An immense thank you to Toronto silent book club member Sue Reynolds for the introduction to our latest silent book club meeting report. Passionate about adventurous reading, animals and animal welfare, and Hollywood femmes fatales, Sue has also contributed previously to this blog, with a great review of Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan.

I have been very lucky during this past pandemic year that all of the bookclubs (silent and traditional) in which I participate have been able to carry on meeting and talking about books via zoom calls. It’s not quite the same as meeting at our much beloved coffee shop or in the park, but we have been able to connect, see each others’ faces, catch up on personal or neighbourhood news, and share our love of books and reading.

The global pandemic has sent many folks rushing off to their local libraries or bookstores as people rediscover reading, now that they have time on their hands and shops, gyms and pubs are closed. This is great news for writers and booksellers, and some bookstores have been flourishing, surely cause for celebration.

I would like to call attention to other art forms that have really taken a hit this past year, namely art that relies on live performance such as theatre, music and dance. These folks, those on
stage and those who work behind the scenes, have led the charge to bring their work to an online global audience. Some performers like Georgia’s Indigo Girls have used their streamed gigs to raise much-needed funds for food banks and other relief agencies.

The National Theatre in London, England has been streaming recorded plays to cinemas around the world for over a decade. During the early days of the pandemic NT Live streamed a different play every week, free of charge (although donations were gratefully accepted). Book lovers like us could watch innovative and exciting theatrical adaptations of Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Treasure Island and Small Island.

Thanks to modern technology that allows streaming I have seen more plays, films, author interviews and concerts than at any other point in my life. I want to encourage other people to seek out plays, book readings, music and dance online and to support those artists who have kept us entertained and sane for the past year. We owe them a huge debt.

 

The latest combined reading list from our group brims with literary goodness to suit every taste, wethinks. (In addition to our zoom meeting, we got to discuss some of these books during a brief, masked, physically distanced meet-up at our favourite local park.) The titles featured in each of our reports combine print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks (which are indicated separately, with narrator/performer information where possible). (And yes, you’ll find the book that inspired thoughts about maintaining a “fine balance” on this list!)

• Deep Salt Water by Marianne Apostolides
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
• The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
• 50 Toronto Hidden Gems & Curiosities edited by Matthew Blackett and Dylan Reid
• Nomadland by Jessica Bruder, narrated by Karen White (audiobook)
• Face of a Killer by Robin Burcell
• Value(s) – Building a Better World for All by Mark Carney
• The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
• Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers
• OBIT by Victoria Chang
• Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary, illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky
• The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, narrated by Christine Lakin (audiobook)
• The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim by Jonathan Coe (audiobook)
• Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles
• The Speed of Mercy by Christy Ann Conlin
• Through the Garden (a love story with cats) by Lorna Crozier (audiobook)
• Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
• Odd One Out by Lissa Evans
• Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan
• Sabrina & Corina: Stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine (audiobook)
• The Swan Suit by Katherine Fawcett
• Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (BBC Dramatisation)
• The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
• A Bite of the Apple – A Life with Books, Writers and Virago by Lennie Goodings
• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
• The Survivors by Jane Harper, narrated by Stepehen Shanahan (audiobook)
• Plainsong by Kent Haruf
• Beach Read by Emily Henry
• Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
• A Net for Small Fishes by Lucy Jago
• The Summer Book by Tove Janssen
• Sisters by Daisy Johnson
• The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
• We’re All in This Together by Amy Jones
• Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce
• Grown Ups by Marian Keyes (audiobook)
• knife | fork | book poetry chapbooks
• The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie
• A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson
• The Last Stargazers by Emily Levesque
• Successful Aging: a neuroscientist explores the power and potential of our lives by Daniel J. Levitin
• Killing Mr Watson by Peter Matthiessen (audiobook)
• Wintering by Katherine May
• Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up by Dave Meslin
• A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
• Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano
• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
• The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips
• The Cretan Runner by George Psychoundakis
• Good Citizens Need Not Fear by Maria Reva
• The Discovery of Jeanne Baret – A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe by Glynis Ridley
• Our Darkest Night by Jennifer Robson
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling, narrated by Stephen Fry (audiobook)
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling, narrated by Stephen Fry (audiobook)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling, narrated by Stephen Fry (audiobook)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling, narrated by Stephen Fry (audiobook)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling, narrated by Stephen Fry (audiobook)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling, narrated by Stephen Fry (audiobook)
• Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple
• By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart
• The Assumption of Rogues and Rascals by Elizabeth Smart
• Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout
• The Frequency of Us by Keith Stuart
• The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson
• How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa
• Jane Austen – A Life by Claire Tomalin
• Too Much and Never Enough – How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump
• Juliet’s School of Possibilities: A Little Story About the Power of Priorities by Laura Vanderkam
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead
• Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead (audiobook)
• Three Keys by Kelly Yang

Book-related articles, recommendations and more came up during this meeting’s discussions and chat, including:

• These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (Harper’s Magazine, January 2021) – Many in our silent book club group are Ann Patchett fans. This captivating non-fiction piece by Patchett will warm the hearts of those fans, and is guaranteed to win her new ones.
• Another recent Ann Patchett piece highly recommended by several silent book club members is How to Practice in The New Yorker.
• Spacing is one of the most unique magazines on Canadian newsstands. The magazine uncovers the joys, obstacles and politics of Canada’s big cities by cutting through the cynicism that often pervades any discussion about urban issues. Spacing pushes readers to think critically about how they can shape the public spaces that surround their everyday lives. Learn more about their publications and other initiatives here.

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.

Stay safe, stay well, keep reading!

Colourful, glowing neon hearts have been popping up in windows throughout the Greater Toronto area, including a burgeoning wave of them in the east end Toronto neighbourhood in which our silent book club has its roots. Not only are they beautiful and, dare I say, heartening, but they have a wonderful purpose, explained further here.

Here’s ours:

It would be beyond splendid to simply take a 10-minute walk through this neighbourhood – past many of the houses displaying these hearts – to the place where our silent book club used to meet in person to share our latest reading enthusiasms and then read together quietly and companionably. Till we can do that, though, the glow of our book-loving hearts in our online gatherings – which, delightfully, can welcome fellow readers much further away than this immediate neighbourhood – will more than sustain us.

Here is the latest, always generous, astonishingly rich combined reading list from our group. The titles featured in each of our reports combine print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks (which are indicated separately, with narrator/performer information where possible).

• The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
• Dangerous Women by Hope Adams (aka Adele Geras)
• The Crossover by Kwame Alexander, narrated by Corey Allen (audiobook)
• OBIT by Victoria Chang
• The Rain Before it Falls by Jonathan Coe
• The Speed of Mercy by Christy Ann Conlin
• The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
• The Graves of Whitechapel by Claire Evans
• Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan
• No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality by Michael J. Fox
• Stardust (BBC Radio Drama) by Neil Gaiman, narrated by full cast (audiobook)
• go-go dancing for Elvis by Leslie Greentree
• A Minor Planet for You by Leslie Greentree
• Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage
• M.C. Higgins the Great by Virginia Hamilton
• Plainsong by Kent Haruf
• The Sunrise by Victoria Hislop (audiobook)
• Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston, narrated by Robin Miles (audiobook)
• Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston, narrated by Bahni Turpin (audiobook)
• Marrow Willow by Maureen Hynes
• Fishnet by Kirstin Innes (audiobook)
• knife | fork | book poetry chapbooks
• The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie
• Autopsy of a Boring Wife by Marie-Renée Lavoie
• Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
• Killing Mister Watson by Peter Matthiessen
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• Dual Citizens by Alix Ohlin
• The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley
• Salma the Syrian Chef by Danny Ramadan
• The Barren Grounds by David A. Robertson
• Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts On Kindness by George Saunders
• The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith
• The Public Image by Muriel Spark
• The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex
• Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
• The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson
• The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin, narrated by Meryl Streep (audiobook)
• Away by Jane Urquhart
• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Educated by Tara Westover
• The Storied Life of AJ Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

Some more book-related articles, recommendations and more came up during this meeting’s discussions and chat, including:

• Designed during the pandemic by Moss LED, a company that offers high quality lighting products for film, cinema, television and other applications, the neon hearts popping up all over the Greater Toronto area are meant to show love and support to healthcare heroes and frontline workers and to pay tribute to live entertainment workers significantly displaced and downsized by the pandemic’s constraints. A portion of the sale of each heart goes to the Michael Garron Hospital Foundation in east end Toronto. Learn more at www.ourglowinghearts.ca.
• These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (Harper’s Magazine, January 2021) – Many in our silent book club group are Ann Patchett fans. This captivating non-fiction piece by Patchett will warm the hearts of those fans, and is guaranteed to win her new ones.
• Eleanor Catton has adapted for the screen her 2013 Booker Prize winning book The Luminaries. The resulting six-part series is an excellent complement to a hefty novel that is challenging, complex and rewarding.

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.

Hearts aglow, let’s continue to light our way and our spirits with reading and continued connections to our fellow readers.