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.

JANUARY BOOK

Belated ritual solstice greetings and a Happy New Year to all!

January's book will be Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner (https://www.amazon.com/Hotel-Du-Lac-Anita-Brookner/dp/0679759328), a short read for the holiday season.  Note:  we have moved the meeting to Tuesday, Jan. 8 to avoid a conflict with New Year's Day.  Join us for an evening of good food, good drink and lively conversation in the Sylvia Hotel dining room, starting at 7pm.  (We no longer meet in the lounge.)  New members (and old) always welcome.  Happy reading to all in 2019!

         

In the novel that won her the Booker Prize and established her international reputation, Anita Brookner finds a new vocabulary for framing the eternal question "Why love?" It tells the story of Edith Hope, who writes romance novels under a pseudonym. When her life begins to resemble the plots of her own novels, however, Edith flees to Switzerland, where the quiet luxury of the Hotel du Lac promises to restore her to her senses.  Beautifully observed, witheringly funny, Hotel du Lac is Brookner at her most stylish and potently subversive.

DECEMBER BOOK

December's book will be The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante (https://www.amazon.com/Story-New-Name-Neapolitan-Novels/dp/1609451341).  Join us at 7pm on the evening of Tuesday, Dec. 4 in the dining room of the Sylvia Hotel.  (Yes, that's right, we've abandoned the lounge; the new live music format tends to overwhelm the conversation.)  As always, new members are more than welcome.

         

Soon to be an HBO series, the follow-up to My Brilliant Friend in the New York Times bestselling Neapolitan quartet about two friends growing up in post-war Italy is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted family epic by Italy's most beloved and acclaimed writer, Elena Ferrante, "one of the great novelists of our time." (Roxana Robinson, The New York Times)