DECEMBER BOOK

Ritual winter solstice greetings to one and all!  Our selection for December is Born in Blackness (link) by Howard W. French, a Columbia University Professor of Journalism and long time New York Times foreign correspondent and bureau chief.  Since we've shifted to the second Tuesday of the month, that means it's December 12 this time around.  And we're continuing at Zawa Restaurant on Commercial Drive (link) with the usual 7pm start time.  So take a break from the holiday hoopla and drop by this Tuesday evening for some tasty bites, beer and book banter.  All sentient life forms welcome.

Traditional accounts of the making of the modern world afford a place of primacy to European history. Some credit the fifteenth-century Age of Discovery and the maritime connection it established between West and East; others the accidental unearthing of the "New World." Still others point to the development of the scientific method, or the spread of Judeo-Christian beliefs; and so on, ad infinitum. The history of Africa, by contrast, has long been relegated to the remote outskirts of our global story. What if, instead, we put Africa and Africans at the very center of our thinking about the origins of modernity?   In a sweeping narrative spanning more than six centuries, Howard W. French does just that, for Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe's dehumanizing engagement with the "dark" continent.

NOVEMBER BOOK

Our tome of choice for November is Anecdotes of Destiny (link) by Isak Dinesen (nom de plume of Danish author Karen Blixen, whose works include Out of Africa, one of our previous selections).  We'll continue meeting on the second Tuesday of the month until further notice.  That means Tuesday, November 10 is your chance to enjoy some pilsner and palaver at Zawa Restaurant on Commercial Drive (link).  All are welcome to join our merry band of bookateers at the usual 7pm start time.

These five rich, witty and magical stories from the author of Out of Africa include one of her most well known tales, 'Babette's Feast', which was made into the classic film. It tells the story of a French cook working in a puritanical Norwegian community, who treats her employers to the decadent feast of a lifetime. There is also a real-life Prospero and his Ariel in 'Tempests', a mysterious pearl-fisher in 'The Diver' and a brief, tragic encounter in 'The Ring'. All the stories have a mystic, fairy-tale quality, linked by themes of angels, the sea, dreams and fate. They were among the last to be written by Isak Dinesen, and show her as a master of short fiction.

OCTOBER BOOK

Our book for October is  Middlemarch by noted 19th century English novelist Mary Ann Evans, who wrote under the name George Eliot (link).  Hope everyone got an early start on this behemoth.  We'll be meeting on the second Tuesday of the month (to avoid conflict with the Vancouver International Film Festival).  So that's Tuesday, October 10 at Zawa's on Commercial Drive (link).  As usual, all are welcome to join the festivities which commence at 7pm.

George Eliot's novel, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, explores a fictional nineteenth-century Midlands town in the midst of modern changes. The proposed Reform Bill promises political change; the building of railroads alters both the physical and cultural landscape; new scientific approaches to medicine incite public division; and scandal lurks behind respectability. The quiet drama of ordinary lives and flawed choices are played out in the complexly portrayed central characters of the novel—the idealistic Dorothea Brooke; the ambitious Dr. Lydgate; the spendthrift Fred Vincy; and the steadfast Mary Garth. The appearance of two outsiders further disrupts the town's equilibrium—Will Ladislaw, the spirited nephew of Dorothea's husband, the Rev. Edward Casaubon, and the sinister John Raffles, who threatens to expose the hidden past of one of the town's elite. Middlemarch displays George Eliot's clear-eyed yet humane understanding of characters caught up in the mysterious unfolding of self-knowledge.

SEPTEMBER BOOK

Our September selection isThe Caretaker (link), a play by Nobel Prize winning British dramatist Harold Pinter.  Once again we'll be at Zawa's on Commercial Drive (link) for our last meeting of the summer.  Please note:  we'll be off our usual schedule again as we'll meet on the second Tuesday of the month, September 12, at our regular time of 7pm.  Come one, come all!

The Caretaker is a drama in three acts. Although it was the sixth of Pinter's major works for stage and television, this psychological study of the confluence of power, allegiance, innocence, and corruption among two brothers and a tramp, became his first significant commercial success.  A 1963 filmed version of the play starred Alan Bates, Donald Pleasence and Robert Shaw.

AUGUST BOOK

For August, we've selected a classic of French literature :  Candide (link) by Voltaire (pseudonym of Francois-Marie Arouet).  Please note:  due to scheduling conflicts we've moved the August meeting to Thursday, August 10.  We can decide on our September date then.  We'll continue to enjoy these fine summer evenings on the patio at Zawa Restaurant & Bar (link).  As usual, it's a 7pm start and the more, the merrier.

Voltaire's masterpiece belongs in the hands of every reader pondering our assumptions about human behavior and our place in the world. Candide tells of the hilarious adventures of the naïve Candide, who doggedly believes that "all is for the best" even when faced with injustice, suffering, and despair. Controversial and entertaining, Candide is a book that is vitally relevant today in our world pervaded by—as Candide would say—"the mania for insisting that all is well when all is by no means well."

JULY BOOK

Our book for July is Roadside Picnic (link) by the Russian brother tandem of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, later adapted into the 1979 film Stalker by acclaimed Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky.  We'll continue in the cozy confines of Commercial Drive at Zawa Restaurant & Bar (link).  Join the bookateers this Tuesday, July 4 at 7pm for another fine summer patio evening of gourmandizing, gulping and gab.  All are welcome as always.

 

Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a "full empty," something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he'll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answer to all his problems.

  

JUNE BOOK

Our selection for June is The Handmaid's Tale (link) by celebrated Canadian author Margaret Atwood.  (Your assignment this month is an essay comparing and contrasting the book with the TV series; grading will be on the Bell curve.)  Please take note:  we're trying a new location, Zawa Restaurant and Bar on Commercial Drive just off Venables (link).   We'll start at our usual 7pm.  Come and join the fun next month (Tuesday, June 6).  Everyone welcome.

In Margaret Atwood's dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead's commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive. At once a scathing satire, an ominous warning, and a tour de force of narrative suspense, The Handmaid's Tale is a modern classic.

 

MAY BOOK

Our book for May is The White Castle (link) by the Turkish Nobelist Orhan Pamuk.  We'll meet at the Steamworks Brew Pub (Steamworks) by Waterfront Station, back on the patio as the rumors of spring seem to be true.  (If the patio is full, look for us inside.)   So that's Tuesday, May 2 with the usual 7pm start time.  Come one, come all!  No one will be turned away.

From a Turkish writer who has been compared with Borges, Nabokov, and DeLillo comes a dazzling novel that is at once a captivating work of historical fiction and a sinuous treatise on the enigma of identity and the relations between East and West. In the 17th century, a young Italian scholar sailing from Venice to Naples is taken prisoner and delivered to Constantinople There he falls into the custody of a scholar known as Hoja--"master"--a man who is his exact double. In the years that follow, the slave instructs his master in Western science and technology, from medicine to pyrotechnics. But Hoja wants to know more: why he and his captive are the persons they are and whether, given knowledge of each other's most intimate secrets, they could actually exchange identities. Set in a world of magnificent scholarship and terrifying savagery, The White Castle is a colorful and intricately patterned triumph of the imagination.

APRIL BOOK

Our selection for April is The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (link) by acclaimed Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami.  We'll continue at the Steamworks Brew Pub (Steamworks) by Waterfront Station, perhaps finally reclaiming the patio as spring seems to be in the air.  Join the usual cast of suspects for some noshing and lively debate on Tuesday, April 4, kicking off at 7pm.  All are welcome including the merely curious.

In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city's placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is one of Haruki Murakami's most acclaimed and beloved novels.

 

MARCH BOOK

This month we celebrate the Ides of March (and the march of time) with The Order of Time (link ) by Italian physicist and popular science writer Carlo Rovelli.  We're back at the Steamworks Brew Pub (Steamworks) next to Waterfront Station; on the heated patio if it's open or inside if not.  (It was a bit noisy last time so we may consider other options for future meetings.)  Join the fun on the evening of Tuesday, March 7 with the usual 7pm start time.  All are welcome, always.  And a special welcome to our two newest members.

For most readers this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it remains. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where at the most fundamental level time disappears. He explains how the theory of quantum gravity attempts to understand and give meaning to the resulting extreme landscape of this timeless world. Weaving together ideas from philosophy, science and literature, he suggests that our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective, better understood starting from the structure of our brain and emotions than from the physical universe.

FEBRUARY BOOK

Our book for February is Siddhartha by Herman Hesse (link), the German/Swiss Nobelist. It's the Steamworks Brew Pub (Steamworks) next to Waterfront Station once again; on the heated patio if it's open or inside if not.  We'll be meeting at 7pm on the evening of Tuesday, February 6.  Friends, Romans, countrymen and everyone else are welcome to join our merry troupe.

Though set in a place and time far removed from the Germany of 1922, the year of the book's debut, the novel is infused with the sensibilities of Hermann Hesse's time, synthesizing disparate philosophies–Eastern religions, Jungian archetypes, Western individualism–into a unique vision of life as expressed through one man's search for meaning.