I regularly come away from our silent (and often not-so-silent!) book club feeling ready to burst: with book recommendations, with revitalized enthusiasm for my reading (when it has flagged or been kind of muddled in recent months), with sheer joy at connecting and sharing with such an amazing, generous and eclectically inclined group of booklovers.

I’m bursting again as I assemble this report. Just scroll down and you’ll see the brimming reading list resulting from our latest gathering, which was another two-parter: a well-attended and lively zoom meeting with new and longtime group members, followed a short while later by a small, brief but so vital meeting in the early winter sunshine at the nearby park where we’ve met in the past to read silently together under the trees. Utterly rejuvenating, on so many levels …!

Here’s that gorgeous reading list … and when you’ve spent some engrossing time in these digital stacks, keep going. There are more bookish delights overflowing from today’s gathering.

• Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• The Audlib Project, Giller Prize finalists (audiobook)
• Maggie and Me by Damian Barr
• You Will be Safe Here by Damian Barr
• Damian Barr on Instagram
• Lost Family – A Memoir by John Barton
• Trio by William Boyd
• Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown
• An Enduring Wilderness: Toronto’s Natural Parklands by Robert Burley
• Brain on Fire – My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
• Cape Breton’s Magazine (issues 43, 47, 48, 58, 59, 66, 67 and 71)
• Down North: The Book of Cape Breton’s Magazine, edited by Ronald Caplan
• The Sentinel by Lee Child and Andrew Child
• Waiting for a Star to Fall by Kerry Clare
• The Polished Hoe by Austin Clarke
• The Longest Evening by Ann Cleeves
• Letters from An American by Heather Cox Richardson
• The History of Great Things by Elizabeth Crane
• Love by Roddy Doyle
• Odd One Out by Lissa Evans
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
• War on Peace by Ronan Farrow
• The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde
• The Peripheral by William Gibson
• Mydas by Jon Goode
• The End of Me by John Gould
• We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib
• Beach Read by Emily Henry, narrated by Julia Whelan (audiobook)
• Squeeze Me by Carl Hiaasen
• Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes, read by Julia Whelan (audiobook)
• Just Like You by Nick Hornby
• The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
• The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
• Your Still Beating Heart by Tyler Keevil
• Fled by Meg Keneally
• Indians on Vacation by Thomas King
• Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson
• In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson
• The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
• The Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine
• Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
• The Malahat Review
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
• In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen
• L.E.L. The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated “Female Byron” by Lucasta Miller
• I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell
• Hamnet and Judith by Maggie O’Farrell
• Good Evening, Mrs Craven by Mollie Panter-Downes
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
• The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick
• Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce
• The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny
• Victorian London, The Tale of a City 1840-1870 by Lisa Picard
• Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-Benta
• The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz
• Children of God by Mary Doria Russell
• Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla Saad
• Prey series by John Sandford
• The Unwrapping of Theodora Quirke by Caroline Smailes
• Ash by Sharan Strange
• Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
• How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa
• Caligula by Aloys Winterling

In addition to that rich and intriguing selection of books, we shared some other book-related news and items of interest, including …

• Elena Ferrante names her 40 favourite books by female authors (The Guardian)
  At least one silent book club member – I’m guessing there will be more! – is looking at this list as reading inspiration heading into the winter.
• Hay Winter Weekend
  With such a wealth of online literary events these days – festivals, book launches, readings, fundraisers and more – it’s not surprising that avid readers might be double booked (ahem) at times, toggling from one event to another. One silent book club member arrived at our zoom meeting today breathless with enthusiasm about a William Boyd reading and interview, one of many fine offerings from the venerable Hay Festival.
• Nut Press, curated by book squirrels – blog by Kathryn Eastman
  Our east end Toronto silent book club was delighted to welcome reader, writer, book blogger, rugby fan (can you guess which of the pictures above came from her?) and lawyer Kathryn Eastman of South Wales, UK, to our latest zoom meeting, and we look forward to her joining us in future. Much as we miss our in-person silent book club gatherings, the move to online meetings means we’ve been able to fling the virtual doors open wider to wonderful guests further afield. Kathryn, thank you for your wonderful book recommendations – including Tyler Keevil, a Canadian author now living in Wales – and your warm presence in today’s virtual gathering.

‘Tis the season to think even more than we do the rest of the year about purchasing books, during a year when purchasing books has particular urgency. During today’s gathering, we discussed the importance of doing what we can to support independent booksellers, and we traded recommendations about businesses that offer online, curbside pickup and delivery options.

• Here is a Canada-wide map of Canadian independent booksellers that have been highly responsive to the pandemic and have been supplying books to eager readers.
• Some particular favourites local to Toronto-based booklovers are: Book City, Type Books, Queen Books and The Novel Spot Bookshop.
• Here is another resource for bookstores in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).
• In South Wales, two of Kathryn Eastman’s favourite booksellers are Griffin Books in Penarth and Book-ish in Crickhowell

Our group co-founder Jo paid lovely tribute on the occasion of our silent book group’s third anniversary.

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.

The traditional ways we celebrate are curtailed right now, suffice to say. Group co-founder Jo still strikes a very fine celebratory note as she observes that our silent book group is now 3, thank you very much! Hers is a joyful recounting of how our group came to be, how it has evolved and how it continues to flourish and sustain us. Couple that with the warmth and connection glowing from our device screens during this week’s “pop-up” (meaning somewhat spontaneously scheduled) silent book club zoom meeting and we know we’re going to make it through the swiftly descending darker days and nights.

Let this gorgeous list of our recent reading lift your hearts, too. The titles featured in each of our reports combine print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks (which are indicated separately).

• Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (audiobook), narrated by Lisette Lecat
• Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
• Swivelmount by Ken Babstock
• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
• Blaze Island by Catherine Bush
• Virgin River by Robyn Carr (audiobook), narrated by Therese Plummers
• Uncertain Terms by Clare Chambers
• The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham (audiobook)
• White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
• Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
• Landing by Emma Donoghue
• The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
• Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
• V for Victory by Lissa Evans
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
• The Swan Suit by Katherine Fawcett
• Celtic Tales by Kate Forrester
• Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith (audiobook)
• The End of Me by John Gould
• Safe as Houses by Susan Glickman
• Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf (audiobook)
• Plainsong by Kent Haruf (audiobook), narrated by Tom Stechschulte
• Just Like You by Nick Hornby (audiobook), narrated by Ben Bailey Smith & Hattie Ladbury
• Barracoon – The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston
• The Company We Keep by Frances Itani
• The Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell
• Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles (audiobook)
• The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline
• Luster by Raven Leilani (audiobook)
• Coming Up for Air by Sarah Leipciger
• The Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine
• The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
• March Book One by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell (graphic novel)
• Sargent’s Women – Four Lives Behind the Canvas by Donna M. Lucey
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
• Dead Mom Walking by Rachel Matlow (audiobook)
• Strange Hotel by Eimear McBride (audiobook)
• The Cleverness of Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith (audiobook), narrated by Adjoa Andoh
• No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (audiobook)
• Beneath the Bleeding by Val McDermid
• Full Disclosure by Beverley McLachlin
• Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• The Lake House by Kate Morton
• The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
• Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
• L.E.L. The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated “Female Byron” by Lucasta Miller
• Good Evening, Mrs Craven by Mollie Panter-Downes
• In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park with Maryanne Vollers
• The Best of The Best of Canadian Poetry, eds. Molly Peacock and Anita Lahey
• The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
• The Hangman by Louise Penny
• Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
• A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
• I Just Can’t Stop It: My Life in the Beat by Ranking Roger, with Daniel Rachel
• The End of Animal Farming by Jacy Reese
• Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (audiobook)
• Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (audiobook)
• Jack by Marilynne Robinson
• Normal People by Sally Rooney (audiobook)
• Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (audiobook)
• Reasons to be Cheerful by Nina Stibbe (audiobook)
• Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe (audiobook)
• How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa
• In Search of the Wild Tofurky by Seth Tibbott
• The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin, narrated by Meryl Streep (audiobook)
• Revolution by Deb Olin Unferth
• Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward (audiobook)
• Word Problems by Ian Williams
• Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (audiobook)
• The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum by Sarah Wise
• Before the Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson (audiobook)
• Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (audiobook)

Through it all, we continue to share our group’s successes and delights with readers around the world.

Silent book clubs are showing that reading alone, together, is good for us
by Kasia Delgado, iNews UK
September 29, 2020

We’re entering month 7 of the global pandemic and reflecting on how it has changed us. #silentbookclub looks different now. In Torino and Toronto (pictured) readers gather in person, outside, safely distanced, with masks.
from Silent Book Club on Instagram
September 28, 2020

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.

by Jo Nelson

In August of 2018, three of us, Vicki, Jo, and Kirsten, were among the neighbourhood people gathering in Stephenson Park for Kirsten’s yoga class. Activities in the park were a true local community development initiative catalyzed by Peter Woodcock to address some challenges in the park and community.

As we walked from the park after the class, the three of us got to talking about a book club as another activity to bring the community together. One of us had tried to start a traditional one that didn’t work. Vicki enthusiastically introduced us to the concept of a Silent Book Club, where everyone could read whatever they wanted during the month, we would share our lists with no judgement, and then spend a companionable hour sitting silently together reading. We were inspired and decided to try it, meeting at a neighbourhood used book and record store/coffee shop called Press to support the local economy as well as the cultural aspect of reading!

The first meeting had 4 participants, who had read everything from poetry to novels to a car repair manual.

Through Vicki’s invitations and connections, the group grew exponentially during the first year. Within months, we were beyond our informal beginnings. We found ourselves having to buy more chairs for the coffee shop, and then declaring a limit on numbers that could attend at one time. Vicki organized a central email address and a growing file of members and contact information. She posted stories, photos, and lists of the books we had read in her blog. Eventually media invitations to talk about the club began to come in. From there, several other Silent Book Clubs spun off in other neighbourhoods across Toronto and beyond.

The eclectic interests of the members have inspired many of us to try new authors and genres that we would not have tried on our own. There are a number of books that have been passed from person to person, and sometimes back again. Between us, we have read poetry, non-fiction, historical novels, classic gems such as Little Women and Proust, the entire collection of Louise Penny’s mysteries set in Quebec and Kent Haruf’s stories of a small town in Colorado, graphic novels, women’s adventure stories, Indigenous and Black authors, books about Toronto and by Toronto authors, and young adult fiction. Not to mention the car operation manual!

In addition to meeting at Press, we have enjoyed refreshing summer meetings under the trees in the park.

When the lockdown began, we moved our regular meetings to Zoom* with some trepidation but unwillingness to let the connections go. In addition, we created pop-up weeknight special meetings mid-month on Zoom. The connection and support of these meetings has sustained us through the uncertainty of the pandemic.

And we have discovered joy in the new friends we have made, both the fictional ones and the other readers.

So here’s to the joy of the last 3 years, and to the next 3 years and more!

* I had to jump into Jo’s article here to point out that she administers and chairs the Zoom meetings with aplomb and a steady hand!