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.