by Kwame Alexander, narrated by Corey Allen (audiobook)
• OBIT by Victoria Chang
• The Rain Before it Falls by Jonathan Coe
• The Speed of Mercy by Christy Ann Conlin
• The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
• The Graves of Whitechapel by Claire Evans
• Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan
• No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality by Michael J. Fox
• Stardust (BBC Radio Drama) by Neil Gaiman, narrated by full cast (audiobook)
• go-go dancing for Elvis by Leslie Greentree
• A Minor Planet for You by Leslie Greentree
• Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage
• M.C. Higgins the Great by Virginia Hamilton
• Plainsong by Kent Haruf
• The Sunrise by Victoria Hislop (audiobook)
• Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston, narrated by Robin Miles (audiobook)
• Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston, narrated by Bahni Turpin (audiobook)
• Marrow Willow by Maureen Hynes
• Fishnet by Kirstin Innes (audiobook)
• knife | fork | book poetry chapbooks
• The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie
• Autopsy of a Boring Wife by Marie-Renée Lavoie
• Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
• Killing Mister Watson by Peter Matthiessen
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• Dual Citizens by Alix Ohlin
• The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley
• Salma the Syrian Chef by Danny Ramadan
• The Barren Grounds by David A. Robertson
• Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts On Kindness by George Saunders
• The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith
• The Public Image by Muriel Spark
• The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex
• Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
• The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson
• The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin, narrated by Meryl Streep (audiobook)
• Away by Jane Urquhart
• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Educated by Tara Westover
• The Storied Life of AJ Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

Some more book-related articles, recommendations and more came up during this meeting’s discussions and chat, including:

• Designed during the pandemic by Moss LED, a company that offers high quality lighting products for film, cinema, television and other applications, the neon hearts popping up all over the Greater Toronto area are meant to show love and support to healthcare heroes and frontline workers and to pay tribute to live entertainment workers significantly displaced and downsized by the pandemic’s constraints. A portion of the sale of each heart goes to the Michael Garron Hospital Foundation in east end Toronto. Learn more at www.ourglowinghearts.ca.
• These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (Harper’s Magazine, January 2021) – Many in our silent book club group are Ann Patchett fans. This captivating non-fiction piece by Patchett will warm the hearts of those fans, and is guaranteed to win her new ones.
• Eleanor Catton has adapted for the screen her 2013 Booker Prize winning book The Luminaries. The resulting six-part series is an excellent complement to a hefty novel that is challenging, complex and rewarding.

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.

Hearts aglow, let’s continue to light our way and our spirits with reading and continued connections to our fellow readers.