“I love books where nothing happens!”

… and all the silent book club members shimmering in another magical zoom gathering smiled and nodded knowingly. We readers know, don’t we?

We also love to ensure our reading is close at hand, whether we’re home or going afar. When the email notifications for our latest meeting went out, one of the first replies was from longtime group stalwart Catherine D. She revealed that she was sending her message while on vacation in Italy. She said she wouldn’t be able to zoom in for the meeting, but would be reading in solidarity while on a train during the meeting time. She also revealed that, even after lots of good advice from a recent in-person in-the-park silent book club gathering at which she’d received lots of good advice on which books to pack for her trip … well, she still had to purchase more books when she reached her destination. Isn’t that always the way? She sent us a digital postcard – shared on the zoom meeting, of course – of her in front of The Almost Corner Bookshop in Trastevere, Rome. We love everything about this.

We also clearly love carrying our books with us wherever we go – to the beach, for example, or to a shaded spot in the backyard. (How perfect that an Eastern Comma butterfly perched on one of our readers’ chairs in the backyard in a small post-zoom meeting gathering.)

Most movingly, the images of people who value books carrying them to keep the books safe, to preserve books, to share books with others, emerged as an interesting motif in our discussions today. In 1937 Nanking in The Library of Legends by Janie Chang, the protagonist and her university classmates and professors carry the eponymous books 1,000 miles to safety in China’s western provinces when their city is bombed. In 1930s Appalachia, a traveling librarian in The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson rides by mule to bring books and periodicals to isolated rural Kentuckians. Although she was not conventionally literate herself, medieval wife, mother, and mystic Margery Kempe convinced those who could write to tell her story in what is considered the earliest autobiography written in the English language. Her voice from the early 1400s is carried to us today in book form.

THE FIRE OF LOVE
fig. 1 Add. MS 61823, f. 43v. Reproduced with the permission of the British Library.
In figure 1 Margery’s first experience of ‘þe fyer of loue’ (88/32) is boldly noted with a stylised drawing of flames, and a Latin gloss: ‘ignis diuini amoris … so s[eint] {or scilicet?} R[ichard] [of] Hampall’.

We love to share our book discoveries and challenges, and carry them to you here.

As always, our latest combined book list – this one is immense! – gathers the recent reading of many of our members, whether they attended the meeting in question or not. When I send out meeting notifications to the group, I get swift and diligent replies back and whether or not someone is joining the meeting, they regularly send their recent reading.

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). Any title on any of our group’s lists means that at least one (often more) readers have given that title some consideration. That is enough, to my mind, to say that another reader reading our reports and lists might consider it, too. Is that an out-and-out recommendation? Not necessarily, but it means a title has been given attention and thought, and that always counts for a lot.

• Drawing Restraint Vol. 1 1987-2002 by Matthew Barney
• Either/Or by Elif Batuman
• The Possessed by Elif Batuman (audiobook)
• Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut, compiled and edited by John Bennett and Susan Rowley
• Operation Tropical Affair by Kimberli A Bindschatel
• Villette by Charlotte Bronte
• The Palace Papers by Tina Brown
• And the Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave
• The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan
• The Library of Legends by Janie Chang
• Reacher: Killing Floor by Lee Childs
• The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman, narrated by Kristin Atherton (audiobook)
• The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
• The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig
• Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton
• American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
• The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont
• Man or Mango? by Lucy Ellmann
• In the Margins by Elena Ferrante
• A Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley (audiobook)
• From the Fifteenth District: a novella and eight short stories by Mavis Gallant
• Mount Pleasant by Don Gillmor
• The Girl in the Middle by Anais Granofsky
• Smoke and Mirrors by Elly Griffiths
• The Midnight Hour by Elly Griffiths
• A Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths
• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, narrated by Carey Mulligan (audiobook)
• Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay (audiobook)
• Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny
• Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry
• Just Like Family by Kate Hilton
• The Ladies Midnight Swimming Club by Faith Hogan, narrated by Flora Montgomery (audiobook)
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin
• The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins
• Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner
• Except the Dying (Inspector Murdoch #1) by Maureen Jennings
• 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph
• The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
• The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk (audiobook)
• The Vegetarian by Han Kang
• Walk in the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan
• The Book of Margery Kempe, edited by Anthony Bale
• Blue Portugal and Other Essays by Theresa Kishkan
• Palaces for the People – How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life by Eric Klinenberg
• A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson
• The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee, narrated by Orlagh Cassidy (audiobook)
• Poguemahone by Patrick McCabe
• The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale by Haley McGee
• Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English by John McWhorter
• The Fell by Sarah Moss
• Be Ready for the Lightning by Grace O’Connell
• I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell
• Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, narrated by Hope Davis (audiobook)
• The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny
• State of Terror by Louise Penny and Hillary Rodham Clinton, narrated by Joan Allen (audiobook)
• The Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez-Reverte, translated by Margaret Jull Costa
• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw, narrated by Janina Edwards (audiobook)
• Singing School by Robert Pinsky
• Bewilderment by Richard Powers
• Olive the Lionheart: Lost Love, Imperial Spies, and One Woman’s Journey to the Heart of Africa by Brad Ricca
• The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson
• The China Room by Sunjeev Sahota
• Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris (audiobook)
• One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle
• Where or When by Anita Shreve
• Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit (audiobook)
• Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel
• This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
• Singapore Sapphire (Harriet Gordon Mysteries) by A.M. Stuart
• Revenge in Rubies (Harriet Gordon Mysteries) by A.M. Stuart
• Learwife by J.R. Thorp
• Fight Night by Miriam Toews, narrated by Miriam & Georgia Toews (audiobook)
• Clock Dance by Anne Tyler, narrated by Kimberly Farr (audiobook)
• French Braid by Anne Tyler, narrated by Kimberley Farr (audiobook)
• Nostalgia by M.G. Vassanji
• Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
• When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
• The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
• Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
• Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong
• Red Clocks by Leni Zumas

More book-related articles, resources, news, recommendations and more are often inspired or offered by our members and/or come up during our discussions and chat. Here are the latest:

• President Barack Obama’s annual summer reading and music lists are always eagerly anticipated.
• This year’s Booker Prize longlist includes titles already familiar to our silent book club group, along with new titles to challenge and delight.
• Recommend Me a Book is an intriguing web site that helps you find new books to read without first judging the them by their covers. It offers up the first pages of novels without bias, and reveals the author and title if you indicate you’re interested. Even if you already have great sources of book recommendations – like, say, a really awesome silent book club group – you are likely to become obsessed with this site.
• Learn more here and here about the Almost Corner Bookshop in Trastevere, Rome, which our silent book club friend visited recently.

Our previous silent book club reports (for online and in-person meetings) and book lists are always available for you to enjoy and get some reading inspiration right here.

You can also check out links to articles, 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 hiatus or modified schedules, many are running virtual meetings in different formats, and some are carefully running in-person gatherings again. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

Be sure to carry good reading with you, wherever you go!