Thank you Jane for hosting us last night. Your house is beautiful and the meal was excellent and Christmassy. It really gets everyone in the spirit.
The book discussion mirrored the strangeness of the book: what is conciousness; will AI make anything better; who loved who; the parrallels between the 1819 story and the 2019 story; what about those sexbots??? And just to show how long a book club discussion sticks with you: Natalie texted me this morning to share her 3:00am revelation that Ry, the trans character, was both Mary and Percy Shelley. Talk about commitment to the book club!
The gift exchange saw several steals and funny scenes. Jane got to be both the beginning and end of the game - somehow fitting and everyone left with a gift that she liked.
There was a lot of time spent on organization and I will share the details here. The discussion on theme was to clarify what we discussed last month. We will read non-fiction books - the selector can decide what kind of non-fiction she wants.
Additionally, I will transfer the details into the side columns when I have a chance.
Date Location Book Selector
Jan 6 Christine Tiny Lights for Travellers by Naomi Lewis Jane
Jan24-26 Collingwood TBD Laura
Feb21-23 Florida TBD Carolyn
March No book club
Apr 6 Barb
May 4 Miriana
Jun 1 Carolyn
July Laura or Carol Cottage
August No bookclub
Sept14 Laura or Carol
Oct 5 Julia
Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year's celebration everyone. See you Jan 6.
Hi everyone. Christmas/Holiday/Winterfest/SeasonalWonderland book club is at my place on Monday. There is room for a couple of cars in my driveway and there may be road work at Kennedy and Pallisades that you will have to drive around. Let me know if you can come. Please remind me if you have things you don’t eat. Looking forward to seeing you all.
We talked about doing a book club in Florida the weekend of February 21, 2020. I will probably go down on the Thursday night and return on the Sunday. You may want to start looking at tickets because there are a lot of sales happening right now. Please confirm your attendance as soon as possible! Should be a blast.
Who would have thought November would bring us a snow storm but it did and that meant much to Julia’s dismay we all arrived early tonight since we didn’t want to be late due to the weather! Thank you Julia for adapting to the weather and hosting us in your beautiful home. Dinner was amazing so thank you.
Jane, Laura, Carol and Carolyn you were missed... in fact Carolyn when we learned you passed your exam we toasted your successes and graduation with wine! Julia has photo to prove this happened.
Our new theme for 2020 is one month non-fiction choice followed by next month focusing on witches, fiction or non-fiction. Should make for an interesting year!
Next month’s book does not fit the theme but it is Carolyn’s choice which means she’ll facilitate. Book is Frankissteien by Jeanette Winterson.
FYI - December Book club is at Jane’s. Annual gift exchange on capped @$25-30. No theme!
Looking forward to hosting next week, Monday November 11th. I appreciate everybody's flexibility moving the date back. I'll do my best to keep Jane up long enough to charm all of you!
547 Delaware Ave
I'm planning on cooking vegetarian so aside from that, any allergies I need to know about?
I mentioned on Monday that I am taking this course at GB. Please join me! It’s every Wednesday night from 6:30-9:30pm, from Jan 15, 2020 - April 1, 2020. Theory + tasting! What could be better...
After much discussion and debate October book selection is “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens. We’re not certain whose book selection this is but I am happy to call it my choice and moderate in November.
Barb will post a reset of who’s hosting/selecting for 2020 but in the meantime we made another group decision tonight... a group decision when half of the group had already departed so my apologies... first Miriana promises to cook eggplant Parmesan (with a kale Salad) annually which is just so exciting and secondly everyone needs to bring theme ideas for next month’s meeting as we want to lock a theme for 2020. Those of us present for the final discussion felt locking a theme brought us stronger book selections. Carolyn you’re away next month but send your theme ideas so we can ensure everyone has a say.
Lovely to see everyone tonight, a beautiful meal and passionate discussion... love to be part of this! Miriana thank you for hosting!
Hi all. You probably remember Sharon. She came to talk to us about her book “Wild Rose.” Sharon is short listed for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize for her book, “Season of Fury and Wonder.”
Yay Sharon!
... we are a brave group of women who will discuss any topic, any book, anywhere... I think the staff at tonight’s restaurant will be talking about “this group of women...” for quite some time! Sex makes for interesting listening in!
... we are able to not all love a book yet dig in and discus the pros and cons for hours without judging each other or hurting feelings! 7 out of 8 didn’t like the book, for those of you not in attendance I will leave it to you to determine who liked it!
... we feel trust in each other to be honest and true, ask Julia who shared her most recent sexual encounter or was it her mother’s?
... we all instantly jumped up to hug Nat and her puppy aka dog! Barb you were missed as well!
.... Miriana was the best moderately EVER... seriously she took her job to heart and I thank her for subbing in, we are a tough group to moderate, well done!
... the food and wine was delicious, Carolyn kindly thank Mark and although I miss sitting on your back deck it was a lovely evening and a lovely compromise, like you said a win win for both of you and all of us as well!
... finally I know October is Miranda, November Julia, December Jane and January me at The Duke... as for books Laura will post tomorrow.
Such a fun evening, thanks everyone for being honest and true!
I usually do this every year so we can have a record of what we read. These books mostly represent our theme from the last two years: "Difficult Women."
The Burning Girl by Claire Messud A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan What Happened by Hillary Clinton Her Body and other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado Girl Walks out of a Bar by Lisa F. Smith Brave by Rose McGowan Blood, Water, Paint by Joy McCullough Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman Heroes in My Head by Judy Rebick Transcription by Kate Atkinson Swing Time by Zadie Smith Becoming by Michelle Obama Improvement by Joan Silber Washington Black by Esi Edugyan The Mountain Story by Lori Lansens Educated by Tara Westover My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite This is How it Always is by Laurie Frankel Three Women by Lisa Taddeo
If you want to see books from previous years look under the label: Year End.
Marc and I are having our usual fight about records in the dining room. He refuses to clear them out and has bribed me with taking the book club out for dinner. He is a skilled negotiator and we will be dining at:
Sotto Voce Wine Bar 595 College St, Toronto Monday , September 09 @7pm
http://sottovoce.ca
Since the blog is now sending out emails again I wanted to update the book selector list... I know I don't pick in October as I picked June's book but I don't remember who hasn't selected recently... if you're due to select a book let me know and I'll add you to the list. Thx.
These are the questions that keep me up at night planning for Book Club!
Next Monday is at my place... I already know both Jane & Barb are away... kindly let me know if you are able to make it so I figure out how many to cook for and whether I need to add extra seating to the dining room table!
Address is 218 Rusholme Road - parking on street or if you can't find any you can pull your car in the back and park in front of our garage.
FYI - Julia & I are swapping hosting duties for June... since I missed meeting Baby Jane last month the deal memo between Julie and I states Julia has to bring Baby Jane to June's dinner so I can properly pinch her cheeks as well as oh and awe over her!
I'll post again closer to the time just wanted to give our new mom a chance to settle in to the chaos two little ones brings!
Caroline - the book choice is really interesting... looking forward to discussing... only thing that keeps coming to mind for me is "once a psychopath always a psychopath... what is she thinking!" Still not quite done but I'm getting nervous!
MY SISTER, THE SERIAL KILLER
By Oyinkan Braithwaite
226 pp. Doubleday. $22.95.
Korede knows that bleach masks the smell of blood, that the cabinet under the kitchen sink should be “filled with everything required to tackle dirt and grease” and that scrubbing helps her think. Korede is an ace cleaner. Which is good, because by the time her younger sister, Ayoola, calls her for the third time to say, “Korede, I killed him,” someone is going to have to roll up her sleeves. Again.
Korede and Ayoola have grown up in Lagos, a city that is bulging with people streaming in from the countryside in search of jobs. The policemen are as corrupt as the politicians, and everyone seems to be on the make. Ayoola is gorgeous. “Hers is the body of a music video vixen,” writes Korede, the troubled narrator of “My Sister, the Serial Killer,” a surprising debut novel by a young Nigerian writer, Oyinkan Braithwaite, that has been picked up by publishers on both sides of the Atlantic. “Ayoola’s skin is a color that sits comfortably between cream and caramel and I am the color of a Brazil nut, before it is peeled; she is made wholly of curves and I am composed only of hard edges.”
“My Sister, the Serial Killer” is less a murder mystery — it devotes little attention to why Ayoola is killing her boyfriends, other than that she seems to find it remarkably easy to do thanks to a sharp knife she stole from her father — and more a study in the strange complexity of sibling bonds. Ayoola is a tease. Korede, the head nurse at St. Peter’s Hospital, is a dab hand with the multi-surface cleaner and the rubber gloves. Despite their differences, Ayoola and Korede are allies and codependents — sisters-in-arms in the fight to survive in a city that strives to suffocate women at every turn.
Before his untimely death (it may or may not have been an accident), Ayoola and Korede’s father was a master of the dodgy deal, selling refurbished cars to a dealership as brand-new and building his smart new ranch house on the proceeds. He beats his daughters, tries to pimp them out to important friends and colleagues and brings home his mistress despite his wife also being there at the time. When she screams, he looks at her with indifference. “If you don’t shut up now, I will deal with you.” The girls’ mother reaches for the Ambien.
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Braithwaite writes in a rat-a-tat style that forces the plot along at a clip. Short chapters headed “Bleach,” “Body,” “Scrubs,” “Heat,” “Questions” follow one another in a taut rhythm like that of a drumbeat. A lazier writer would have left it at that. But Braithwaite’s tale takes a darker turn when Ayoola tips her cap at the very man Korede herself is secretly in love with, the warmhearted Dr. Tade Otumu, who keeps a bowl of candy on his desk for his child patients and sings a lullaby to an inconsolable toddler recoiling from being given an injection. “Is there anything more beautiful than a man with a voice like an ocean?” Korede asks herself. The little girl “waddles towards him. When she is older, she will remember him as her first love.”
Although Tade feels affection and respect for his head nurse, he quickly forgets her when Ayoola crooks her little finger at him. For Korede’s sister, the doctor is just another man to play with. He sends her orchids. She sends him a text: “I. Really. Prefer. Roses.” “All he wants is a pretty face,” she tells Korede. “That’s all they ever want.” Despite this, Korede keeps looking after her sister, steering her away from social media because she should still be mourning her latest dead beau if she doesn’t want to raise suspicions about how he passed away.
To stop herself from going crazy, Korede confides in Muhtar Yautai, a patient who for months has been in Room 313. Whenever she feels low, Korede enters his room, lifts the chair from beside the table in the corner, sets it down a few inches from his bed and pours her heart out. “I came to talk to him about Ayoola,” she confesses. “But it is Tade whom I cannot seem to get out of my mind. I … I wish. …” Turning to the subject of Ayoola and the men she is killing, she says: “Femi makes three, you know. Three, and they label you a serial killer. … Somewhere, deep down, she must know, right?”
Muhtar was badly injured in a car accident. He’s been in the hospital for five months, and it helps that he is in a coma. But then he wakes up and begins to remember what Korede has told him. All of a sudden the story takes a different turn.
“My Sister, the Serial Killer” is a bombshell of a book — sharp, explosive, hilarious. With a deadly aim, Braithwaite lobs jokes, japes and screwball comedy at the reader. Only after you turn the last page do you realize that, as with many brilliant comic writers before her, laughter for Braithwaite is as good for covering up pain as bleach is for masking the smell of blood.
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Hi All.
Bookclub is at my house on Monday and I cannot wait to see you all.
1028 Queen Street East.
Black door with graffiti on it - it will be open -- come in and up stairs. Reminder that the stairs are not to code.
Please let me know if you are coming. Does everyone like Mexican?
I was hoping to be on the patio but as I drove home through in a hail 'storm' last evening I decided that was not apt to happen. Instead we will stay inside by the fireplace. It's May for goodness sake.
Finally, I do know that the plant in my living room is deadish and ugly. I cannot tell you how many people have pointed this out. It was neglected when I was in Indonesia and struggling to come back. It too needs the patio to open.
A small yet vocal gathering tonight, only six of us. Overall consensus was we liked the book and best part of the discussion was focused on whether you would eat the granola bar or not after four days of no food... I can’t say who at the table said they would eat it and who wouldn’t as that would be breaking the sacred rules of what said at book club stays at book club! I will say though we all openly mocked Natalie’s new half knee high, half sock combo legging she wore to impress us! Nat needs a sock intervention!
Barb thanks for hosting... love that Carol reminded us we are now living in your shadow oh smart, brilliant super star... and remember as Laura said just let us know when your stock goes public!
Until May - stay warm and dream of sunshine, butterflies and unicorns! Apparently Laura and Carol are building a butterfly garden so dreaming shouldn’t be that hard.
I am hosting book club on Monday at the loft on Croft. Pay Parkingi is available on College or you can try the side streets: Borden; Lippincott and Vankoughnet. Looking forward to seeing you all.
Big shout out to Natalie who cooked an amazing piece of beef after spending most of her week in court. You are a star Champ - thanks a lot. 🙋
The book club discussion was seriously unruly - even Jane with her myriad of skills was not able to keep us focused. For the record:
Carolyn really disliked the book as it reminded her of the Ann Marie MacDonald book where the main character had a sore arm
There was a lot of talk about whether the story was fantastical or magical realism
Jane shared the Buddhist view that you couldn't out run yourself - where ever you are you are always there
Carol and Miriana both enjoyed the book
There was no consensus about the ending. Did he die? Was he trying to be like Titch? Was he going to find Dahomey?
Me? I was mixed. Totally loved this discussion which made the elements of the story come alive.
Congratulations to Julie and baby Jane. We are so happy for you and dying to meet your little one.
Laura and I tried to plan a trip to Palm Springs for next month that sounded really good at 9:00 pm but looked a little hazy the next day. Turns out that book club members are not available. I'm suggesting a re-try for October. What do you think of this timing?
We picked 2 books. April is The Mountain Story by Lori Lansens it is set in Palm Springs. May is Educated by Tara Westover.
With Palm Springs off the table for April - I can agree to host at my house on the 1st monday in April which is April 1 - No joke!
In May there is a blitz supporting the charity Period Purse... they give purses to shelters and street women and purses are packed with a monthly supply of feminine hygiene products plus shampoo, soap, toothpaste etc. I’ve only volunteered once with them but I loved them! Below is list of what they need and if you can bring old purses and donations to April meeting I will get the donations to them in May. https://www.theperiodpurse.com/
Hi Ladies, I'm proposing to host book club on Wednesday, March 6 rather than Monday the 4th. My work schedule has been horrible. Wanted to post you with enough notice! Looking forward to seeing you all and cooking up a storm…🍝 Natalie 🙋
As I write this blog post I’m thinking how I wish I had not gone for that third spanakopita or the jumbo sized slice of birthday cake but it’s difficult to have willpower when amazing food fills the table! For those of you absent this evening Jane hosted a meal with many different selections, all very yummy! Barb then surprised Carolyn and myself with a lemon poppyseed birthday cake that genuinely made Carolyn tearful! I have forgotten the baker’s name who makes this amazing cake but I too am happy Barb now is able to source this cake... and if all this food wasn’t enough to support numerous conversations Christine and Barb facilitated the discussion with a party game where we discussed which character connects to which place and how are they improved!
Next month Jane switced her book choice and we will be discussing theGillar prize winner Washington Black by Esi Edugyan. See everyone then!
Ps. Laura - there was enough bday cake for you as well... your share went home with Carolyn, Barb and myself!
My sister Laurie just gave this to me and I’m guessing both Christine and Carolyn who frequent the library already might have begun this challenge but it’s a fun addition to your 2019 reading plan! Good luck!
We had a small but vociferous group tonight at Christine’s discussing “Becoming.” Great questions from Natalie and a rare consensus that everyone liked the book, and, incidentally, also liked Michelle Obama. Thanks to Christine for a delicious and super healthy dinner.
Christine has chosen “Improvement” by Joan Silber for February. Written in 2017, it was the Pen Faulkner & National Book Critics winner. From the blurb, “One of the most gifted writers of fiction returns with a bold and piercing novel about a single mother living in New York, her eccentric aunt, and the decisions they make that have unexpected implications for the world around them.” I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am all about this eccentric aunt.
February book club will be at my house. Natalie and I switched. See you next month.
Happy New Year Everyone!
I trust you all had amazing holidays.
I will be hosting on Monday Jan 7 at 7pm at 114 Grace Street!
(try parking south of the stop sign past Mansfield)
Looking forward to a new and exciting year for book club.
I believe it will be College Book Club's 15th Year!! Time is flying.
Please confirm attendance. See you soon
📖📚📚📖
