january book

Next year's book will be The Sellout by Paul Beatty.
Join us on Tuesday, January 3rd at 7:00pm for discussion and seasonal beverages at The Sylvia Hotel Lounge.

https://sylviahotel.com/restaurant/

A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality—the black Chinese restaurant.

Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens—on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles—the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral.

Fuelled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident—the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins—he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.

december book

Next month's book will be The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Join us on Tuesday, December 6th at 7:00pm for discussion and seasonal beverages at The Sylvia Hotel Lounge.

https://sylviahotel.com/restaurant/



The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family.

The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

The Glass Castle is truly astonishing—a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.

november book

Next month's book will be Foe by J M Coetzee
Join us on Tuesday, November 1st at 7:00pm for discussion and beverages at The Sylvia Hotel Lounge.

https://sylviahotel.com/restaurant/




Nobel Laureate and two-time Booker prize-winning author of Disgrace and The Life and Times of Michael K, J. M. Coetzee reimagines Daniel DeFoe's classic novel Robinson Crusoe in Foe. In an act of breathtaking imagination, J.M Coetzee radically reinvents the story of Robinson Crusoe. In the early eighteenth century, Susan Barton finds herself adrift from a mutinous ship and cast ashore on a remote desert island. There she finds shelter with its only other inhabitants: a man named Cruso and his tongueless slave, Friday. In time, she builds a life for herself as Cruso's companion and, eventually, his lover. At last they are rescued by a passing ship, but only she and Friday survive the journey back to London. Determined to have her story told, she pursues the eminent man of letters Daniel Foe in the hope that he will relate truthfully her memories to the world. But with Cruso dead, Friday incapable of speech and Foe himself intent on reshaping her narrative, Barton struggles to maintain her grip on the past, only to fall victim to the seduction of storytelling itself. Treacherous, elegant and unexpectedly moving, Foe remains one of the most exquisitely composed of this pre-eminent author's works. 'A small miracle of a book. . . of marvellous intricacy and overwhelming power' 

october book

Next month's book will be The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre
Join us on Tuesday, October 4th at 7:00pm for discussion and beverages at The Sylvia Hotel Lounge.

https://sylviahotel.com/restaurant/

On its publication in 1964, John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold forever changed the landscape of spy fiction. Le Carré combined the inside knowledge of his years in British intelligence with the skills of the best novelists to produce a story as taut as it is twisting, unlike any previously experienced, which transports anyone who reads it back to the shadowy years in the early 1960s, when the Berlin Wall went up and the Cold War came to life.

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold was hailed as a classic as soon as it was published, and it remains one today.

october book

Next month's book will be The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre
Join us on Tuesday, October 4th for discussion, and beverages at The Sylvia Hotel Lounge.

https://sylviahotel.com/restaurant/

On its publication in 1964, John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold forever changed the landscape of spy fiction. Le Carré combined the inside knowledge of his years in British intelligence with the skills of the best novelists to produce a story as taut as it is twisting, unlike any previously experienced, which transports anyone who reads it back to the shadowy years in the early 1960s, when the Berlin Wall went up and the Cold War came to life.

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold was hailed as a classic as soon as it was published, and it remains one today.

september book(s)

We are skipping the August meeting since many of us will be on vacation, and will reconvene in on Tuesday September 6th at The Sylvia again.
Two books were chosen for September, we could not break the voting deadlock! You can choose to read one or both; The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James + The Girl on the Train by Paul Hawkins.



Regarded by many as Henry James's finest work, and a lucid tragedy exploring the distance between money and happiness, The Portrait of a Lady contains an introduction by Philip Horne in Penguin Classics. When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to enjoy the freedom that her fortune has opened up and to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. Then she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond. Charming and cultivated, Osmond sees Isabel as a rich prize waiting to be taken. Beneath his veneer of civilized behaviour, Isabel discovers cruelty and a stifling darkness. In this portrait of a 'young woman affronting her destiny', Henry James created one of his most magnificent heroines, and a story of intense poignancy. 



EVERY DAY THE SAME
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

UNTIL TODAY
And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel goes to the police. But is she really as unreliable as they say? Soon she is deeply entangled not only in the investigation but in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

july book and location

The still Wandering Book Club.

Next month's book will be The Plot Against America by Philip Roth.
Join us on Tuesday, July 5th for discussion, and beverages at The Sylvia Hotel Lounge.

https://sylviahotel.com/restaurant/

In an astonishing feat of empathy and narrative invention, our most ambitious novelist imagines an alternate version of American history. 

In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected President. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism. 

For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh’s election is the first in a series of ruptures that threaten to destroy his small, safe corner of America–and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother.

june book and location

Maybe we should be called the Wandering Book Club.

Next month's book will be Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. 
Join us on Tuesday, June 7th for discussion, and beverages at The Sylvia Hotel Lounge.

https://sylviahotel.com/restaurant/



A major new novel from one of science fiction's most powerful voices, AURORA tells the incredible story of our first voyage beyond the solar system. 
Brilliantly imagined and beautifully told, it is the work of a writer at the height of his powers. Our voyage from Earth began generations ago.Now, we approach our new home.AURORA.

may book and location

Next month's book will be Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis.

Join us on Tuesday, May 3rd for discussion, and beverages at The Kingston Taphouse 755 Richards Street.

http://www.kingstontaphouse.com/

We will try out the Kingston in May, if anyone is downtown and can do a pre-meeting reconnaissance before then, let us know if it looks suitable. Other suggestions for a meeting place are welcome!

WINNER OF THE 2015 GILLER PRIZE
WINNER OF THE 2015 ROGERS WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE 2015 TORONTO BOOK AWARDS

- I wonder, said Hermes, what it would be like if animals had human intelligence. 
- I'll wager a year's servitude, answered Apollo, that animals - any animal you like - would be even more unhappy than humans are, if they were given human intelligence. 

And so it begins: a bet between the gods Hermes and Apollo leads them to grant human consciousness and language to a group of dogs overnighting at a Toronto vet­erinary clinic. Suddenly capable of more complex thought, the pack is torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking,preferring the old 'dog' ways, and those who embrace the change. The gods watch from above as the dogs venture into their newly unfamiliar world, as they become divided among themselves, as each struggles with new thoughts and feelings. Wily Benjy moves from home to home, Prince becomes a poet, and Majnoun forges a relationship with a kind couple that stops even the Fates in their tracks.

Andre Alexis's contemporary take on the apologue offers an utterly compelling and affecting look at the beauty and perils of human consciousness. By turns meditative and devastating, charming and strange, Fifteen Dogs shows you can teach an old genre new tricks.

Derailed!

Looks like we will be meeting at the St Regis this month as the venerable Railway Club has suddenly become defunct. A new name and location will be discussed. May the Railway Club rise again!

april book

Next month's book will be The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene.

Join us on Tuesday, April 5th for discussion, beverages and a half price pizza!

For Arthur Rowe the charity fête was a trip back to childhood, to innocence, a welcome chance to escape the terror of the Blitz, to forget twenty years of his past and a murder...Then he guesses the weight of the cake, and from that moment on he’s a hunted man, the target of shadowy killers, on the run and struggling to remember and to find the truth.

march book

Next month's book will be Noir: A Novel by Robert Coover.
Join us on Tuesday, March 1st for discussion, beverages and a half price pizza!

With impeccable skill, Robert Coover, one of America's pioneering postmodernists, has turned the classic detective story inside-out. Here Coover is at the top of his form; and Noir is a true page-turner-wry, absurd, and desolate.

You are Philip M. Noir, Private Investigator. A mysterious young widow hires you to find her husband's killer-if he was killed. Then your client is killed and her body disappears-if she was your client. Your search for clues takes you through all levels of the city, from classy lounges to lowlife dives, from jazz bars to a rich sex kitten's bedroom, from yachts to the morgue. "The Case of the Vanishing Black Widow" unfolds over five days aboveground and three or four in smugglers' tunnels, though flashback and anecdote, and expands time into something much larger. You don't always get the joke, though most people think what's happening is pretty funny.

february book

Next month's book will be My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk.
Join us on Tuesday, February 2nd for discussion, beverages and a half price pizza!



At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish writers. 

The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of his realm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition indeed. The ruling elite therefore mustn’t know the full scope or nature of the project, and panic erupts when one of the chosen miniaturists disappears. The only clue to the mystery–or crime? –lies in the half-finished illuminations themselves. Part fantasy and part philosophical puzzle, My Name is Red is a kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection of art, religion, love, sex and power.