Books for 2008

Non-Fiction
A Modest Proposal - Jonathon Swift
Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank
Singin' & Swingin' & Gettin' Merry Like Christmas - Maya Angelou
The World Without Us - Alan Weisman
28 Stories of AIDS in Africa - Stephanie Nolen
The Orchid Thief - Susan Orlean

Classic (pre-2oth century)
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
The Bostonians - Henry James
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Three Men In a Boat - Jerome K Jerome
Middlemarch - George Eliot

Sci-fi / Fantasy
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K Dick
The Chrysalids - John Wyndham
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman

Canadian Literature
Stanley Park - Timothy Taylor
The Love of a Good Woman - Alice Munro
Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures - Vincent Lam
The Other Side of the Bridge - Mary Lawson
Green Grass, Running Water - Thomas King
Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood
Rogues' Wedding - Terry Griggs

Children's Literature
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
The Giver - Lois Lowry
Eragon - Christopher Paolini
Le petit prince (a.k.a. The Little Prints) - Antoine Saint Exupery

Film Adaptation
Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende

Prize Winner
On Beauty - Zadie Smith
the accidental - Ali Smith
The Polished Hoe - Austin Clarke
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Ironweed - William J Kennedy
A Complicated Kindness - Miriam Toews

20th / 21st Century Literature
Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins
The Waves - Virginia Woolf
Diary of a Bad Year - J M Coetzee
The Last Samurai - Helen DeWitt
The Lamb - Christopher Moore
On Beauty - Zadie Smith
The Tenderness of Wolves - Stef Penney

Book Selection for 2008

The first book club meeting of 2008 is scheduled for Sunday January 20 at 4pm, at my place. This meeting will be the book selection meeting. We will be choosing books from each of the following eight categories. All members (old and new) are invited to recommend one book for each category. We will then vote to decide which books we will read.

Non-fiction
Classic novel (pre-20th Century)
Canadian Literature
Sci-fi / Fantasy
Children's Literature
Film Adaptation (a novel that has been made into a movie)
Prize Winner (a novel that has won a major literary prize)
20th Century Literature

We have moved the meeting time to Sunday late afternoons to accommodate people's schedules better. We have also decided to hold meetings every six weeks rather than every four. This will hopefully provide people with more time to read the books so that our discussions can be more inclusive. See you on the 20th!

New Format for Book Club

Next month we will be dicussing the book We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. This is our last selection for the year. In November we will hold a meeting to choose our next round of books which we will begin in January 2008. The members of the book club who were at the meeting last night decided to change the format of the book selection process. We are going to choose books within eight genres rather than voting on one book from each member's nominations. All members are invited to bring one book for each genre/category, and all members will then vote on those nominated. The categories are:

Non-fiction
Classic novel (pre-20th Century)
Canadian Literature
Sci-fi / Fantasy
Children's Literature
Film Adaptation (a novel that has been made into a movie)
Prize Winner (a novel that has won a major literary prize)
20th Century Literature

If there is time and interest at the end of the eight months we will choose a play to read and discuss at the next meeting. This can be a cold reading, and will make for an easy and entertaining book club meeting.

One other note: if you are not going to be able to commit to attending the majority of the book club meetings during 2008, we would ask that you refrain from nominating books during the selection process. It is important that we have a general idea of how many people will be coming to the meetings each month so that we don't end up with only two people having read the novel. We will be inviting new members to join the club in the hopes that we can boost our numbers at the monthly meetings. You are still more than welcome to join us during the book club meetings that are of interest to you.

Change in Schedule?

Hi all,

Just wanted to confirm that we had all agreed to switch the next book club meeting to sometime at the beginning of September, so that Rachel will be back from England and able to attend? If so, what date will work for everyone? I think the 5th and 12th are both Wednesdays in Sept.

J

Veronika Meeting Postponed

The meeting for our May book choice, Veronika Decides to Die, has been postponed to Wednesday, June 13th. The meeting will still be at my place at 7pm. I'll see all of you then!