This month, our east end Toronto silent book club chapter celebrates its 7th anniversary, thank you very much! Here’s how our first meeting went.

Our latest meetings, online and in-person, were just yesterday. Not every meeting is like this, but some like yesterday’s are an interesting balance of our fellow readers’ enthusiasms and delights and … disappointments or cautions. I actually really appreciate that our readers have so grown to trust each other that our discussions and reviews are not just about what we enjoyed reading, but what we didn’t. When the review is not necessarily glowing, we can also trust that the assessments will be measured or readers acknowledge when maybe it just wasn’t the right time for one to be challenged by a particular subject or author. It’s still constructive and informative.

As always, every title on our group’s lists means that at least one (but usually more) readers have given that title thoughtful consideration. That doesn’t mean that every work on our lists is expressly recommended (as I just suggested) – but that’s still more than OK, we think. Inclusion on this list always means that our readers have devoted time and attention to a title – and that, dear readers, means a lot.

• Fourteen Days by The Authors Guild, edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston, narrated by Shayna Small (audiobook)
• A Future We Can Love by Susan Bauer-Wu
• Uncomfortability by Roxanna Bennett
• Satellite Image by Michelle Berry
• The Doctor’s Wife by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
• What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust by Alan Bradley
• Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, narrated by Allyson Ryan (audiobook)
• Pests – How Humans Create Animal Villains by Bethany Brookshire
• Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler
• What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
• Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach
• The Donoghue Girl by Kim Fahner
• Ford Nation by Rob Ford and Doug Ford
• Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller
• Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials by Marion Gibson
• Warlock by Oakley Hall
• Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad
• The Moonlight Market by Joanne Harris
• Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth, narrated by Jessica Clarke (audiobook)
• Bury the Lead by Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti
• This Side of Murder by Anna Lee Hubet
• Search by Michelle Huneven
• The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan
• The Good People by Hannah Kent, narrated by Caroline Lennon (audiobook)
• Himself by Jess Kidd
• Sweet Water by Christina Baker Kline, narrated by Amy Rubinate and Suzanne Toren (audiobook)
• The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb
• Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
• May It Have a Happy Ending by Minelle Mahtani
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
• Showa 1926-1939 A History of Japan by Shigeru Mizuki
• Us by David Nicholls
• You Are Here by David Nicholls
• The Colony Club – A Captivating Tale of Ambition and Social Change by Shelley Noble
• We Solve Murders by Richard Osman
• Gull Island by Anna Porter, narrated by Madeleine Maby (audiobook)
• Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
• The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl
• What She Said by Elizabeth Renzetti
• The Evenings by Gerard Reve
• Leaving by Roxana Robinson, narrated by Hannah Choi (audiobook)
• 253 by Geoff Ryman
• L’Arabe du futur 5 Une Jeune ease au Moyen-Orient (1992-1994) by Riad Sattouf
• Seven Summers by Paige Toon
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
• Table for Two by Amor Towles
• Laugh More by Debbie Travis
• Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
• Rewitched by Lucy Jane Wood
• Meet Me At the Museum by Anne Youngson

Here are some extra book-related articles, resources, news and recommendations, items and tidbits that are often companions to books on the list, or are inspired or offered by our members and/or come up during our discussions and chat.

• In case you missed it … yes, we’re that book club from TV!
• One of the creatures chronicled in Pests – How Humans Create Animal Villains by Bethany Brookshire is the cane toad. If that story sparks your interest, you might also enjoy the 1988 documentary Cane Toads: An Unnatural History.

Our group’s previous reports and book lists – all eminently trustworthy – areright 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 the worldwide phenomenon of silent book clubs via Guinevere and Laura’s Silent Book Club web site. In fall 2023, they welcomed their 500th chapter … and with continuing and astonishing momentum, they are now boasting over 1,000 chapters!!! (There were around 60 chapters when we joined as the first Toronto chapter in 2017.) You can find information on meetings happening around the world and close to where you live. Every club is a different size, format (in-person, virtual or combinations) and vibe, so contact a club’s organizers beforehand if you have any questions or preferences. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

Happy, happy reading (or even sad, or challenging, or frustrating reading … but keep going!) until next we meet!

Not everyone makes it to every book club meeting, every month. (Mind you, many make it to many meetings, which makes every month’s meetings full, rich and special.)

But you know what? Every month’s meetings happen, and happy readers gather to generously share their reading, virtually and in person. Those meetings spawn a new and intriguing combined list of books that have delighted, challenged, maybe occasionally disappointed but always filled our time in interesting ways. So, I’m just going to get to the list right away … and I’ll chatter at more length about the books, the readers, the recurring themes and lively topics that emerge in our discussions … all that and more, next month.

As always, every title on our group’s lists means that at least one (but usually more) readers have given that title thoughtful consideration. That doesn’t mean that every work on our lists is expressly recommended – but that’s more than OK, we think. Inclusion on this list always means that our readers have devoted time and attention to a title – and that, dear readers, means a lot.

• Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary – Her Private letters from inside the Studios of the 1920s, annotated by Cari Beauchamp
• Hotel Splendide by Ludwig Bemelmans
• Look After Her by Hannah Brown
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• The Wedding People by Alison Espach
• James by Percival Everett
• The Donoghue Girl by Kim Fahner
• Limbo by Dan Fox
• Carpenter’s Gothic by William Gaddis (audiobook)
• The Tunnel by William Gass
• Widow Fantasies by Hollay Ghadery
• Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez, narrated by Stacy Gonzalez, Jonathan Gregg and Jessica Pimentel (audiobook)
• Discretion by Faiza Guene, translated by Sarah Ardizzone
• Self-Esteem and the End of the World by Luke Healy
• The Earth in the Attic by Fady Joudah
• […] by Fady Joudah
• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Kangaroo by D.H. Lawrence
• Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon
• The Elusive Samurai by Yusei Matsui
• Held by Anne Michaels
• The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery
• The Capital of Dreams by Heather O’Neill
• We Solve Murders by Richard Osman
• The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake by Breece D’J Pancake
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
• The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters, narrated by Aaliya Warbus and Jordan Waunch (audiobook)
• The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose
• Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Sweetwater by Roxana Robinson
• Death in Spring by Merce Rodoreda
• The Dolphin House by Audrey Schulman
• Winter by Ali Smith
• The Art of Dying by Sarah Tolmie
• The Darwin Incident by Shun Umezawa
• Nothing Left to Fear from Hell by Alan Warner
• 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei by Eliot Weinberger
• The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear
• The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu
• Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa, narrated by Catherine Ho (audiobook)
• Meet Me At the Museum by Anne Youngson

Here are some extra book-related articles, resources, news and recommendations, items and tidbits that are often companions to books on the list, or are inspired or offered by our members and/or come up during our discussions and chat.

• The Manga Taisho (translated as Cartoon Grand Prize) is a Japanese comics award recognizing achievement in manga. Take a look at the history of the prize, and its latest nominations and winners.
• Book Riot offers some good recommendations of books about media literacy.
• Fady Joudah is the eighteenth recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize.