The title of this blog post kind of says it all. We’ve been meeting with friends, neighbours and fellow booklovers who have quickly become friends once or twice a month to share our reading enthusiasms and challenges, in the cozy confines of a favourite local coffee/vinyl/book haven … for two years! Here is to many more – friends, books, chai lattes, scones and more.

(Photo by Jo Nelson)

Without further ado, here is today’s eclectic list of books presented with passion and verve during the discussion portion of the meeting, and read with equal passion and commitment during the delicious silent portion of the meeting.

• England, England by Julian Barnes (audiobook)
• The Only Story by Julian Barnes (audiobook)
• Harry Potter and the Art of Spying by Lynn M. Boughey and Peter Earnest
• My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
• The Long Call by Ann Cleeves (audiobook)
• Patience by Daniel Clowes
• Watching You Without Me by Lynn Coady
• Watermark by Christy Ann Conlin
• The Innocents by Michael Crummey
• Breaking the Ocean – A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Reconciliation by Annahid Dashtgard
• Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson (audiobook)
• The Rain Watcher by Tatiana de Rosnay (audiobook)
• Children of the Moon by Anthony De Sa
• The 30 Second Commute: A Non Fiction Comedy About Writing and Working From Home by Stephanie Dickison
• Rose’s Run by Dawn Dumont
• The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store by Cait Flanders (audiobook)
• The Witch Elm by Tana French (audiobook)
• Patterns of Empire – The British and American Empires, 1688 to the Present by Julian Go
• The Humans by Matt Haig
• The Radleys by Matt Haig
• The Mountain Master of Sha Tin by Ian Hamilton
• The Hole That Must Be Filled by Kenneth J. Harvey
• The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz
• Everything Under by Daisy Johnson
• A Small Person Far Away by Judith Kerr
• An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion by Dorothea Lange and Paul S. Taylor
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
• Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer by Arthur Lubow
• The Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso
• Our Eyes, Our Tongue by Erika McKeen
• Circe by Madeline Miller
• The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton (audiobook)
• Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
• The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett (audiobook)
• Popshot Quarterly
• In Search of Lost Time Volume 3 – Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust
• The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson
• Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
• Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
• We are the Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer
• Autumn by Ali Smith
• Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout (audiobook)
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (audiobook)
• The Break by Katherena Vermette
• Robert Capa, A Biography by Richard Whelan
• October by Richard B. Wright

(Photos by Jo Nelson)

Enjoy our previous silent book club meeting reports and book lists here.

We’re pleased and honoured to have been interviewed about the silent book club concept and how to start a club of one’s own.

• CBC Radio’s Ontario Morning (starting at 41:20)
• CBC Toronto web site
• a series of interviews across Canada with CBC Radio, including Toronto’s Here and Now
• The Christian Science Monitor – Witty banter optional: The no-pressure, no-homework book club

San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich were most recently featured in a wonderful piece on the NPR web site (yes, National Public Radio, thank you very much!). Extensive and enthusiastic coverage silent book club coverage includes this piece in the February 2019 issue of O, the Oprah Magazine, describing the club’s genesis and extolling its virtues as the concept and clubs spread worldwide.

If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, please feel free to contact me for more information.

San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich were most recently featured in a wonderful piece on the NPR web site. Thanks to that fantastic coverage, lots of curious readers are googling “silent book club [city]” … and many more readers in the Greater Toronto Area are finding us. As a result, we arranged to do a doubleheader this month, with meetings on Saturday and Sunday at our favourite spot, Press …

By doubling the number of meetings, at least for this month, we were able to welcome some new attendees, still have room for our ongoing members, and not compromise the quality of our gatherings – or blow out Press’ walls – with too large a group. We might be able to double up our meetings on occasion, but another way we can accommodate the enthusiasm for the silent book club experience is by helping others to start their own groups … and in that regard, we have some great news! A recent attendee at one of our meetings earlier this summer has started a group in the Mississauga area. Another regular attendee of our meetings is guiding a traditional book club of which she is a member to transition to a silent book club, and hers will be meeting in midtown Toronto. These groups are just getting off the ground, but if you’re interested in finding out more, please contact me for more details. Needless to say, we’re thrilled to see our group’s energy and enthusiasm spinning off into new groups benefiting more readers, local businesses and communities.

As always, before the silent reading portion of the meeting, we went around the table so everyone could offer highlights on their recent reading discoveries, delights and challenges. One fellow reader revealed that chancing upon Judith Kerr’s obituary in The Economist has opened some new reading pleasures that she and her children are sharing together. When I described part of the inspiration for Karen Solie’s latest poetry collection, The Caiplie Caves, another fellow reader nearly jumped out of her chair to insist she needed to read those poems, because she’s been to that part of the rugged coast of Scotland. Another fellow reader spoke with brief and moving eloquence about the joys of revisiting Alistair MacLeod’s short stories in Island. These moments and more are why the “non-silent” portion of our meetings seems to be as cherished as the silent portion.

The range and variety of books we highlighted, recommended, occasionally expressed dismay or disappointment about and devoted a concentrated an hour to … once again, the list is lush, delicious, lively, intriguing.

(Note: The list that follows now reflects books discussed in both sessions of our two-meeting weekend.)

• Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker
• The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
• Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• Something Fierce by Carmen Aguirre
• Daring to Drive by Manal al-Sharif
• MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood (audiobook)
• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
• Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard
• How to be Sick by Toni Bernhard
• The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown
• Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson by Mark Bourrie
• Original Prin by Randy Boyagoda
• My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
• Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon
• Changes that Heal by Henry Cloud
• Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles
• The Innocents by Michael Crummey
• Flow – The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
• A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
• Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
• Exile Quarterly
• The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis
• The Neapolitan Novels (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child) by Elena Ferrante
• In Pieces by Sally Field (audiobook)
• The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (audiobook)
• Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
• Early Riser by Jasper Fforde
• The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
• A Maggot by John Fowles
• Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
• Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon
• The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
• The Torn Skirt by Rebecca Godfrey
• Mister Sandman by Barbara Gowdy
• Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
• The Water Rat of Wanchai by Ian Hamilton
• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
• Lands of Lost Borders by Kate Harris
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Breaking Free – How I Escaped Polygamy, the FLDS Cult, and My Father, Warren Jeffs by Rachel Jeffs
• The Son of a Certain Woman by Wayne Johnston
• The Clue in the Diary (Nancy Drew Mystery Stories) by Carolyn Keene
• When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr
• Bombs on Aunt Dainty by Judith Kerr
• The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
• That Time I Loved You by Carrianne Leung
• I Know my Own Heart: The Diary of Anne Lister
• Island by Alistair MacLeod
• Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
• The Path Between the Seas – The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914 by David McCullough
• Late Breaking by K.D. Miller
• February by Lisa Moore
• Alice Munro short story compilation
• The Whisper Man by Alex North
• Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill
• Dear Evelyn by Kathy Page
• The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett (audiobook)
• The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
• Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
• The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny
• In Search of Lost Time Volume 3 – Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust
• The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
• Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney (audiobook)
• Bina by Anakana Schofield
• Theory of Bastards by Audrey Schulman
• Leaving the Witness by Amber Scorah
• Discovering Dorothea by Karolyn Shindler
• Autumn by Ali Smith
• Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith (audiobook)
• Aging With Grace by David Snowdon
• The Caiplie Caves by Karen Solie
• Becoming a Supple Leopard by Kelly Starrett
• Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
• Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq
• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
• Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method by Daniel Scott Tysdal
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk
• Desert Queen – The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia by Janet Wallach
• Train the Brave: Tame Your Fear, Take the Chance, Dare to Live Big by Margie Warrell
• Worry by Jessica Westhead

Enjoy our previous silent book club meeting reports and book lists here.

We’re pleased and honoured to have been interviewed about the silent book club concept and how to start a club of one’s own.

• CBC Radio’s Ontario Morning (starting at 41:20)
• CBC Toronto web site
• a series of interviews across Canada with CBC Radio, including Toronto’s Here and Now
• The Christian Science Monitor – Witty banter optional: The no-pressure, no-homework book club

San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich were most recently featured in a wonderful piece on the NPR web site (yes, National Public Radio, thank you very much!). Extensive and enthusiastic coverage silent book club coverage includes this piece in the February 2019 issue of O, the Oprah Magazine, describing the club’s genesis and extolling its virtues as the concept and clubs spread worldwide.

If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, please feel free to contact me for more information.

April was showering in earnest today, but it did not deter sufficient numbers of readers from carefully bundling up their books and reading devices and meeting for our largest gathering of silent book club devotees to date: 18 around the tables marked “Reserved for Book Club”. Several new readers joined the group that has made this book club inviting and compelling since its inception in the fall of 2017.

After last month’s coverage of our silent book club, we put a lot of thought into how to manage the deluge of new interest. As we acknowledged, the charm and vitality of silent book club meetings comes from the size of the group and setting in which the meetings are held. At the same time, we were keen to welcome new readers and enjoy their company, hear new book recommendations and perspectives on the joys of reading, and just generally spread the silent book club love around. That love includes, by the way, our willingness to advise others on how to start clubs of their own. Be in touch if we can help you start a club of your own.

When CBC Toronto turned the spotlight on our group, another great benefit of the coverage was that it helped shed light on other silent book clubs in the Greater Toronto area and others that are re-inspired to give it a try. Some of the groups we discovered include:

• Broad Conversations
  Hamilton
  Check out their event listings here.
• Famous Last Words
  Junction neighbourhood, Toronto
  Check out their event listings here.
• Silent Book Club
  Ajax/Pickering
  Here is their Facebook group.

The following is the book list which sums up all the titles presented and discussed within the group this month, with an infusion of many brand new titles thanks to the brand new attendees. If you follow our book lists from month to month, you’ll notice that some titles are repeated, which happens when a book gets passed to a new reader or another reader reads and wants to discuss the same book. At some point, I’m going to create a master list of all books discussed – eliminating duplicates – to get a sense of how many unique books our group has discussed since its inception in October, 2017. After today’s meeting, I estimate it’s around 350+ titles.

When we go round the table before the silent reading portion of the gathering, each reader offers capsule reviews of what they have finished or are in the midst of reading – positive or negative, always constructive. Our list as I present it here has no rating system, just a link to either publisher information or generally positive reviews or informational pieces. The list is not inherently a list of recommendations, just a record of what we discussed. Mind you, I think it is a pretty good list of recommendations, as it continues to reflect a diverse and vibrant range of subjects and genres that might spark the interest of anyone keeping up with our club.

• Purple Hibicus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom
• Daring to Drive by Manal al-Sharif
• Homes by Abu Bakr al Rabeeah and Winnie Yeung (2019 Canada Reads runner-up)
• The Suspect by Fiona Barton
• Living Up to a Legend by Diana Bishop
• My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor
• Love is Blind by William Boyd
• No Bones by Anna Burns
• Milkman by Anna Burns
• Canada Reads winners
• Brother by David Chariandy (2019 Canada Reads 3rd place)
• God of Shadows by Lorna Crozier
• Woman World by Aminder Dhaliwal
• By Chance Alone by Max Eisen (2019 Canada Reads winner)
• A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Alicia Elliott
• Road Trip Rwanda by Will Ferguson
• In Pieces by Sally Field (book and audiobook)
• Beneath the Skin by Nicci French
• Faithful Place by Tana French
• Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller
• The Red Scarf by Kate Furnivall
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
• The Mare by Mary Gaitskill
• Less by Andrew Sean Greer
• Swallowing Mercury by Wioletta Greg, translated by Eliza Marciniak
• 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist
• Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
• Guapa by Saleem Haddad
• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
• Thanks a Thousand by A.J. Jacobs
• The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles
• News of the World by Paulette Jiles
• Metropolis by Philip Kerr
• Under a Cruel Star: a Life in Prague 1941-1968 by Heda Margolius Kovály
• Belonging by Nora Krug
• Family Album by Penelope Lively (audiobook)
• The Photograph by Penelope Lively (audiobook)
• Passing On by Penelope Lively
• Unexploded by Alison MacLeod
• Call the Nurse: True Stories of a Country Nurse on a Scottish Isle by Mary J. MacLeod
• Entry Island by Peter May
• A Woman First: First Woman by Selina Meyer
• A Mercy by Toni Morrison (audiobook)
• Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
• Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
• Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi
• How Hard Can It Be? by Allison Pearson
• Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
• Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson
• After the War is Over by Jennifer Robson
• Moonlight Over Paris by Jennifer Robson
• Goodnight from London by Jennifer Robson
• The Gown by Jennifer Robson
• Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
• The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
• Inheritance – A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro
• By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
• Women Talking by Miriam Toews
• Starlight by Richard Wagamese
• These are not the potatoes of my youth by Matthew Walsh
• The Best Kind of People by Zoe Whittall
• Forge by Jan Zwicky

As always, you can enjoy our previous silent book club meeting reports and book lists here.

In addition to the recent coverage by CBC Toronto, our silent book club was included in a late 2018 feature about silent book clubs in the international news publication The Christian Science Monitor. Enjoy the article here. San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich are featured in the February 2019 issue of O, the Oprah Magazine, describing the club’s genesis and extolling its virtues (if we haven’t done that enough here!) as the concept and clubs spread worldwide.

If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, please feel free to contact me for more information.

Particularly warm kudos are in order this month to the silent book club members who made it through the February cold and over the snowy, slippery streets to our bookish oasis. Some have been contending with the colds, flus and other ailments of the season, and all have been contending with the ever-changing and treacherous weather and how it permeates everyone’s moods, energy and ambition.

As we were settling around our table (so nicely adorned now with a “Reserved For Book Club” sign – thanks, Press!), removing coats and scarves and layers, setting out our books, beverages and treats, an interesting thing happened. Our normally book-focused chit-chat strayed – innocuously at first – into the seemingly unavoidable state of the world today, including commentary on the latest shenanigans coming from the country to our south (aka the elephant next to which Canada sleeps). Suddenly, we seemed to realize we did not want to stray down that path – and we rapidly got back on the intended path. The refreshingly robust manner in which our group resisted – stayed true to what the group is about – did my heart and brain immense good. I hope the readers around the table with me today felt the same way.

I realize that by using the term “chit-chat”, I’ve possibly belittled what this group has come to mean to me. Our discussions are anything but inconsequential or unimportant. By sharing with open minds and hearts and without judgement the words and ideas that interest, inspire, challenge and comfort us, we’re doing something truly essential. We are taking time away from our daily demands to do that, and we’re stepping away from the newsfeeds and discourse that often inflame more than they inform. I would not call this practice a form of avoidance. On the contrary, I would assert that we’ve not only found a potent curative in this quiet fellowship, but we’ve found a very practical way to mentally and emotionally recharge before heading back into the fray.

We were not long into the “what I’ve been reading lately” portion of today’s gathering when it dawned on all of us that there was a consistent thread of darkness wending through all the reading choices we seem to be making in recent weeks. By the third or fourth mention of “post-apocalyptic”, we were conjecturing whether this was a collective response to the weather, our health, the state of the world … Whatever the cause, I think it made us aware that we all seek comfort, insight and diversion in interesting ways … and, we might all want to calibrate the brightness and lightness levels on our reading. Can’t hurt, eh.

Here, as usual, is the book list which sums up all the titles presented and discussed within the group. Each reader offers capsule reviews – positive or negative, always constructive. Our list as I present it here has no rating system, just a link to either publisher information or generally positive reviews or informational pieces. The list is not inherently a list of recommendations, just a record of what we discussed. The list continues to reflect a diverse and vibrant range of subjects and genres that might spark the interest of anyone keeping up with our club.

• Purple Hibicus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
• The Survivalist Series by A. American
• One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
• When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
• Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
• The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
• The Boat People by Sharon Bala
• Burying Ariel by Gail Bowen
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• Milkman by Anna Burns
• The Art of American Screen Acting, 1912-1960 by Dan Callahan
• Gutenberg’s Apprentice by Alix Christie
• Foreign Babes in Beijing – Behind the Scenes of a New China by Rachel DeWoskin
• Heartbreaker by Claudia Dey
• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
• A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• American War by Omar El Akkad
• A Place of Hiding by Elizabeth George
• The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
• The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
• Woods Cop Mysteries by Joseph Heywood
• Machine Without Horses by Helen Humphreys
• Lighthouse Island by Paulette Jiles
• The Art of Detection by Laurie R. King
• Independent People by Halldor Laxness
• OBITS. by tess liem
• The Bookshop of Yesterdays by Amy Meyerson
• Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
• The Library Book by Susan Orlean
• 40 Sonnets by Don Paterson
• Tell – poems for a girlhood by Soraya Peerbaye
• Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
• The Long Take by Robin Robertson
• Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
• The Strange by Jérôme Ruillier, translated by Helge Dascher
• Martin John by Anakana Schofield
• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
• The Emissary by Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani
• Take Us to Your Chief by Drew Hayden Taylor
• Women Talking by Miriam Toews
• Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
• Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
• A Brief History of the Amazons : Women Warriors in Myth and History by Lyn Webster Wilde
• Positive by David Wellington
• Educated by Tara Westover
• Reproduction by Ian Williams

After our hour of silent reading, we wrapped up today’s meeting with something new. Some members read aloud brief selections from their recent reading. Today’s selections included poems from 40 Sonnets by Don Paterson and Tell – poems for a girlhood by Soraya Peerbaye, a poem found online with no author attribution about the allures of Africa, and the opening lines of the introduction to A Brief History of the Amazons : Women Warriors in Myth and History by Lyn Webster Wilde. It’ll be interesting to see if this becomes an occasional or regular feature of our gatherings.

As always, you can enjoy our previous silent book club meeting reports and book lists here.

Our silent book club was included in a late 2018 feature about silent book clubs in the international news publication The Christian Science Monitor. Enjoy the article here. San Francisco-based Silent Book Club founders Guinevere de La Mare and Laura Gluhanich are featured in the February 2019 issue of O, the Oprah Magazine, describing the club’s genesis and extolling its virtues (if we haven’t done that enough here!) as the concept and clubs spread worldwide.

If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, please feel free to contact me for more information.