In the week leading up to our latest silent book club meeting, I had the pleasure once again to scatter silent book club seeds via the radio airwaves. This time, I chatted in studio with host Wei Chen of CBC Radio’s Ontario Morning. Her show is the morning show for communities across Ontario that do not have their own dedicated local shows – but for all the real estate the show covers, they manage to cover smaller towns and regions and give their broadcasts a friendly, community-oriented feel. The show features a regular weekly book segment, and when Wei Chen contacted me talk about silent book clubs, I immediately knew it was a perfect fit.

You can listen to our chat here (starting at 41:20).

Will some seeds sprout and take hold in smaller communities across Ontario? Here’s hoping!

In keeping with that metaphor, this month’s silent book club was witness to the future blossoming of two new silent book clubs.

1. We welcomed a first-time visitor who came in from the Port Credit area to see a silent book club meeting in action, to bolster the planning she already has under way for a club in her neighbourhood. Judging by the panache with which she offered a couple of enticing “what I’m currently reading” zingers during the go-round before the silent reading portion, she is going to be a lively and inspiring silent book club leader once her group gets under way. Bookish road trip to Port Credit!
2. One of our regular attendees who comes from midtown to east end Toronto for our group is hoping to start running a new silent book club in her neighbourhood in the near future. Actually, her book club isn’t “new” exactly, just in its incarnation as a silent book club. She has been part of a traditional book club for close to 20 years – the book club itself has been in existence for 28 years – that was run, and clearly well, by a facilitator who is no longer able to run it. The rest of the club wants to continue to meet, so she suggested that they change the format to a silent book club. Not only is this an interesting evolution for a longstanding club – and we’ll want to learn how things turn out for them – but we won’t be losing a regular member of our group, as she still wants to be part of our meetings.

There are lots of great insights and revelations in every one of our meetings, but there was something special about what was shared this month. Many of the following titles were described and recommended so warmly, so enthusiastically, even touchingly … and I know as I’m compiling this list that many attendees are waiting for it impatiently, with bookish appetites and attentions sparked. Some of the titles (and we don’t give away which ones, as our lists are presented as is, for anyone reading them to judge as they see fit) disappointed, and it was nice to briefly discuss and commiserate about the rain that sometimes falls in every booklover’s experience. Finally, members shared how grateful they are for the group and for the new books and genres and subject matter they’ve explored through the group’s recommendations and encouragement. This bookish heart is aglow.

Without further ado, here is this month’s delicious book list:

• The Aftermath by Rhidian Brook
• The Central Park Five by Sarah Burns
• Fever by Sharon Butala
• The Perfection of the Morning by Sharon Butala
• Wild Stone Heart: An Apprentice in the Fields by Sharon Butala
• Into That Fire by MJ Cates
• Past Tense by Lee Child
• Gentleman Jack by Anne Choma
• Watching You Without Me by Lynn Coady
• The Truth About Delilah Blue by Tish Cohen
• Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles
• Heave by Christy Ann Conlin
• The Round House by Louise Erdrich (audiobook)
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
• The 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology edited by Kim Maltman
• 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
• The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff
• The Chai Factor by Farah Heron
• The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
• Learning to See by Elise Hooper
• Meat is for Pussies by John Joseph
• The Wheel of Life – A Memoir of Living and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
• The Grandmothers by Doris Lessing
• A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
• Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up by Dave Meslin
• February by Lisa Moore
• Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
• What Comes with the Dust by Gharbi M. Mustafa
• Becoming by Michelle Obama
• The Library Book by Susan Orlean
• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• Between Friends by Amos Oz
• Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
• A Few Green Leaves by Barbara Pym
• Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• The Gown by Jennifer Robson
• Finding Ultra by Rich Roll
• Normal People by Sally Rooney
• The Long Shot by Kennedy Ryan
• The Maze at Windermere by Gregory Blake Smith
• The Art of Dying by Sarah Tolmie
• The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters (audiobook)
• Educated by Tara Westover
• Wicked Wallflowers podcast
• A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

As always, you can enjoy our previous silent book club meeting reports and book lists here.

In addition to this week’s interview with CBC Ontario Morning, we’ve enjoyed other recent coverage by the CBC, on the CBC Toronto web site and via a series of interviews across Canada with CBC Radio.

In addition to the CBC, our silent book club was included in a late 2018 feature about silent book clubs in the international news publication The Christian Science Monitor. Enjoy the article here. San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich are featured in the February 2019 issue of O, the Oprah Magazine, describing the club’s genesis and extolling its virtues as the concept and clubs spread worldwide.

If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, please feel free to contact me for more information.

Thank you, as always, to Press books. coffee. vinyl., our bookish and comfy home away from home for all our silent book club meetings.

Heavy spring rain did not prevent some valiant silent book club members from meeting this past weekend. No readers or books were worse (or soggier) for wear, and even though it was a smaller group, the list of books discussed and read was still rich and robust. As usual, each reader offered capsule reviews of what they had finished or were in the midst of reading – positive or negative, always constructive. The list presented here has no rating system, just a link to either publisher information or generally positive reviews or informational pieces. The list is not inherently a list of recommendations, just a record of what was discussed. Mind you, each meeting’s list is a pretty good list of recommendations, as it continues to reflect a diverse and vibrant range of subjects and genres that might spark the interest of anyone keeping up with the club. And if you start a club yourself, I’m betting you’ll find the very same things!

(Photo by Jo Nelson)

• Protest Kitchen: Fight Injustice, Save the Planet, and Fuel Your Resistance One Meal at a Time by Carol J. Adams and Virginia Messina
• The Very Bloody History of Britain by John Farman
• The Neapolitan Novels (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child) by Elena Ferrante
• Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness by Ingrid Fetell Lee
• The Mare by Mary Gaitskill
• Every Note Played by Lisa Genova
• My name’s not George: The story of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters by Stanley G. Grizzle
• Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells by Pico Iyer
• Chasing Light ~ Telling Stories by Valerie Jardin
• Single Exposures: Random Observations on Photography, Art & Creativity by Brooks Jensen
• The Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series by Val McDermid
• Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up by Dave Meslin
• Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty
• The Long Way Home by Louise Penny
• Glass Houses by Louise Penny
• The Jane Whitefield novels by Thomas Perry
• Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
• Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
• Gene Smith’s Sink by Sam Stephenson
• Forge by Jan Zwicky

(Photo by Jo Nelson)

As always, you can enjoy our previous silent book club meeting reports and book lists here.

We’ve enjoyed some recent coverage by the CBC, on the CBC Toronto web site and via a series of interviews across Canada with CBC Radio.

In addition to the CBC, our silent book club was included in a late 2018 feature about silent book clubs in the international news publication The Christian Science Monitor. Enjoy the article here. San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich are featured in the February 2019 issue of O, the Oprah Magazine, describing the club’s genesis and extolling its virtues as the concept and clubs spread worldwide.

If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, please feel free to contact me for more information.

(Photo by Maggie Macintosh, CBC Toronto)

On Wednesday, May 22nd, I had the absolute pleasure to sing the praises of silent book clubs to CBC Radio hosts in St. John’s, Toronto, Fredericton, Calgary, Yellowknife, Victoria, Kelowna, Whitehorse and Edmonton. At the same time, San Francisco silent book club originator and founder Guinevere de la Mare (she and Laura Gluhanich started the first club in 2012 – check www.silentbook.club for the latest on the more than 75 chapters worldwide that are spreading the sbc love!) spoke to CBC Radio in London ON, Cape Breton, Winnipeg, Halifax, Vancouver, Sudbury, Thunder Bay and Saskatoon.

So, I hope that means that friends across the country will soon have the chance to enjoy what I go on and on about every month – right in their own towns!

Enjoy my (dead nervous) interview with Reshmi Nair on CBC Toronto’s Here and Now.

Thanks again to Maggie Macintosh of CBC Toronto for making all this possible (and for taking one of my all-time favourite pictures of our group, above). Many thanks to our friends at PRESS Books Coffee Vinyl, and to all the avid readers who have supported our very special book club and have been such great inspirations.

Although it was still cool, the sun was shining and trees were blossoming as I made my way to silent book club this morning. Part of its many pleasures is that our meetings are held at an establishment in the neighbourhood (PRESS Books Coffee Vinyl on the Danforth in east end Toronto), a mere 10-minute walk from home. So much is so good about silent book club.

I’ll save this news for my next silent book club post because there is an off chance it won’t happen, but I might have the opportunity very soon to share the joys of silent book clubbing before a rather prominent audience. Our club is working to manage the wonderful attention it’s received recently, balancing welcoming new members while keeping each meeting to a size that is still comfortable for all attending. If I get the chance with this potential speaking opportunity, I want to use it to emphasize how easy it is to set one of one’s own up, in one’s own neighbourhood. Silent book clubs are about books and readers, but as we have learned, it’s also about community, fellowship and even sanctuary. Whether this thing happens or not, I’ll expand a bit on the topic in my next post.

As I mentioned in my previous post, when CBC Toronto turned the spotlight on our group, another great benefit of the coverage was that it helped shed light on other silent book clubs in the Greater Toronto area and others that are re-inspired to give it a try. I took time since our last silent book club meeting to check out one at Famous Last Words, a literary-themed bar in the west end Junction neighbourhood of Toronto. (Check out their silent book club and other event listings here.)

At Famous Last Words’ evening silent book club gathering (ours at Press run on Saturdays from 10 am to noon-ish), I enjoyed a Negroni instead of a chai latte, for starters. FLW is a pleasantly appointed bar that provides a couple of corner tables – almost like cozy booths – at the back for their silent book club meeting. The one I attended had five participants in total, including owner Marlene. One participant, an amiable 30ish fellow named George, was visiting Toronto on business for the first time, coming in from Boston. He was clearly taking every moment of his visit to explore Toronto – including acquiring a Presto card and actually making his way from his hotel in Yorkville to an event in Don Mills, bless him – and finding a book club gathering was actually on his list – bless him again. Did I mention that silent book clubs bring together very special people?

The book chat portion of the meeting was brief but collegial, and the book reading portion was warm, comfortable and undistracted. Between FLW and my subway rides there and back, I got a ton of reading done that evening. I’d go back, and I recommend it to others seeking other silent book club offerings in the Toronto area.

And now, this meeting’s book list, summing up all the titles presented and discussed within the group this month. (Per last report’s comments, I’m definitely cooking up an idea for consolidating all our booklists into one searchable format – stay tuned!)

When we go round the table before the silent reading portion of the gathering, each reader offers capsule reviews of what they have finished or are in the midst of reading – positive or negative, always constructive. Our list as I present it here has no rating system, just a link to either publisher information or generally positive reviews or informational pieces. The list is not inherently a list of recommendations, just a record of what we discussed. Mind you, I think it is a pretty good list of recommendations, as it continues to reflect a diverse and vibrant range of subjects and genres that might spark the interest of anyone keeping up with our club.

• The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom
• Sofie & Cecilia by Katherine Ashenburg
• Homes by Abu Bakr al Rabeeah and Winnie Yeung (2019 Canada Reads runner-up)
• Welcome Home by Lucia Berlin
• The Wife by Alafair Burke (audiobook)
• No Bones by Anna Burns
• Canada Reads winners
• Watching You Without Me by Lynn Coady
• Black Apple by Joan Crate
• Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
• American War by Omar El Akkad (audiobook)
• Next Episode by B.D. Ferguson
• Lonely Planet’s Guide to Travel Writing by Don George
• The Assault on Reason by Al Gore
• 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist
• The Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf (audiobook)
• Girl of the Southern Sea by Michelle Kadarusman
• Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
• Belonging by Nora Krug
• The Wheel of Life – A Memoir of Living and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
• Deep River Night by Patrick Lane (audiobook)
• No Time to Spare – Thinking About What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Spiderweb by Penelope Lively (audiobook)
• The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Girls by Mary S. Lovell
• Randy Craig Mysteries by Janice MacDonald
• Cast Iron by Peter May
• Three Silent Things by Margaret Mayhew
• The Path Between the Seas – The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914 by David McCullough
• Refuse: CanLit in Ruins edited by Hannah McGregor, Julie Rak, and Erin Wunker
• I Called Him Necktie by Milena Michiko Flašar, translated by Sheila Dickie
• February by Lisa Moore
• Roadmap to Hell: Sex, Drugs and Guns on the Mafia Coast by Barbie Latza Nadeau (audiobook)
• In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
• The Library Book by Susan Orlean
• Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (audiobook)
• Women Talking by Miriam Toews
• The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe
• This Life or the Next by Demian Vitanza, translated by Tanya Thresher
• A Brief History of the Amazons : Women Warriors in Myth and History by Lyn Webster Wilde
• Night by Elie Weisel
• A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

As always, you can enjoy our previous silent book club meeting reports and book lists here.

In addition to the recent coverage by CBC Toronto, our silent book club was included in a late 2018 feature about silent book clubs in the international news publication The Christian Science Monitor. Enjoy the article here. San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich are featured in the February 2019 issue of O, the Oprah Magazine, describing the club’s genesis and extolling its virtues as the concept and clubs spread worldwide.

If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, please feel free to contact me for more information.

Thanks to everyone for their warm interest in our silent book club. The volume and types of requests have been unprecedented since we were featured on the CBC Toronto web site this past weekend. We’re flattered and grateful for all of them!

The charm and vitality of silent book club meetings comes from the size of the group and setting in which the meetings are held. To accommodate potentially many more attendees, we’re assessing our capacity so all can get to enjoy what a silent book club is all about.

If you’re interested in attending a future meeting, please email sbc@ziegler.ca and give us permission to place you on our communications list for upcoming updates about future meetings, as well as news about other silent book club chapters and events that are in the works.

In the mean time, enjoy the chronicle of our silent book club here.

(Photo by Maggie Macintosh, CBC Toronto)

(Photo by Maggie Macintosh, CBC Toronto)

We had the pleasure today of welcoming Maggie Macintosh of CBC Toronto to this month’s edition of our silent book club gathering. She spent the morning with us and has crafted a lovely account of our meeting … so I’m going to let her give the silent book club meeting report this time!

Nice, eh?

Here is the book list which sums up all the titles presented and discussed within the group this month. If you follow our book lists from month to month, you’ll notice that some titles are repeated, which happens when a book gets passed to a new reader or another reader reads and wants to discuss the same book. At some point, maybe I should create a master list of all books discussed – eliminating duplicates – to get a sense of how many unique books our group has discussed since its inception in October, 2017. We estimate it’s around 300+ titles.

When we go round the table before the silent reading portion of the gathering, each reader offers capsule reviews of what they have finished or are in the midst of reading – positive or negative, always constructive. Our list as I present it here has no rating system, just a link to either publisher information or generally positive reviews or informational pieces. The list is not inherently a list of recommendations, just a record of what we discussed. Mind you, I think it is a pretty good list of recommendations, as it continues to reflect a diverse and vibrant range of subjects and genres that might spark the interest of anyone keeping up with our club.

New to the list this month: two people recommended magazines, and several readers singled out audiobook versions of books they are reading, so I will do my best to annotate titles according if they are discussed as audio versions.

• Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• The Survivalist Series by A. American
• Jackson Brodie books by Kate Atkinson
• Not the End of the World by Kate Atkinson
• Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
• Transcription by Kate Atkinson
• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
• Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• Milkman by Anna Burns
• Brother by David Chariandy
• Outline by Rachel Cusk
• The New Middle East – The World After the Arab Spring by Paul Danahar
• Blue Nights by Joan Didion
• Faithful Place by Tana French
• Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller
• The Red Scarf by Kate Furnivall
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
• The Mare by Mary Gaitskill
• Seduction by Catherine Gildiner
• Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage
• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
• America: The Farewell Tour by Chris Hedges (audiobook)
• Various titles by Carl Hiaasen
• Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
• Can You Ever Forgive Me? by Lee Israel
• The Black Tower by P.D. James
• This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay
• Under a Cruel Star: a Life in Prague 1941-1968 by Heda Margolius Kovály
• Passing by Nella Larsen (audiobook)
• Independent People by Halldor Laxness
• Nirliit by Juliana Léveillé-Trudel, translated by Anita Anand
• I See You by Clare Mackintosh
• Don’t Tell the Newfoundlanders: The True Story of Newfoundland’s Confederation with Canada by Greg Malone
• On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
• The Quaker by Liam McIlvanney
• The Bookshop of Yesterdays by Amy Meyerson
• Modern Guide to Energy Clearing by Barbara Moore
• Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism by Joyce Nelson
• Becoming by Michelle Obama
• The Library Book by Susan Orlean
• I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
• Careless Love by Peter Robinson
• The Gown by Jennifer Robson
• Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
• Martin John by Anakana Schofield
• Take Us to Your Chief by Drew Hayden Taylor
• Keeper’n Me by Richard Wagamese
• One Native Life by Richard Wagamese
• Ragged Company by Richard Wagamese
• Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
• Embers by Richard Wagamese
• The Walrus magazine
• West End Phoenix magazine
• Educated by Tara Westover
• A Killer in King’s Cove, Death in a Darkening Mist + more by Iona Whishaw
• The Synchronicity Key by David Wilcock
• Reproduction by Ian Williams
• Red China Blues by Jan Wong

Enjoy our previous silent book club meeting reports and book lists here.

In addition to the coverage of this month’s meeting by CBC Toronto, our silent book club was included in a late 2018 feature about silent book clubs in the international news publication The Christian Science Monitor. Enjoy the article here. San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich are featured in the February 2019 issue of O, the Oprah Magazine, describing the club’s genesis and extolling its virtues (if we haven’t done that enough here!) as the concept and clubs spread worldwide.

If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, please feel free to contact me for more information.

Winter returned to Toronto with a frigid vengeance this Saturday morning. Us silent book clubbers didn’t notice it at the time, mind you, so wrapped up were we in the company of other readers and our wonderful books, in cozy book/coffee shop Press. I’m confident silent book club is going to see us through a harsh winter, if that’s what we now have before us, judging by today’s meeting’s record attendance, which included four new participants.

Today’s recap was a nice blend of revisits with books that are making their rounds from reader to reader – again, testament to the trust in tastes and recommendations this group has fostered – with a cavalcade of new and varied titles. So let’s get right to the book list which, as always, encompasses all titles presented and discussed within the group. Each reader offers capsule positive, negative or mixed – always refreshingly constructive – reviews. Our list as I present it here has no rating system, just a link to either publisher information or generally positive reviews or informational pieces. The list is not inherently a list of recommendations, just a record of what we discussed. The list continues to reflect a diverse and vibrant range of subjects and genres that might spark the interest of anyone keeping up with our club.

• This Wound is a World by Billy-Ray Belcourt
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• Milkman by Anna Burns
• The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie
• The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side by Agatha Christie
• Heartbreaker by Claudia Dey
• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
• The Art of Fiction by John Gardner
• The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
• Woods Cop Mysteries by Joseph Heywood
• Harder Ground by Joseph Heywood
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Lightfoot by Nicholas Jennings
• Independent People by Halldor Laxness
• Get in Trouble by Kelly Link
• The Lost Vintage by Ann Mah
• Get the Picture – A Personal History of Photojournalism by John G. Morris
• Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
• Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
• There There by Tommy Orange
• Why Religion? by Elaine Pagels
• Foe by Iain Reid
• Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
• Red Joan by Jennie Rooney
• Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
• Rembrandt’s Eyes by Simon Schama
• Animal Liberation by Peter Singer
• Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga
• Take Us to Your Chief by Drew Hayden Taylor
• Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
• Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
• Affinity by Sarah Waters
• Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
• Educated by Tara Westover
• The Hidden Life of Trees, What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben
• The Woo Woo by Lindsay Wong

I can hardly wait to see who joins us – books and people – next meeting!

As always, you can enjoy our previous silent book club meeting reports and book lists here.

Our silent book club was included in a recent feature about silent book clubs in the international news publication The Christian Science Monitor. Enjoy the article here. San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich are featured in the February 2019 issue of O, the Oprah Magazine, describing the club’s genesis and extolling its virtues (if we haven’t done that enough here!) as the concept and clubs spread worldwide.

If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, please feel free to contact me for more information.