Everyone marks the turning from one year to the next differently. Some dedicated readers who do not want to experience book hangovers on January 1st are working diligently as this blog post is being prepared to finish books before midnight … and then they start January 1st with a new tbr pile to tackle, turning to a fresh page in their book journals.

Well, not all readers do that, but all members of the east end Toronto chapter (which stretches east to New Jersey and Wales) of the Silent Book Club worldwide fellowship of readers are dedicated to good reading. We’re looking back on another year of reading discoveries, delights and challenges, and how we celebrated that with bookloving companions near and far. We’re looking ahead to more such celebrations, switching up the format of our virtual meetings to include themed discussions. We’re also planning for safe, comfortable in-person meetings that return us to the founding impetus of the silent book club concept: reading silently together, turning pages and drinking in fine words, with our friends and neighbours, in our neighbourhood.

Follow along with us in 2023. Continue or start your own reading journeys, collectively and individually, and be in touch to let us know about the books that are captivating you.

Here is our group’s final combined book list of this year. As I’ve mentioned before, each list reflects the reading of many of our members, whether or not they attended the meeting. The titles featured in each of our reports encompass print and digital versions of books, along with audiobooks. This list also combines the group’s reading as discussed over two meetings this month of December, 2022.

I’m regularly asked if our group recommends specific books. My answer? 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 encouragement, I’d say, for other readers reading our reports and lists to consider it, too. Is that a recommendation? It might be, but not exactly or necessarily. It always means that a title has been given attention and thought by our readers, which counts for a lot.

• Remarkably Jane: Notable Quotations on Jane Austen by Jennifer Adams
• Cold Kill by Rennie Airth
• The Winners by Fredrik Backman
• I Hope This Finds You Well by Kate Baer
• Hyperfocus: How to Be More Productive in a World of Distraction by Chris Bailey
• If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin, narrated by Bahni Turpin (audiobook)
• Galaxias by Stephen Baxter
• The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg (audiobook)
• The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan, edited by Alice Notley with Anselm Berrigan and Edmund Berrigan
• Biblioasis Christmas Ghost Stories 3-Pack 2022 (A Visit by Shirley Jackson, The Dead and the Countess by Gertrude Atherton & The Corner Shop by Lady Asquith)
• Murder at the Porte de Versailles by Cara Black
• This Time, That Place by Clark Blaise
• Wenjack by Joseph Boyden (audiobook)
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, narrated by Tim Robbins (audiobook)
• My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, narrated by Adepero Oduye (audiobook)
• The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed To Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brené Brown (audiobook)
• At Home by Bill Bryson
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (audiobook)
• Around England with a Dog by Lesley Choyce
• Officer Clemmons by François S. Clemmons
• Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki, Bronson Pinchot, John Lescault (audiobook)
• The Descendants by Robert Chursinoff
• The Haunting Season – Eight Ghostly Tales for Long Winter Nights by Bridget Collins, Imogen Hermes Gowar, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Andrew Michael Hurley, Jess Kidd, Elizabeth Macneal, Natasha Pulley and Laura Purcell
• Care Of: Letters, Connections, and Cures by Ivan Coyote (audiobook)
• How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz
• Deer Man by Geoffroy Delorme
• Some Trick: Thirteen Stories by Helen DeWitt
• Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
• The Life of Crime by Martin Edwards
• American War by Omar El Akkad, narrated by Dion Graham (audiobook)
• The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy
• Siblings Without Rivalry: How To Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
• Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago Forte
• Fruit by Brian Francis (audiobook)
• The Christmas Pearl by Dorothea Benton Frank
• Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu
• The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey, narrated by Xe Sands (audiobooks)
• Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy by Mo Gawdat
• The White Darkness by David Grann, narrated by Will Patton (audiobook)
• Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths
• Stray Dogs by by Rawi Hage
• Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (audiobook)
• Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart by Claire Harman
• Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf, narrated by Mark Bramhall (audiobook)
• The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
• I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better by Monica Heisey
• Who Am I Again? by Lenny Henry
• The Year of the Puppy by Alexandra Horowitz
• Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner
• Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, narrated by Arina Li (audiobook)
• People From My Neighbourhood by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from the Japanese by Ted Goossen
• If Cats Disappeared From The World by Genki Kawamura, translated by Eric Selland
• Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan
• Foster by Claire Keegan
• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
• The Feast by Margaret Kennedy
• Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley
• The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri
• Luster by Raven Leilani
• Where Reason Ends by Yiyun Li
• Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm
• Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
• Straggle – Adventures in Walking While Female by Tanis MacDonald
• Code Name Madeleine – A Sufi Spy in Nazi Occupied Paris by Arthur J. Magida
• Light, Gesture and Color by Jay Maisel
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken
• Don’t Tell Alfred by Nancy Mitford (audiobook)
• Regenesis by George Monbiot
• Did You Miss Me? by Sophia Money-Coutts
• Rumpole at Christmas by John Mortimer
• The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa, narrated by Kevin Shen (audiobook)
• The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
• Hamnet and Judith by Maggie O’Farrell
• I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell
• The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
• On Not Knowing – How to Love and Other Essays by Emily Ogden
• Animal Life by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, translated from the Icelandic by Brian Fitzgibbon
• Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life by Birgitta Olubas
• In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration by Shane M. O’Mara, narrated by Liam Gerrard (audiobook)
• A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny
• A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny, narrated by Robert Bathurst (audiobook)
• To float, to drown, to close up, to open by E. Alex Pierce
• Barkskins by Annie Proulx
• Shimmer by Alex Pugsley
• His Dark Materials: The Collectors by Philip Pullman
• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Shy by Mary Rodgers
• Every Family Has a Story by Julia Samuel
• People Change by Vivek Shraya
• Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell
• Calypso by David Sedaris (audiobook)
• The Best of Me by David Sedaris (audiobook)
• Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
• Noopiming: The Cure For White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, narrated by Tiffany Ayalik (audiobook)
• Playing the Long Game by Christine Sinclair with Stephen Brunt
• My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith, narrated by Sir Timothy Ackroyd (audiobook)
• The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith, narrated by Lisette Lecat (audiobook)
• Ai Ladki by Krishna Sobti
• Spacing magazine, 2022 | Issue 61 Ontario Place
• Happy New Year by Malin Stehn
• The Victorian and the Romantic by Nell Stevens
• This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
• Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq (audiobook)
• The Listeners by Jordan Tannahill
• Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor
• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
• Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
• The It Girl by Ruth Waring
• The Love Connection by Denise Williams, narrated by January LaVoy, Shane East (audiobook)
• The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear
• Solito by Javier Zamora
• Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam, narrated by Ethan Herisse (audiobook)

Here are some additional book-related articles, resources, news, recommendations and more. These items and tidbits 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 … and sometimes our conversation meanders from books to interesting topics and nuggets of information, just because!

• “My favorite part of a Silent Book Club meetup is the not-silent part, where you get to meet nice people, talk about books, and get recommendations for what to read next.” Our group agrees.
• If you don’t already, you need to know more about natto.
• Greg Bear’s work “combined a wide-ranging view of future technical developments with political speculation.” Science fiction readers mourn his death at 71.
• A Novel Spot bookstore is one of the Toronto purveyors of books much beloved by our group members.

Our previous reports and book lists are available year round to intrigue, amuse, provoke and add to your tbr pile … 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.

Happy new year … in reading and in everything!

The last time it happened, we wondered if it was a dream. Well, it happened again, so I guess it wasn’t a dream … but it was truly dreamy.

Once again, we made our way through The Great Escape bookstore, out the back door, through the urban oasis of a blooming pollinator garden, through the vine-draped entrance to the charming space where we once again realized absolute silent book club paradise. By the late summer afternoon light angling through the back garage doors, perfectly enhanced with a chandelier and fairy lights, with occasional visits from sweet store dog Scout, we settled into our chairs for an hour of peaceful reading – neighbours’ voices and nearby traffic just a pleasant hum in the background.

We followed that with an hour of just the right depth of discussion about the books we’ve been reading, the ones that have enchanted us and the ones that have perhaps disappointed us. That conversation segued into some reflections on how we all progress from one book to the next – sometimes checking off titles from some kind of list or some kind of organized map of subjects or authors we want to work our way through, and sometimes spontaneously and with no plan or preconceived notions at all.

Those of us who didn’t acquire a few books on the way in made sure to acquire a few on the way out. How many kinds of perfect was our return trip (not the last – the snow is not flying just yet) to bookish heaven?

Here are the books we read and discussed at The Great Escape:

• Son of Elsewhere by Elamin Abdelmahmoud
• Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, narrated by Campbell Scott (audiobook)
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler
• Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
• Dancing After Ten by Vivian Chong
• My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
• Grendel by John Gardner
• Not the Apocalypse I Was Hoping For by Leslie Greentree
• Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
• Letters in a Bruised Cosmos by Liz Howard
• Overcoming Bias – Building Authentic Relationships Across Differences by Tiffany Jana and Matthew Freeman
• The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• A Crooked Tree by Una Mannion
• North Korea Journal by Michael Palin
• This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett
• Durable Goods by James Pollock
• The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter
• Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
• Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
• Intruder by Bardia Sinaee
• When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman

Again, we have additional book-related articles, resources, news, recommendations and more. These items and tidbits 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. Here are the latest:

• One of our attendees at The Great Escape meeting was toting her books in gorgeous book sleeves which the rest of us coveted. Turns out we need not covet, but should all head straight to the Always September Shop on Etsy to get our own from a delightful selection of designs.
• “I’m going through hell for the sake of art. Tolstoy or Henry James could learn a thing or two” Author Adrian Chiles recounts the challenges of recording an audiobook of his own work.
• A number of our silent book club members have enjoyed Son of Elsewhere by Elamin Abdelmahmoud. Trevor Corkum of 49th Shelf recently chatted with Elamin about what a captivating read the debut memoir is.

Our previous reports 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.

Organized, spontaneous, organizedly spontaneous, spontaneously organized … however you approach it, keep enjoying your reading.

Was it a dream? Still aglow a day later, I can say no, this special event was real …

We made our way through a heavenly bookstore portal (pausing to browse and make some purchases), then down a lush garden path, over a welcoming threshold to absolute silent book club paradise, complete with a chandelier, fairy lights and lovely, chill bookstore dog Scout. The Great Escape Bookstore so generously provided us with a magical space for an unforgettable bookish gathering.

The pleasures of reading silently together as a group all came flooding back, as if the last two years have been some other kind of strange dream. The Great Escape garage was a peaceful balance of the hum of nearby neighbourhood activity, and the comforting sound of pages turning, readers shifting in their chairs or nibbling snacks, a dog slipping gently amongst us from time to time … and oh, those shared happy glances when two readers looked up from their books at the same time …

That first hour went by so quickly, and then we took another hour to chat, to describe what we’d been reading, to share excerpts and other recent reading experiences and challenges. The only thing that could have further intensified the magic was to have even more zoom-to-real-life transformations – more of our reading companions who have been with us before, and with us throughout these challenging times – with us there in that perfect setting.

As we ventured home with replenished book bags and replenished hearts, we know more gatherings like this will be in our future.

Here are the books we read and discussed at The Great Escape:

• Transcription by Kate Atkinson
• Either/Or by Elif Batuman
• Villette by Charlotte Bronte
• Bodies in Trouble by Diane Carley
• The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier
• Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• The Workshop: Seven Decades of the Iowa Writers Workshop, edited by Tom Grimes
• Indigenous Relations – Insights, Tips & Suggestions to Make Reconciliation a Reality by Bob Joseph with Cynthia F. Joseph
• Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
• I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell
• The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny
• Run Towards the Danger by Sarah Polley

And now, I’ll just let a few more pictures of our bookish heaven speak for themselves.

This past week’s virtual silent book club gathering was a little smaller than usual. But on a cold, blustery winter night, it still brought much-needed connection, warmth and light. I just wish we could have extended that to the book club member who couldn’t attend … because that blustery night meant her power was out.

Not only was there the cozy glow of our zoom screens, but a pleasant sidebar of our bookish exchanges was a discussion about how to light the book pages we turn to in the middle of the night when we can’t sleep (a challenge perhaps happening more frequently during the pandemic). Of course, ebook readers such as Kindles and Kobos are lighted by design, but what to do when you’re trying to enjoy a traditional paper book in the darkness, also trying not to disturb others who share your sleeping space? This discussion rather happily reminded me that I had a wonderful and steadfast book light (of which I’ve purchased a few, to make sure I’m never without one) that helped me through numerous recent sleepless nights.

Even when the gatherings are smaller, our reading lists associated with each meeting are plentifully composed of many members’ recent selections, because they send them to me for inclusion in the blog reports whether or not they’re in attendance. 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).

• Strange Things by Margaret Atwood
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Us Against You by Fredrik Backman, translated by Neil Smith, narrated by Marin Ireland (audiobook)
• Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden, narrated by Robert Ramirez, Ruth Ann Phimister (audiobook)
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• Reacher: Killing Floor by Lee Childs
• The Haunting Season – Eight Ghostly Tales for Long Winter Nights by Bridget Collins, Imogen Hermes Gowar, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Andrew Michael Hurley, Jess Kidd, Elizabeth Macneal, Natasha Pulley and Laura Purcell
• The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin
• Thousand Plateaus – Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
• It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand by Megan Devine
• Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
• This Place by Sam Donaldson and Mike Sprout
• Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, narrated by Dion Graham (audiobook)
• What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
• Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
• Twelve Nights by Urs Faes
• Root of All Evil by E.X. Ferrars
• Love People, Use Things: Because the Opposite Never Works by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus
• The Wars by Timothy Findley
• Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
• The Liar by Stephen Fry (audiobook)
• Five Little Indians by Michelle Good, narrated by Kyla Garcia (audiobook)
• Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez
• Selected Short Stories of Franz Kafka
• In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson (audiobook)
• The Art of Falling by Danielle McLaughlin
• The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self by Alice Miller
• The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave, narrated by Jessie Buckley (audiobook)
• This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell
• Dog Songs by Mary Oliver
• Erebus: The Story of a Ship by Michael Palin
• The Hero’s Walk by Anita Rau Badami, narrated by Laara Sadiq (audiobook)
• Some Integrity by Padraig Regan
• Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World by Daniel Sherrell
• Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
• Such Color by Tracy K. Smith
• Surviving the City. Vol. 2, From the Roots Up by Tasha Spillett-Sumner and Natasha Donovan
• Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
• Life in the City of Dirty Water: a memoir of healing by Clayton Thomas-Müller
• We Two Alone by Jack Wang
• The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead
• The Diversity of Life by Edward O. Wilson

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, including:

• That book light that is my insomnia saviour is from Mighty Bright. Not only is it lightweight and clips securely to your book, it’s rechargeable. It’s seen me through several occasions throughout the pandemic when I used the #cantsleepreading hashtag.
• The Auschwitz Museum on Twitter is a compelling companion to the book In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson.
• Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans got its title from a line in “The Bridge Poem” by Donna Kate Rushin.

Our previous silent book club meeting reports (online and in-person versions) and book lists are always available for you to read and enjoy 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, many are running virtual meetings in different formats, and some are re-emerging carefully with in-person gatherings. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

Stay safe and cozy, with a stack of books (in whatever form) to warm heart and mind, and to always light your way.

How much do books, talking about books and talking about books with wonderful book friends warm up the wintry days? Well, let me show you.

Whether they’re able to attend a particular meeting or not, our silent book club members always send me, the blog report compiler, lists of what they’ve been reading lately, so we can provide a generous reading list with each meeting. 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).

• Home of the Floating Lily by Silmy Abdullah
• The Cleaner by Marina Abramovic
• Emma by Jane Austen
• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, narrated by Shayna Small (audiobook)
• Turning Off the Tap: Overcoming the Real Reasons We Overeat by Sara Best
• The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, narrated by Neil Hellegers (audiobook)
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Black Hole by Charles Burns
• The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri, translated by Stephen Sartarelli
• Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers, narrated by Karen Cass (audiobook)
• Don’t Bite the Hook: Finding Freedom from Anger, Resentment, and Other Destructive Emotions by Pema Chodron
• Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels by Rachel Cohen
• Kingdomtide by Rye Curtis
• Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
• Something Wicked by E.X. Ferrars
• The Wars by Timothy Findley
• Wonderworks: the 25 most powerful innovations in the history of literature by Angus Fletcher
• The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
• Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
• Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez
• The Storyteller by Dave Grohl
• The Seas by Samantha Hunt
• Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett, David Boyd
• The Feast by Margaret Kennedy
• Ravenscraig by Sandi Krawchenko Altner
• Birdie by Tracey Lindberg, narrated by Alyssa Bresnahan (audiobook)
• Rez Rules: My Indictment of Canada’s and America’s Systemic Racism Against Indigenous Peoples by Chief Clarence Louie
• Why Men Lie by Linden MacIntyre
• Mudlark – In Search of London’s Past Along the River Thames by Lara Maiklem
• West with the Night by Beryl Markham
• The Art of Falling by Danielle McLaughlin
• What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty (audiobook)
• The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
• Three Sisters by Heather Morris, narrated by Flinty Williams (audiobook)
• Hamnet and Judith by Maggie O’Farrell
• Upstream by Mary Oliver
• The Junta of Happenstance by Tolu Oloruntoba
• The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman
• Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi
• Erebus: The Story of a Ship by Michael Palin
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
• These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
• State of Terror by Louise Penny and Hillary Clinton
• Trickster Drift by Eden Robinson
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling, narrated by Jim Dale (audiobook)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
• Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World by Daniel Sherrell
• Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
• The Digital Plague by Jeff Somers
• Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal, narrated by Amy Ryan, Michael Stuhlbarg (audiobook)
• The Betrayal of Anne Frank by Rosemary Sullivan
• Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson, narrated by Graham Halstead (audiobook)
• Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq (audiobook)
• The Master by Colm Toibin
• The Magician by Colm Toibin
• The Tiger by John Vaillant
• Starlight by Richard Wagamese, narrated by Wesley French (audiobook)
• Praying with Jane Eyre by Vanessa Zoltan

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, including:

• One of our silent book club members heartily recommends the Backlisted podcast. Launched in late 2015, each episode features a guest (usually a writer) who has chosen a book they love and which they think deserves a wider audience. As the podcast’s web site contends, though sponsored by the crowd-funding publisher Unbound, the podcast isn’t about selling new product: it’s about how and why some books stand the test of time.
• Harry Potter and the Sacred Text is another group member-recommended podcast that started around the same time as Backlisted. It comes at the Harry Potter books via rigorous but still accessible approaches, using central themes with which to explore characters and context.

Our previous silent book club meeting reports (online and in-person incarnations) and book lists are always available for you to read and enjoy them 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, many are running virtual meetings in different formats, and some are re-emerging carefully with in-person gatherings. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

Stay safe and cozy, with a stack of books (in whatever form) to warm heart and mind, and to light your way.

As we’ve kvelled in the introduction to many a report here, our virtual silent book club gatherings have been a vital lifeline and inspiration for many of us throughout the pandemic. (You can read the many ways we’ve waxed poetic and – well, not prosaic exactly, but whatever is the equivalent in prose – here.)

Not only are we a collegial and bonded group of readers and friends, but are we ever a trusted recommendation engine on overdrive! It’s fair to say that most of us depart these meetings seeking out new titles via our favourite booksellers and libraries. In fact, some of us are making purchases and putting holds on books during meetings, thank you very much. And as our enthusiasm spills out to social media and offline discussions with family and friends, the bookish love continues, we know for a fact.

Bearing in mind that global supply chain issues exacerbated by the pandemic are also affecting books, we agreed at our latest meeting that we needed to get our holiday book purchasing done, well, yesterday …!

Without further ado – time’s a-wasting! – here’s our latest combined reading list. 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).

• Mr. Cadmus by Peter Ackroyd
• Postbox Kashmir: Two Lives in Letters by Divya Arya
• Eating India: An Odyssey into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices by Chitrita Banerji
• Toby’s Room by Pat Barker, narrated by Juliet Prague, Kieran Bew, Finlay Robertson (audiobook)
• Stop Doing That Sh*t: End Self-Sabotage and Demand Your Life Back by Gary John Bishop
• Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life by Gary John Bishop
• Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs
• An Image in the Lake by Gail Bowen
• How to Be Happy Though Human by Kate Camp
• The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington, narrated by Sian Phillips (audiobook)
• The Heron’s Cry by Ann Cleeves, narrated by Jack Holden (audiobook)
• The Spoon Stealer by Lesley Crewe
• What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
• Things Are Against Us by Lucy Ellmann
• Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal
• Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan
• Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
• The Sandman by Neil Gaiman (audiobook)
• Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey
• People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry
• Poetry is Queer by Kirby
• Midnight in Everwood by M.A. Kuzniar
• Silverview by John Le Carre
• Luster by Raven Leilani (audiobook)
• The Tinder Sonnets by Jennifer LoveGrove
• The Coward by Jarred McGinnis
• Shaheen Bagh: A Graphic Recollection by Ita Mehrotra
• Best Canadian Stories 2017, edited by John Metcalf
• Rizzio by Denise Mina (audiobook)
• No Man’s Land by Wendy Moore
• A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ni Ghriofa
• The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman
• Rise & Shine, Benedict Stone by Phaedra Patrick, narrated by James Langton (audiobook)
• State of Terror by Louise Penny and Hillary Clinton
• Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher, narrated by Jilly Bond (audiobook)
• Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto
• Do the Work by Steven Pressfield
• Ghostbuster’s Daughter: Life with My Dad, Harold Ramis by Violet Ramis Stiel
• Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Barney’s Version by Mordecai Richler
• Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V E Schwab, narrated by Julia Whelan (audiobook)
• Body Surfing by Anita Shreve
• A Dark and Hollow Star by Ashley Shuttleworth
• The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex, narrated by Tom Burke and Indira Varma (audiobook)
• Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout, narrated by Kimberly Farr (audiobook)
• A Boy of Good Breeding by Miriam Toews, narrated by Susanna Fournier (audiobook)
• The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
• Unreconciled by Jesse Wente
• Still Life by Sarah Winman
• Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria

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, including:

• Senior Reading Raccoons is a book recommendation Facebook group enthusiastically touted by one of our silent book club members.
• The Decameron Project short story collection by The New York Times is inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron”, written as the plague ravaged Florence in the 14th century. This project offers stories capturing this pandemic’s moments, featuring authors including Margaret Atwood, Edwidge Danticat, David Mitchell, Colm Toibin, Mona Awad, Rachel Kushner, Esi Edugyan and more.

Our previous silent book club meeting reports (online and in-person incarnations) and book lists are always available right here for your enjoyment and edification, not to mention gift-giving ideas – even gifts for yourself, of course! New discoveries, old favourites and more – we guarantee there’s something amongst our reports that will keep your reading appetite fueled.

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, but many are running virtual meetings in different formats, and some are re-emerging carefully with in-person gatherings. Please feel free to contact me for more information about our club and its offerings.

Stay safe and stay well, and keep your reading supply chain flowing!

While pondering and prepping for our latest upcoming silent book club zoom meeting (a mid-week, evening “pop-up”), I came across the following most wonderful quotation, tweeted by Jen Benka (@jenbenka), President and Executive Director of the Academy of American Poets:

“‘Distanced intimacy’ strikes me as a really good phrase for what reading always offers, that books are also technologies for being together alone or alone together … Unknown sources of distanced intimacy — they are out there, just beyond the frame.”

— Ben Lerner

Oh, didn’t that quotation find me at just the perfect moment? I responded on Twitter that the “distanced intimacy” of reading takes many forms. We can feel connection with a book reviewer’s thoughts, or those of avid readers here (meaning Twitter, but on social media and online in general) sharing their enthusiasm for a particular book … or just that feeling of reading and knowing others are experiencing the same words.

In particular, the concept works brilliantly for silent book club groups. There was a form of distanced intimacy even when we met in person, once upon a time. That fellowship of readers and its potent online distanced intimacy have been particularly vital forms of solace and connection throughout the pandemic, and will remain so in future, I absolutely know.

And so it was once again, when we gathered zoomily (but not gloomily) for another exchange of great book recommendations, discussion and comisseration.

Our latest combined reading list is not only a rich autumn cornupcopia, but also a treasure trove of ideas to store away for the winter. 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).

• Home Ice: Reflections of a Reluctant Hockey Mom by Angie Abdou
• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
• Before We Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
• The Women of Troy by Pat Barker, narrated by Kristin Atherton (audiobook)
• Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs
• The Tradition by Jericho Brown
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler
• How to Be Happy Though Human by Kate Camp
• Collected Stories by Roald Dahl
• Magpie by Elizabeth Day
• On the Proper Use of Stars by Dominique Fortier, translated by Sheila Fischman
• Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller
• Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
• The Infinite Blacktop by Sara Gran (audiobook)
• Think Again by Adam Grant
• The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
• The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
• Living Nations, Living Words poetry anthology, edited by Joy Harjo
• Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez
• 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph
• Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce
• The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King
• Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune
• No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
• In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (audiobook)
• The Second Woman by Louise Mey, translated from the French by Louise Rogers Lalaurie
• Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
• The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed
• Black Drop by Leonora Nattrass
• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
• Masses on Radar by David O’Meara
• There There by Tommy Orange, narrated by Darrell Dennis, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Alma Cuervo and Kyla Garcia (audiobook)
• The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick, narrated by James Langton (audiobook)
• The Madness of Crowds: A Novel by Louise Penny
• State of Terror by Louise Penny and Hillary Clinton
• A Double Life by Charlotte Philby
• The Dig by John Preston
• The Only Child by Andrew Pyper
• The Gown by Jennifer Robson, narrated by Marisa Calin (audiobook)
• Normal People by Sally Rooney
• Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
• Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (audiobook)
• Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin
• My Mother, My Translator by Jaspreet Singh
• Wayward by Dana Spiotta
• Fight Night by Miriam Toews
• The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
• The Strangers by Katherena Vermette (audiobook)
• Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese
• Unreconciled by Jesse Wente
• Disorientation by Ian Williams
• Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
• The Weekend by Charlotte Wood
• Pride by Ibi Zoboi, narrated by Elizabeth Acevedo (audiobook)

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, including:

• On the Proper Use of Stars by Dominique Fortier, translated by Sheila Fischman is one of many historical and imagined retellings of the Franklin Expedition. Our discussion about this book led us to Margaret Atwood’s series of lectures in the mid-1990s on the influence of the mysteries of the Canadian North in many works: Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature.
• Some of our members have been fascinated by A Ghost in the Throat, an intriguing melding of poetry, translation, memoir, history and more by the Irish poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa. The Poetry Extension recently interviewed her.

Boost your reading with much bookish manna from heaven, courtesy of our previous silent book club meeting reports (online and in-person incarnations) and book lists – find them all here. We just know you’ll find something new or unusual, or maybe something old and familiar, that will keep your reading mojo working.

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, 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 and stay well, in this world and the worlds that books open to us.