we have a new book for the spring!

“Sometimes you read a book and you begin to realize that it is going to change the way you live your life. Written with tenderness and deceptive simplicity, this is a memoir that is not just about bird watching (though I promise you will want to buy binoculars and get out there) but also about how we carve silent places of understanding with the people for whom we care. I loved this book. Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry”
— Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
“Among all the anxious books out there about how to ‘manage motherhood’ this one is truly (and literally) a breath of fresh air. Lynn Thomson and her teenage son share a love for the natural world that takes them to the wild and silent corners of Tofino, Pelee Island, and the Galapagos. Her account of these expeditions is a gentle, unselfconscious guide to the toughest part of parenthood: how to love our kids at the same time we let them go.”
— Marni Jackson, author of Home Free and The Mother Zone

and author. and night. read on for more about lynn thomson's memoir, "birding with yeats".

and pencil in monday april 18th. tickets will go on sale soon but to make sure you are among the first to hear about that, join our email list on the "join us" page. 

“A delicately rendered memoir on motherhood, family, and the beauty of the natural world.

In fall 2007, Lynn Thomson experiences a huge life shift. Her teenage son, Yeats, is just beginning high school. Yeats has always struggled against the system, against the pressure to conform. He is a poet at heart: acutely sensitive, highly intelligent, and solitary by nature. Lynn and Yeats have always been close, but after fourteen years as a stay-at-home mom Lynn is going back to work for her husband, Ben, who has just opened his own bookstore.

When Lynn and Yeats take a trip to Vancouver Island, they discover a mutual love of bird watching. Lynn is the only other person Yeats has found who loves nature and watching birds. Plus, she has a car. Lynn describes in wondrous detail the many trips she and Yeats take, from the Wye Marsh and Pelee Island in Ontario, to Vancouver Island in British Columbia, to an ill-fated trip to the Galapagos Islands. The two grow closer with each bird-watching expedition. At the same time, Lynn notices that her son is beginning to pull away — and she must learn to let go.

Birding with Yeats is a delicate, sensitive, and gentle reflection on the unique bond between a mother and son, and the magic that is the natural world.”

 

Lynn Thomson is a bookseller in Toronto, Canada. Birding with Yeats is her first book.

we have a date in january!

nazneen sheikh, author of "the place of shining light", will join us at public kitchen on monday january 25th. for tickets, tickets go to the  join us page . 

once you have your ticket, head on down to wordsworth (don't let a little road construction get in your way!), pick up your book (and maybe a few christmas gifts at the same time) then snuggle in to read during the holidays. 

Three men race against time to take possession of a sacred 5,000-year-old Buddhist sculpture: Khalid, a leading Pakistani antiquities dealer, arranges for the illegal importation of the statue from neighbouring Afghanistan. Ghalib, a wealthy art collector with political aspirations, has purchased the statue for his private collection. Adeel, a highly recommended ex-military officer, is hired by Khalid to transport the sculpture to its final destination.

When Adeel first views the statue in a cave in Bamiyan — known as “the place of shining light” — he has a profound spiritual reaction and decides to steal the sculpture for himself. When Khalid and Ghalib realize their prized possession is missing, they conspire to do whatever it takes to have it returned — before it’s lost forever.

Taking readers on a wild journey from the valleys of Afghanistan, to the magical mountain kingdoms of Northern Pakistan, and the diplomatic enclaves of Islamabad, The Place of Shining Light is a riveting and timely story of art, war, greed, and spirituality.

 

let's celebrate our anniversary

to celebrate our first year as a club, we're teaming up with our friends at the new quarterly literary magazine for a special night of great food, great literature and great people to support a local literary endeavour, the wild writers literary festival. on friday november 6th, we hope you'll join us for dinner, wine and a special talk with two award-winning authors at the balsillie school.

here's the deal. with your ticket you get:

  • a casual "build your own taco" dinner at the balsillie school catered by taco farm
  • complimentary wine
  • copies of both "sleep" by nino ricci and "long change" by don gillmor
  • lots of opportunities to chat with all the festival authors at the dinner
  • q&a in the auditorium with nino ricci and don gillmor, moderated by craig norris from cbc radio 

tickets go on sale on the "join us" page of this website on october 1

Don Gillmor's brilliant new novel, Long Change, examines the world of oil through the life and loves of one man; both stories are epic.

Fleeing his violent, Pentecostal father, as well as a crime he committed in the parking lot of the first bar he ever entered, Ritt Devlin leaves Texas at fifteen, crossing the border into Alberta. Big for his age, he soon finds work on an oil rig on the outskirts of Medicine Hat. But that's not the life he wants, and he saves up to study geology. By the time he's in his early twenties he's the head of his own oil company.

Spanning almost seventy years, and following the geology and politics of oil from Texas to the Canadian oil patch, to Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Azerbaijan, various political capitals, and the Arctic, Long Change is divided into three parts, each of them framed by one of Ritt's marriages. The first, to his great love, Oda, shows the beginnings of his company; that marriage is cut short when Oda dies of cancer while carrying their first child. His second wife is Deirdre, an elegant lawyer who helps Ritt expand Mackenzie Oil, but who needs more than business from her marriage. Then there is Alexa, a late middle age fling, a bad idea on both sides, in some ways as violent and delusional as the oil business.

The vision that drives Ritt throughout his life is to drill in pristine Arctic waters, and he pulls it off. But then comes the inevitable disaster. Ritt, now in his eighties, is not the man he was in any sense of the word. As he staggers away from the scene of the disaster, through the Arctic night, we know the dream of oil and of his own company is also burning in the night...

From multi-award winning author Nino Ricci comes a novel of harrowing emotional power and suspense, the story of one man’s descent into sleeplessness.

David Pace is a man who seems to have it all – a successful career as an almost-famous academic, a wife blessed with both beauty and brains, a young son and a lovely home. It is only when he comes down with a rare sleep disorder that the careful lies he has stitched together to form his perfect life begin to unravel. As sleep both haunts him and eludes him he descends into a twilight world that leaves his family in tatters and his career on the brink. Then he finds himself with a loaded gun in his hands, and all of a sudden he feels tantalizingly, gloriously awake.

Fuelled by a steady mix of pharmaceuticals, David’s desperate quest to get free of the fog his disorder has plunged him into pushes him towards the very extremes of human behaviour. As he takes ever greater risks and makes ever more destructive choices his sense of what is real and who he is and what he is capable of begins to slip terrifyingly out of reach.

thats a wrap!

and what a night it was! we wound up year one of appetite for reading with christine fischer talking to us about her three-pronged inspiration for her book, umbrella mender. and then we were off with a free-ranging discussion about northern nurses, what made hazel tick, the ethics of removing native children from their communities in the 50s to treat TB and so much more. 

it was a great note to end our first year. thanks to public kitchen for superb meals, wordsworth for the clever and inspired book choices, all of the authors who were so integral to the success of the evenings. and to all of our "members". it wouldn't be the same without you. 

news of the next book and tickets going on sale will be on the website soon. keep watching. and happy summer reading. 

 

history, geography and more with christine fischer guy

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we had a great evening last night with Christine Fischer Guy hearing about the "path through the woods" and how it developed for her. The evening was all the richer for Christine's observations on history, geography and the social issues around treating natives for TB in the 1950s. And, again, great tapas, great conversation and great fun. thanks everyone. and especially thanks to christine.