JANUARY BOOK

Ritual winter solstice greetings to all!  January's book will be The Blue Flower (https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Flower-Novel-Penelope-Fitzgerald/dp/B01L9EEYQQ/ref=tmm_pap_title_13?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=) by Booker Prize winning British author Penelope Fitzgerald.  Join us on the evening of Tuesday, January 7 as we cure our New Year's hangovers with some hair of the dog and lively literary discussion at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge.  The fun begins at 7pm and newcomers and the idly curious are more than welcome.  As that famous philosopher Groucho Marx said, "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.  Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

         

The Blue Flower is set in the age of Goethe, in the small towns and great universities of late eighteenth-century Germany. It tells the true story of Friedrich von Hardenberg, a passionate, impetuous student of philosophy who will later gain fame as the Romantic poet Novalis. Fritz seeks his father's permission to wed his "heart's heart," his "spirit's guide"—a plain, simple child named Sophie von Kühn. It is an attachment that shocks his family and friends.

DECEMBER BOOK

December's book will be To Have and Have Not (https://www.amazon.com/Have-Not-Scribner-Classics/dp/0684859238/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1574664524&sr=8-1) by Ernest Hemingway.  Come and join our merry band of bibulous bibliophiles at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge on the evening of Tuesday, December 4.  As usual, it's a 7pm start time and newcomers and the idly curious are always welcome.

         

In this harshly realistic, yet oddly tender and wise novel, Hemingway perceptively delineates the personal struggles of both the "haves" and the "have nots" and creates one of the most subtle and moving portraits of a love affair in his oeuvre. In turn funny and tragic, lively and poetic, remarkable in its emotional impact, To Have and Have Not takes literary high adventure to a new level. As the Times Literary Supplement observed, "Hemingway's gift for dialogue, for effective understatement, and for communicating such emotions the tough allow themselves, has never been more conspicuous."

NOVEMBER BOOK

November's book will be Night Train (https://www.amazon.com/Night-Train-Martin-Amis/dp/0375701141) by English writer Martin Amis (the son of writer Kingsley Amis).  Join the fun at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge on the evening of Tuesday, November 5.  The night kicks off at 7pm and newcomers are always welcome.

         

Not since his celebrated novel Money has Martin Amis turned his focus on America to such remarkable effect. Fusing brilliant wordplay with all the elements of a classic whodunit, Amis exposes a world where surfaces are suspect (no matter how perfect), where paranoia is justified (no matter how pervasive), and where power and pride are brought low by the hidden recesses of our humanity.

OCTOBER BOOK

October's book will be Young Man with a Horn by Dorothy Baker (https://www.amazon.com/Young-Horn-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590175778), another volume in the excellent series of NYRB Classics.  Join us on the evening of Tuesday, October 1 at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge for an informal evening of drink, dining and discussion, beginning at 7pm.  As always, new members and the idly curious are always welcome.

         

Dorothy Baker's Young Man with a Horn is widely regarded as the first jazz novel, and it pulses with the music that defined an era. Baker took her inspiration from the artistry - though not the life - of legendary horn player Bix Beiderbecke, and the novel went on to be adapted into a successful movie starring Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall and Doris Day.

SEPTEMBER BOOK

September's book will be This Side of Paradise, the first novel by noted American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (https://www.amazon.com/This-Paradise-Penguin-Twentieth-Century-Classics/dp/0140189769/ref=sr_1_1?crid=LYRVOAXTBTH8&keywords=this+side+of+paradise+penguin&qid=1566795686&refinements=p_lbr_books_series_browse-bin%3APenguin+Twentieth-Century+Classics&rnid=3275128011&s=gateway&sprefix=this+side+of+paradise+pen%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C254&sr=8-1).  Come and join the fun on Tuesday, September 3 at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge overlooking English Bay, as we hoist a few to toast summer's swan song.  Newcomers and the simply curious are always welcome.  As usual, the festivities commence at 7pm.

         

First published in 1920, This Side of Paradise marks the beginning of the career of one of the greatest writers of the first half of the twentieth century. In this remarkable achievement, F. Scott Fitzgerald displays his unparalleled wit and keen social insight in his portrayal of college life through the struggles and doubts of Amory Blaine, a self-proclaimed genius with a love of knowledge and a penchant for the romantic.  Clever and wonderfully written, This Side of Paradise is a fascinating novel about the changes of the Jazz Age and their effects on the individual.

AUGUST BOOK

August's book will be Seize the Day (https://www.amazon.com/Seize-Penguin-Classics-Saul-Bellow/dp/0142437611/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3RQUBQY45VYYZ&keywords=seize+the+day+saul+bellow&qid=1563946439&s=gateway&sprefix=seize+th%2Caps%2C434&sr=8-1  ) by the American Nobel laureate Saul Bellow (who was actually born in Lachine, Quebec).  You can join our group of dedicated bibliophiles on the evening of Tuesday, August 6 at the splendiferous Sylvia Hotel Lounge, commencing at 7pm.  Summer evenings at the Sylvia, overlooking English Bay, are a quintessential Vancouver experience.

           

Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos: he is separated from his wife and children; at odds with his vain, successful father; failed in his acting career (a Hollywood agent once cast him as the "type that loses the girl"); and in a financial mess. In the course of one climactic day he reviews his past mistakes and spiritual malaise, until a mysterious philosophizing con man grants him a glorious, illuminating moment of truth and understanding, and offers him one last hope….

JULY BOOK

July's book will be Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (https://www.amazon.com/Wide-Sargasso-Sea-Jean-Rhys/dp/0393352560/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=).  What better way to spend a summer evening than bantering with a pack of cantankerous, opinionated bookworms at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge, while enjoying some fine food and beverages, kitty corner to the splendor of English Bay?  See you at the Sylvia on Tuesday, July 2; festivities commence at 7pm and newcomers are always welcome.

         

Wide Sargasso Sea, a masterpiece of modern fiction, was Jean Rhys's return to the literary center stage.  She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters.  With Wide Sargasso Sea, her last and best-selling novel, she ingeniously brings to light one of fiction's most fascinating characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.  This mesmerizing work introduces us to Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester.  Rhys portrays Cosway amidst a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.

JUNE BOOK

June's book will be As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee (https://www.amazon.com/Walked-Midsummer-Morning-Nonpareil-Books/dp/1567923925/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=).  Join us at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge on the evening of Tuesday, June 4 as we engage in a lively literary discussion while imbibing a few choice beverages and taking in the resplendent view of English Bay.  Newcomers and the merely curious always welcome (and there is no dress code).

         

"I was nineteen years old, still soft at the edges, but with a confident belief in good fortune.  I carried a small rolled-up tent, a violin in a blanket, a change of clothes, a tin of treacle biscuits, and some cheese.  I was excited, vain-glorious, knowing I had far to go; but not, as yet, how far."

So starts the adventure of the young Laurie Lee, who walks from his tiny village in a remote corner of Gloucestershire, to London and into the twentieth century.  Knowing one Spanish phrase, he decides to take the ferry to Spain.  Unbeknownst to Lee, Spain in 1934 was on the verge of war and, inexorably, he becomes entangled in the passionate, violent and bloody confusion that was the Spanish Civil War.

MAY BOOK

May's book will be The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys (https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Garden-Novel-Helen-Humphreys/dp/0393324915).  Join us at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge on the evening of Tuesday, May 7.  Festivities commence at 7pm.  New members and curious onlookers always welcome.

         

This word-perfect, heartbreaking novel is set in early 1941 in Britain when the war seems endless and, perhaps, hopeless. London is on fire from the Blitz, and a young woman gardener named Gwen Davis flees from the burning city for the Devon countryside. She has volunteered for the Land Army, and is to be in charge of a group of young girls who will be trained to plant food crops on an old country estate where the gardens have fallen into ruin.

APRIL BOOK

April's book will be Falling Man by the prolific contemporary American author Don DeLillo (https://www.amazon.com/Falling-Man-Novel-Don-DeLillo/dp/1416546065/ref=sr_1_1?crid=NP615I3O6OS4&keywords=falling+man+don+delillo&qid=1552273347&s=gateway&sprefix=falling+man+%2Caps%2C288&sr=8-1).  Join us on Tuesday, April 2 at the Sylvia Hotel Lounge for some spirited discussion while enjoying some tasty morsels and imbibing a few choice beverages.  Bring your friends, family, accountant... new members are always welcome.  (Yes, we have reverted back to the Lounge.  The Sylvia has abandoned their Tuesday live music sessions.  Apparently our withering looks and whingeing had the desired effect.  Consequently, the Sylvia's Dining Room is once again safe for visiting royalty.)

         

There is September 11 and then there are the days after, and finally the years.

Falling Man is a magnificent, essential novel about the event that defines turn-of-the-century America. It begins in the smoke and ash of the burning towers and tracks the aftermath of this global tremor in the intimate lives of a few people.  Brave and brilliant, Falling Man traces the way the events of September 11 have reconfigured our emotional landscape, our memory and our perception of the world. It is cathartic, beautiful, heartbreaking.

MARCH BOOK

March's book will be Brother by local author David Chariandy (https://www.amazon.com/Brother-David-Chariandy/dp/1635573548/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1551586885&sr=8-1-fkmrnull).  Join us on Tuesday, March 5 for a repast and repartee at the Sylvia Hotel Dining Room.  (We'll be in the Lounge if the Dining Room is still closed.)  Festivities begin at 7pm and new members are always welcome.  (Yes, it's free to join.)

         

In luminous, incisive prose, a startling new literary talent explores masculinity, race and sexuality against a backdrop of simmering violence during the summer of 1991.  Honest and insightful in its portrayal of kinship, community and lives cut short, David Chariandy's Brother is an emotional tour de force that marks the arrival of a stunning new literary voice.

FEBRUARY BOOK

February's book will be Thinking (https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Science-Decision-Making-Problem-Solving-Prediction/dp/0062258540), a collection of pieces edited by John Brockman, who runs the Edge.org website.  Whether you subscribe to cogito ergo sum or bibo ergo sum, put on your thinking caps and drinking chaps and join us at the cozy Sylvia Hotel dining room (not the lounge) on Tuesday, Feb. 5.  Festivities commence at 7pm and new members (and old) are always welcome.

         

From the bestselling authors of Thinking, Fast and Slow; The Black Swan; and Stumbling on Happiness comes a cutting-edge exploration of the mysteries of rational thought, decision-making, intuition, morality, willpower, problem-solving, prediction, forecasting, unconscious behavior, and beyond. Edited by John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org ("The world's smartest website"—The Guardian), Thinking presents original ideas by today's leading psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers who are radically expanding our understanding of human thought.