Last month, we presented our silent book club report and reading list with pictures of our meeting participants holding up the books they were reading and discussing. We rather liked that way of showing off our reading, so we’ve decided to do it again this month. As one participant emphasized, we wanted to show booklovers “cradling” their book treasures – holding them gently, delicately, protectively, like cradling an infant. Isn’t that a rather lovely, evocative and accurate way of capturing how we care for books and what they can mean to us?

No matter the composition of a particular silent book club gathering – there are unique alchemies in the different combinations of regular, occasional and new readers coming from different experiences and perspectives – each gathering seems to collectively speak to interesting recurring themes. In this month’s meetings, we touched time and again on how books allow us to immerse ourselves in the lives of others, ultimately allowing us to better understand both others and ourselves. (AbeBooks states it plainly and beautifully here.)

The following list encompasses books discussed with passion, read with joy and touted with enthusiasm over two meetings this Family Day long weekend. We present this list after every month’s gathering or gatherings, not only as a service to everyone who attends in person, but to extend what we share at each meeting to a virtual network of fellow readers. We invite you to explore the lists and pursue the books. Each title links to additional information about the book, either from the publisher, from articles about the book or author, or from generally positive and/or constructive reviews.

• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Days by Moonlight by Andre Alexis
• Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
• Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
• The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
• The Cheese Trap by Neal Barnard
• The Only Story by Julian Barnes
• Matthew Barney: Redoubt
• The Believer
• Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me by Adrienne Brodeur
• Blowing the Bloody Doors Off And Other Lessons in Life by Michael Caine (audiobook)
• The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú
• Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles
• The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins
• The Enchanted Hour – The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction by Meghan Cox Gurdon
• A Bitter Feast by Deborah Crombie
• Recursion by Blake Crouch
• The Innocents by Michael Crummey
• Hard Times by Charles Dickens
• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline (read aloud)
• Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline
• Radicalized by Cory Doctorow
• A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Too Close to the Falls by Catherine Gildiner
• After the Falls by Catherine Gildiner
• Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant by Joel Golby
• We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib
• Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
• Me by Elton John (audiobook)
• Bad Blood – The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment by James H. Jones
• Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn
• Dominoes at the Crossroads by Kaie Kellough
• Smorgasbord: The Art of Swedish Breads and Savory Treats by Johanna Kindvall
• The Stand by Stephen King
• Elevation by Stephen King
• Crow Winter by Karen McBride
• Unreasonable Behaviour by Don McCullin
• Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan (audiobook)
• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
• The Year of Reading Dangerously – How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life by Andy Miller
• Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
• An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma
• Arias by Sharon Olds
• A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park
• Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce
• The books of Louise Penny
• The Lightkeeper’s Daughters by Jean E. Pendziwol
• Sodom and Gomorrah, In Search of Lost Time, Volume 4 by Marcel Proust
• Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson
• Normal People by Sally Rooney
• The Five: The Untold Stories of the Women Killed By Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
• Books of photographer Sebastião Salgado
• Calypso by David Sedaris
• Rasputin by Douglas Smith
• Swing Time by Zadie Smith
• Ludo and the Star Horse by Mary Stewart
• The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
• The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff
• Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq
• The Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy by Laini Taylor
• From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• Vantage Point by Scott Thornley
• The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti
• Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
• The Uninhabitable Earth – Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells
• Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington

As always, you can catch up on our previous silent book club meeting reports 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.

• CBC Radio’s Ontario Morning (starting at 41:20)
• CBC Toronto web site
• a series of interviews across Canada with CBC Radio, including Toronto’s Here and Now
• The Christian Science Monitor – Witty banter optional: The no-pressure, no-homework book club

San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich were most recently featured in a wonderful piece on the NPR web site (yes, National Public Radio, thank you very much!). Extensive and enthusiastic coverage silent book club coverage includes this piece 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’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.