may book

Next month's book will be Tenth of December by George Saunders.
Join us on Tuesday, May 6th for discussion and beverages.

WINNER OF THE 2014 FOLIO PRIZE AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2013

George Saunders's most wryly hilarious and disturbing collection yet, Tenth of December illuminates human experience and explores figures lost in a labyrinth of troubling preoccupations. A family member recollects a backyard pole dressed for all occasions; Jeff faces horrifying ultimatums and the prospect of DarkenfloxxTM in some unusual drug trials; and Al Roosten hides his own internal monologue behind a winning smile that he hopes will make him popular. With dark visions of the future riffing against ghosts of the past and the ever-settling present, this collection sings with astonishing charm and intensity.

april book

Next month's book will be Life after Life by Kate Atkinson.
Join us on Tuesday, April 1st (no pranks after 12 noon) for discussion and beverages.



What if you could live again and again, until you got it right? 

On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war. 

Does Ursula's apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can -- will she?

Darkly comic, startlingly poignant, and utterly original -- this is Kate Atkinson at her absolute best. 

march book

Next month's book will be Ablutions by Patrick DeWitt. It looks like we all enjoyed The Sisters Brothers so much(read in 2012), we want to explore another book by this author.
Join us on Tuesday, March 4th for drinks and discussion.




In a famous but declining Hollywood bar works A Barman. Morbidly amused by the decadent decay of his surroundings, he watches the patrons fall into their nightly oblivion, making notes for his novel. In the hope of uncovering their secrets and motives, he establishes tentative friendships with the cast of variously pathological regulars.But as his tenure at the bar continues, he begins to serve himself more often than his customers, and the moments he lives outside the bar become more and more painful: he loses his wife, his way, himself. Trapped by his habits and his loneliness, he realizes he will not survive if he doesn't break free. And so he hatches a terrible, necessary plan of escape and his only chance for redemption.Step into Ablutions and step behind the bar, below rock bottom, and beyond the everyday take on storytelling for a brilliant, new twist on the classic tale of addiction and its consequences.

2013 books ranked

A surprising tie for the number one position!

Considering only 3 people read Wolf Hall, those that read it enjoyed it immensely. Might need to try picking that one up again.

#1 (tie) Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

#1 (tie) A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

#2 The Love of a Good Woman  Alice Munro

#3 Complicity Iain Banks

#4 The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

#5 The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

#6 Great Apes by Will Self

#7 The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

#8 The Dante Club: A Novel by Matthew Pearl

#9 The Bartender: Darkness on the Edge of Town by Axel Matfin

what we read in 2013

Here is a list of what we read last year, I'm not sure if anyone read The Bartender or not so I've left it on the list. I will make the usual voting/score sheets for our next meeting...who will come out on top?

If you can't make it to the meeting but want to vote on your favourites, leave me your ranking (best to worst) in the comments section.

January - A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

February - The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

March - Great Apes by Will Self

April - Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

May - The Bartender: Darkness on the Edge of Town by Axel Matfin

June - The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

July - The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

August - ???

September - ???

October -The Dante Club: A Novel by Matthew Pearl

November - The Love of a Good Woman  Alice Munro

December - Complicity Iain Banks

february book

Next month's book will be The Dinner by Herman Koch.
Join us on Tuesday, February 4th for what is sure to be an interesting discussion.
We will also be voting on our favourite reads of 2013, which author will prevail?



An internationally bestselling phenomenon: the darkly suspenseful, highly controversial tale of two families struggling to make the hardest decision of their lives—all over the course of one meal.

It's a summer's evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.
     Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.
     Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

january book

We've chosen a slender volume for December reading, Complicity by Iain Banks.



COMPLICITY n. 1. the fact of being an accomplice, esp. in a criminal act 
Local journalist Cameron Colley writes articles that are idealistic, from the viewpoint of the underdog. A twisted serial killer seems to have the same MO -- he commits brutal murders on behalf of the underdog. As the two stories begin to merge, Cameron finds himself inextricably and inexplicably implicated by the killer. 
When the arms dealer whom Cameron plans to expose is found literally "disarmed" before Cameron can even put pen to paper and the brewery chief, loathed by Cameron, who sold out at the expense of his workers finds himself permanently unemployable, the police become convinced of Cameron's guilt, as do half his friends and colleagues, forcing Cameron to employ all his investigative skills to find the real killer and his motive.