The whole premise of silent book club gatherings is based on readers reading what they want to read, versus a book club dictating what everyone will read together). An interesting development in our group is that titles are making repeat appearances, a natural progression from a group of readers coming to know each other and respect each other’s recommendations. Further, some readers are having or suggesting side discussions to – wait for it – just discuss one title and delve into it more deeply. Oh my! Just like a traditional book club, eh?

I’m a reader, not a writer, so maybe I don’t have the gifts to express this precisely, but I wonder if we’re coming full circle in some ways because we’re coming to the same books through developing trust, not imposing taste. Over time – our group is over six years old now, with many long-time members – that trust has been nurtured both virtually and again, gradually, in person. Does it make some sense, perhaps, that our individual branches, roots and vines are intertwining? Just a thought …

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

* Reading challenges – do you take them up? Do reading challenges – presented by libraries, Goodreads, events like Canada Reads, or ones you and your fellow readers make up yourselves – spark and inspire your reading, take you in new directions, etc.?

One of our regular members is all about the challenges … so we were very disappointed when she couldn’t make it to the meeting. Wherever she was that evening, her ears must have been burning, though, because we referenced and praised her commitment to challenges throughout the discussion. Coming a distant second to that member’s dedication is my own taking up of the Sealey Challenge (a community challenge to read a work of poetry every day for the month of August) for the last three years. Beyond that, our group agreed that apart from awards longlists and shortlists and the like, our greatest inspirations come from … book clubs like ours, and fellow readers such as the ones with which we surround ourselves.

As always, I can confidently predict you’re going to love our group’s latest combined book list and will find more than one book that will pique your interest. This list gathers up books mentioned and discussed by the end of our February 2024 meetings. Each list reflects the reading of many of our members, so dedicated to the group that they regularly provide their reading lists even when they can’t attend a meeting. The titles featured in each of our reports encompass print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks.

Every title on our group’s lists means that at least one (but usually more) readers have given that title thoughtful consideration. That’s encouragement for you and other readers checking out our reports and lists to consider it, too. Does that mean every work on our lists is expressly recommended? Not exactly or necessarily. Inclusion on this list always means that our readers have devoted time and attention to a title, which means a lot.

• Aloud Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, edited by Miguel Algarin and Bob Holman
• The Bittlemores by Jann Arden
• Home of Sudden Service by Elizabeth Bachinsky
• God of Missed Connections by Elizabeth Bachinsky
• Things That Cause Inappropriate Happiness by Danila Botha
• The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan
• The Mountain and the Valley by Ernest Buckler
• We Are Mermaids by Stephanie Burt
• Living at the Movies by Jim Carroll
• The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll
• The Churchgoer by Patrick Coleman
• Sharp Notions, edited by Marita Dachsel and Nancy Lee
• Don’t Look Down by Hilary Davidson
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• Childhood, Youth, Dependency – The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen
• The Between by Tananarive Due
• A New Season by Terry Fallis
• The Art Thief by Michael Finkel
• The Magus by John Fowles
• Heroes: the Greek myths reimagined by Stephen Fry (audiobook)
• The Checklist Manifesto: how to get things right by Atul Gawande, narrated by John Bedford Lloyd (audiobook)
• The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano
• Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados
• Hidden Potential: the science of achieving greater things by Adam Grant (audiobook)
• The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea by Mark Haddon
• Sapiens (The Pillars of Civilization) by Yuval Noah Harari
• Weyward by Emilia Hart
• Directions for an Opened Body by Kenneth J. Harvey
• Time by Eva Hoffman
• Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson
• Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz
• Vladimir by Julia May Jonas
• Happiness Falls by Angie Kim
• The Gwendy Trilogy (Gwendy’s Button Box, Gwendy’s Magic Feather, Gwendy’s Final Task) by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar
• Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
• The Biggest Bluff: how I learned to pay attention, master the odds, and win by Maria Konnikova (audiobook)
• Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
• Enter the Chrysanthemum by Fiona Tinwei Lam
• The Collected Poems of Irving Layton
• Essex County by Jeff Lemire
• The Future by Catherine Leroux
• Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
• Kids Say The Darndest Things! by Art Linkletter
• Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
• How Canada Works by Peter Mansbridge
• Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
• The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
• The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue, narrated by Tara Flynn (audiobook)
• Dictionary People by Sarah Ogilvie
• The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman
• What Really Happens in Vegas by James Patterson and Mark Seal
• Edge of Reality by Jacques Peretti
• The Mountains Sing by Nguy?n Phan Qu? Mai
• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, narrated by Alma Cuervo, Julia Whelan, Robin Miles (audiobook)
• Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
• Come and Get It by Kiley Reid, narrated by Nicole Lewis (audiobook)
• Writing Home – A PEN Canada Anthology, edited by Constance Rooke
• The Lamp at Noon and Other Stories by Sinclair Ross
• There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness by Carlo Rovelli
• Love Novel by Ivana Sajko, translated by Mima Simic
• Love and Courage: my story of family, resilience, and overcoming the unexpected by Jagmeet Singh (audiobook)
• 24/6 by Matthew Sleeth
• The Coral Sea by Patti Smith
• Just Kids by Patti Smith
• M Train by Patti Smith
• New Selected Poems by Mark Strand
• Koko by Peter Straub
• Vinegar Hill by Colm Toibin
• Moccasin Square Gardens by Richard Van Camp
• Her Blue Body Everything We Know by Alice Walker
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
• Only This Blue by Betsy Warland
• The Right to Be Cold: one woman’s story of protecting her culture, the Arctic, and the whole planet by Sheila Watt-Cloutier
• Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
• Denison Avenue by Christina Wong, with illustrations by Daniel Innes
• The Fly in Autumn by David Zieroth
• Black Friend: Essays by Ziwe


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

• “We have all come across a book we were excited to read and have finally found the time to start but it is not gripping us the way we would like.” Kriti, a voracious reader, tackles Dealing with DNF: The Practice of Did Not Finish on her blog Armed with a Book.
• Can We Please Put an End to Overperformed Audiobooks? LitHub’s Maris Kreizman really doesn’t need to hear your version of a Cockney accent.
• ‘God forbid that a dog should die’: when Goodreads reviews go bad – Whether you use and find Goodreads a useful resource or not, it can definitely influence readers and writers.

 

Last fall, the worldwide Silent Book Club network welcomed its 500th chapter … and that incredible growth and momentum has continued into the new year. When Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich graciously hosted a couple of virtual meet-ups for club organizers around the world at the end of 2023 (I joined a meeting that spanned the US, and included representation from Canada, South Africa, Finland and more), they revealed that in fact, the SBC explosion continues and they now top 600 chapters! It had around 60 chapters when we joined as the first Toronto chapter in 2017.

You can always find our previous reports and book lists right here, growing every month.

You can also check out links to articles, interviews and more here – some with San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich, and some with us here in east end Toronto.

Learn more about silent book clubs via Guinevere and Laura’s Silent Book Club web site. You can find information on meetings happening around the world and close to where you live. Every club is a different size, format (in-person, virtual or combinations) and vibe, so contact a club’s organizers beforehand if you have any questions or preferences. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

Tying this back to the hint of a theme with which I started this blog post, as the organization grows, so grows each chapter … and the branches, the roots, the vines, the myriad ways we connect as readers and connect with writers, grows and thrives too!

Long-time members know and new members swiftly intuit that our silent book club gatherings – virtually and in person – are safe and welcoming spaces for all readers. Those spaces aren’t only where we enthusiastically share our bookish pleasures, which often inspire others to venture beyond their usual subject matter, genres, formats and comfort zones. They’re also where we share reading challenges and even disappointments. It’s also, perhaps most importantly, where we know reading is meant to be joy, solace and revelation, never a frustration or – heaven forbid – a competition.

At the start of this new year, which is often the point at which readers and those whose reading has perhaps lapsed make resolutions, we’re cheering everyone on. Whatever the types and numbers of books you read this year or any year, what you’re achieving is excellent. If you need to be reminded of that, hang out with other readers and you’ll feel cheered on, bolstered and encouraged!

Heading into a fresh new year of amazing reading and discoveries, I can confidently continue to guarantee you’re going to love our group’s latest combined book list. This one gathers up books mentioned and discussed by the end of our January 2024 meetings. Each list reflects the reading of many of our members, so dedicated to the group that they regularly provide their reading lists even when they can’t attend a meeting. The titles featured in each of our reports encompass print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks.

Every title on our group’s lists means that at least one (but usually more) readers have given that title thoughtful consideration. That’s encouragement for you and other readers checking out our reports and lists to consider it, too. Does that mean every on our lists is expressly recommended? Not exactly or necessarily. Inclusion on this list always means that our readers have devoted time and attention to a title, which counts for a lot.

• Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin, narrated by Emily Tremaine (audiobook)
• First to Leave the Party by Salah Bachir, narrated by Ann-Marie MacDonald (audiobook)
• No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister
• The Mothers by Brit Bennett, narrated by Adenrele Ojo (audiobook)
• The Windsor Knot by SJ Bennett, narrated by Jane Copland (audiobook)
• Medusa by Jessie Burton
• King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender, narrated by Ron Butler (audiobook)
• Chasing the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar
• Becoming the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar
• Murder Before Evensong by the Reverend Richard Coles
• Greenwood by Michael Christie
• A Change in the Air by Jane Clarke
• The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin
• The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin, narrated by Sheila Reid, Rebecca Benson (audiobook)
• The Adversary by Michael Crummey, narrated by Mary Lewis (audiobook)
• How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis (audiobook)
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• Don’t Look Now by Daphne du Maurier
• Inheritance by Jenny Eclair
• The Ben Ripple: Choosing to Live through Loss with Purpose by Lisa Elliott
• Care by Jaime Forsythe
• Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune, narrated by A.J. Bridel (audiobook)
• The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler
• The Magus by John Fowles
• Mythos: a retelling of the myths of Ancient Greece by Stephen Fry (audiobook)
• Service by Sarah Gilmartin
• Shifting Gears: Coast to Coast on the Trans Am Bike Race by Meaghan Hackinen
• Mythology by Edith Hamilton
• Hunger by Knut Hamsun
• Slow Horses by Mick Herron, narrated by Gerard Doyle (audiobook)
• Permanent Astonishment: Growing Up Cree in the Land of Snow and Sky by Tomson Highway, narrated by Jimmy Blais (audiobook)
• The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard
• 1934: The Chatham Coloured All-Stars’ Barrier-Breaking Year by Heidi LM Jacobs
• Ultra-Distance Cycling: An Expert Guide to Endurance Cycling by Simon Jobson and Dominic Irvine
• Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner (audiobook)
• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
• Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
• Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage by Anne Lamott
• Belle Greene by Alexandra Lapierre, narrated by Ja’Air Bush (audiobook)
• My Effin’ Life by Geddy Lee
• Knife on Snow by Alice Major
• The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
• No One Saw a Thing by Andrea Mara
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• Portrait of a Murderer by Anne Meredith
• The City & The City by China Miéville
• Maybe You Should Give Up: 7 Ways to Get Out of Your Own Way and Take Control of Your Life by Byron Morrison
• The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
• Shut Up You’re Pretty by Téa Mutonji, narrated by Jemeni (audiobook)
• Bone and Bread by Saleema Nawaz
• The Rape of Europa by Lynn H Nicholas
• Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult
• The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose
• Nobody by Anna Quon
• Just Kids by Patti Smith
• You Break It You Buy It by Lynn Tait
• Women Talking by Miriam Toews, narrated by Matthew Edison (audiobook)
• The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verges
• Joan is Okay by Weike Wang, narrated by Catherine Ho (audiobook)
• The Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams
• All the Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham
• Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear, narrated by Kim Hicks (audiobook)
• Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley
• A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, narrated by Oliver Wyman (audiobook)

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

• Silent Book Club: low-pressure reading group comes to Halifax
  by Philip Moscovitch, Halifax Examiner
  November 30, 2023
• Reading Rhythms has caused a bit of a stir, in part because some feel they come across as having invented a reading experience that Silent Book Club groups have been doing for years. But however readers are reading together, perhaps the more the merrier …
• Even if we don’t understand it … well, Dr Petroff is an occasional participant in the east end Toronto silent book club group, so yay!

When we mentioned last fall that the worldwide Silent Book Club network had just welcomed its 500th chapter … we didn’t know the incredible growth would continue into the new year. When Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich graciously hosted a couple of virtual meet-ups for club organizers around the world (I joined a meeting that spanned the US, and included representation from Canada, South Africa, Finland and more), they revealed that in fact, the SBC explosion continues and they now top 600 chapters! It had around 60 chapters when we joined as the first Toronto chapter in 2017.

You can always find our previous reports and book lists right here, growing every month.

You can also check out links to articles, interviews and more here – some with San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich, and some with us here in east end Toronto.

Learn more about silent book clubs via Guinevere and Laura’s Silent Book Club web site. You can find information on meetings happening around the world and close to where you live. Every club is a different size, format (in-person, virtual or combinations) and vibe, so contact a club’s organizers beforehand if you have any questions or preferences. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

We did it on zoom. We did it in person. We celebrated our reading and we cheered each other on!

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

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

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

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

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

Once again, I can pretty much guarantee you’re going to love our group’s latest combined book list, collecting up books mentioned and discussed by the end of our December 2023 meetings. Each list reflects the reading of many of our members, so dedicated to the group that they regularly provide their reading lists even when they can’t attend a meeting. The titles featured in each of our reports encompass print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks.

Any title on any of our group’s lists means that at least one (but usually more) readers have given that title some consideration. That’s encouragement for you and other readers checking out our reports and lists to consider it, too. Is that a recommendation? It might be, but not exactly or necessarily. Inclusion on this list always means that a title has been given thoughtful consideration and attention by our readers, which you can be assured counts for a lot.

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

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

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

You can always find our previous reports and book lists right here, growing every month.

You can also check out links to articles, interviews and more here – some with San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich, and some with us here in east end Toronto.

Learn more about silent book clubs via Guinevere and Laura’s Silent Book Club web site. You can find information on meetings happening around the world and close to where you live. Every club is a different size, format (in-person, virtual or combinations) and vibe, so contact a club’s organizers beforehand if you have any questions or preferences. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are going to love our group’s latest combined book list, with collects up books mentioned and discussed by the end of our November 2023 meeting. Each list reflects the reading of many of our members, so dedicated to the group that they regularly provide their reading lists even when they can’t attend a meeting. The titles featured in each of our reports encompass print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks.

Any title on any of our group’s lists means that at least one (but usually more) readers have given that title some consideration. That’s encouragement for you and other readers checking out our reports and lists to consider it, too. Is that a recommendation? It might be, but not exactly or necessarily. Inclusion on this list always means that a title has been given thoughtful consideration and attention by our readers, which you can be assured counts for a lot.

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

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

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

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

You can always find our previous reports and book lists right here, growing every month.

You can also check out links to articles, interviews and more here – some with San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich, and some with us here in east end Toronto.

Learn more about silent book clubs via Guinevere and Laura’s Silent Book Club web site. You can find information on meetings happening around the world and close to where you live. Every club is a different size, format (in-person, virtual or combinations) and vibe, so contact a club’s organizers beforehand if you have any questions or preferences. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

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

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

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

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

Our Silent Book Club group has gathered in local parks …

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

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

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