The Buzz...About Books

The Many Book Clubs of Taylor Memorial Branch

Taylor Memorial Branch is a book lovers’ paradise with three book discussion groups.  

The Tuesday Afternoon Book Club was founded over 30 years ago.  Several members have attended for 25 years or more. The club features stimulating literary discussions and visits from authors like José Latour, Wayson Choy and Anthony De Sa.  Earlier this year the book club hosted author Kwai-yun Li who read from her book The Palm Leaf Fan: & Other Stories, and also enjoyed a luncheon of Hakka Chinese Food with the members.  During summer the meetings sometimes move onto the library patio. 

The next meeting will be on January 3 at 2 PM, featuring a discussion of Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith.

The Thursday Evening Book Club was founded in 1991.  Its next meeting is on January 5 at 7 PM with a discussion of the international bestseller The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.

Two years ago it became clear that one evening book club simply wasn’t enough to meet the needs of the community and The Tuesday Evening Book Club was created.  The next meeting will take place on January 3 at 7 PM.  The book discussed will be The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks.

Taylor Memorial Branch is located at 1440 Kingston Rd.

For more information call the branch at 416-396-8939. 

Start the New Year with a Best Seller

As 2011 draws to a close, The Sisters Brothers written by Patrick deWitt, has been appearing on many Best Books of the Year lists. It has already won the Governor General's Literary Award and been Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Giller Prize. Ablutions, deWitt's debut novel, was also well-received. Originally from Vancouver Island, Patrick deWitt is a new author to watch for in the future.

Set in 1851 during the gold rush, Eli and Charlie Sisters are hired gunslinger for the Commodore, a man who is as famous as he is feared. The brothers have been hired, once again, to travel from Oregon City to San Francisco to hunt down and kill a prospector named Herman Kermit Warm. The Commodore mysteriously never tells the brothers how Warm has wronged him. Everywhere they go, the Sisters' brothers strike fear in the hearts of everyone they meet. Their brutality is legendary. Suring their journey they have many adventures, including run-ins with Indians, a bear, a witch, a lost boy, a vengeful frontier baron, saloon ladies, and a gang of fur trappers.

Eli, the more sympathetic brother, narrates the tale. As he witnesses his brother's cruelty, blood-lust and addiction to drink and women, he begins to realize that this may be his last job for the Commodore and he may just consider settling down to a quiet, peaceful life.

Also available in:

Audiobook

Large Print

Talking Book (Restricted to Print Disabled Patrons)

Criminally Entertaining Book Club

Colonel Mustard in the Library is the perfect book club for mystery lovers or for readers who just want to try something new.

Located at the Mount Pleasant branch, it runs Sep to June (except December) on the last Tuesday of the month at 7pm. Usually there is a book or a series of books for discussion, but sometimes we have special speakers or events.  On January 31 Detective Constable Wade Knapp, Training Officer for the Forensic Identification Services will share information about techniques used to solve real life crimes.

Colonel Mustard is intended to introduce you to authors and titles you might not have heard of before, and a great opportunity for that is our Tea and Murder session in March. The members of the book club will present reviews of mysteries they've enjoyed and you'll be able to borrow them right away to try them for yourself.

Check Mount Pleasant's program listings for the events planned for other months.

Christchurch Noir

Christchurch, New Zealand is one of my favourite cities in the world and I was heartbroken to hear of yesterday's earthquake.  I recently read a mystery set in Christchurch and it seems an appropriate time to write about it.

I once sat in a Christchurch coffee shop long after closing time because the proprietor was too polite to ask me to leave.  Paul Cleave's Christchurch is not nearly that pleasant.   His is a town of unexpected violence where outwardly normal people struggle constantly with their inner demons, and frequently lose the battle.  In Collecting Cooper former policeman Theo Tate knows all about that.  As the book opens he's just being released from after serving a four-month prison term.  Haunted by previous investigations, Tate wants to stay away from criminal investigation, but a serial killer is targeting police officers and one of Tate's former colleagues asks him to help.  He also becomes involved with a missing persons investigation.  Several people have gone missing in Christchurch and one of them is Emma Green, a young woman Tate knows well.  She had very nearly been killed by Tate in the DUI accident that landed him in prison and he is compelled to investigate, determined to find her alive.

It's a dark, violent and thoroughly intriguing novel.

Collecting Cooper is the second book to feature Theo Tate.  He made his first appearance  in the novel Cemetary Lake. 

Best Book of 2011?

2011 is winding down and Toronto Public Library would like to know:

What was your best/favourite book of 2011?

Comment here, and follow the discussion on Facebook.

Some of the responses so far:

Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System by Raj Patel
Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
The Eyes of a Child by Richard North Patterson
The Measure of a Man by J.J. Lee
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell

Curses! Five books about swearing

…nothing is more fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library. 
Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

I was a mere child when I began my library career and I soon discovered that my co-workers would sometimes use "decidedly unparliamentary" language in the staff room.  Swearing librarians just seemed wrong somehow.  Later I came to realize that some people who love words, love the “bad” ones, too.  As Robertson Davies observed, books can be a bad influence on a civil tongue.

Here is a selection of books about profanity available at Toronto Public Library:

Expletive Deleted: a Good Look at Bad Words by Ruth Wajnryb
Australian linguist Wajnryb provides both research and wit in her examination of foul language.

The F-Word by Jesse Sheidlower
Now in its third edition, the book details the history and usage of the “most controversial word in the English language”.

Filthy English: The How, Where, When and What of Everyday Swearing by Pete Silverton
Silverton examines the British evolution into a more "linguistically liberal" society.

Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language by Keith Allan and Kate Burridge
The authors provide insight into the role of taboo language in everyday life.

Seven Dirty Words: the Life and Crimes of George Carlin by James Sullivan
In 1973, a radio station broadcast a George Carlin monologue called "Filthy Words". The subsequent uproar led to a Supreme Court decision affirming the federal government's power to regulate speech on radio and television broadcasts in the United States.

Christopher Hitchens: 1949 - 2011

 
Christopher Hitchens, British author and essayist, died last night of complications related to cancer. A fierce intellectual and polemicist, Hitchens was no stranger to controversy. Indeed, his impressive body of work has both engaged and enraged his many readers over the years - and his passing has resulted in an outpouring of editorials reflecting on his life and work.  

Read obits from the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, the BBC, CNN, the Guardian, the National Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Daily Mail and Vanity Fair.

See Vanity's Fair's photo essay.  Read some of his memorable quotes here and here.

Watch Hitchen's inteview with Sally Quinn of the Washington Post in which he reflects upon his life's work. 

 

The Guardian reports on a forthcoming memoir, Mortality, based on his Vanity Fair columns.

Until then:

 

 

 

 

 

• God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
• Hitch-22: A Memoir
• Arguably: Essays 
• The Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism

 

Hitchens in 1968.

 

Brown Bag Book Club at City Hall

What could be better than a lunch time book club?

In September 2011, City Hall Branch held its first meeting of the Brown Bag Book Club.  Designed to attract those who work in the area around City Hall, the group meets during the lunch hour between 1:05-2:00 PM.  Members are encouraged to bring their lunch to the meetings.

So far the club has read and discussed To Kill a Mockingbird, The Kite Runner and Peony in Love.

The next meeting is Thursday December 15 when the group will discuss The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. 

New members are always welcome!  For more details phone the branch at: 416-393-7650.

There are book clubs of all shapes and sizes in Toronto Public Library branches.  Find one that's right for you in our list of Book Clubs & Writer's Groups.

Harry Potter for Grown-ups?

With the craze over the release of the very last Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 and the success of HBO's A Game of Thrones, fantasy continues to be very popular. Even the TV networks have jumped on the bandwagon with the new series Once Upon a Time and Grimm.

One new fantasy novel, Lev Grossman's The Magicians, has been called "Harry Potter for Grown-ups".  It is the story of seventeen year-old Quentin Coldwater who is very smart and very miserable.  A fan of fantasy novels since he was a kid, he dreams of escaping his unhappy life and travelling to the world of Fillory, the imaginary world of his favourite children's series Fillory and Further.  He has always wanted to perform magic but, like most people, he does not think that magic, or Fillory, are real. 

Through a strange series of events, his life suddenly improves when he finds himself accepted to Brakebills, the only school of magic in North America.  The first part of the novel covers Quentin's years at Brakebills, where in addition to learning magic, he experiences all the usual events of college - first love, self-doubt, making and losing friends and new challenges.

The next section starts after graduation when one of his friends figures out a way to actually get to Fillory.  Once there, Quentin and his friends will find out whether or not an adventure in a magical world is as great as they always dreamed it would be. The story continues in the recently published The Magician King.

The two books have received good reviews in the Globe and Mail and the Guardian. A good book for adults who grew up reading the Narnia series (which Fillory resembles) and other fantasy.  However, the pace is much slower than most books in this genre and the themes and content are more adult.  If you are interested, place your hold soon as there are rumours that Fox will be making it into a series.

For more suggestions on books that may appeal to fantasy fans, check out our Wild about Harry Potter? Recommended Books list.

Magicians is also available in audiobook, eBook and eAudiobook formats.

The Magician King is also available in audiobook format.

Tonight! Chat Online with Alissa York

Alissa York, author of the acclaimed novels Mercy, Effigy and Fauna, was our guest this evening for an online chat.  She provided wonderful insight into the writing process.

Click the link below for the chat replay.

Alissa York Live Chat