Have I mentioned that the east end Toronto silent book club is very fortunate to have a sister silent book club group in midtown Toronto? Yes I have, but it bears repeating. (Here is founder Beth Gordon’s story about how it got started.

Midtown always was a short subway ride away from east end Toronto pre-pandemic, and they’re still close at hand via zoom. Here is their latest combined reading list, from a meeting just a few days ago.

• The Palace Papers by Tina Brown
• A Month in the Country by JL Carr
• Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark, narrated by Laura Jennings (audiobook)
• The Lighthouse Witches by CJ Cooke
• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
• Haven by Emma Donoghue
• The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy
• You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
• The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
• Hitch 22 by Christopher Hitchens
• Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth
• The Year of the Puppy by Alexandra Horowitz
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• Forest For The Trees by Rita Leistner
• Straggle – Adventures in Walking While Female by Tanis MacDonald
• Dopesick by Beth Macy (audiobook)
• Solved: How the World’s Great Cities are Fixing the Climate Crisis by David Miller
• The Whole Singing Ocean by Jessica Moore
• Anna by Amy Odell
• The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
• The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley
• Downfall by Robert Rotenberg
• This Accident of Being Lost by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
• The Victorian and the Romantic by Nell Stevens (audiobook)

As the midtown and east end Toronto readers would all recommend: find your cozy spot, find your cuddly reading companion, and enjoy your reading or seek out some of ours!

Even the smallest of our zoom gatherings cast an intense glow as we gather from our reading chairs, home offices, bedrooms, cottages, condo balconies and more. Not only do they warm our very close here’s and now’s, but those beams carom around the world, bounce back and connect us in marvellous, often revelatory ways.

Here’s an example of that wonderful caroming effect from our latest meeting:

1. Silent book club member in Wales describes and recommends The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley, a historical novel set in Peru.
2. Silent book club member in Canada duly notes, obtains and reads recommended book, falls in love, pursues the author’s other works.
3. Silent book club member in Canada remarks on amazing book to daughter, who responds “I’ve been telling you to read this!”
4. Silent book club member in Canada recounts this during zoom meeting while …
5. Silent book club member’s daughter is texting her from Peru …!
6. Silent book club member in Wales, also on zoom call, is thoroughly delighted.
7. Other silent book club members (and now you, reading this blog post, scanning down to the book list) add this book to their tbr lists.

Of course, the fact that the Silent Book Club movement boasts 300+ chapters around the world means that these moments of bookish connection are happening all over the globe. Because many of these clubs have gone from local to hybrid/online events, inviting booklovers to “visit” meetings in other countries, means the effect is blossoming everywhere – and readers, authors and publishers all benefit.

As always, our latest combined book list reflects the reading of many of our members, whether or not they attended the 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 (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? Not exactly or necessarily, but it means a title has been given attention and thought, which counts for a lot.

• Son of Elsewhere by Elamin Abdelmahmoud
• The Arsonists’ City by Hala Alyan, narrated by Leila Buck (audiobook)
• Burning Questions (Essays and Occasional Pieces 2004 to 2021) by Margaret Atwood
• The Winners by Fredrik Backman, narrated by Marin Ireland (audiobook)
• The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy by Chris Bailey
• Seven Steeples Sara Baume
• A Month in the Country by JL Carr
• A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier, narrated by Fenella Woolgar (audiobook)
• The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen, narrated by David Duchovny/Ethan Herschenfeld (audiobook)
• Care Of by Ivan Coyote
• Haven by Emma Donoghue
• Haven by Emma Donoghue, narrated by Adrian Kelly (audiobook)
• The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy
• The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
• Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana
• Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, narrated by Feodor Chin (audiobook)
• The Many Daughters of Afong Moy: A Novel by Jamie Ford
• The South Westerlies by Jane Fraser
• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
• The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths
• The Amateurs by Liz Harmer, narrated by Stacey DePass (audiobook)
• A Mind to Murder by PD James
• Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner, narrated by Juliet Stevenson (audiobook)
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami
• Foster by Claire Keegan
• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, narrated by Aiden Kelly (audiobook)
• The Sealwoman’s Gift by Sally Magnusson
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza
• The Whole Singing Ocean by Jessica Moore
• Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley, narrated by Joniece Abbott-Pratt (audiobook)
• Pursuit by Joyce Carol Oates, narrated by Andi Arndt (audiobook)
• The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman
• Orpheus Builds a Girl by Heather Parry
• The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley
• The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley
• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, narrated Alma Cuervo/Robin Miles/Julia Whelen (audiobook)
• The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare, full cast BBC production (audiobook)
• Spine Poems: An Eclectic Collection of Found Verse for Book Lovers by Annette Dauphin Simon
• Lucky by Marissa Stapley, narrated by Soneela Nankani (audiobook)
• Double Blind by Edward St Aubyn, narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch (audiobook)
• The Admiral’s Wife by MK Tod
• Vinegar Girl: the Taming of the Shrew retold by Anne Tyler
• Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler, narrated by Andrew Macleod (audiobook)
• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
• Places Lost – In Search of Newfoundland’s Resettled Communities by Scott Walden
• Crying in H Mart: a memoir by Michelle Zauner
• Red Clocks by Leni Zumas, narrated Erin Bennett/Karissa Vacker (audiobook)

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.

• Our silent book club member from Jersey City recommends this Virtual Poetry Reading replay from the Brooklyn Book Festival, featuring Kaveh Akbar, Victoria Chang and Warsan Shire.
• I spent a good chunk of my time chatting with Amanda Earl on the The Small Machine Talks podcast rhapsodizing about silent book clubs.
• Many of our silent book club readers are fans of author Peter Robinson, particularly his crime series featuring Inspector Alan Banks. Robinson passed away at the age of 72 earlier this month after a brief illness. The Globe and Mail and The Guardian offered fine tributes.

Our previous reports and book lists are always available to inform, delight, inspire and 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 currently on hiatus or modified schedules, many are running virtual meetings in different formats, and some are carefully running in-person gatherings again. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

Sending beams of book love your way, as always …

Our silent book club group’s collected reading, which we regularly share here, is not just lists of titles, author’s name, publishing information, reviews – although they’re still mighty fine lists we hope everyone is sparked by, inspired by and enjoys.

In its tidy, alphabetical arrangement, the list cannot convey all the intriguing interminglings and intertwined intimacies that our conversations lend it, but oh, they are there. That is the alchemy of our books, our readers and our wonderful interactions. Today’s meeting was no exception. One reader’s update flowed to the next reader’s, and recurring themes and connections emerged. Zoom might have its shortcomings, but it’s easy to see when everyone is smiling – some smiles tinged with surprise and unexpected realization – and nodding in agreement.

In that intoxicating conversational flow from book to book, from book experience to book experience, from insight to insight, here are some of the flashes that glinted off the waves.

• As instructive and empowering as reading a respected book on how to make a marriage thrive, is coupling that with a comforting reread of Pride and Prejudice. In fact, don’t Elizabeth and Darcy offer an interesting model for constructive or productive fighting, perhaps?
• One book club member observed that she’d ending reading a lot of romance and relationship books of late. Even more satisfying than how many of those books concluded, she remarked “I love watching relationships develop.”
• Another member commented on how she slogged through but did not ultimately savour a book with an unlikeable main character. Isn’t it interesting, though, how we might appreciate the writer’s craft in creating an authentically unappealing or unsympathetic, but that same craft might alienate us from the book?
• Revisiting books from our past can be a comforting return to old friends and familiar words. It can be a revelation, as we see and learn new things absorbing the same words at different ages, from different life vantage points. It can also be fraught, as words and how they are used are now interpreted differently, through different social, historical or other lenses. Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan Jacobs posits some challenging approaches to books from other eras, whether or not they are part of our personal past reading.
• Reading aloud to a loved one is like your own personalized audiobook, isn’t it?

As I note with every report, our latest combined book list gathers the recent reading of many of our members, whether or not they attended the meeting. The titles featured in each of our reports combine print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks (which are indicated separately, with narrator/performer information where possible). 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 enough, to my mind, to say that another reader reading our reports and lists might consider it, too. Is that an out-and-out recommendation? Not necessarily, but it means a title has been given attention and thought, which always counts for a lot.

• Historic Shelburne by Sarah Acker and Lewis Jackson
• Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, narrated by Campbell Scott (audiobook)
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
• Lady Clementine by Marie Benedict
• O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
• Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
• One of Ours by Willa Cather
• Collected Stories of Willa Cather
• The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements & Onjuli Datta
• Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles
• The Lighthouse Witches by CJ Cooke, narrated by Eva Feiler, Lesley Harcourt, Jess Nesling and Joshua Manning (audiobook)
• Sweet Home by Wendy Erskine
• The Trees by Percival Everett
• Relic by Alan Dean Foster
• The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman and Nan Silver
• Come Closer by Sara Gran, narrated by Julie McKay (audiobook)
• Toronto Reborn: Design Successes and Challenges by Ken Greenberg
• Not the Apocalypse I Was Hoping For by Leslie Greentree
• The Blood Card by Elly Griffiths
• Now You See Them by Elly Griffiths
• 10 Days That Shaped Modern Canada by Aaron W. Hughes
• Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan Jacobs
• The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen
• Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner
• The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez, narrated by Teddy Hamilton and Erin Mallon (audiobook)
• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
• Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid
• Thunderstruck by Eric Larson
• The Colony by Audrey Magee, narrated by Stephen Hogan (audiobook)
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• Lessons by Ian McEwan
• One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston, narrated by Natalie Naudus (audiobook)
• The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living by Louise Miller, narrated by Jorjeana Marie (audiobook)
• Gathie Falk: Revelations by Sarah Milroy
• The Love Story of Missy Carmichael by Beth Morrey, narrated by Harriet Walter (audiobook)
• Home by Toni Morrison (audiobook)
• When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O’Neill
• The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman
• This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett
• The Messy Lives of Book People by Phaedra Patrick
• Run Towards the Danger by Sarah Polley
• The Heart Is an Involuntary Muscle by Monique Proulx
• The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks
• Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly
• Paradise Lodge by Nina Stibbe
• Intruder by Bardia Sinaee
• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
• Ragged Company by Richard Wagamese
• Places Lost – In Search of Newfoundland’s Resettled Communities by Scott Walden
• The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
• In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
• Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan (audiobook)
• We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker
• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zanier

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.

• “The pen is in our hands. A happy ending is ours to write.”
  Our group of readers joined in feeling with readers around the world at the sad news of the passing of British writer Hilary Mantel, whose historical fiction (two works of which won the Booker Prize), short stories and memoirs were much admired and beloved.
• Canada’s national newspaper The Globe and Mail is touting its newly reinvigorated Books section and coverage. We’re monitoring accordingly.
• The Brooklyn Book Festival, with in-person and virtual programs, is running from September 25 to October 3, 2022. Our Jersey City silent book club member will be there, and she is particularly looking forward to Chen Chen’s reading.
• Climate Week NYC from September 19-25, 2022 has an excellent reading list compiled by the New York Public Library.
• Cosplay: A History by Andrew Liptak, shared at a recent meeting, pairs well with this TED talk on cosplay.

Our previous reports and book lists are always available to inform, delight and inspire … 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 currently on hiatus or modified schedules, many are running virtual meetings in different formats, and some are carefully running in-person gatherings again. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

Wishing you reading that flows and riffs and ripples from one entrancing experience to the next …

“I love books where nothing happens!”

… and all the silent book club members shimmering in another magical zoom gathering smiled and nodded knowingly. We readers know, don’t we?

We also love to ensure our reading is close at hand, whether we’re home or going afar. When the email notifications for our latest meeting went out, one of the first replies was from longtime group stalwart Catherine D. She revealed that she was sending her message while on vacation in Italy. She said she wouldn’t be able to zoom in for the meeting, but would be reading in solidarity while on a train during the meeting time. She also revealed that, even after lots of good advice from a recent in-person in-the-park silent book club gathering at which she’d received lots of good advice on which books to pack for her trip … well, she still had to purchase more books when she reached her destination. Isn’t that always the way? She sent us a digital postcard – shared on the zoom meeting, of course – of her in front of The Almost Corner Bookshop in Trastevere, Rome. We love everything about this.

We also clearly love carrying our books with us wherever we go – to the beach, for example, or to a shaded spot in the backyard. (How perfect that an Eastern Comma butterfly perched on one of our readers’ chairs in the backyard in a small post-zoom meeting gathering.)

Most movingly, the images of people who value books carrying them to keep the books safe, to preserve books, to share books with others, emerged as an interesting motif in our discussions today. In 1937 Nanking in The Library of Legends by Janie Chang, the protagonist and her university classmates and professors carry the eponymous books 1,000 miles to safety in China’s western provinces when their city is bombed. In 1930s Appalachia, a traveling librarian in The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson rides by mule to bring books and periodicals to isolated rural Kentuckians. Although she was not conventionally literate herself, medieval wife, mother, and mystic Margery Kempe convinced those who could write to tell her story in what is considered the earliest autobiography written in the English language. Her voice from the early 1400s is carried to us today in book form.

THE FIRE OF LOVE
fig. 1 Add. MS 61823, f. 43v. Reproduced with the permission of the British Library.
In figure 1 Margery’s first experience of ‘þe fyer of loue’ (88/32) is boldly noted with a stylised drawing of flames, and a Latin gloss: ‘ignis diuini amoris … so s[eint] {or scilicet?} R[ichard] [of] Hampall’.

We love to share our book discoveries and challenges, and carry them to you here.

As always, our latest combined book list – this one is immense! – gathers the recent reading of many of our members, whether they attended the meeting in question or not. When I send out meeting notifications to the group, I get swift and diligent replies back and whether or not someone is joining the meeting, they regularly send their recent reading.

The titles featured in each of our reports combine print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks (which are indicated separately, with narrator/performer information where possible). 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 enough, to my mind, to say that another reader reading our reports and lists might consider it, too. Is that an out-and-out recommendation? Not necessarily, but it means a title has been given attention and thought, and that always counts for a lot.

• Drawing Restraint Vol. 1 1987-2002 by Matthew Barney
• Either/Or by Elif Batuman
• The Possessed by Elif Batuman (audiobook)
• Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut, compiled and edited by John Bennett and Susan Rowley
• Operation Tropical Affair by Kimberli A Bindschatel
• Villette by Charlotte Bronte
• The Palace Papers by Tina Brown
• And the Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave
• The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan
• The Library of Legends by Janie Chang
• Reacher: Killing Floor by Lee Childs
• The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman, narrated by Kristin Atherton (audiobook)
• The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
• The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig
• Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton
• American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
• The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont
• Man or Mango? by Lucy Ellmann
• In the Margins by Elena Ferrante
• A Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley (audiobook)
• From the Fifteenth District: a novella and eight short stories by Mavis Gallant
• Mount Pleasant by Don Gillmor
• The Girl in the Middle by Anais Granofsky
• Smoke and Mirrors by Elly Griffiths
• The Midnight Hour by Elly Griffiths
• A Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths
• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, narrated by Carey Mulligan (audiobook)
• Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay (audiobook)
• Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny
• Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry
• Just Like Family by Kate Hilton
• The Ladies Midnight Swimming Club by Faith Hogan, narrated by Flora Montgomery (audiobook)
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin
• The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins
• Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner
• Except the Dying (Inspector Murdoch #1) by Maureen Jennings
• 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph
• The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
• The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk (audiobook)
• The Vegetarian by Han Kang
• Walk in the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan
• The Book of Margery Kempe, edited by Anthony Bale
• Blue Portugal and Other Essays by Theresa Kishkan
• Palaces for the People – How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life by Eric Klinenberg
• A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson
• The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee, narrated by Orlagh Cassidy (audiobook)
• Poguemahone by Patrick McCabe
• The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale by Haley McGee
• Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English by John McWhorter
• The Fell by Sarah Moss
• Be Ready for the Lightning by Grace O’Connell
• I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell
• Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, narrated by Hope Davis (audiobook)
• The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny
• State of Terror by Louise Penny and Hillary Rodham Clinton, narrated by Joan Allen (audiobook)
• The Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez-Reverte, translated by Margaret Jull Costa
• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw, narrated by Janina Edwards (audiobook)
• Singing School by Robert Pinsky
• Bewilderment by Richard Powers
• Olive the Lionheart: Lost Love, Imperial Spies, and One Woman’s Journey to the Heart of Africa by Brad Ricca
• The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson
• The China Room by Sunjeev Sahota
• Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris (audiobook)
• One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle
• Where or When by Anita Shreve
• Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit (audiobook)
• Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel
• This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
• Singapore Sapphire (Harriet Gordon Mysteries) by A.M. Stuart
• Revenge in Rubies (Harriet Gordon Mysteries) by A.M. Stuart
• Learwife by J.R. Thorp
• Fight Night by Miriam Toews, narrated by Miriam & Georgia Toews (audiobook)
• Clock Dance by Anne Tyler, narrated by Kimberly Farr (audiobook)
• French Braid by Anne Tyler, narrated by Kimberley Farr (audiobook)
• Nostalgia by M.G. Vassanji
• Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
• When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
• The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
• Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
• Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong
• Red Clocks by Leni Zumas

More book-related articles, resources, news, recommendations and more are often inspired or offered by our members and/or come up during our discussions and chat. Here are the latest:

• President Barack Obama’s annual summer reading and music lists are always eagerly anticipated.
• This year’s Booker Prize longlist includes titles already familiar to our silent book club group, along with new titles to challenge and delight.
• Recommend Me a Book is an intriguing web site that helps you find new books to read without first judging the them by their covers. It offers up the first pages of novels without bias, and reveals the author and title if you indicate you’re interested. Even if you already have great sources of book recommendations – like, say, a really awesome silent book club group – you are likely to become obsessed with this site.
• Learn more here and here about the Almost Corner Bookshop in Trastevere, Rome, which our silent book club friend visited recently.

Our previous silent book club reports (for online and in-person meetings) and book lists are always available for you to enjoy and get some reading inspiration 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 currently on hiatus or modified schedules, many are running virtual meetings in different formats, and some are carefully running in-person gatherings again. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

Be sure to carry good reading with you, wherever you go!