One of my vital and ongoing sources of joy again this year was our silent book club group: meeting, discussing and sharing online and in person and savouring and expanding one’s horizons every month through our endlessly rich and varied combined reading lists. It never feels like homework or competition, just the most splendid kinds of sharing, encouragement and discovery.

How wonderful then to be able to fit in one more set of meetings before the end of this year!

Those meetings left me and, I hope, my fellow readers (including those of you relishing our meetings after the fact through this blog post) abuzz with more reading aspirations that will send me happily into another new year of reading.

One of yesterday’s zoom attendees praised Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie. According to the reader, not only were the book’s themes and examples heartening and optimistic, but the author’s contention that “I’ve done the sums” was also reassuring.

I’ve never “done the sums” with our collected reading lists, as the sums really aren’t the point, are they? But just for fun, I scanned through our 2025 lists … and discovered that we shared an average of 52 books amongst ourselves and with readers of this blog every month in the past year. So, it’s not homework or competition, as we’ve always contended, but isn’t it nice to know a new, fresh wave of books of all kinds awaits you every month?

Chapbook of poems from Wales on a table at East Toronto Coffee Co, accompanied by coffee and pastries (Photo by Vicki Ziegler)

Every title on our group’s always generous lists means that at least one (usually more) readers have given that title thoughtful attention. That doesn’t mean that every work on our lists is explicitly recommended, of course. Inclusion on this list always means that our readers have devoted time and consideration to a title – and that counts for a lot!

• Algospeak by Adam Aleksic
• The Long Game by Elena Armas
• All the Broken Places by John Boyne
• Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall
• Your Utopia by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur
• Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels by Rachel Cohen
• The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman
• The Tortoise’s Tale by Kendra Coulter
• Emilie by Arlette Cousture
• Blonde Dust by Tatiana de Rosnay
• Wild Animal by Joël Dicker, translated by Robert Bononno
• Into the Magic Shop – A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart by James R. Doty, MD
• The Wasp Trap by Mark Edwards
• The Wasp Trap by Mark Edwards, narrated by John Hopkins & Anna Burnett (audiobook)
• A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst
• Off Limits by Nawal El Saadawi
• Finding Flora by Elinor Florence
• Blood Dark by Louis Guilloux, translated by Laura Marris
• The Winemaker’s Wife by Kristin Harmel
• I Become Her by Joe Hart
• Flight Paths by Rebecca Heisman
• Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen
• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
• Followed by the Lark by Helen Humphreys, narrated by Jennifer Pickens (audiobook)
• Let Me Hear a Rhyme by Tiffany D. Jackson (audiobook)
• The Shining by Stephen King
• Audition by Katie Kitamura
• The Names by Florence Knapp
• On the Edge of Reason by Miroslav Krleza
• Give Unto Others by Donna Leon
• Seasonal Work: Stories by Laura Lippman
• Frostfire by Elly MacKay
• The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
• Earthlings by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori
• Shut Up You’re Pretty by Tea Mutonji
• Wreck by Catherine Newman
• True Biz by Sara Novic, narrated by Lisa Flanagan, Kaleo Griffith (audiobook)
• We the Kindling by Otoniya J Okotbitek, narrated by Shelby Mwambu (audiobook)
• A Field Guide to Birds of Ontario by Mark Peck
• How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin
• In Search of Lost Time – Volume IV, Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright
• In Search of Lost Time – Volume V, The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright
• Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid
• Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie
• Colony by Anne Rivers Siddons
• Atomweight by Emi Sasagawa
• Cafe with No Name by Robert Seethaler, translated by Katy Derbyshire
• Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories: Lady Ferry by Sarah Orne Jewett, The Mistress in Black by Rosemary Timperley and Lucky’s Grove by H. Russell Wakefield
• Hirayasumi by Keigo Shinzo
• Walking with Beth – Conversations with My Hundred-Year-Old Friend by Merilyn Simonds
• Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld, narrated by Carrington MacDuffie (audiobook)
• Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson
• Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
• Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, narrated by Kate Burton, etc. (audiobook)
• The Solitary Gourmet by Jiro Taniguchi and Masayuki Kusumi, translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian
• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Pick a Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa, narrated by Zoe Doyle (audiobook)
• Murder on the Marlow Belle by Roger Thorogood
• A Truce That is Not Peace by Miriam Toews (audiobook)
• Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope
• Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui
• The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman
• Time of the Child by Niall Williams
• Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood, narrated by Ailsa Piper (audiobook)
• Goodnight Tokyo by Atsuhiro Yoshida, translated by Haydn Trowell
• Hello Sunshine by Keezy Young

And yes, we usually have some extra book-related articles, resources, news and recommendations to share. These are 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.

• Starting in January 2026, Silent Book Club headquarters will be offering new book recommendations, shining a spotlight on a new book release each month.
• Take a look at the New York Public Library Top Checkouts of 2025, Best Books of 2025 and New Yorker 100 Exhibition at the library. (One of our zoom members lives near and is fortunate to visit the New York Public Library on a regular basis!)
• As Wikipedia defines it, cozy mysteries “are a sub-genre of crime fiction in which sex and violence occur offstage, the detective is an amateur sleuth, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community.” In this month’s zoom meeting, a reader mentioned that she was embarking on an exploration of cozy mysteries in Asian settings. As you can see from that previous link, the cozymystery.com web site can steer interested readers to any variation of this sub-genre imaginable!
• A vital companion to Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie is the Our World in Data web site.

Our group’s previous reports and book lists are always available 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 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, breathtaking momentum, they now boast almost 2,000 chapters … (There were around 60 chapters when we joined as the first Toronto chapter in 2017.) The SBC organization celebrated its 10th anniversary throughout October … and our chapter celebrated its 8th anniversary in early November.

You can find information on meetings happening around the world and close to where you live. Every club is different in size, format (in-person, virtual or hybrid) 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.

The happiest of happy reading, however you keep track … or don’t!