I’m guessing our sense of place – both collective and individual – has changed significantly in very recent years. Where we are when we are here, when we are meeting, when we are with someone and so on has sharp new meanings when coupled with how we resorted to social media platforms or different renditions of virtual connection to stay in contact (one definition of contact, anyhow) when we were not able to be in physical proximity or contact. I won’t fill this blog post with too many meandering thoughts about what we might still be going through with respect to connecting or not connecting and what that means, because I do want to get to the latest brimming and delicious book list our group has amassed. But here are some questions and thoughts that popped up for me as I was prepping this month’s silent book club report:

• When we meet virtually with fellow readers, even if most of those gathering are within walking distance of each other, is someone zooming with us from across a border or an ocean here with us? (The edges of east end Toronto extend here and here, so my answer is a hearty “yes!”)
• When we meet in person on a patio, in a park or in a coffee shop with fellow readers from the neighbourhood, is the here that location or is the here the places we inhabit in our books once we’re reading silently together?
• When we are reading by ourselves in our living room or on our balcony or porch or cottage dock, are we there with our other fellow readers, too … while we’re here wherever our books have taken us, as well as here in a comfy reading spot?

In some ways, maybe it’s neither here nor there, eh? We’re blessed to be able to read, we’re fortunate to have access to many ways to read, we’re privileged (in all good senses of that word that remain) to read what we want to read when we want to read it – and to lend our voices on behalf of those being deprived of that right.

Here (see what I did there?) are some of the places our readers and their books were this past month:

Silent book club member Philippa visited the Grolier Poetry Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts
(Here’s an interesting piece from The Paris Review in 2013 on this destination literary landmark.)

Sometimes other activities – like piloting an inflatable loon on a northern Ontario lake – distract one from proper cottaging activities like reading. But then again, with a beverage holder and some way to protect one’s books or reading devices from the water, an inflatable loon on a northern Ontario lake would be as dreamy a reading place as a hammock … just sayin’ …

Here (yes, here) is our group’s latest combined book list, gathering up books mentioned and discussed at our end of July meeting. Each list reflects the reading of many of our members. Many provide their reading lists even when they can’t attend a meeting. 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 (but often more) readers have given that title some consideration. That’s encouragement for you and other readers checking out our reports and lists to consider it, too. Is that a recommendation? It might be, but not exactly or necessarily. (This is rare, but a reader confided this month that one of the titles on this list offered one of their worst reading experiences ever …) That said, that same title might be one of your best reading experiences – who knows? Inclusion on this list always means that a title has been given thoughtful consideration and attention by our readers, which counts for a lot.

• Castaways in Time by Robert Adams
• Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
• When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
• Duck Eats Yeast, Quacks, Explodes; Man Loses Eye by Gary Barwin & Lillian Necakov
• Exit by Belinda Bauer
• The House is on Fire by Rachel Beanland
• Silent Women: Pioneers of Cinema, edited by Melody Bridges and Cheryl Robson
• The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne
• Strong Female Character by Fern Brady
• Careering by Daisy Buchanan
• Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
• Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey
• Burial of Ghosts by Ann Cleeves
• Rescued: Book 1 – Darkest of Portland Series by Dena Crawford-Nibler
• Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter
• The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen
• An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
• Fruit by Brian Francis (audiobook)
• Making Psyence Fiction by James Gaunt
• Wild Honey – Reading New Zealand Women’s Poetry by Paula Green
• The Last Remains by Elly Griffiths
• Design for Transformative Learning by Lisa Grocott
• Fourth Under Sol by Guerric Haché
• Broken Light by Joanne Harris
• Anatomy of a Killer by Romy Hausmann
• Lucy Maud Montgomery – The Gift of Wings by Mary Henley Rubio
• The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Henry Callahan
• Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez
• Shivitti: A Vision by Ka-tzetnik 135633
• The Half Moon by Mary Beth Keane
• The Dutch Wife by Ellen Keith, narrated by Abby Craden, Eric Jason Martin & Charles Thurston (audiobook)
• Other Routes: 1500 years of African and Asian Travel Writing, edited by Tabish Khair, Martin Leer, Justin D Edwards and Hanna Ziadeh
• Fairy Tale by Stephen King
• All That Is Mine I Carry With Me by William Landay
• In Amber’s Wake by Christine Leunens
• Sand Castle by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters
• The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy
• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
• 1979 by Val McDermid
• The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan, narrated by Aoife McMahon (audiobook)
• The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud, narrated by Cassandra Campbell (audiobook)
• The Man Who Died Twice by by Richard Osman, narrated by Lesley Manville (audiobook)
• Run Towards the Danger by Sarah Polley
• The Revenant by Michael Punke
• Quarterly Essay
• Oh Canada Our Home and Inventive Land! by Prof. Mark Rector
• The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke
• Boat by Lisa Robertson
• The Guncle by Steven Rowley (audiobook)
• Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
• The School of Mirrors by Eva Stachniak
• A Death at the Party: A Novel by Amy Stuart
• Animal by Lisa Taddeo
• Suspect by Scott Turow
• One Native Life by Richard Wagamese
• Zero Days by Ruth Ware
• Winter in the Air & Other Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner
• To Track a Traitor by Iona Whisham
• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
• Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams
• Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Some other silent book club and reading items of interest …

• Here’s what looks like a wonderful there for silent book club members in New Zealand to meet!
• A reader in Seattle has the broader silent book club network abuzz, thanks to her excited discovery and effusive praise of the silent (maybe not so silent?) book club experience.

  Silent Book Club “head office” offers an email listserv for those who organize and manage sbc chapters around the world, and that community is talking up a storm about the wave of interest and influx of new member requests that @hellomandyo’s video has generated. (Yes, we’ve welcomed lots of new inquiries, too – and look forward to meeting some new readers in the months ahead!) Some chapters run significantly higher capacity events than others (more on that another day), and some chapters are still virtual versus in-person, so how one engages with each group is different. I imagine the delight in reading, reading together and sharing reading delights with other readers, as captured by @hellomandyo, is consistent across all chapters around the world!

Our previous reports and book lists are always available to interest and amaze, not to mention threatening to send your tbr pile toppling! The reports and lists are always right here, growing every month.

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. Every club is a different size, format (in-person, virtual or combinations) and vibe, so contact a club’s organizers beforehand if you have any questions or preferences. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

Here, there and everywhere, we hope your reading nurtures head and heart!