Here is an adorable but seemingly unrelated-to-books picture of an Airedale puppy brimming with teenaged attitude.

Mavis* has just started attending obedience classes. Those classes are as necessary, if not more, for us two-leggeds as for the four-leggeds. If the class happens to fall at the same time as a silent book club meeting – well, hard choices must be made.

* Yes, her name is in part inspired by Mavis Gallant – so, further proof our puppy is book-related!

But, while Mavis and I were marching studiously around a small gymnasium*, I was also happy that our book club was carrying on and in good hands. Our February meeting was kindly and very ably led by longtime member Sue Reynolds.

* The dog obedience class location is just steps away from one of our group’s favourite bookstores, The Great Escape! Even more proof this is all book-related!

It’s so gratifying to see that our 5 1/2-year-old group need not rely on any one person to thrive. At the same time, while the whole is perhaps more than the sum of its parts, it’s each part, each reader, each unique library of books and authors and genres and subjects, that makes this group (and, I’m guessing, every silent book club group around the world) unique and vital to each of its parts. Each person and their reading choices and insights are essential to the group’s chemistry, vibe and steadfast reliability as a resource and source of comfort. Can the same be said of the more single-book-oriented groups from which many silent book club members have come?

What also made me happy as I was dog-obediencing instead of silent-book-clubbing was that when it came time to compile a list of the books discussed in the meeting, I know I would hear the voices making recommendations and offering brief critiques. I hope everyone enjoying these reports can hear those voices, too.

At mid-month, we again convened a meeting focused on a couple of discussion topics:

• Influential authors and books – What is the book or who is the author that has been the greatest influence on you as a reader, and has stayed with you over the years? What is the book or author that has inspired some of your fondest or funniest memories?
• Unpleasant reading – What if a book turns unpleasant and out of your comfort zone? If an author is doing a commendable job of creating a graphic, disturbing or overly suspenseful situation, but it is not a comfortable reading experience, do you carry on or stop?

Surprise, surprise – the discussion was lively and eclectic, once again! The influential authors and books cited ranged from one’s early reading days to the present. We all realized that those significant writers and works that inspire, inform and take our reading in new directions can come to us at any time or age. It’s not just about the compelling Nancy Drew formula that got us into a early reading groove, is it?

How we each face or work around unpleasant reading – be it graphic, troubling, triggering or otherwise problematic – made for a discussion during which, in the safe space that we’ve created with our group, readers could reveal how certain kinds of words and images have troubled and challenged us. If reading is viewed as a comforting diversion, an escape from the world’s cruelties, is one obliged to let those cruelties intrude on the page? As one group member observed, if a writer has gone to the arduous task of putting difficult things on the page, maybe we need to honour that work and look.

After two such meetings, it feels like what we’re learning about each other and ourselves – as readers and as people – means we’ll be tackling some more book-related themes together in the months to come.

Here is our group’s latest combined book list, reflecting books mentioned and discussed at the meeting at the end of February. As I’ve mentioned before, each list reflects the reading of many of our members, whether or not they attended the meetings in question. The titles featured in each of our reports encompass print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks.

Any title on any of our group’s lists means that at least one (often more) readers have given that title some consideration. That is encouragement, I’d say, for other readers reading our reports and lists to consider it, too. Is that a recommendation? It might be, but not exactly or necessarily. It always means that a title has been given thoughtful consideration and attention by our readers, which counts for a lot.

• Becoming Duchess Goldblatt by Anonymous, narrated by Gabra Zackman, J. Smith-Cameron, Lyle Lovett (audiobook)
• Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton
• Shadows of Eternity by Gregory Benford
• A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers, narrated by Emmett Grosland (audiobook)
• Greenwood by Michael Christie
• Consumed by David Cronenberg
• The Deep by Nick Cutter
• Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enríquez
• Taking a Chance: The First 25 years of Fishers’ Loft Inn: An Urban To Rural Journey: 80+ Inn recipes by John & Peggy Fisher and Roger Pickavance
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
• Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett, narrated by Mark Bramhall, Kirby Heyborne (audiobook)
• Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray: River of Dreams by Anita Heiss
• Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia, edited by Anita Heiss
• Confessions With Keith by Paulina Holdstock
• The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys
• Until Further Notice by Amy Kaler
• Antarctica by Claire Keegan
• Foster by Claire Keegan
• Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, narrated by Bird Brennan (audiobook)
• Living in the Tall Grass: Poems of Reconciliation by Chief R. Stacey Laforme
• On the Ravine by Vincent Lam
• Superfan: A Pop Culture Memoir by Jen Sookfong Lee (audiobook)
• The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett by Annie Lyons, narrated by Nicolette McKenzie (audiobook)
• The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté, narrated by Daniel Maté (audiobook)
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• Lessons by Ian McEwan
• Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
• Bay of Spirits by Farley Mowat
• Songs for the End of the World by Saleema Nawaz
• The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
• Did Ye Hear Mammy Died by Séamas O’Reilly
• Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution by Judy Rebick
• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, narrated by Kirsten Potter (audiobook)
• The Nine by Gwen Strauss, narrated by Juliet Stevenson (audiobook)
• Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, narrated by Angus King (audiobook)
• In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas
• A Quality of Light by Richard Wagamese
• The Life and Loves of a She Devil by Fay Weldon
• Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson, narrated by Lynnette R. Freeman, Simone Mcintyre (audiobook)
• Toward the North, edited by Hua Laura Wu, Xueqing Xu, and Corinne Bieman Davies
• The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

Our previous reports and book lists are available to tantalize, entertain, provoke and add to your tbr pile … 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 on hiatus or modified schedules, many are running virtual meetings in different formats, and some are carefully running in-person and hybrid gatherings. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

Even when you can’t make it to our book club or your book club, or you don’t currently have a book club to gather with bookloving friends, we hope our readings lists and discussions here help sustain you as a reader.