“Book after book, I read.” What we cannot live without …

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Wrapping up 2024 for the Toronto silent book club couldn’t be more wonderful with another guest introduction to our monthly blog post. Dear fellow readers, meet Joylyn Chai. She lives two doors up the street from Vicki, our delightful SBC host. Joylyn doesn’t like eating breakfast in the mornings, but in the evening she loves eating potato chips and watching TV. She has the habit of greeting trees and waving ‘hello’ to the moon. Her essays and poems have appeared in numerous publications; her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and selected as notable for Best American Essays 2024. She lives and works on the traditional territories of Tkaronto/Toronto.

The Book Club

Silent book club member Joylyn Chai, smiling brightly with glorious bookshelves in the backgroundYears ago, a colleague of mine, who was teaching English at the same school where I worked, asked his students to write a list of the top three things they love. When he told me he did this exercise with his classes, I asked him about his own list. Without hesitation, he unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket and read it aloud:

  1. Wife
  2. Daughter
  3. Reading

I smiled and nodded as if it was a mass-produced inscription on the inside of a greeting card. “Of course,” I crooned approvingly. His choices were predictable — just the usual suspects standing on his podium of love.

I’m certain the gold and silver medal winners of innumerable lists are won by members of the immediate family, making their appearancepracticallybanal. But after careful consideration of my coworker’s list in which I imagined it to be my own, I wondered what I could live without. I wondered if I could live without number 3 even though I loved number 1 and 2 more. I wondered if reading should secretly be at the top of my list — and at the top of his.

Each month, or thereabouts, I join the Silent Book Club at a local café to talk and read. We talk about what we are reading and then we read aboutwhat we talked about. I like listening to other people talk about their books. They introduce their books like they’re good friends or sometimes like an exasperating lover they’ll soon be rid of.

After everyone has ordered a beverage of their choice (cappuccino, Italian soda, herbal tea) we settle into our seats and arrange our books on the table in front of us. Someone will have a slender copy of a poetry collection. Another will have a stack of mylar-covered library loans. Someone will bring along a dogeared, epic tome. Another will have their tablet propped up, open, and aglow.

In turn, each member speaks, carefully holding their book so everyone can look at the cover and see its title and author. We give a brief synopsis and share how long we’ve been reading it and how the book came to us. The conversation is not unlike those I’ve had with my friends who are dating: “OK, who are they? How long have you been seeing them? How did you meet? Do you like them? Tell me everything.”

What I especially like about attending the SBC is seeing how people physically interact with their books. When the books are lying on the table, I notice the way people press their fingers into the covers when they’re being emphatic or making a point. They’ll say something approving or disapproving about the main character, plot, or setting and pick the book up to fan its pages. When searching for the right word to describe a scene or the author’s style, people might flip the book on its back or drag a finger down its spine. Electronic users will scroll their screens, hold onto the device with two hands and straighten it — even though it was perfectly straight to begin with.

Innately, we are physically intimate with our books. For a short time, they are our constant companions. We wonder when we can steal a moment to escape with them privately. Occasionally, we fall deeply in love with them and can’t stop thinking about them; their presence clouds our every thought. And when we are out in the world together, we touch them when they’re sitting next to us, just as we would with our closest friends.

I’ve been thinking alot about rituals and the presence of them in my life. The ritual, as a communal practice that marks special occasions, invites its participants to do something together in unison. The SBC invites people to read in silence together and sometimes the people I’m sitting beside are complete strangers. Living in a bustling city like Toronto, I am no stranger to strangers. I sit thigh-to-thigh with unknown folks on public transit. I stand in a tight line with other cart-pushing shoppers at the grocery store. On transatlantic flights, I’ve even been the shoulder where another unnamed passenger has laid their weary head. We are all strangers until there is intention to acknowledge the specific importance of a person.

After our conversation, Vicki, our gracious host, will make eye contact with each member in the group — a gesture of unabashed interest and kindness — and ask if everyone is ready to read. Vicki, bright-eyed and smiling, will lovingly nod her head of darling, wavy locks. We’ll all murmur assent and open our books. It’s at this moment the ritual begins.

A few minutes pass before we leave each other. Then we leave the coffee house, this city. We leave the routine and responsibilities of our lives and dive into stories or explanations of other worlds. Immersed and engrossed, our silence becomes a haven as beautiful as a quiet garden in bloom. We read for an hour and when the time is up, it’s often hard to pull our attention away from the words on the page. We emerge gently, our minds and bodies still possessed by the power of imagination. We breathe in deeply. We exhale. Softly, Vicki welcomes us back as if we’ve been away for a very, very long time.

My family is ever so dear to me and when I think about losing them, my heart feels like it is being carved out of my chest. My morbid compulsion to imagine life without them comes from the loss I’ve already experienced, the impenetrable grief that sits indifferent, like stone, at the bottom of my gut. Forced without choice, I’ve learned to live without the people whom I have loved the most. And during those times when it seemed like nothing in the world could possibly console me, I read. Book after book, I read.

If I were to write down the top three things that I love most in the world, my list would have the same order as my colleague’s:

  1. Husband
  2. Daughters
  3. Reading

But I know there’s only one thing on my list that I cannot live without.

 

Silent book club members gathered, reading silently, at a table at East Toronto Coffee Co. Here are some of the books they read, on a ETCC table (including a pair of glasses and tea in a takeout cup): Wavewalker: A Memoir of Breaking Free by Suzanne Heywood, Strangers in Their Own Land - Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild, We Used to Dream of Freedom - A Memoir of Family, the Holocaust, and the Stories We Don't Tell by Sam Chaiton, There Is a God by Antony Flew and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Silent book club member Jenn C read the Biblioasis Christmas Ghost Stories 2024: Podolo by L.P. Hartley, Captain Dalgety Returns by Laurence Whistler, Amethyst Cross by Mary Fitt. The wee books are arranged on a Christmas tree branch.

Let’s also wrap up 2024 with another brimming, rich and spectacular combined reading list from our indefatigable silent book club group. As always, every title on our group’s generous lists means that at least one (but usually more) readers have given that title thoughtful consideration. That doesn’t mean that every work on our lists is expressly recommended, of course. Inclusion on this list always means that our readers have devoted time and attention to a title – and that, dear readers, means a lot.


Here are some extra book-related articles, resources, news and recommendations, items and tidbits that are often companions to books on the list, or are inspired or offered by our members and/or come up during our discussions and chat.

This year and every year, our group’s previous reports and book lists are always 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 the worldwide phenomenon of silent book clubs via Guinevere and Laura’s Silent Book Club web site. In fall 2023, they welcomed their 500th chapter … and with continuing and astonishing momentum, they are now boasting over 1,500 chapters!!! (There were around 60 chapters when we joined as the first Toronto chapter in 2017.) 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.

Onward to a new year of reading challenges and delights!

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