Held Here at Home

Today we met at my place to talk about Held by Anne Michaels. The book is challenging but rewarding with vivid scenes that stay with you and sentences that make you stop and wonder:  "The shadow of a bird moved across the hill; he could not see the bird."  or "We can only think about the unknown in terms of the known."

We made decisions about the next two months.  On Tuesday May 7th we'll meet at Susan's to talk about Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. 

The book for June will be The Measure by Nikki Erlick. We will meet a Jane's on Wednesday, June 19th to talk about it. 

Some Books We Like

• Death Interrupted: How Modern Medicine is Complicating the Way We Die by Blair Bigham, MD
  
• The Measure by Nikki Erlick
• The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
  
• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
• Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
  
• The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
• Followed by the Lark by Helen Humphreys 

Thinking about an octopus as a character in our next book here are a few videos to dig deeper.

Fresh Water Finally

The plan was to meet at Lynda's today, then we cancelled, then this morning, suprise! it all came together and the five of us had a perfectly great time. It felt a bit impromptu with the last minute decision, except that Lynda had prepared great snacks for us, and had chosen some soothing music to play in the background.  Lots of laughs and reminiscing. We even spent some time talking about the book, which tells a story about the complicated mix of light and dark in life and love. 

The next book we plan to read is Held by Anne Michaels.  We chose Thursday April 4th, recognizing that the date may have to change when we hear from those who were absent today. It will be at my house (Marian).

Books of Note: 

• Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig
• The Story of Us by Catherine Hernandez
• Swimming Back to Trout River by Linda Rui Feng
• Tenacious Beasts by Christopher Preston 
• The Reason You Walk by Wab Kinew 
• The Orenda by Joseph Boyden 
• Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
• Caste: the Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

Watchable: 

• The Greatest Night in Pop: We Are the World. (Netflix)
  
• Navalny (Crave)
• Saving Bea (Netflix)
• Hope Street (Britbox)
• Perfect Days
  
• Origin
• All of Us Strangers
• Four Daughters
• Oppenheimer
• Poor Things
• Anyone But You
• The Holdovers (Crave)
• Colin from Accounts (Gem)
  

Thursday, January 11, 2024 

January Lunch Meeting

For the first meeting of 2024, Jan, Lynda, Saara and I had lunch at La Veranda Osteria in Etobicoke. Although it is a large restaurant and usually fairly crowded, on that day it was literally empty except for us! The food was delicious and the atmosphere very relaxed--all extremely enjoyable.   Afterwards we came back to my house for orange chiffon cake and tea. Because there were only four of us, and only two had finished the book (Fresh Water for Flowers) we decided that we should wait until February to discuss it. 

In the meantime we talked about the Canada Reads choices for this year, and had a very profound discussion on windows and mirrors, with Saara's comments being especially insightful!!! She will be happy to share them at our next meeting, which will be at Lynda's on February 21st, when we'll be discussing Foster by Claire Keegan (as well as Fresh Water for Flowers)

Canada Reads Books:

Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

Denison Avenue by Christina Wong and Daniel Innes

Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune

Shut up You're Pretty by Tea Mutonji

The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou

Watching:

The Night Agent (Netflix)

Karen Pirie (BritBox)

All of Us Strangers (film)