Category: Monday Evening Book Club

Molly of the Mall
by Heidi L.M. Jacobs

eBook | Print

The Monday Evening Book Club continues to meet on the second Monday of the month at 7:00 PM via Zoom.

Registration to discuss the 2020 winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal, Molly of the Mall is now open.

“Heidi L.M. Jacobs has created a delightfully whimsical protagonist in Molly. Always informed by the characters from literature she loves, she approaches life in her own unique, and fanciful, way. Such fun to follow the retail nightmares and romantic comedy mishaps of this Austenian heroine of mid-90s Edmonton.”

Further Reading

Audio & Video

One Native Life
by Richard Wagamese
eBook|eAudiobook

The Monday Evening drop-in book club will continue to meet via Zoom. Registration is required.

Begin Registration

Celebrate National Indigenous History Month and one of the foremost Indigenous authors and storytellers, Richard Wagamese. With the option to download both the eAudiobook and eBook, you’ll have no problem experiencing  Richard’s luminous connection to life this month.

“For Wagamese the land is sacred, and his passion for its healing powers is so contagious that readers may well find themselves inspired to tuck his book under one arm and carry it outside.” Winnipeg Free Press

Further Reading

Milkweed| Bibliography, Bio, & Interview

CBC|Book Review & Interview 

Now Toronto|Who gets to tell Indigenous stories?

Obituary

Globe & Mail

BC Book Look

Video

“An immaculate measure of grace.” Richard’s powerful speech from the Matt Cohen Awards.

Richard reads from One Native Life

 

 

The Monday Evening Book Club will discuss The Godmother by Hannelore Caye (available on hoopla) via Zoom on Monday, May 11 at 7:00 PM.

Registration is required.

Begin Registration 

 

The Monday Evening Book Club will meet at 7:00 pm on Monday, April 8 in the 2nd floor Training Room to discuss the best-selling memoir Educated by Tara Westover.

Tara Westover was seventeen when she first set foot in a classroom. Instead of traditional lessons, she grew up learning how to stew herbs into medicine, scavenging in the family scrap yard and helping her family prepare for the apocalypse. She had no birth certificate and no medical records and had never been enrolled in school.

Westover’s mother proved a marvel at concocting folk remedies for many ailments. As Tara developed her own coping mechanisms, little by little, she started to realize that what her family was offering didn’t have to be her only education. Her first day of university was her first day in school—ever—and she would eventually win an esteemed fellowship from Cambridge and graduate with a PhD in intellectual history and political thought.

A CBC radio’s The Current interview (with partial transcript)

A Guardian book review

A Book review by Bill Gates (includes a video interview)

Our Monday Book Club meeting, originally scheduled for April 6, is being converted to a “virtual” discussion of the book The Empress of Idaho by Todd Babiak via email. Members are being contacted and can participate via email. Non-members are welcome to add their comments to the blog!

About the book …

Monument, Colorado, July 1989. Fourteen-year-old Adam Lisinski is mesmerized the moment Beatrice Cyr steps into his life. Adam has a lot going for him: he’s hoping to be a starter on his high school football team, he has a fiercely protective mom, a girlfriend, and a part-time job at Eugene’s Gas Stop, where he works with his best friend. But he neglects everything that matters to him after Beatrice, his neighbour’s enigmatic new wife, comes to town. Soon he finds himself alone with her–in the change room at Modern You, a clothing store on Second Street; in the back row of the theatre at Chapel Hill Cinema; in the front seat of her truck. He’s confused about who she is, what she wants, and where she comes from. Adam is desperate, caught between wanting to spend time with Beatrice–whose past is catching up with her–and lying to everyone he cares about. The guilt overwhelms him. And when Beatrice convinces Adam’s mom to quit her job and partner in a risky real estate venture, he has to do something before everything spins further out of control. The plan he comes up with tests his courage and leads him to an unshakable truth about loyalty and love.

By turns riveting and tender-hearted, The Empress of Idaho is a story about the vulnerability and confusion of adolescence at the moment when it slams against adulthood. It’s an unforgettable portrait of a boy’s difficult coming of age.

About the author …

Author website

A CBC Radio Next Chapter interview with Todd Babiak

An Edmonton Journal book review

A Quill and Quire book review

Discussion questions (Penguin Random House reading guide)

Research article on female sexual predators