At the moment we are The Book Club Without A Name; occasionally the subject of a suitable name comes up and we bat various suggestions around... but then we get back to discussing books. We do, however, have our own custom designed T-shirt...

There are 10 of us - 5 couples:

Fred, the Tower of Fred horn section
Jean the Pianist
Joette the Architect
Larrie the Traveling Carpenter
Leith the English Professor
Michael the Freelance Reader
Nou the Music Store Guy
Rob the Buggy Mandolin Player
Sarah the Early Musician
Suzanne the Drama Teacher

often accompanied by one or more members of the junior division:

Aaron the Senior Junior Member and Ace Chess Player
Benjamin the Not So Recently Born
Ciaran the Ever-Ready Energy Bunny
Devin the Ever-Ready Energy Bunny Mark II
Nia the Ever-Ready Energy Bunny Mark III
Calder the Most Recently Born Of All

How we choose our books
We've been evolving our method of choosing books over the years. The basic foundation of our choices has been the Master Book List. This list originated and gets annually expanded at our January meeting, when everyone comes armed with a lengthy list of books that they have recently been attracted to. We each take a turn presenting our list of books to the other members, and so the Master Book List grows year by year. The complete, current, Y2K-compliant Master Book List is in PDF format. You'll need the Acrobat Reader (available from Adobe) to view it.

We choose two books to read each time: a Primary Book, and a Secondary Book which (in theory) complements some aspect of the Primary Book. Originally both Primary and Secondary books were chosen by concensus from the MBL. Lately, however, we have modified that approach to ensure that everyone's favorites are given equal time. Each meeting one member takes his or her turn (alphabetically, by first name!) to propose three titles for the next Primary Book: everyone votes from amongst the three choices. The Secondary Book is usually chosen by concensus from among the books on the MBL.

Where and when we meet
We all live in the Vancouver area, and meet every two months at one of the member homes. Initially we met on a Monday evening, but now we're experimenting with a Sunday pot-luck dinner format. Twice a year (Summer and Winter) we have a daytime brunch meeting and make more of a social event of it. Our Master Book List is refreshed annually with new titles at the January meeting. Occasionally some or all of us attend readings or concerts, and we've even ventured into joint play-readings on a couple of occasions. There's a chronology of our meetings and the books we've chosen here.

This page last updated December 30, 2008