We all know what can happen with the best laid plans, don’t we? What we pondered at length last month with respect to resuming some semblance of in-person silent book club meetings was done so seasoned with the generous grains of salt we’ve learned to wield with all plans made during a pandemic.

Fortunately, not all best laid plans automatically go awry, either. We didn’t get to meet as we’d anticipated, but we did get to meet in ways we’ve come to expect and enjoy … and in ways we didn’t quite expect that we enjoyed immensely. This picture says it all.

Yes, we did get to gather in the park again – bundled up and expecting it might be brisk, and being blessed with a moderate, sunny, downright lovely afternoon. And no, we didn’t get to gather at our local venue, Press, but several of us stopped there before the park meeting for takeout hot beverages. While we sat in the park with the sun beaming down – which was splendid to share with neighbours walking dogs, exercising and playing ultimate frisbee, tennis and ping pong, and more – I imagined that same sunshine streaming through the windows of the rest of our group’s homes, where those not joining us in the park were observing their respective hours of silent reading.

Any chance Mother Nature could gift us one more such golden day in November …? We came away hoping and planning our bookish plans for next month.

Between our zoom and park meetings, we’ve amassed another gorgeously overflowing list of books. The titles featured in each report combine print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks (which are indicated separately).

• The Outlander by Gil Adamson
• Ridgerunner by Gil Adamson
• Amnesty by Aravind Adiga (audiobook)
• Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson
• One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
• Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
• The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress by Beryl Bainbridge (audiobook)
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (audiobook)
• Toby’s Room by Pat Barker, narrated by Juliet Prague, Kieran Bew, Finlay Robertson (audiobook)
• Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile (audiobook)
• The Red Lotus by Chris Bohjalian, narrated by Rebecca Lowman (audiobook)
• The Unlocking Season by Gail Bowen
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
• Milkman by Anna Burns, narrated by Brid Brennan (audiobook)
• Sin Eater by Megan Campisi
• Small Pleasures by Claire Chambers
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• The Skin We’re In by Desmond Cole (audiobook)
• Still Foolin’ Em by Billy Crystal (audiobook)
• This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga (audiobook)
• The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
• Old Baggage by Lissa Evans
• V for Victory by Lissa Evans
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
• 52 Times Britain was a Bellend: The History You Didn’t Get Taught at School by James Felton
• Sorry for your Trouble by Richard Ford, narrated by Stephen Mendel (audiobook)
• A Good Neighbourhood by Therese Anne Fowler, narrated by Ella Turenne (audiobook)
• Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gappah
• Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick
• Late Edition: A Love Story by Bob Greene
• How to Survive a Pandemic by Dr. Michael Greger
• Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi (audiobook)
• We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib, narrated by Parmida Vand (audiobook)
• New Hercule Poirot Mystery Series by Sophie Hannah
• The Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf
• A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
• Ghost Stories by M.R. James
• Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James
• Millennium Rising by Jane Jensen
• Indians on Vacation by Thomas King
• The Village by Marghanita Laski
• The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett by Annie Lyons
• Northern Light: The Enduring Mystery of Tom Thomson and the Woman Who Loved Him by Roy MacGregor
• A Girl is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride (audiobook)
• John Adams by David McCullough
• Beneath the Bleeding by Val McDermid
• Truth Be Told: My Journey Through Life and the Law by Beverley McLachlin
• Full Disclosure by Beverley McLachlin
• Dinosaurs on Other Planets by Danielle McLaughlin
• Read Me, A Poem a Day for the National Year of Reading, chosen by Gaby Morgan
• The Love Story of Missy Carmichael by Beth Morrey
• The Distant Hours by Kate Morton
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
• Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth
• How Happy to Be by Katrina Onstad
• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• Remnants of Mid-Century Toronto by Vic Pahwa and edited by Matt Blackett
• Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, narrated by Hope Davis (audiobook)
• The Joyful Vegan by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau
• The Secret Wife by Gill Paul
• The Cruellest Month by Louise Penny
• The Murder Stone by Louise Penny
• The Street by Ann Petry (audiobook)
• True Grit by Charles Portis, narrated by Donna Tartt (audiobook)
• No Grave For This Place by Judy Quinn, translated by Donald Winkler
• Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe (audiobook)
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
• Innocent Graves by Peter Robinson
• Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
• Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz, narrated by Lin-Manuel Miranda (audiobook)
• Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag, translated by Srinath Perur
• Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
• Modern Times by Cathy Sweeney
• From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle
• Ru by Kim Thúy, translated by Sheila Fischman
• A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews
• Irma Voth by Miriam Toews
• The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin, narrated by Meryl Streep (audiobook)
• Pine by Francine Toon
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
• New Deal Photography USA 1935-1943 by Peter Walthe
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• Army and Nation – The Military and Indian Democracy since Independence by Steven I. Wilkinson
• Road To Seeing by Dan Winters
• Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice for Living Your Best LIfe by Ali Wong

We continue to share our group’s successes and delights with readers around the world.

Silent book clubs are showing that reading alone, together, is good for us
by Kasia Delgado, iNews UK
September 29, 2020

We’re entering month 7 of the global pandemic and reflecting on how it has changed us. #silentbookclub looks different now. In Torino and Toronto (pictured) readers gather in person, outside, safely distanced, with masks.
from Silent Book Club on Instagram
September 28, 2020

Our previous silent book club meeting reports (online and in-person incarnations) and book lists are here.

You can also check out links to articles, CBC Radio 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 haitus, but many are running virtual meetings in different formats. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

A silent book club meeting with friends and neighbours, held at and in support of a local business exemplifies exactly the kinds of freedoms we are foregoing now to get through these unsettled and unsettling times … and is where we’re all going to want to be when we get through this. Read well where you are now, gather in the ways that are safe and make most sense, including virtually. Be well and let books buoy your spirits, make our ever changing and challenging circumstances more tolerable, and make the time pass swiftly.

As I mentioned in our last silent book club report (just a week ago when a modest contingent of us had a physically distanced but still vitally connected park meeting) we’re making tentative plans to return to our original silent book club venue. We’ve discussed with the venue what an optimal group size would be, the venue is attentively figuring out how to accommodate our request for a location for our table that will put us out of the way of other customers, we’re planning to visit again to test the wifi and work out the logistics of a hybrid in-person and zoom meeting …

It’s all being done collaboratively with thought and care, but who knows if we’ll actually be able to do it? Daily coronavirus case numbers are worryingly on the rise again in our area, and restrictions are being reapplied to private gathering numbers. Will that change for other types of gatherings? Dare we hope otherwise? However we hope and however the numbers look week after week, how are we simply going to feel? What feels reasonable and safe? That is constantly changing, and we’re all dealing with that change as best we can, but with differing results from day to day, week to week and month to month.

On one hand, how our book club will meet next is perhaps among the least of our worries. On the other hand, how our book club will continue in the weeks and months to come might help us to cope with the worst of our worries. Our beloved books, the themes and ideas and worlds and comforts and diversions they offer us, and the discussion, fellowship and encouragement of other booklovers might be what sustains us. That is what I was reminded of – profoundly – during today’s meeting, which returned to the online formula that has worked well for us in recent months. And that’s it, fundamentally – that’s the message. Our silent book club group, however we’ve managed to assemble, has remained comfortingly constant and is committed to constantly adapting. I sensed and heard real commitment to maintaining that constancy, in whatever form makes sense and feels right.

What we discussed during this gathering is a vibrant and varied cornucopia of reading and related treasures. The titles featured in each report combine print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks (which are indicated separately). Not only that, but this collection includes magazines, podcasts, documentaries and web resources, all with literary connections.

I took part in the zoom meeting from the porch of our cottage bunkie. The temperature by the lake this morning was 6 degrees Celsius at the start of the meeting, rising to a balmy 9 degrees by the end of the meeting. I dressed warmly, put on gloves briefly at one point and had a blanket on stand-by. The point of the exercise was to test if I could last through a whole meeting in cool autumn conditions, with the possibility I could encourage others to enjoy me for one more meeting in the park in October. I’m game if some of my fellow booklovers are!

• Big Sky by Kate Atkinson
• Calling Bullshit: The Art of Scepticism in a Data-Driven World by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West
• I’d Rather Be Reading – The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life by Anne Bogel (audio book)
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, read by Marilyn Lightstone
• Blaze Island by Catherine Bush
• Hellgoing by Lynn Coady (audiobook)
• The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• The Masterpiece by Fiona Davis
• My Passion for Trees: Judi Dench (documentary)
• Dickens’ London by Charles Dickens
• Actress by Anne Enright (audiobook)
• Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans
• Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans
• Old Baggage by Lissa Evans
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
• The Swan Suit by Katherine Fawcett
• Flannery – The Storied Life of the Writer from Georgia (documentary)
• The Folio Society
• We Don’t Need Roads – The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy by Caseen Gaines (audiobook)
• Granta, the magazine of new writing – issue 141, Autumn 2017 “Canada”
• We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib
• Dead Lions by Mick Herron
• Comforts of Home by Susan Hill
• Molly of the Mall: Literary Lass and Purveyor of Fine Footwear by Heidi L.M. Jacobs
• Shroud for a Nightingale by P.D. James
• Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones
• Stretch Facilitation by Adam Kahane
• The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis
• Northern Light: The Enduring Mystery of Tom Thomson and the Woman Who Loved Him by Roy MacGregor
• Bella Figura by Kamin Mohammadi
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
• Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver
• The Library Book by Susan Orlean
• Dear Mrs Bird by A.J. Pearce
• A Velocity of Being: Letters to A Young Reader edited by Maria Popova
• Brainpickings web site, edited by Maria Popova
• The Overstory by Richard Powers
• Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling, illustrated by Jim Kay
• Voltaire’s Bastards by John Ralston Saul
• Summer by Ali Smith
• Modern Times by Cathy Sweeney
• Ru by Kim Thúy, translated by Sheila Fischman
• Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
• Educated by Tara Westover
• Road To Seeing by Dan Winters
• Growing Young: How Friendship, Optimism and Kindness Can Help You Live to 100 by Marta Zaraska

Our previous silent book club meeting reports (online and in-person incarnations) and book lists are here.

You can also check out links to articles, CBC Radio 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 haitus, but many are running virtual meetings in different formats. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

A silent book club meeting with friends and neighbours, held at and in support of a local business exemplifies exactly the kinds of freedoms we are foregoing now to get through these unsettled and unsettling times … and is where we’re all going to want to be when we get through this. Read well where you are now, gather in the ways that are safe and make most sense, including virtually. Be well and let books buoy your spirits, make our ever changing and challenging circumstances more tolerable, and make the time pass swiftly.

Ours was a small but mighty gathering of members of the east end Toronto silent book club. We’ve been fortunate this summer to escape some of the pervasive pandemic isolation with some modestly sized and physically distanced book club meetings under the trees at the south end of Stephenson Park, a neighbourhood oasis. We’ve managed well-attended zoom sessions once or twice a month since the March lockdown – and those have been lively and ameliorating and gratifying – but the park gatherings have felt particularly vital and connecting. Sharing our books and reading together is what fundamentally drew us all together to begin with, didn’t it?

With hints of autumn in the air and tickling the leaves, it felt like this might be our last chance to meet in the park. Not only does it feel like we’re at a seasonal turning point, but who knows what turns and twists are ahead in the situation we’re all facing right now? It was some solace to see friends, and to share not only our recent reading but our recent and upcoming home and work and family challenges ahead, all tinged with the unknown.

We’re making tentative plans to return to our original silent book club venue, with a smaller and physically distanced in-person component complemented with an extended online component. It’s all being done with thought and care, but who knows if we’ll actually be able to do it? Is it possible we’ll be reverting and retreating as the days grow shorter? Dare we hope otherwise?

On one hand, how our book club will meet next is perhaps among the least of our worries. On the other hand, how our book club will continue in the weeks and months to come might help us – even just a bit – to cope with the worst of our worries. The world of our books and the fellowship and encouragement of other booklovers might be what sustains us.

Is this T-shirt not simply perfect? Thanks to silent book club member Emilia for attending an earlier meeting sporting this wonderful garment, and sharing the key link that means we can all purchase our own here.

Because the group was smaller this time, our combined reading list is somewhat more modest than usual, but still filled with wonder and gorgeousness and diversity. The list will blossom further in just a week, when a larger group of us meets again online.

• Blaze Island by Catherine Bush
• Antigonick (Sophokles), translated by Anne Carson, illustrated by Bianca Stone
• The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans
• V is for Victory by Lissa Evans
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
• The Inspector Green Mysteries by Barbara Fradkin
• Plainsong by Kent Haruf
• Comforts of Home by Susan Hill
• Shroud for a Nightingale by P.D. James
• The Darkness by Ragnar Jonasson
• Orrery by Donna Kane
• The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis
• Bella Figura by Kamin Mohammadi
• Dear Mrs Bird by A.J. Pearce
• The Overstory by Richard Powers
• #thesealeychallenge to read 31 works of poetry (one per day) in the month of August
• Ru by Kim Thúy, translated by Sheila Fischman

Our previous silent book club meeting reports (online and in-person incarnations) and book lists are here.

You can also check out links to articles, CBC Radio 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 haitus, but many are running virtual meetings in different formats. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

A silent book club meeting with friends and neighbours, held at and in support of a local business exemplifies exactly the kinds of freedoms we are foregoing now to get through these unsettled and unsettling times … and is where we’re all going to want to be when we get through this. Read well where you are now, gather in the ways that are safe and make most sense, including virtually. Be well and let books buoy your spirits, make our ever changing and challenging circumstances more tolerable, and make the time pass swiftly.

We aimed, as we’ve done for the last couple of months, to have a two-part silent book club meeting today, first on zoom, then a bit later with a smaller group in person in our local park. Capricious weather cues and conflicting forecasts forced us to call off the much anticipated park visit. As disappointing as that was, the vitality of our zoom meeting – brimming with great reading and listening recommendations and stimulating discussion – was palpable and clearly savoured by all.

While the connections this month were largely online, our trusted recommendation network of book club friends keeps buzzing offline. That network extends to physically distanced discussions and book exchanges. We’re meeting and dropping books off at each other’s homes, and we’re spurring each other to head to library branches and bookstores, and to borrow and purchase online. In bookish terms, our “new normal” is a hybrid of online and offline opportunities to continue to boost and share our collective love of reading … something that has helped, in no small part, to navigate the many “new normals” with which we’re all contending.

Here is our brimming, buzzing, lively combined reading list for this month. The titles featured each month combine print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks (which are indicated separately).

• This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart by Madhur Anand
• Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Annappara
• The Arabian Nights (aka The Thousand and One Nights)
• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
• Homes: A Refugee Story by Abu Bakr al Rabeeah and Winnie Yeung
• Behindlings by Nicola Barker
• Life Class by Pat Barker (audiobook)
• Toby’s Room by Pat Barker (audiobook)
• The Expat Files by Ken Becker
• Immigrant City by David Bezmozgis
• The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
• Radical Acts of Love by Janie Brown
• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• Brother by David Chariandy
• Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles
• The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
• Had it Coming by Robyn Doolittle, narrated by Alison J Palmer (audiobook)
• American War by Omar El Akkad
• No Authority by Anne Enright
• The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens, narrated by Zach Villa (audiobook)
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo, narrated by Anna Maria Nabirye (audiobook)
• The Swan Suit by Katherine Fawcett
• 52 Times Britain was a Bellend: The History You Didn’t Get Taught at School by James Felton
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, narrated by Amando Duran (audiobook)
• The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
• We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib
• The Second Sleep by Robert Harris
• Plainsong by Kent Haruf
• Eventide by Kent Haruf
• Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
• The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
• Original Sin by P.D. James
• Need You Dead by Peter James
• The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff
• 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph
• The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi, narrated by Sneha Mathan (audiobook)
• A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost
• Last Impressions by Joseph Kertes
• Last Night in Nuuk by Niviaq Korneliussen
• Road Ends by Mary Lawson
• Blood from a Stone by Donna Leon
• Northern Light: The Enduring Mystery of Tom Thomson and the Woman Who Loved Him by Roy MacGregor
• I’ll Be Gone In the Dark by Michelle McNamara
• Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick by Zora Neale Hurston
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
• Weather by Jenny Offill (audiobook)
• The Library Book by Susan Orlean (audiobook)
• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny
• All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny
• My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
• The Overstory by Richard Powers
• A Short Guide to a Happy Life by Anna Quindlen
• Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson
• Traplines by Eden Robinson
• Blood Sports by Eden Robinson
• Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney, narrated by Xe Sands (audiobook)
• #thesealeychallenge to read 31 works of poetry (one per day) in the month of August
• A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert (audiobook)
• Beautiful Boy by David Sheff
• Summer by Ali Smith
• Crow by Amy Spurway
• The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel
• Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout
• Keep It Moving by Twyla Tharp (audiobook)
• From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle
• The Break by Katherena Vermette
• The Fat Woman’s Joke by Fay Weldon
• Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
• Pride by Ibi Zoboi

Our previous silent book club meeting reports (online and in-person incarnations) and book lists are here.

We’re pleased and honoured to have been interviewed about the silent book club concept and how to start a club of one’s own. You can check out links to articles, CBC Radio 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 haitus, but many are running virtual meetings in different formats. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

A silent book club meeting with friends and neighbours, held at and in support of a local business exemplifies exactly the kinds of freedoms we are foregoing now to get through these unsettled and unsettling times … and is where we’re all going to want to be when we get through this. Read well where you are now, gather in the ways that are safe and make most sense, including virtually. Be well and let books buoy your spirits, make our ever changing and challenging circumstances more tolerable, and make the time pass swiftly.

Many have likened their isolated pandemic days to the movie Groundhog Day, where every day repeats of the last and it all becomes a seemingly endless, blurry loop. But just as the protagonist of that movie works to break out of that loop and emerges a better person, the repetition of our current days is not without its benefits as we iterate and improve upon what turns out to be important. In its modest way, how we’ve modified our silent book club gatherings has broken many of us out of the distracted loops that have affected our beloved reading practices, and have helped to sustain us through the day after day of the current situation.

We repeated again this month what we did last month, a two-part silent book club meeting. We started online with a zoom meeting …

… and then some carried on offline with their silent reading at home, and some of us gathered for a physically distanced gathering in a tree-lined neighbourhood park.

(It was, by the way, utterly glorious under those trees. It was a 30 degrees C + day in Toronto, but it was noticeably several degrees cooler under the trees. The park grass right up to the trees was parched, but was still green right under the trees. In addition to the breeze swirling in the treetops, an occasional GO train passing on the tracks just south of the park also stirred up the air pleasantly and, surprisingly, did not distract from our reading. And oh, did I mention the beautiful hawk swooping overhead …?)

During both parts of today’s meeting, many members remarked that their usual reading tempos were returning. The rich and bountiful collected reading list which follows is clear testament to our rejuvenated concentration and enthusiasm.

The titles featured each month combine print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks (which are indicated separately). Interestingly, our members who particularly enjoy audiobooks (one member distinguishes when she has read a book “audio’ly”) regularly read and compare the print to the audio editions of a book, often with different reviews.

• Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Behindlings by Nicola Barker
• The Opium Clerk by Kunal Basu
• The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
• In Another Place, Not Here by Dionne Brand
• Empty Planet – The Shock of Global Population Decline by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson
• People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (audiobook)
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• The Cat Inside by William S. Burroughs
• Molly: the true story of the amazing dog who rescues cats by Colin Butcher
• Chicken Soup for the Volunteer’s Soul by Jack Canfield
• O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
• Brother by David Chariandy
• Self-Portrait in Black and White: unlearning race by Thomas Chatterton Williams
• City of Djinns – A Year in Delhi by William Dalrymple
• A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• American War by Omar El Akkad
• Nanaimo Girl by Prudence Emery
• Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich
• Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans
• The Butchering Art, Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris
• Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by BJ Fogg
• Out of Darkness Shining Light by Petina Gappah
• Early Stages by John Gielgud
• Loving Large: A Mother’s Rare Disease Memoir b
• A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
• The Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf
• Plainsong by Kent Haruf
• Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf (audiobook)
• The Chai Factor by Farah Heron
• Motherhood by Sheila Heti
• The Benefit of Hindsight by Susan Hill
• The Fallen Man by Tony Hillerman
• The Ghost Orchard: The Hidden History of the Apple in North America by Helen Humphreys
• Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones
• A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost
• The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time by John Kelly
• When They Call You a Terrorist – A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele
• Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver
• Road Ends by Mary Lawson
• French Kids Eat Everything : {And Yours Can Too} by Karen Le Billon
• Severance by Ling Ma
• Northern Light: The Enduring Mystery of Tom Thomson and the Woman Who Loved Him by Roy MacGregor
• The Bishop’s Man by Linden MacIntyre
• Dead Mom Walking by Rachel Matlow
• In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen
• John Adams by David McCullough
• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
• Circe by Madeline Miller
• Dishonesty is the Second Best Policy and Other Rules to Live by by David Mitchell
• Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
• The Red Sweet Wine of Youth (The Brave and Brief Lives of the War Poets) by Nicholas Murray
• Shut Up You’re Pretty by Tea Mutonji
• Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (audiobook, read by Cassandra Campbell)
• Becoming by Michelle Obama (audiobook)
• Broken Places & Outer Spaces: finding creativity in the unexpected by Nnedi Okorafor
• Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett (audiobook, read by Tom Hanks)
• Good Citizens Need Not Fear by Maria Reva
• Ladies of Liberty by Cokie Roberts
• Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
• Mr Salary by Sally Rooney
• Normal People by Sally Rooney
• The Five: The Untold Stories of the Women Killed By Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
• The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson
• The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter
• M Train by Patti Smith
• Crow by Amy Spurway
• Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J Ryan Stradal
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
• The Door by Magda Szabo (audiobook)
• Everything You Love Will Burn by Vegas Tenold
• The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• The Witch of the Inner Wood by M. Travis Lane
• Away by Jane Urquhart
• Forbidden Hollywood – When Sin Ruled the Movies (1930-1934 Pre-Code Era) by Mark A. Vieira
• Square Haunting by Francesca Wade
• Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh
• Educated by Tara Westover
• What Ho! The Best of P.G. Wodehouse

Our previous silent book club meeting reports (online and in-person incarnations) and book lists are here.

We’re pleased and honoured to have been interviewed about the silent book club concept and how to start a club of one’s own. You can check out links to articles, CBC Radio 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 haitus, but many are running virtual meetings in different formats. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

We’re starting to meet again in person, modestly and very cautiously, but not without justifiable trepidation that warrants alternative ways of gathering. A silent book club meeting with friends and neighbours, held at and in support of a local business exemplifies exactly the kinds of freedoms we are foregoing now to get through these unsettled and unsettling times … and is where we’re all going to want to be when we get through this. Read well where you are now, gather in the ways that are safe and make most sense, including virtually. Be well and let books buoy your spirits, make our ever changing and challenging circumstances more tolerable, and make the time pass swiftly.

Yes, meetings … we enjoyed two silent book club meetings in one day today. Each in their way was the pleasurable sanctuary of deep, green shade on a brilliantly hot summer day.

We started – as many book clubs, yoga classes, family get-togethers, not to mention corporate meetings, seminars and more do these days – on zoom. Coffee cups dipped in and out of the screens as we shared our latest reading, from home offices and living rooms and, delightfully more and more, from sunny balconies and backyards. The collective book list is gradually blossoming as we increasingly vanquish the distraction many of us have been suffering these pandemic days.

(Glenn Sumi of Now Magazine recently offered these excellent insights into the science behind why it’s so hard to read a book right now. I was happy to commiserate with Glenn about this reading affliction as he was researching the article.)

With the warm discussions and connections of our zoom session still aglow in heads and hearts, a handful of us then made our way to the park for a cautious but eagerly anticipated in-person gathering for some silent reading under the trees. Packing for this outing was a little more complicated than usual …

… but with a mask and hand sanitizer in the book bag, that meant I could stop in at our much-missed book club venue, Press books. coffee. vinyl. to pick up an iced coffee on the way to the park.

It was modest, it was physically distanced but it was so very wonderful to gather some of our silent book club friends to finally, companionably, utterly luxuriously enjoy our reading on the grass, in the gorgeous shade, in each other’s bookish company once again. (I’m getting a little verklempt just typing these words …) Our future discussions and compiled reading lists will probably continue to happen in part virtually, but nothing can be compared to the in real life company of fellow booklovers and friends.

• Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Annappara (+ audiobook)
• Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball
• Whose Water Is It, Anyway? by Maude Barlow
• The Book of Runes by Ralph Blum
• Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
• Growing Up Greenpoint: A Kid’s Life in 1970s Brooklyn by Tommy Carbone
• True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
• The Skin We’re In by Desmond Cole
• Pulse Points by Jennifer Down
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans
• Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans (audiobook)
• Old Baggage by Lissa Evans
• The Swan Suit by Katherine Fawcett
• Poetry of Robert Frost
• The Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay
• Poetry of Allen Ginsberg
• The End of Me by John Gould
• Florida by Lauren Groff
• Loving Large: A Mother’s Rare Disease Memoir by Patti Hall
• All True Not a Lie In It by Alix Hawley
• Benediction by Kent Haruf
• Eventide by Kent Haruf
• The Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf
• The Devils of Loudon by Aldous Huxley
• Molly of the Mall: Literary Lass and Purveyor of Fine Footwear by Heidi L.M. Jacobs
• Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
• Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
• The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Berlin by Jason Lutes
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
• Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro
• Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
• Poetry of John O’Donohue
• The Overstory by Richard Powers
• Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
• His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
• Mrs. Simcoe’s Diary, edited by Mary Quayle Innis
• Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
• The Rovers Return – Coronation Street Official Companion by Tim Randall
• The Reader by Bernard Schlink
• My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner: A Family Memoir by Meir Shalev
• Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
• The Secret History by Donna Tartt
• The Witch of the Inner Wood by M. Travis Lane
• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (audiobook)
• The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
• Educated by Tara Westover
• Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

You can always catch up on our previous silent book club meeting reports (our online and in-person incarnations) and book lists here.

We’re pleased and honoured to have been interviewed about the silent book club concept and how to start a club of one’s own. You can check out links to articles, CBC Radio 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.

The text I usually put at the end of each report still isn’t entirely applicable, but I’m still going to repeat it with continued optimism:

If you’ve so far enjoyed the silent book club experience virtually, are you tempted to experience it firsthand? 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. If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, check out the resources on the Silent Book Club web site, or please feel free to contact me for more information.

The sign-off from our recent reports is, I think, evolving and still very applicable:

We will wait until we can again fling open our doors, venture out and gather in our communities. We’re starting to do that cautiously, but not without justifiable trepidation that warrants alternative ways of gathering. A silent book club meeting with friends and neighbours, held at and in support of a local business exemplifies exactly the kinds of freedoms we are foregoing now to get through these unsettled and unsettling times … and is where we’re all going to want to be when we get through this. Read well where you are now, gather in the ways that are safe and make most sense, including virtually. Be well and let books buoy your spirits, make our ever changing and challenging circumstances more tolerable, and make the time pass swiftly.

I prepared for our latest silent book club online meeting in the midst of a literal storm. Rain was pelting down and the lights were flickering. I was so keen to do what I could to be connected again with my fellow readers that I had a candle nearby, battery backup on alert for my laptop and my phone at the ready to use as a wifi hotspot if our home internet connection dropped.

As I prepared, and then joined the zoom session with happiness and relief, I considered how the meeting was like a calm in the midst of the storm – in many ways, and in the midst of several storms. The continued waves of uncertainty, frustration, ennui and sadness with which we’re all contending during the pandemic are a form of roiling storm. And now, the veritable tsunami of protests around the world against racism and police brutality, and how these necessary upheavals compel us to confront our own biases and deficits of knowledge and understanding, are a storm like no other.
Reading continues to be a vital part of our way forward to greater understanding, insight, support and respect. Paradoxically, we are navigating these storms together but isolated – which makes our opportunities to connect with each other and with the words and accounts of those experiencing injustice so critical.

This latest meeting had the reassuring constancy of faces and voices, and of discussion that we all welcome and relish. We dedicated time to talking about the storms we’re riding through and out together, and the diverse books that help us with our ongoing education. It was gratifying to realize that numerous titles our group has already discussed and shared are part of that essential syllabus, but also humbling to know that we must constantly expand that list, seek those books, strive for that understanding. So, we will always be looking for eye-opening reading, adding to that list and sharing it, amongst ourselves and with anyone coming to these reports, interested in what we’re reading and discussing.

We debated a bit about whether or not to offer a separate reading list in this report, singling out the works that we’ve found elucidating and/or that we individually and collectively want to commit to reading more of. There are merits to both approaches. A separate list can give emphasis and prominence to titles and subject matter. One blended alphabetical list, as we usually present in our reports, passes no judgement, but indicates that by a title’s presence, it was given attention and consideration by at least one person in our group, and that title was discussed, considered and probably read by others.

Just because we are still largely sheltering in place, does not mean we need to grow complacent and remain in place in terms of our thinking and learning. Diversity should be integral to our reading all the time, never as a required reading / homework assignment type of thing. So, we’ve blended all the titles once again in our (we hope) always capacious, always welcoming, always enlightening book list.

• Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• The Calling by Inger Ash Wolfe (alias for Michael Redhill)
• Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
• Big Sky by Kate Atkinson
• Transcription by Kate Atkinson
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Bread Out of Stone by Dionne Brand
• Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
• Embrace the Grim Reaper by Judy Clemens
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• The Skin We’re In by Desmond Cole
• Kudos by Rachel Cusk
• Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
• A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
• Learning about Jane Elliott, including her Commitment to Combat Racism survey
• Old Baggage by Lissa Evans
• The Swan Suit by Katherine Fawcett
• Civilization: the West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson
• The Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay
• Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
• Less by Andrew Sean Greer
• Loving Large: A Mother’s Rare Disease Memoir by Patti Hall
• Benediction by Kent Haruf
• The German House by Annette Hess
• The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time by Arianna Huffington
• How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi
• Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X Kendi
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
• Unsettling Canada by Arthur Manuel
• Policing Black Lives by Robyn Maynard
• Full Disclosure by Beverley McLachlin
• Truth Be Told: My Journey Through Life and the Law by Beverley McLachlin
• The Progress of Love by Alice Munro
• The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht (audiobook)
• So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
• Rituals for Work by Kursat Ozenc and Margaret Hagan
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
• The Story of Captain Cook (An Adventure from History) (A Ladybird Book Series 561) by L. du Garde Peach
• Still Life by Louise Penny
• Mrs. Simcoe’s Diary, edited by Mary Quayle Innis
• Salvage by Duncan Ralston
• Invisible No More by Andrea Ritchie
• Normal People by Sally Rooney
• The Five: The Untold Stories of the Women Killed By Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
• Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (audiobook)
• Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
• The Witch of the Inner Wood by M. Travis Lane
• The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
• Indigenous Writes by Chelsea Vowel
• Black Like Who? by Rinaldo Walcott
• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
• The Nightwatch by Sarah Waters (audiobook)

You can always catch up on our previous silent book club meeting reports (our online and in-person incarnations) and book lists here.

We’re pleased and honoured to have been interviewed about the silent book club concept and how to start a club of one’s own. You can check out links to articles, CBC Radio 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.

Under the current circumstances, the text I usually put at the end of each report isn’t entirely applicable, but I’m still going to repeat it with continued optimism anyhow:

If you’ve so far enjoyed the silent book club experience virtually, are you tempted to experience it firsthand? 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. If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, check out the resources on the Silent Book Club web site, or please feel free to contact me for more information.

The sign-off from our recent reports is, I think, still very applicable:

We will wait until we can again fling open our doors, venture out and gather in our communities. A silent book club meeting with friends and neighbours, held at and in support of a local business exemplifies exactly the kinds of freedoms we are foregoing now to get through these unsettled and unsettling times … and is where we’re all going to want to be when we get through this. Read well where you are now, be well and let books buoy your spirits, put the current situation in perhaps new and fresh contexts, and make the time pass swiftly.

The sun shines, at least figuratively, any day that includes a silent book club meeting. That the sun actually shone this morning as we all prepared for today’s meeting was every reader’s favourite example of pathetic fallacy. Even though the bulk of the meeting was, as it has been for a while, online … the fact that (yes, Ducks, Newburyport was mentioned briefly today!) the sun shone as a few of us in the neighbourhood met for a physically distanced catch-up outside Press, the book / record / coffee shop, our pre-pandemic (and we hope post-pandemic) meeting place.

You can’t see it, but I was grinning from ear to ear as I got ready for that visit.

You also can’t see the smiles of our silent book club friends, but trust they were there as we enjoyed some neighbourly chat and showed off some of the books that are helping us through this challenging time.

While we’ve comisserated about the pandemic’s effects on our ability to concentrate and read, it’s been reassuring to see the tide gently turn over the course of our recent silent book club meetings to how our reading is influencing our thinking about current and future circumstances. One member talked about how he has been pondering his love of travel, how that is going to change post-pandemic and, interestingly, how a recent read has reframed some things for him. He described the children’s book The 79 Squares by Malcolm J. Bosse, in which an unlikely friendship develops between a troubled 14-year-old boy and an 82-year-old man:

“The old man introduces his new friend to the natural beauty and life of the garden in which he now spends most of his time. He instructs Eric to divide the garden into 79 squares, asking that the boy spend one hour a day in each square and watch life unfold — from the ant to the squirrel.” (from 1979 New York Times review)

Our silent book club friend commented on how that premise compelled him to consider the city block around his home, to travel it and examine it with the same attention as he would more far flung places. What revelations our reading provides us with, perhaps when we least expect it.

No matter how enthusiastic (or not) each of us is about technology, we all have misgivings about the amount of screen time pervading our lives. That said, I think all or most of us would agree that technology has helped to keep us in vital communication with each other, for business, community and personal reasons. As “zoomed out” as a lot of us are, we still don’t want to miss our family gatherings, yoga classes and book club discussions and even silent reading sessions.

What I’ve been delighted to discover is how we can “dial down” the technology, but still use it to allow people to stay “dialed in”, even blending in non-digital forms of communication to stitch it all together. For this latest zoom meeting of our book club, we invited participants in by good old landline phone – and I even extended the invitation to one participant with a handwritten note delivered to the mailbox on her front porch:

After leaving her that note a few days ago, it felt like a special kind of magic to hear her voice during today’s zoom meeting.

The fleeting, distanced visits connect us. The zoom meetings connect us. And our eclectic, lovingly assembled book list connects us to each other and to all other readers out there, getting through all of what we’re all getting through right now.

• Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara
• The Taken by Inger Ash Wolfe (alias for Michael Redhill)
• Transcription by Kate Atkinson
• Matthew Barney: Redoubt
• Black+White Photography magazine
• Life of Emily Carr by Paula Blanchard
• The 79 Squares by Malcolm J. Bosse
• If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino (audiobook)
• True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
• Bad Blood – Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
• A Lesser Photographer by CJ Chilvers
• The Untold by Courtney Collins
• The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins
• Research Design by John W. Creswell and J. David Creswell
• Younger Next Year for Women by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge
• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
• Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
• My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
• Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (alias for J.K. Rowling)
• Lethal White by Robert Galbraith (alias for J.K. Rowling)
• Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
• Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
• The End of Me by John Gould
• The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
• The Wisdom of Groundhog Day – How to improve your life one day at a time by Paul Hannam
• Benediction by Kent Haruf
• In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
• Children of the Land by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
• Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez
• Slow Horses by Mick Herron
• A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• Always Look On the Bright Side of Life by Eric Idle (audiobook)
• A Separate Peace by John Knowles (audiobook)
• Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It by Gina Kolata
• The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Vision Boards by Marcia Layton Turner
• A Hobbit a Wardrobe and a Great War by Joseph Loconte
• Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas
• Blowout – Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth by Rachel Maddow
• Full Disclosure by Beverley McLachlin
• The Progress of Love by Alice Munro
• Let’s Tell This Story Properly by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
• Purge by Sofi Oksanen
• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• Poetry magazine
• Salvage by Duncan Ralston
• The Baudelaire Fractal by Lisa Robertson
• The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
• The Five: The Untold Stories of the Women Killed By Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
• Beautiful Boy by David Sheff
• Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff
• Spacing magazine
• Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney
• Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
• Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
• Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson
• Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice for Living Your Best Life by Ali Wong

You can always catch up on our previous silent book club meeting reports (our current online incarnation and our previous, lovingly recalled, much anticipated again in-person version) and book lists here.

We’re pleased and honoured to have been interviewed about the silent book club concept and how to start a club of one’s own. You can check out links to articles, CBC Radio 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.

Under the current circumstances, this text I put at the end of each silent book club report isn’t entirely applicable, but I’m still going to repeat it with continued optimism anyhow:

If you’ve so far enjoyed the silent book club experience virtually, are you tempted to experience it firsthand? 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. If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, check out the resources on the Silent Book Club web site, or please feel free to contact me for more information.

And the sign-off from our recent reports is, I think, still very applicable:

We will wait until we can again fling open our doors, venture out and gather in our communities. A silent book club meeting with friends and neighbours, held at and in support of a local business exemplifies exactly the kinds of freedoms we are foregoing now to get through these unsettled and unsettling times … and is where we’re all going to want to be when we get through this. Read well where you are now, be well and let books buoy your spirits, put the current situation in perhaps new and fresh contexts, and make the time pass swiftly.

As we observed – in Brady Bunch zoom formation – in recent online silent book club meetings, reading just doesn’t feel the same or offer the same solace and escape as it did before the world changed as it did. But by meeting and commiserating and try try trying again, we’re finding the words and the pieces and the books that are getting us back to what we love. And by getting back to what we love, we’re equipping ourselves to cope with whatever version of so-called normal comes next.

During our latest silent book club meeting, scheduled as a surprise “pop-up” outside of our usual schedule that everyone seemed to appreciate, we shared the ways in which we’re working to get back into satisfying reading grooves. One approach that seems to be working is rereading past favourites. Interestingly, it seems to be the comfort of the familiar, although not necessarily comfort reads per se that is clicking. For example, a couple of us coincidentally are rereading the short story collection The Progress of Love by Canada’s Nobel Prize-winning Alice Munro – and oh, what we’re discovering/rediscovering! Ms Munro is a truly wicked and incisive observer of human nature, and of the passions and frustrations that swim not far beneath the benign and mundane surfaces of the everyday. And oh, how bracing and energizing it is to return 20 (er, or more) years later to reread what captivated the first time with age and gained experience and, of course, wisdom.

Silent book club members have always touted the magic of certain magazines – particularly for long form pieces and journalism – for keeping up one’s reading momentum and enthusiasm. The New Yorker and The Economist are favourites, and others have mentioned and shared copies of West End Phoenix, Arc Poetry, The Walrus and Popshot Quarterly, among others.

Here’s a little bit of what and where our silent book club members are reading right now:

While we all remain a little concerned individually that our reading enthusiasm and tempo is not quite what it was (but hey, it’s never been a competition), our aggregate book list is still rich, formidable and gorgeous. Here is the latest:

• Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I by Peter Ackroyd
• The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol J. Adams
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
• Books by Inger Ash Wolfe (alias for Michael Redhill) (audiobooks)
• Bad Blood – Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
• The books of Agatha Christie
• American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
• Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• The Economist
• Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman
• The Girl Who Reads on the Métro by Christine Feret-Fleury (audiobook)
• The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
• Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith
• To the River: Losing My Brother by Don Gillmor
• Benediction by Kent Haruf (audiobook)
• Small Change by Elizabeth Hay
• The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox by Barry Hughart
• Always Look On the Bright Side of Life by Eric Idle (audiobook)
• A Noble Radiance by Donna Leon
• Dumpty by John Lithgow
• Of Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• I Am Woman by Lee Maracle
• The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey
• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
• The Progress of Love by Alice Munro
• Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
• The New Yorker
• Guantánamo’s Darkest Secret by Ben Taub (in The New Yorker)
• The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht (audiobook)
• The books of Louise Penny
• Sodom and Gomorrah, In Search of Lost Time, Volume 4 by Marcel Proust
• His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
• Ghostland by Duncan Ralston
• Salvage by Duncan Ralston
• Every Part of the Animal by Duncan Ralston
• Stiff by Mary Roach (audiobook)
• The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (audiobook)
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith
• The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J Ryan Stradal
• On the Plain of Snakes by Paul Theroux
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
• The Witch of the Inner Wood by M. Travis Lane
• The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
• 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam

As always, you can catch up on our previous silent book club meeting reports (from our current online incarnation and our previous and lovingly recalled and anticipated again in-person version) and book lists here.

We’re pleased and honoured to have been interviewed about the silent book club concept and how to start a club of one’s own. You can check out links to articles, CBC Radio 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.

Under the current circumstances, this text I put at the end of each silent book club report isn’t entirely applicable, but I’m going to repeat it with continued optimism anyhow:

If you’ve so far enjoyed the silent book club experience virtually, are you tempted to experience it firsthand? 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. If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, check out the resources on the Silent Book Club web site, or please feel free to contact me for more information.

And the sign-off from our recent reports is, I think, still very applicable:

We will wait until we can again fling open our doors, venture out and gather in our communities. A silent book club meeting with friends and neighbours, held at and in support of a local business exemplifies exactly the kinds of freedoms we are foregoing now to get through these unsettled and unsettling times … and is where we’re all going to want to be when we get through this. Read well where you are now, be well and let books buoy your spirits and make the time pass swiftly.