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.