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.