“Now I know the truth: what matters is what you experience while reading, the states of feeling that the story evokes, the questions that rise to your mind, rather than the fictional events described.”

from The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez. Copyright © 2023 / quoted by Christian Bauman (@baumansbrain on Twitter) as his December 31, 2023 #SundaySentence

Part of what I experience while reading is not on the page proper. It’s the company of who I am reading with, and their subtle but powerful presence as they focus on the words in front of them, imbues the words in front of me with an incomparable glow. The silence belies the states of feeling we’ve immersed ourselves in, the worlds and minds in which we’re blissfully venturing, possibly but willingly lost. The company of readers – the people we love and the people with whom we share this love – is a rare, rich and utterly special fellowship.

We enjoyed five silent book club meetings this month: three virtual meet-ups between the east end and midtown Toronto groups (where the online boundaries extend to Wales, New Jersey and Edmonton), and two in-person gatherings at a couple of lovely Danforth coffee shops. Those last two meetings in particular reminded me potently of the importance of that companionable silence.

So, I’m not going to ramble on as I usually do in these blog posts. The silence says it all …

Once again, I can pretty much guarantee you’re going to love our group’s latest combined book list, collecting up books mentioned and discussed by the end of our December 2023 meetings. Each list reflects the reading of many of our members, so dedicated to the group that they regularly 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 usually 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. Inclusion on this list always means that a title has been given thoughtful consideration and attention by our readers, which you can be assured counts for a lot.

• Africa Solo by Mark Beaumont
• Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
• Biblioasis Christmas Ghost Stories
• This Road I Ride: Sometimes It Takes Losing Everything to Find Yourself by Juliana Buhring
• Finna (LitenVerse, #1) by Nino Cipri
• Ghost World by Daniel Clowes
• Other Ways to Win: A competitive cyclist’s reflections on success by Lee Craigie
• The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin
• Sharp Notions, edited by Marita Dachsel and Nancy Lee
• The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré, narrated by Adjoa Andoh (audiobook)
• Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, narrated by Julie Teal (audiobook)
• The Breaking Point by Daphne DuMaurier
• The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez
• How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney
• The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler
• Chainsaw Man by Tatsuki Fujimoto
• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
• Water Always Wins by Erica Gies
• The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths, narrated by Jane McDowell (audiobook)
• Face It by Debbie Harry
• Some Hellish by Nicholas Herring
• Wellness by Nathan Hill
• The Future of Us by Jay Ingram
• You’re a Mean One, Matthew Prince by Timothy Janovsky
• The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun, narrated by Greta Jung (audiobook)
• Mindful of Murder by Susan Juby, narrated by Lisa Larsen (audiobook)
• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
• Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King
• Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
• Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy
• Close to Home by Michael Magee
• This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America by Navied Mahdavian
• Remainder by Tom McCarthy
• Paradais by Fernanda Melchor
• Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri
• A Holly Jolly Ever After by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone
• Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah
• Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp, translated by Jo Heinrich
• The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman
• Pageboy by Elliot Page (audiobook)
• Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, narrated by Meryl Streep (audiobook)
• The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques Pepin
• Beaverland by Leila Philip
• A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym, narrated by Mary Sarah (audiobook)
• The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken
• Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid, narrated by Julia Whelan (audiobook)
• Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney, narrated by Xe Sands (audiobook)
• Normal People by Sally Rooney
• In the Country of Others by Leila Slimani, translated by Sam Taylor, narrated by Lara Sawalha (audiobook)
• Valley of the Birdtail: an Indian reserve, a white town, and the road to reconciliation by Andrew Michael Stobo Sniderman and Douglas Sandersonn, narrated by Greg Rogers (audiobook)
• You Break It You Buy It by Lynn Tait
• The Blush by Elizabeth Taylor
• Her First Palestinian by Saeed Teebi
• A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas, illustrated by Edward Ardizzone
• Starlight by Richard Wagamese, narrated by Wesley French (audiobook)
• All the Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham
• I Am a Truck by Michelle Winters
• Agatha Christie – A Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley

Did we mention that the worldwide Silent Book Club network recently welcomed its 500th chapter?!? It had around 60 chapters when we joined as the first Toronto chapter in 2017.

When Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich graciously hosted a couple of virtual meet-ups for club organizers around the world (I joined a meeting that spanned the US, and included representation from Canada, South Africa, Finland and more), they revealed that in fact, the SBC explosion continues and they now are closer to 600 chapters!

You can always find our previous reports and book lists 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.

Happy New Year, dearest readers – the readers we are, the readers we know, the readers we don’t yet know, all of you out there, reading silently …

Our end-of-month go-round/roundup meeting with our silent book stalwarts happened in two parts today.

First, we had a morning zoom meeting. That more-than-Brady-Bunch (if you know, you know) set of squares on the screen exuded the usual (because it’s always this way) and special (because it’s always that, too) warmth, connection and insight that our group of astute readers always offers.

Second, we had a small afternoon in-person meeting at a local (to east end Toronto) cafe. If you follow our group’s updates, you know that the start of our now six years as a silent book club group brimmed with wonderful in-person meetings supporting local businesses and locations. Like many, we pivoted to online during the pandemic and garnered great benefits from that, including new reading friends far away and opportunities for meetings devoted to discussions about books in addition to time allotted to just read. But that power and glory of readers just connecting and reading together … well, we recaptured a bit of that today.

… and it’s all left me, group organizer and awestruck fellow reader, wobbly with delight. So much so that I didn’t collect a lot of images and illustrations of the experience … although I do think the picture below of open books, rapt readers bent over them and sunlight streaming across coffee shop tables kind of says it all.

Many thanks to East Toronto Coffee Co for a lovely corner of their cozy cafe, in which we happily and gently restarted our in-person silent book club tradition. We look forward to returning there again very soon!

In addition to our monthly go-round meetings, we continue to devote a second meeting every month to a bookish topic of discussion. The topic of this month’s themed discussion meeting was:

Do author interviews (before? during? after? audio/video versus print?) affect how you feel about that author’s books?

The short answer is “Yes to all of the above”. The longer answer is, not surprisingly, richer and more nuanced. Sometimes interviews affect our feelings about an author’s books, for good or not-so-good, meaning it might turn one off from pursuing other works by that author. But then again, it depends on the type and quality of interview and how thorough and trustworthy the interviewer is. (Also not surprisingly, Eleanor Wachtel’s name came up more than once!)

Perfectly timed for our discussion of this topic was author Anne Michaels’ interview on CBC’s Q. In it, she remarks on why she is quite private about her own life, in part because she doesn’t want it to intrude upon or displace the reader’s experience of what she has written.

You are going to love our group’s latest combined book list, with collects up books mentioned and discussed by the end of our November 2023 meeting. Each list reflects the reading of many of our members, so dedicated to the group that they regularly 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 usually 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. Inclusion on this list always means that a title has been given thoughtful consideration and attention by our readers, which you can be assured counts for a lot.

• Son of Elsewhere by Elamin Abdelmahmoud (audiobook)
• Masala Lab: The Science of Indian Cooking by Krish Ashok
• Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton
• Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
• Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein (audiobook)
• A Possible Trust by Ronna Bloom
• A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne
• This Road I Ride: Sometimes It Takes Losing Everything to Find Yourself by Juliana Buhring
• Where There’s a Will: Hope, Grief and Endurance in a Cycle Race Across a Continent by Emily Chappell
• On Palestine by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé
• Books by Jenny Colgan
• Other Ways to Win: A competitive cyclist’s reflections on success by Lee Craigie
• Sharp Notions, edited by Marita Dachsel and Nancy Lee
• The Librarianist by Patrick de Witt
• A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman by Margaret Drabble
• The Pachinko Parlor by Elisa Shua Dusapin
• Vita Nostra by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko, translated by Julia Meitov Hersey
• The Observer by Marina Endicott
• How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney
• I Only Read Murder by Will Ferguson and Ian Ferguson
• Notre Dame – A short history of the meaning of cathedrals by Ken Follett
• The Ensemble by Aja Gabel, narrated by Rebecca Lowman (audiobook)
• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
• Rebellion Box by Hollay Ghadery
• Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, narrated by Will Patton, Ann Marie Lee, Danny Campbell (audiobook)
• The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths, narrated by Sarah Feathers, Anjana Vasan, Esther Wane, Andrew Wincott (audiobook)
• The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths
• So to Speak by Terrance Hayes
• The Art of Being a Tourist at Home: Expand Your World Without Leaving Your Home Town by Jenny Herbert
• The Song of Kahunsha by Anosh Irani
• The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
• None of this is true by Lisa Jewell
• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
• So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan
• The Feast by Margaret Kennedy, narrated by Colin Mace (audiobook and ebook)
• Doctor Sleep by Stephen King, narrated by Will Patton (audiobook)
• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
• Rombo by Esther Kinsky, translated by Caroline Schmidt
• Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein
• In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune
• Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald (audiobook)
• The Only Café by Linden MacIntyre, narrated by Greg Campbell (audiobook)
• Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh
• Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy
• This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America by Navied Mahdavian
• The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
• The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield, edited by Lorna Sage
• Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Wonderful, Wacky Family by Amy Newmark
• What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez
• Rememberings by Sinéad O’Connor
• Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
• The Diary of Samuel Pepys (abridged / audiobook)
• Neglected No More by Andre Picard
• Outsider – An Old Man, a Mountain and the Search for a Hidden Past by Brett Popplewell
• The SunPedal Ride: India: 79 Days, 7424 kilometres, a Solar Awareness Mission by Sushil Reddy
• Tatouine by Jean-Christophe Réhel, narrated by Adam Kenneth Wilson (audiobook)
• The Hole by Jose Revueltas
• The Iliac Crest by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated by Sarah Booker
• Bad Blood by Lorna Sage
• Good Bones by Maggie Smith
• The Fraud by Zadie Smith
• Unchained: One Woman, One Bike, One Dream … One World by Rubina Soorty
• The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Gaetan Soucy
• By Heart: Elizabeth Smart, A Life by Rosemary Sullivan
• Roaming by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki
• At Mrs Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor
• The Mysteries by Bill Watterson
• My Murder by Katie Williams
• The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, narrated by Pippa Bennett-Warner (audiobook)
• Hurdy Gurdy by Christopher Wilson
• The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester (audiobook)
• I Am A Truck by Michelle Winters
• Magnificant Rebels: The first romantics and the invention of self by Andrea Wulf
• An Immense World by Ed Yong

Here are some extra book-related articles, resources, news and recommendations. 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 and chat.

• “Why not? Why sniff? Why not just like, congratulate people or cheer them on as they’re reading?”
  Our group can confirm: audiobooks are books, given attention equal to physical books in all our meetings and on our reading lists.
• The reader who spoke today about An Immense World by Ed Yong learned about it from Science Friday.
• Silent Book Club headquarters has some cute merch, if you need to confirm your bookishness quietly while still making a clear statement.
• Take a look at the New York Public Library Best of 2023 Lists.

Did we mention that the worldwide Silent Book Club network recently welcomed its 500th chapter?!? It had around 60 chapters when we joined as the first Toronto chapter in 2017.

You can always find our previous reports and book lists 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.

As a silent book club group member, I am so many kinds of fortunate. Not only do I wish all readers all kinds of great reading, but I also wish you the blessing of a circle of great fellow readers – close at hand and in person, and far flung, virtual and just as connected – to make all of your reading experiences powerful and glorious.

Congratulations to the Silent Book Club organization – a worldwide bookish phenomenon that means so much to readers here in east end Toronto – on hitting the impressive milestone of 500 chapters! Here’s the announcement.

Our chapter’s first meeting with 4 attendees was in 2017 (yes, it’s our 6th anniversary!) At that time, I think there were around 50-60 chapters worldwide.

In 2019, our Toronto chapter teamed up with Silent Book Club co-founder Guinevere de la Mare to do a bunch of CBC Radio interviews extolling the virtues of this approach to book clubs and reading. At that time, I believe we were telling interviewers that there were around 75 SBC chapters worldwide.

Our Silent Book Club group has gathered in local parks …

… gathered virtually during the pandemic, and kept up the zoom format for flexibility, convenience and because new members joined our group from around the world. (As Kathyrn Eastman will confirm, the eastern edge of Toronto now extends all the way to Wales!)

Our Silent Book Club group continues to meet for special bookish experiences, including our wonderful visits to Great Escape Bookstore.

500 chapters worldwide, all gathering in different ways, numbers of readers and settings, means that more and more readers are enjoying a kind of bookish fellowship that has come to mean a lot to many of us!

This month’s “go round” silent book club meeting offered up another intriguing recurring observation. Almost to a person, each reader reported that something about their recent reading surprised them – mostly pleasantly, but not always.

Do we / should we always go into our reading with expectations? If so, are those expectations set by our previous experiences with that author or publisher, by awards conferred or good reviews garnered that suggest a certain standard or quality to the work, by recommendations from trusted sources (such as a really great group of book club members?) Or, might we head into the pages of a particular book with lowered expectations because you don’t trust the recommendation or recommendations, but feel obliged to read the book for some reason? And then – oh my! – the reading experience is better than you expected?

Do obligatory reads take the joy out of the reading experience … even if there’s the chance the book you really didn’t want to read might reward your efforts? Is it even possible to open (or start playing/streaming) any book with truly no expectations?

That recurring comment or allusion, and the cascade of questions it provokes, just might become the topic for further discussion at our next themed discussion meeting. That’s what happened last month, when the amusing and enigmatic title Duck Eats Yeast, Quacks, Explodes; Man Loses Eye led to a discussion of how sometimes an alluring title, an enchanting book cover design, or a wonderfully tactile, well-constructed book object draws us in to, perhaps, an enchanting reading experience …

I was so absorbed in this latest discussion (we’ve scheduled them mid-month every month since the start of this year) that I didn’t keep complete notes, but some observations and examples jumped out of what little I did scribble down:

• Really good book cover design makes you want to climb into the picture.
• Do beautiful book covers make you purchase those books? Well, did beautiful record album covers ever make you purchase those albums?
• Someone cited Zandra Rhodes’ cover of Treasures of Time by Penelope Lively as a favourite.
• Another book club member cited the striking cover of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley as a favourite.
• Another book club member praised the bright and intricate mosaic design of The Lost Letters of William Woolf by Helen Cullen.
• Over decades and generations, the Rupert annuals have a pleasing, comforting and consistent aesthetic.
• And for something completely different, but completely entrancing, take a look at Lit Hub’s 12 Best Book Covers of June, 2023.

Here is our group’s latest, always tempting and yes, often surprising combined book list, gathering up books mentioned and discussed at our end of June meeting, plus some mentioned in passing during our mid-month themed discussion. (You are probably going to have to click on every link to check each book’s cover!) 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. It always means that a title has been given thoughtful consideration and attention by our readers, which counts for a lot.

• A Spell of Good Things by Ayobami Adebayo
• Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen
• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, narrated by full cast (audiobook)
• The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, narrated by Laural Merlington (audiobook)
• Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood, narrated by Margaret Atwood & 7 others (audiobook)
• Humanly Possible by Sarah Bakewell
• Griffin and Sabine by Nick Bantock
• Duck Eats Yeast, Quacks, Explodes; Man Loses Eye by Gary Barwin & Lillian Necakov
• Exit by Belinda Bauer
• spill simmer falter wither by Sara Baume
• The Postcard by Anne Berest, narrated by Barrie Kealoha (audiobook)
• Strong Female Character by Fern Brady
• Carering by Daisy Buchanan
• Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum, narrated by Jorjeana Marie (audiobook)
• The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa, narrated by Joy Osmanski (audiobook)
• Mercy Gene by JD Derbyshire
• Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott (audiobook)
• The Great War by Marc Ferro
• Peace Talks by Tim Finch
• Fruit by Brian Francis
• Travelling In, Travelling Out: A Book of Unexpected Journeys by Namita Gokhale, Mishi Saran
• Coffee First, Then the World: One Woman’s Record-Breaking Pedal Around the Planet by Jenny Graham
• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
• Not the Apocalypse I Was Hoping For by Leslie Greentree
• You Are Here – Around the World in 92 Minutes by Chris Hadfield
• Force of Nature by Jane Harper
• Exiles by Jane Harper
• The Other Black Girl: A Novel by Zakiya Dalila Harris, narrated by Aja Naomi King, with Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Heather Alicia Simms, & Bahni Turpin (audiobook)
• A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes (audiobook and ebook)
• The Story of Us by Catherine Hernandez
• The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson
• The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys
• We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter, narrated by Kathleen Gati, Robert Fass (audiobook)
• Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka, translated by Sam Malissa, narrated by Pun Bandhu (audiobook)
• Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
• A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee by Lorraine Johnson
• The Perfumist of Paris by Alka Joshi
• Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, What Inuit Have Always Known to Be True, edited by Joe Karetak, Frank Tester, and Shirley Tagalik
• Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan
• Foster by Claire Keegan, narrated by Aoife McMahon (audiobook)
• The Dutch Wife by Ellen Keith
• The Dutch Orphan by Ellen Keith
• The Night Ship by Jess Kidd
• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us by Colleen Kinder
• This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger
• Diary of An Invasion by Andrey Kurkov, narrated by David Aranovitch (audiobook)
• Eavesdropping by Stephen Kuusisto
• Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger, narrated by Kinsale Hueston (audiobook)
• The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• Severance by Ling Ma
• The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
• The Second-Worst Restaurant in France by Alexander McCall Smith, narrated by Timothy Ackroyd (audiobook)
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
• The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, narrated by MacLeod Andrews & Julia Whelan (audiobook)
• The Council of Animals by Nick McDonell
• The Birth House by Ami McKay, narrated by Genevieve Steele (audiobook)
• Losing the Signal by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff
• Hurricane Season by Nicole Melleby, narrated by Stina Nielsen (audiobook)
• Anne’s House of Dreams by Lucy Maud Montgomery
• Come As You Are by Dr Emily Nagoski
• Things I Learned from Falling by Claire Nelson
• The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man by Paul Newman, narrated by Paul Newman (previously taped) and 7 others (audiobook)
• Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
• Nala’s World by Dean Nicholson and Garry Jenkins
• Animal Life by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, translated from the Icelandic by Brian Fitzgibbon
• There There by Tommy Orange
• Timecode of a Face by Ruth Ozeki (audiobook)
• Tell Me How to Be by Neel Patel, narrated by Vikas Adam (audiobook)
• Invisible Women: World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez (audiobook)
• Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
• Boat by Lisa Robertson
• Coronation Year by Jennifer Robson
• The Guncle by Steven Rowley (audiobook)
• No Crystal Stair by Mairuth Sarsfield
• Conquered City by Victor Serge, translated by Richard Greeman
• Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
• Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
• The Nine by Gwen Strauss, narrated by Juliet Stevenson (audiobook)
• The Kind Worth Saving by Peter Swanson, narrated by Keith Szarabajka, Kathleen Early, Helen Laser & Micky Shiloah (audiobook)
• Em by Kim Thúy (audiobook and ebook)
• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
• The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verges
• The Call of the Wrens by Jenni L Walsh
• These Are Not the Potatoes of My Youth by Matthew Walsh
• Other People’s Houses by Abbi Waxman
• The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams
• Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams
• Still Life by Sarah Winman (audiobook)
• Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin

Here are some additional book-related articles, resources, news, recommendations and more. 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 and chat.

• A great article recommended by one of our book club members:
  Have You Been to the Library Lately?
  Librarians once worried about shushing patrons. Now they have to deal with mental health episodes, the homelessness crisis, and random violence
  The Walrus (June, 2023)
• Still on the subject of book covers … 75 Covers of The Master and Margarita, Ranked, With Comment (Lit Hub, 2017)
• ‘The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning’ Is Your New Reality-TV Addiction – If you loved the book, you will want to check out how Amy Poehler has transformed it for TV.
• Nala’s World by Dean Nicholson comes to life on Instagram @1bike1world.

Our previous reports and book lists are always available to surprise, delight, captivate, challenge and add to your tbr pile. They’re 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.

We hope your reading is surprising you in good ways every day!

Sometimes unexpected forces draw us into the books we end up reading. Who could resist, as one of our readers mused aloud during our latest silent book club zoom meeting, a title like this: Duck Eats Yeast, Quacks, Explodes; Man Loses Eye? We all thank Gary Barwin and Lillian Necakov for an initial enchantment leading, assuredly, to more delights and revelations we might have missed if that title didn’t reach out to us.

Striking book covers sometimes reach out to us first. As our group discussed earlier this month, sometimes the announcement of an award grabs our attention. Sometimes, those announcements do not impress us at all and in fact, might actively send us in other directions. The combination of kismet and trust when the minds of readers meet, virtually or in person, directly or indirectly, seems to have more and more power and influence over how we discover books and writers, and what we read next.

As I’ve mentioned in silent book club blog posts this year, we now balance our silent book club virtual meetings each month with a mid-month themed discussion. This month, award and reviews were on our minds. The passing reference to that captivating book title has, I think, planted a discussion seed for a future meeting …

Here is our group’s latest and always tempting combined book list, gathering up books mentioned and discussed at our end of May meeting, plus some mentioned in passing during our mid-month themed discussion. As you know, 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 (yes, often quirky and captivating!) 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, I think it’s fair to say, for other readers checking out 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.

• Son of Elsewhere by Elamin Abdelmahmoud (audiobook)
• Limberlost by Robbie Arnott
• If They Come for Us: poems by Fatimah Asghar (audiobook)
• Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson, narrated by Pearl Hewitt (audiobook)
• Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
• One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
• The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, narrated by Bernadette Dunne, Katie MacNichol, Mark Bramhall (audiobook)
• Maddaddam by Margaret Atwood, narrated by Bernadette Dunne, Bob Walter, Robbie Daymond (audiobook)
• Duck Eats Yeast, Quacks, Explodes; Man Loses Eye by Gary Barwin & Lillian Necakov
• Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton
• Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Womxn in North America by Sheima Benembarek
• The Most Precious Substance on Earth by Shashi Bhat, narrated by Meher Pavri (audiobook)
• Covid Chronicles: A Comics Anthology, edited by Kendra Boileau and Rich Johnson
• Openwork and Limestone by Frances Boyle
• The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte
• Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson
• Post Office by Charles Bukowski
• The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis
• The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
• Desperate Characters by Paula Fox
• The Lioness of Boston by Emily Franklin
• Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu
• The Promise by Damon Galgut, narrated by Peter Noble (audiobook)
• Messy Roots by Laura Gao
• Juno Loves Legs by Karl Geary
• The Crossing Places by Elly Griffith
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
• You Are Here – Around the World in 92 Minutes by Chris Hadfield
• Cockroach by Rawi Hage, narrated by Piter Marek (audiobook)
• Burntcoat by Sarah Hall, narrated by Louise Brealey (audiobook)
• Instructions for the Drowning by Steven Heighton
• Alice in Bed by Judith Hooper
• God’s Children Are Little Broken Things by Arinze Ifeakandu
• Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka, translated by Sam Malissa, narrated by Pun Bandhu (audiobook)
• Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, narrated by Sura Siu (audiobook)
• The Company We Keep by Frances Itani, narrated by Elizabeth Wiley (audiobook) and ebook
• The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, narrated by Shivantha Wijesinha (audiobook)
• The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw
• Eavesdropping by Stephen Kuusisto
• Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li
• Gold Boy Emerald Girl by Yiyun Li
• Must I Go by Yiyun Li
• The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li
• An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim
• Do Hard Things by Steve Magness
• The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
• The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
• The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
• The Only Survivors by Megan Miranda
• The Extra Ordinary Life of Frank Derrick, Age 81 by J.B. Morrison
• Welcome Me to the Kingdom by Mai Nardone
• Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah
• The Cat Who Saved Books: A Novel by Sosuke Natsukawa, narrated by Kevin Shen (audiobook)
• Animal Life by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, translated from the Icelandic by Brian Fitzgibbon
• The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
• State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, narrated by Nancy Baldwin (audiobook)
• I Will Die in a Foreign Land by Kalani Pickhart
• Teach Anyone to Read by Lillie Pope
• Lanny by Max Porter
• Homelands: The History of a Friendship by Chitra Ramaswamy
• Diagnosing Minor Illness in Children by Kerry Ryan
• Unless by Carol Shields, narrated by Joan Allen (audiobook)
• Testimony by Anita Shreve
• The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff
• Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
• Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld, narrated by Kristen Sieh (audiobook)
• The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
• The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark
• The Only Problem by Muriel Spark
• Scars and Stars by Jesse Thistle
• In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas
• The Lesser Blessed by Richard Van Camp
• Frost in May by Antonia White
• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, narrated by JD Jackson (audiobook)
• Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
• When the English Fall by David Williams
• The Odyssey by Lara Williams
• The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear
• Annabel by Kathleen Winter, narrated by Tandy Cronyn (audiobook)
• American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

Here are some additional book-related articles, resources, news, recommendations and more. 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 and chat.

• While our silent book club discussion group/jury is out on the influence of awards on their reading choices … well, we can still enjoy things like leading performers reading extracts from the International Booker Prize 2023 shortlist.
• The Bullet Train novel by Kotaro Isaka, translated by Sam Malissa and movie starring Brad Pitt takes place on Japan’s amazing high speed Shinkansen train.
• Worth repeating: Toronto Public Library’s Adult Literacy Services matches learners with volunteers who tutor them in basic reading, writing and math. The program is for English-speaking adults 16 years or older. One of our silent book club members very happily volunteers with the program and suggests others check it out.
• One of our silent book club members enthused at our latest meeting about American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. Here’s a great profile of Yang in the latest issue of the New York Times Magazine.

Our previous reports and book lists are available to spark interest, intrigue, entertain and add to your tbr pile. They’re 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. 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.

However books call out to you, we hope you heed those calls, make some great discoveries and continue to relish your reading. We hope our reading lists and discussions here are a help and inspiration!