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.