As I’ve said before, not everyone makes it to every book club meeting, every month. But the book beat goes on, and individual members and the group as a whole keeps it going, pretty much every month of the year – now going on eight years straight!

Without further ado, here are some images from our group’s July gatherings, followed by another gorgeous combined reading list from the group.

Photo credits: Jess Bootsma, Jennifer D. Foster

Every title on our group’s generous lists means that at least one (but usually more) readers have given that title considered attention. That doesn’t mean that every work on our lists is expressly recommended, of course. Inclusion on this list always means that our readers have devoted time and thought to a title – and that counts for so very much.

• How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann
• Saltwater by Jessica Andrews
• If I Knew Then: Finding Wisdom in Failure and Power in Aging by Jann Arden
• The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry
• Death in Diamonds by S.J. Bennett
• Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel, narrated by Cassandra Campbell (audiobook)
• Last Look by Charles Burns
• Black Hole by Charles Burns
• Final Cut by Charles Burns
• What is History, Now? Helen Carr and Susan Lipscomb
• Not My Type by E. Jean Carroll
• The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
• Monica by Daniel Clowes
• The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns
• The Mystery of the Haunted Dance Hall by Charis Cotter
• Recipe for a Good Life by Lesley Crewe
• Turncoat by Aaron Elkins
• Fire in The Stars by Barbara Fradkin
• Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert
• The Retirement Plan by Sue Hincenbergs
• The Family Recipe by Carolyn Huynh
• Always Look on the Bright Side of Life – A Sortabiography by Eric Idle
• Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin
• Detective Aunty by Uzma Jalaluddin
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, narrated by Jeff Woodman (audiobook)
• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
• The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
• Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir by Cyndi Lauper with Jancee Dunn
• Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li
• Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman
• Human Nature by Kate Marvel
• I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
• The Road to Goderich by Linda McQuaig
• Rag Pickers by Blaine Newton
• Death in Focus by Anne Perry
• Inverted World by Christopher Priest
• In Search of Lost Time Volume I – Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright
• Don’t Let Me Be Lonely – An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
• A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Seales
• The Village Newcomers by Rebecca Shaw
• On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
• The Queen of Sugar Hill: A Novel of Hattie McDaniel by Reshonda Tate
• White Walls: Collected Stories by Tatyana Tolstaya
• Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte

Our group’s previous reports and book lists never take the month off, either – they’re 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 closer and closer to 2,000 chapters … (There were around 60 chapters when we joined as the first Toronto chapter in 2017.) And oh, SBC will be celebrating its 10th anniversary this fall!

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 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 reading till next we meet … or don’t, but that’s OK, too.

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!

This blog post originally appeared in Todd Tyrtle’s Go Outside Today blog by Todd Tyrtle blog on February 29, 2020. I’ve gratefully reproduced it here with Todd’s permission.

In the late 1970’s, a new item was added to our elementary school’s daily schedule. “Sustained Silent Reading” or simply “Silent Reading” as the teachers called it. Classes would pause mid-afternoon and the entire class would read silently together – whatever books we liked. The idea was to encourage a love of reading – something I already had a great deal of. So for me, being given 30-40 minutes of my school day several times a week was like a dream come true. The class would become silent save for the occasional sound of a page turning as we all dove in to separate worlds. Some of us would read books from the Weekly Reader Book Club, others books we’d found at the library in the classroom. After some time, our teacher would quietly inform us time was up. Slowly the students would come back. Stuart Little would drive Kathy back to our school in his little car, Mike would wave goodbye to Harriet and Sport and catch a New York subway that mysteriously had a stop in our classroom, and Sam Gamgee and I would finish our second lunch and I’d say goodbye. For the rest of the afternoon, my mood would be influenced by having spent time reading a book I loved.

Decades passed, and during that time my reading waxed and waned with how busy my life was, and lately, how compelling the Internet, my smart phone, and social media were.

Ironically, one day last October my smartphone gave me a notification about a news story. With all of the data Google had, it knew I was heading for India soon and told me that something called a Silent Book Club was now regularly happening in Delhi. The idea was intriguing. Participants meet in a cafe and then, just as I remember doing in 1978, they sit together and silently read. Unlike many book clubs, there is no expectation that everyone will read the same book and discuss it. There is time set aside for optional discussion of books that everyone is reading and of course before or after the event itself, participants can socialize freely.

I did not find time to visit the club in Delhi, however I was very excited to read more about it. The idea, described on their website as “Introvert Happy Hour”, started in San Francisco 2012 and has since spread to dozens of cities in thirty countries.

In January I meet up with the Toronto chapter which meets at a bookstore / cafe / record store called Press Books, Coffee, and Vinyl, a cozy spot smelling of a delicious combination of used books and coffee. Several tables are pushed together with space for about a dozen people. I’m warmly welcomed by Vicki, the organizer, and introduced to several of the other participants. I grab a coffee and a scone and take a seat.

Though I’d read some time ago about the Toronto chapter’s activities, I’d forgotten the agenda and was a bit taken off guard by the format. Every meeting starts by going around the table. Each participant introduces themselves and then has 2-3 minutes to talk about what they’ve read recently and what they are planning on reading today. I quickly make a few notes about what I had read earlier in the month and in December and then listen in to everyone else’s impressions of what they’d read recently. The diversity of books was so interesting and inspiring. (You can see a full list at the Silent Book Club’s entry for my first visit here). Up until now I haven’t had a chance to talk to many other people about what they’re reading and so I’ve relied on following my own whims as to what I generally enjoy. This has meant reading so many travel memoirs, a little self-improvement non-fiction, a tiny bit of history, and the occasional fiction piece. Hearing about the great reads everyone else was enjoying is doing an excellent job of getting me out of the literary echo chamber I’d put myself in.

After everyone has had their chance to talk about the books they’d recently been spending time inside, it is time to read. We all go silent and I notice that Joni Mitchell has been playing on the cafe’s turntable. The atmosphere is lovely. It isn’t just reminding me of childhood Sustained Silent Reading time at school, I am noticing it is something that I rarely get to experience these days: the experience of sharing comfortable silence with others. Very often with friends and family there’s a sense that if we’re together there must be a conversation happening. This is most definitely not the case here. I’m happy to be in the room with others but I’m also happy to simply be able to read and share space with them.

Fifty-five minutes in to the reading, Vicki gently raps on the table signaling that we have five minutes left before our hour of reading together is up. I appreciate this little bit of notice as it allows me to gently return from my read. The five minutes pass quickly and we end the session with a series of photos of us with our books for sharing on the Toronto Silent Book Club blog – anonymized to preserve everyone’s privacy. I’m less concerned about my own privacy so I have a second photo taken that clearly shows me with my read.

For the curious – that book was hit and miss. There were some fantastic stories – and others that left me cold.
I have been to one more Silent Book Club meeting since then – this time with Sage who enjoyed it tremendously. The biggest thing I notice after this experience is how much I have enjoyed rediscovering reading. Over the past several weeks since the first meeting, I have read literally hundreds of pages more than I was regularly reading. And the more I spend reading, the more I notice others doing the same. A few mornings ago I had an impromptu “silent book club” experience at 6:00 AM on the bus as I joined a line of three other people all in a row reading our books together.

This experience, along with my visit back to 1987, has created ripples throughout my life well beyond this – watch for an entry on this subject in the very near future.

If you’re inspired to find a Silent Book Club chapter in your own area, check out the Silent Book Club map. And if there isn’t one, learn how to start your own here. To my friends in India: take note – there aren’t many chapters there yet, but I have readers in both Delhi and Bangalore (including HSR Layout and Whitefield) who may enjoy visiting those events. If you do, please share what it’s like – I’m very curious to hear how the chapters differ).