Our latest silent book club meeting report is introduced by long-time member Lyla MacAulay, parent and teacher in Toronto, avid and eclectic reader, and fosterer of many kittens.

This week during Silent Book Club, I thought about journeys and how far we have come.

When I was invited to join Silent Book Club, it seemed no small thing to haul myself from west to east Toronto. To read. Silently. Which I could do in my own cozy space. But I did it, and was richly rewarded by meeting wonderful readers and the amazing variety and depth of the books they introduced me to.

Fast forward to pandemic times. Vicki and Jo were heroic in welcoming us to Zoom, and while our physical spaces got more and more restricted, our book space grew and grew! Paradoxically, shrinking to a screen opened SBC to readers from southwestern Ontario to Wales. And we shared worlds in other ways; we had glimpses of shelves and kitchens, gardens and mugs, partners and pets, tantalizing views of each others’ lives that we would not have seen with our meet-ups at Press Vinyl (still on our radar!), or in the park.

It seems to me that in expanding our places and our members, we have expanded our hearts and imaginations. Our group is so supportive of the struggles we’ve had, and grateful for the time we have together, and I don’t think that would have happened as easily and inclusively if SBC was bounded by physical presence.

At SBC we all have a reading journey, and they aren’t linear! From meeting to meeting we wander through subjects and genres, we are fluid in our choices, and we are nudged into other paths by each other. Who knows where we are going? Inspired by The Sealey Challenge (a book of poetry a day in August), I started The Complete Poems of Cavafy. In “Ithaca”, Cavafy reminds us of the value in the journey itself.

When you start on your journey to Ithaca,
Then pray that the road is long,
Full of adventure, full of knowledge

This week’s journey, as Lyla has captured so beautifully, took us from our respective homes and cottages to zoom to sunny Stephenson Park.

Once again, this meeting has culminated in a positively overflowing reading list that will take you in many directions, on many wide-ranging journeys. 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).

• After the Spring: A Story of Tunisian Youth by Hélène Aldeguer
• This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart by Madhur Anand
• Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
• The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
• Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
• Wenjack by Joseph Boyden
• A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
• The Toronto Book of Love by Adam Bunch
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
• CP Cavafy: The Complete Poems
• Greenwood by Michael Christie
• Don’t Look Down by Hilary Davidson
• The Mission House by Carys Davies
• Pandora’s Boy by Lindsey Davis
• The White Album by Joan Didion
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
• The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
• Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison
• Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan
• Troubles by J.G. Farrell
• Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald
• I’ll Fly Away by Rudy Francisco
• Yes to Life, in Spite of Everything by Viktor Frankl
• Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller
• Before the Ruins by Victoria Gosling
• Before the Ruins by Victoria Gosling, narrated by Kristin Atherton (audiobook)
• The Comfort Book by Matt Haig
• The Flying Carpet by Richard Halliburton
• The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
• Force of Nature by Jane Harper, narrated by Stephen Shanahan (audiobook)
• One Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
• Me by Elton John
• 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph
• Indigenous Relations – Insights, Tips & Suggestions to Make Reconciliation a Reality by Bob Joseph with Cynthia F. Joseph
• Boy Wonders by Cathal Kelly
• Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married by Marian Keyes
• DreadfulWater by Thomas King
• Planting: A New Perspective by Noel Kingsbury and Piet Oudolf
• The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, narrated by Matilda Novak (audiobook)
• Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri, narrated by Susan Vinciotti Bonito (audiobook)
• Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
• Fatboy Fall Down by Rabindranath Maharaj, narrated by Errol Sitahal (audiobook)
• The Tenants by Bernard Malamud
• The Natural by Bernard Malamud
• The Color of Water: A Black man’s Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride, narrated by Andre Braugher, Lainie Kazan (audiobook)
• Deacon King Kong by James McBride
• Apeirogon by Colum McCann
• A Pearl in the Storm: How I Found My Heart in the Middle of the Ocean by Tori Murden McClure
• Rick Mercer Final Report by Rick Mercer
• Righteous Victims by Benny Morris
• Summerwater by Sarah Moss, narrated by Morven Christie (audiobook)
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama (audiobook)
• Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
• The Switch by Beth O’Leary, narrated by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Alison Steadman (audiobook)
• The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
• Dad Up by Steve Patterson
• The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny
• That Old Ace in the Hole by Annie Proulx, narrated by Arliss Howard (audiobook)
• Spaceship to the Universe: The Story of Libraries by Shruthi Rao and Anuradha Jagalur
• New Teeth: Stories by Simon Rich
• The Shardlake Series by C.J. Sansom
• The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
• The Thing About Life is That One Day You’ll be Dead by David Shields
• Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey
• The Train by Georges Simenon
• The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin by Georges Simenon
• Love & Courage by Jagmeet Singh
• The Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood
• The Book of David by David Steinberg
• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, narrated by Beata Pozniak (audiobook)
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead
• Love After The End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction edited by Joshua Whitehead
• Personals by Ian Williams
• The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, narrated by Pippa Bennett-Warner (audiobook)
• A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman
• Tin Man by Sarah Winman
• The Plague Year: America in the Time of COVID by Lawrence Wright
• Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin
• Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots, narrated by Alex McKenna (audiobook)

More book-related articles, resources, news, recommendations and more were offered by our members and/or came up during this meeting’s discussions and chat, including:

• The Sealey Challenge started in 2017, when American poet Nicole Sealey challenged herself and others to read a poetry work a day for every day in the month of August. All who take part (I’m taking up the challenge again this year, after successfully completing it in 2020) note their progress on social media using the hashtag #TheSealeyChallenge. Follow along … and, maybe, dip into some poetry yourself this upcoming month.
• Books admired and beloved by this silent book club group have surfaced on the Booker Prize longlist – take a look!
• The Kitchener Public Library was an important and formative part of one silent book club member’s early years as a reader … and is an important resource today for another member we were fortunate to have join us online since the start of the pandemic.
• East end Toronto booklovers rejoice! The Scribe is a new bookstore addition (antiquarian) to the Danforth, near Chester.

Our fellow readers – don’t forget, you’re all part of a vast underground network for goodness at work in the world – are invited to boost their reading with fodder from our previous silent book club meeting reports (online and in-person incarnations) and book lists – find them all here. Perhaps you’ll come across the unexpected!

You can also check out links to articles, 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.

Stay safe, stay well, stay hopeful, stay utterly engrossed in great and rejuvenating books!