JULY BOOK

Our book for July is Roadside Picnic (link) by the Russian brother tandem of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, later adapted into the 1979 film Stalker by acclaimed Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky.  We'll continue in the cozy confines of Commercial Drive at Zawa Restaurant & Bar (link).  Join the bookateers this Tuesday, July 4 at 7pm for another fine summer patio evening of gourmandizing, gulping and gab.  All are welcome as always.

 

Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a "full empty," something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he'll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answer to all his problems.

  

JUNE BOOK

Our selection for June is The Handmaid's Tale (link) by celebrated Canadian author Margaret Atwood.  (Your assignment this month is an essay comparing and contrasting the book with the TV series; grading will be on the Bell curve.)  Please take note:  we're trying a new location, Zawa Restaurant and Bar on Commercial Drive just off Venables (link).   We'll start at our usual 7pm.  Come and join the fun next month (Tuesday, June 6).  Everyone welcome.

In Margaret Atwood's dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead's commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive. At once a scathing satire, an ominous warning, and a tour de force of narrative suspense, The Handmaid's Tale is a modern classic.

 

MAY BOOK

Our book for May is The White Castle (link) by the Turkish Nobelist Orhan Pamuk.  We'll meet at the Steamworks Brew Pub (Steamworks) by Waterfront Station, back on the patio as the rumors of spring seem to be true.  (If the patio is full, look for us inside.)   So that's Tuesday, May 2 with the usual 7pm start time.  Come one, come all!  No one will be turned away.

From a Turkish writer who has been compared with Borges, Nabokov, and DeLillo comes a dazzling novel that is at once a captivating work of historical fiction and a sinuous treatise on the enigma of identity and the relations between East and West. In the 17th century, a young Italian scholar sailing from Venice to Naples is taken prisoner and delivered to Constantinople There he falls into the custody of a scholar known as Hoja--"master"--a man who is his exact double. In the years that follow, the slave instructs his master in Western science and technology, from medicine to pyrotechnics. But Hoja wants to know more: why he and his captive are the persons they are and whether, given knowledge of each other's most intimate secrets, they could actually exchange identities. Set in a world of magnificent scholarship and terrifying savagery, The White Castle is a colorful and intricately patterned triumph of the imagination.

APRIL BOOK

Our selection for April is The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (link) by acclaimed Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami.  We'll continue at the Steamworks Brew Pub (Steamworks) by Waterfront Station, perhaps finally reclaiming the patio as spring seems to be in the air.  Join the usual cast of suspects for some noshing and lively debate on Tuesday, April 4, kicking off at 7pm.  All are welcome including the merely curious.

In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city's placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is one of Haruki Murakami's most acclaimed and beloved novels.

 

MARCH BOOK

This month we celebrate the Ides of March (and the march of time) with The Order of Time (link ) by Italian physicist and popular science writer Carlo Rovelli.  We're back at the Steamworks Brew Pub (Steamworks) next to Waterfront Station; on the heated patio if it's open or inside if not.  (It was a bit noisy last time so we may consider other options for future meetings.)  Join the fun on the evening of Tuesday, March 7 with the usual 7pm start time.  All are welcome, always.  And a special welcome to our two newest members.

For most readers this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it remains. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where at the most fundamental level time disappears. He explains how the theory of quantum gravity attempts to understand and give meaning to the resulting extreme landscape of this timeless world. Weaving together ideas from philosophy, science and literature, he suggests that our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective, better understood starting from the structure of our brain and emotions than from the physical universe.

FEBRUARY BOOK

Our book for February is Siddhartha by Herman Hesse (link), the German/Swiss Nobelist. It's the Steamworks Brew Pub (Steamworks) next to Waterfront Station once again; on the heated patio if it's open or inside if not.  We'll be meeting at 7pm on the evening of Tuesday, February 6.  Friends, Romans, countrymen and everyone else are welcome to join our merry troupe.

Though set in a place and time far removed from the Germany of 1922, the year of the book's debut, the novel is infused with the sensibilities of Hermann Hesse's time, synthesizing disparate philosophies–Eastern religions, Jungian archetypes, Western individualism–into a unique vision of life as expressed through one man's search for meaning.

JANUARY BOOK

Our December book will be Mister Pip (link) by New Zealand author Lloyd Jones. (The film version stars Hugh Laurie).  We're still at the Steamworks Brew Pub (Steamworks) next to Waterfront Station, on the heated patio if it's open or inside if not.  Ring in the New Year with some book lore and brews on Tuesday, January 3 starting at 7pm.  All are welcome always.

  

On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens's classic Great Expectations.