This edition of our warmly anticipated silent book club took to the outdoors, thanks to the weather for permitting. We gathered in a shaded corner of a neighbourhood park (not far from the coffeeshop where we usually meet), toting blankets and folding chairs along with our reading material. The hour before silent book club, some of us enjoyed an invigorating yoga class under the trees. After the class, our instructor, who is visiting Canada from Bangalore, India, joined us for the book gathering. (I’m not-so-secretly hoping she’ll plant some silent book club seeds when she returns home …!) All in all, it was a wonderful way to kick off the weekend.

Truth be told, our time in the park was also a restorative antidote to a trying week of tragedy and upheaval in Toronto. People everywhere face challenges – individually and collectively – every day. The nature and often relentless tempo of those challenges demand that we find ways to recharge and regain strength and focus to head back into what the world throws at us – as neighbours, friends, family members, employers and employees, citizens. For me, I hope for the friends with whom I gathered in the park today, there was solace, rejuvenation, joy and fellowship with our yoga mats, our books and our contemplative silence together under the trees, with other neighbours nearby.

Again, there are some repeats on our book list, because the group continues to actively share and pass along books among the members.

Here is this month’s list of books read and discussed.

• Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
• A God in the Ruins by Kate Atkinson
• The Boat People by Sharon Bala
• Muskoka Holiday by Joyce Boyle
• Transit by Rachel Cusk
• Foreign Babes in Beijing – Behind the Scenes of a New China by Rachel DeWoskin
• The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
• We are all completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
• “S” is for Silence, “T” is for Trespass, “U” is for Undertow and “V” is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton
• Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer
• The Silent Wife by ASA Harrison
• On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood by Richard Harrison
• Yamakarra! by Liza Kennedy and the Keewong Mob
• The Outsider by Stephen King
• The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King
• Nirliit by Juliana Léveillé-Trudel, translated by Anita Anand
• Shakespeare’s Restless World by Neil Macgregor
• Koori, a Will to Win by James Miller
• Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill
• Secrets in Death by JD Robb
• Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
• Collected Tarts and Other Indelicacies by Tabatha Southey
• Swanson on Swanson by Gloria Swanson
• This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
• Take Us to Your Chief by Drew Hayden Taylor
• Eleanor of Aquitaine – A Life by Alison Weir
• The Turning by Tim Winton
• A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

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

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