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.

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?