How much do books, talking about books and talking about books with wonderful book friends warm up the wintry days? Well, let me show you.

Whether they’re able to attend a particular meeting or not, our silent book club members always send me, the blog report compiler, lists of what they’ve been reading lately, so we can provide a generous reading list with each meeting. 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
• The Cleaner by Marina Abramovic
• Emma by Jane Austen
• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, narrated by Shayna Small (audiobook)
• Turning Off the Tap: Overcoming the Real Reasons We Overeat by Sara Best
• The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, narrated by Neil Hellegers (audiobook)
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Black Hole by Charles Burns
• The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri, translated by Stephen Sartarelli
• Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers, narrated by Karen Cass (audiobook)
• Don’t Bite the Hook: Finding Freedom from Anger, Resentment, and Other Destructive Emotions by Pema Chodron
• Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels by Rachel Cohen
• Kingdomtide by Rye Curtis
• Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
• Something Wicked by E.X. Ferrars
• The Wars by Timothy Findley
• Wonderworks: the 25 most powerful innovations in the history of literature by Angus Fletcher
• The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
• Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
• Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez
• The Storyteller by Dave Grohl
• The Seas by Samantha Hunt
• Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett, David Boyd
• The Feast by Margaret Kennedy
• Ravenscraig by Sandi Krawchenko Altner
• Birdie by Tracey Lindberg, narrated by Alyssa Bresnahan (audiobook)
• Rez Rules: My Indictment of Canada’s and America’s Systemic Racism Against Indigenous Peoples by Chief Clarence Louie
• Why Men Lie by Linden MacIntyre
• Mudlark – In Search of London’s Past Along the River Thames by Lara Maiklem
• West with the Night by Beryl Markham
• The Art of Falling by Danielle McLaughlin
• What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty (audiobook)
• The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
• Three Sisters by Heather Morris, narrated by Flinty Williams (audiobook)
• Hamnet and Judith by Maggie O’Farrell
• Upstream by Mary Oliver
• The Junta of Happenstance by Tolu Oloruntoba
• The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman
• Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi
• Erebus: The Story of a Ship by Michael Palin
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
• These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
• State of Terror by Louise Penny and Hillary Clinton
• Trickster Drift by Eden Robinson
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling, narrated by Jim Dale (audiobook)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
• Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World by Daniel Sherrell
• Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
• The Digital Plague by Jeff Somers
• Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal, narrated by Amy Ryan, Michael Stuhlbarg (audiobook)
• The Betrayal of Anne Frank by Rosemary Sullivan
• Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson, narrated by Graham Halstead (audiobook)
• Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq (audiobook)
• The Master by Colm Toibin
• The Magician by Colm Toibin
• The Tiger by John Vaillant
• Starlight by Richard Wagamese, narrated by Wesley French (audiobook)
• Praying with Jane Eyre by Vanessa Zoltan

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:

• One of our silent book club members heartily recommends the Backlisted podcast. Launched in late 2015, each episode features a guest (usually a writer) who has chosen a book they love and which they think deserves a wider audience. As the podcast’s web site contends, though sponsored by the crowd-funding publisher Unbound, the podcast isn’t about selling new product: it’s about how and why some books stand the test of time.
• Harry Potter and the Sacred Text is another group member-recommended podcast that started around the same time as Backlisted. It comes at the Harry Potter books via rigorous but still accessible approaches, using central themes with which to explore characters and context.

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

Stay safe and cozy, with a stack of books (in whatever form) to warm heart and mind, and to light your way.