december book

Next month's book pick is The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro.
Read the whole book, read a few of the stories, join us for drinks and stimulating conversation on Tuesday, December 3rd.



Alice Munro has a genius for entering the lives of ordinary people and capturing the passions and contradictions that lie just below the surface. In this brilliant new collection she takes mainly the lives of women - unruly, ungovernable, unpredictable, unexpected, funny, sexy and completely recognisable - and brings their hidden desires bubbling to the surface. The love of a good woman is not as pure and virtuous as it seems: as in her title story it can be needy and murderous. Here are women behaving badly, leaving husbands and children, running off with unstuitable lovers, pushing everyday life to the limits, and if they don't behave badly, they think surprising and disturbing thoughts.

november book

Next month's book will be The Dante Club: A Novel by Matthew Pearl
See you on Tuesday, November 5, 7:00 pm, Railway Club. 
Be there.



Boston, 1865. A series of murders, all of them inspired by scenes in Dante’s Inferno. Only an elite group of America’s first Dante scholars—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and J. T. Fields—can solve the mystery. With the police baffled, more lives endangered, and Dante’s literary future at stake, the Dante Club must shed its sheltered literary existence and find the killer.

Is the book dead?

Is anyone out there?
Is there any interest in keeping this thing going?
Does anyone still read?

John and I will be at the Railway club tomorrow evening, having a beverage, trading quinoa recipes and discussing politics and Miley Cyrus.
Join us! We may even choose a book to read next month.

september book

Next month's book will be The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Recently retired, sweet, emotionally numb Harold Fry is jolted out of his passivity by a letter from Queenie Hennessy, an old friend, who he hasn't heard from in twenty years. She has written to say she is in hospice and wanted to say goodbye. Leaving his tense, bitter wife Maureen to her chores, Harold intends a quick walk to the corner mailbox to post his reply but instead, inspired by a chance encounter, he becomes convinced he must deliver his message in person to Queenie--who is 600 miles away--because as long as he keeps walking, Harold believes that Queenie will not die. So without hiking boots, rain gear, map or cell phone, one of the most endearing characters in current fiction begins his unlikely pilgrimage across the English countryside. Along the way, strangers stir up memories--flashbacks, often painful, from when his marriage was filled with promise and then not, of his inadequacy as a father, and of his shortcomings as a husband. Ironically, his wife Maureen, shocked by her husband's sudden absence, begins to long for his presence. Is it possible for Harold and Maureen to bridge the distance between them? And will Queenie be alive to see Harold arrive at her door?

some suggestions for august

Two of our members made have already made suggestions for our August read:

Christina suggested the new Colum McCann book, Transatlantic.

http://www.amazon.ca/Transatlantic-ebook/dp/B00BATWLSY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370471866&sr=8-1&keywords=transatlantic


Sarah suggested Dear Life by Alice Munroe

http://www.amazon.ca/Dear-Life-Stories-ebook/dp/B008ADUHKW/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1370471902&sr=1-1&keywords=dear+life

july book

Next month's book will be The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.

When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.

June 4 meeting

Not sure what is happening, our erstwhile leader James seems to be AWOL.

Lets meet and discuss whatever we have been reading, have a cold beverage, and plan a course of action for July.