Some of those twinkling lights were hanging in the trees of our beloved park in east end Toronto, where a few of us assembled for one last bookish go-round and exchange of good wishes for the end of this trying year. How appropriate to be in the place where we gathered when we could to share in person the companionship of reading together.

Some of those twinkling lights beam from our twice monthly regular zoom meetings to share our reading delights and challenges. Yes, we’re weary and even frustrated with those screens. Thank goodness books in all forms give us good reason to turn away from them when we can. And yet, we still show up for those virtual connections, don’t we?

Some of those twinkling lights spark off the pages of the books that divert us, comfort us, guide us, inspire us.

Our last combined reading list for 2021 is as bountiful and diverse as ever. 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).

• Home of the Floating Lily by Silmy Abdullah
• It’s What I Do – A Photographer’s Life of Love and War by Lynsey Addario
• Celebrations by Maya Angelou (audiobook)
• Snow by John Banville
• Biblioasis’ A Ghost Story for Christmas series

        – Mr. Jones by Edith Wharton
        – An Eddy on the Floor by Bernard Capes
        – The Doll’s Ghost by F. Marion Crawford

• The Historians by Eavan Boland
• Dante’s Indiana by Randy Boyagoda
• The Barbizon – The Hotel That Set Women Free by Paulina Bren
• Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone by Brené Brown
• Sparkling Cyanide by Agatha Christie
• Greenwood by Michael Christie
• The Long Call by Ann Cleaves
• On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming
• How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed: A Journal for Grief by Megan Devine
• Untamed by Glennon Doyle (audiobook)
• The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
• A Little London Scandal by Miranda Emmerson
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
• Voices Lost in Snow (short story) by Mavis Gallant
• You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson
• The Storyteller by Dave Grohl
• A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins, narrated by Rosamund Pike (audiobook)
• Venetia by Georgette Heyer, narrated by Phyllida Nash (audiobook)
• The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida
• Better Luck Next Time by Kate Hilton
• Permanent Astonishment by Tomson Highway
• The Sweetest Remedy by Jane Igharo
• Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama, translated by Kodansha
• 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph
• The Feast by Margaret Kennedy
• Eat or We Both Starve by Victoria Kennefick
• The Shining by Stephen King
• The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey by Julia Laite, narrated by Kristen Atherton (audiobook)
• The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson (audiobook)
• The Malahat Review, Indigenous Perspectives issue (#197)
• The Candymakers and the Great Chocolate Chase (The Candymakers #2) by Wendy Mass
• Flesh and Blood by Stephen McGann (audiobook)
• The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
• The Unseen World by Liz Moore, narrated by Lisa Flanagan (audiobook)
• A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ni Ghriofa
• How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
• These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
• State of Terror by Louise Penny and Hillary Clinton
• The Madness of Crowds: A Novel by Louise Penny
• Miss Dior – A Story of Courage and Couture by Justine Picardie
• The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley
• Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym
• Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
• Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (audiobook)
• Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-Benta, narrated by Ordena Stephens-Thompson (audiobook)
• Yearbook by Seth Rogen (audiobook)
• Normal People by Sally Rooney
• Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris
• Homie by Danez Smith (audiobook)
• Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q Sutanto
• Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
• The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
• There’s no such thing as an easy job by Kikuko Tsumura, translated by Polly Barton, narrated by Cindy Kay (audiobook)
• Questions for Ada by Ijeoma Umebinyuo
• The Strangers by Katherena Vermette
• One by One by Ruth Ware
• City Unique: Montreal Days and Nights in the 1940s and ’50s by William Weintraub
• Vancouver Noir, edited by Sam Wiebe
• Disorientation – Being Black in the World by Ian Williams
• Undersong by Kathleen Winter
• The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben

More book-related articles, resources, news, recommendations and more are often inspired or offered by our members and/or come up during our discussions and chat, including:

• Listen to poet Maya Angelou speaking at the 1993 US Presidential Inauguration.
• Here are the New York Public Library suggestions for 2022 the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge, along with the library’s top checkouts for 2021.
• One of our group members discovered that a good way to read The Shining by Stephen King was with discussion questions … and a recipe!
• One of group members highly recommends the poetry of You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson. Here is the poet movingly performing “Instead of Depression” from the collection. (Facebook video)

Our previous silent book club meeting reports (online and in-person incarnations) and book lists are always waiting for you to read and enjoy them right here.

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 hiatus, but many are running virtual meetings in different formats, and some are re-emerging carefully with in-person gatherings. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

To those who make books possible – writers, publishers, booksellers, reviewers, bloggers and more – and all those who adore books in all forms: wishing you a safe, peaceful new year filled with happiness, hope and all the reading you need to sustain and buoy your mind and spirit.