Dear fellow bookworms, we’re blessed with another guest introduction to our monthly blog post! Meet long-time east end Toronto sbc member Jess Bootsma. Her life relative to books is fascinating and moving.

The Power of Books
by Jess Bootsma

It was in the 90’s that my niece’s friend, who I was just about to meet, was designated to pick me up from the bus station. I asked her how she knew it was me and she said, “Oh, Faye said you’d be reading a book”. Funny thing is that I didn’t grow up with books. As a kid we had Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and little else. We lived on a dairy farm on a gravel road and my parents made use of the church library on Sundays which didn’t seem to have kids’ books; they never used the public library. It wasn’t till becoming an adult that I really began exploring books.

The family would have been happy to see me marry a religious animal-agriculture farmer and have a bunch of kids. Instead I moved to Toronto, dropped religion, stayed single and went plant-based. Books reinforced my thinking and gave me permission to question the unquestionable and change direction. The search for books that question the norm, uncover truth and help me see in new ways continues.

Thankfully there are amazing thinkers and writers in this world, there’s the Toronto Public Library, great book stores and, amazingly, the Silent Book Club right in my neighbourhood. It’s a joy to share books with other book lovers and it’s always interesting to hear what others are reading. What a fun way to discover more authors and stories. Bumping into SBC members in the hood is always a nice surprise too. Through the years I’ve come to appreciate it more and more. It was pre-Covid when I went to my first meeting at Press on the Danforth (now closed). We’ve gone through several iterations of the club since then, the latest being able to explore new businesses in the area in which to share our readings and listen to others’ experiences with books, all the while creating community and helping small businesses. We’re a rich and powerful group whose vibrations manifest invisibly in our hearts and communities.

I belong to one other book club. There is a potluck included and we mostly concentrate on reading about food, animals and the environment. Often I’m doing a lot of internal complaining about having to read them because they can be the opposite of escapism. When I can pick my own reading material my favourite form of escapism is reading memoirs.

I rarely keep books as I don’t like the idea of having superfluous belongings in my small home and I appreciate space but not dusting. I’ll borrow from friends or the library. If I buy them I’ll usually pass them on as soon as I’ve read them. It’s only those very rare books that I couldn’t bear to part with. If it’s a borrowed book I really, really like, I might buy it afterwards.

For the last eight years I’ve kept a yearly list of what I’ve read on my phone. Sometimes when I go back to look at the titles I don’t recall the book at all. There are others that I could never forget. I find that there are only one or two per year that I love and will keep recommending to people.

Thank you Vicki for all the hard work of organizing and running the meetings and writing the blog reports. And thanks to all the readers who show up each month to listen and share. I appreciate it greatly as I’m sure we all do.

 

(Photos by Jen Foster, Jess Bootsma and Vicki Ziegler)

Now … get ready for our astonishing combined booklist! Multiple readers from our group have typically given considered attention to each title appearing on our monthly group list of lively and diverse reading. That doesn’t mean that every work on our lists is expressly recommended. However, rest assured that inclusion on our lists always means that our readers have devoted time and thought to each book, which counts for a great deal – don’t you agree?

• The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2025 edited by Hanif Abdurraqib
• Water of the Sky: A Dictionary of 2,000 Japanese Words for Rain by Miya Ando
• Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood (book and audiobook)
• Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik
• David Boring by Daniel Clowes
• The Death-Ray by Daniel Clowes
• Like A Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by Daniel Clowes
• Dog Show by Billy Collins, watercolors by Pamela Sztybel
• Here Where We Live is Our Country by Molly Crabapple
• The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin
• The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, narrated by various – 13 + (audiobook)
• The Brink of Something Beautiful by Bobbi French
• Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
• Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
• The Humans by Matt Haig
• The Midnight Train by Matt Haig
• Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen, narrated by Stephen Hoye (audiobook)
• Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
• A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz
• The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson (audiobook)
• All Fours by Miranda July
• Interposition by Kaie Kellough
• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
• The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (audiobook)
• sometimes, forest by Elee Kraljii Gardiner
• World Cup Fever: A Soccer Journey in Nine Tournaments by Simon Kuper
• Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
• On Sports by David Macfarlane
• Liberty Street by Heather Marshall
• The Divorce by Freida McFadden
• The Filth by Grant Morrison
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• John Candy – A Life in Comedy by Paul Myers
• Macbeth by Jo Nesbo, narrated by Euan Morton (audiobook)
• Granite Harbour by Peter Nichols
• Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
• The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman, narrated by Fiona Shaw (audiobook)
• The Haves and Have-Yachts by Evan Osnos
• Read Your Mind by Oz Pearlman
• Shy by Max Porter, narrated by Joe Gaminara (audiobook)
• London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe (audiobook)
• Multispecies Cities – Solarpunk Urban Futures edited and introduced by Christoph Ruprecht, Deborah Cleland, Norie Tamura, Rajat Chaudhuri, Sarena Ulibarri
• The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett, narrated by January Levay and Jenna Lamia (audiobook)
• The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
• Dinners with Ruth by Nina Totenberg
• Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
• The Astonishing Lives of Older Women by Moira Welsh
• The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade, narrated by Gary Tiedemann (audiobook)
• The One Day You Were My Husband by Rosie Walsh
• The Cold War by Odd Arne Westad
• Lover’s Cove by Oskar Westin
• A Hero Born (Book 1 of The Legend of the Condor Heroes) by Jin Yong, translated by Anna Holmwood
  + Chinese version
• Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

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

• Reading is having a moment? How reading became sexy? Um, that moment has been continuous and, well, reading has always been sexy. But “booksmaxxing” is perhaps the new way of saying it.
• In case you need more tips on how to read more this summer …
• “The archivist handed her a parcel wrapped in thin blue card and ribboned like a gift.” Enjoy this beautiful short film celebrating Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa/
• New York Public Library celebrates Knicks basketball with a booklist about the team’s history and basketball.
• The Wikipedia entry for The Legend of the Condor Heroes includes many of its adaptations (movies, tv series, comics, and more).
• Here is rain art from Miya Ando’s Water of the Sky book.

Our previous reports and book lists are always available for you to enjoy and explore new reads … 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, breathtaking momentum, they now boast almost 2,000 chapters … (There were around 60 chapters when we joined as the first Toronto chapter in 2017.) The SBC organization celebrated its 10th anniversary throughout last October … and our chapter celebrated its 8th anniversary in early November, 2025.

You can find information on meetings happening around the world and close to where you live. Every club is different in size, format (in-person, virtual or hybrid) 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.

And in conclusion for this month, our advice? Happily succumb to the power of books!