Christmas Potluck 2019 - Thank you

Thank you Sheila and Mark for rolling out the red carpet for the club and hosting the annual Christmas Potluck earlier this month! We may have been a little unruly but hopefully none of the silver disappeared. It was a wonderful evening! 

Farewell to the "teens" Baby!

The Boys in the Boat	Daniel James Brown
The Story of Arthur Truluv	Elizabeth Berg
Full Disclosure	Beverly McLachlan
Late Nights on the Air	Elizabeth Hay
Educated	Tara Westover
The Alice Network	Kate Quinn
Burial Rights	Hannah Kent
The Painted Girls	Cathy Marie Buchanan *
Sofie and Cecilia	Katherine Ashenburg *

*Author joined club via SKYPE

Painting Credit – Baby 1966 Emma Amos The Whitney

Now on to 2020!! 

Happy 80th Birthday Margaret Atwood!

Fall 2019 Ottawa International Writers Festival - Read ON!

Francis Bacon - A Brush With Violence

Last night was amazing~ E. and I got to be close up with three amazing Canadian authors, Megan Gail Coles, Sara Peters and Anakana Schofield. Their readings were lovely and the follow up discussion was funny, sad, memorable etc. Wishing I could catch a few more events but running out of time. Next spring I hope to go to more events.  Really stimulating! Stay tuned on these authors as E. and I plan to read the books and take it from there. Not for the light of heart - Irish Canadian Anakana mentioned this visual artist as a comparison to her book. 

Katharine Ashenburg is joining us!!!

Katharine Ashenburg


Great news! We are truly honoured to welcome Katharine to our November meeting to discuss her first novel Sofie and Cecilia. Katharine is no stranger to the Canadian writing community having published several non fiction books and worked as a journalist at several prestigious publications!

Here are the book club questions we developed for the meeting.  
    How many people come home from a holiday abroad and write their first novel over the next decade? (We should note you were a published author and have had a very successful career). Thank you! In our humble opinion your novel was impeccably researched.  Can you briefly describe your approach?  We understand you travelled to Sweden several times , read every book you could access that was translated or written in English about the subject and wrote various scenes in a non linear fashion.  How did it all unfold?

2.      Based on your public appearances, reviews etc what has pleasantly surprised you about your Canadian reading audience’s response to a Swedish based historical novel dating back almost one hundred years? What has been the reaction to your novel outside Canada particularly in Sweden?

3.      Your themes have been described as the lasting bonds of female friendship and complexities of an imperfect marriage that still works at many levels.  We think it is fair to say no marriage is perfect. What message are you trying to convey to modern readers particularly younger women about sticking it out in an imperfect marriage that includes flagrant infidelity Cecilia endures from Lars and Nil’s complete lack of respect of Sofie’s potential and creative drive. How would you want older female readers to describe these marriages to their daughters and granddaughters?

4.    The Northview Road Book Club has read several books about the inner workings of famous marriages including Loving Frank by Nancy Horin and The Paris Wife by Paula McLean. Wedded bliss does not come to mind when we remember those books. In your opinion, what draws the female audience to this genre?

5.      If you were asked to write a Canadian version of Sofie and Cecilia for a CBC miniseries what two marriages would you select to replace the Larsson /Lamm marriages?

6.      How does an older widow interpret the intellectual flowering and serenity you gave Sofie and Cecilia in their widow hood? If the book club wanted to explore this theme further what novels or nonfiction books would you recommend?

7.      You mentioned in an interview with the Canadian Jewish News that the Cecilia’s concerns about the rise of Nazism in Sweden were added in a later stage of the writing of the novel based on some additional research.  Here is an excerpt from the interview:

·        Writing Emma’s worries into Cecilia made her more real – it darkened and deepened her. The advantage of the novelist is that she can take a fact and embroider it into a fictional scene. In this case, it is a fact that the innocent folk dress Emma tried to revive had come to the attention of some of the nationalistic, pro-Nazi elements. They felt that only people born in a particular village – that is, no Jews or foreigners – should wear that village’s local folk dress.

·        That led to a scene in the novel in which Cecilia, ironically the champion of the local dress, is pressured to not wear it at a traditional fiddling competition she and her husband had founded.

·        “We worked for decades fanning those small, weak flames back into life,” she thinks about the folk arts she had fostered. “And now I watch as they are added to a bonfire that threatens to consume us.”

8. How can Cecelia’s response to this development be applied to modern day events where increased polarization seems rampant?  Where do we draw the line between curiosity or celebration of other cultures and cultural appropriation? How does a majority culture in for example North America respectfully learn about minority cultures that may be protective of their expressions of art and culture?

Ottawa International Writer's Festival Plan to Attend

Friends Like These is one event that includes the writer Megan Gail Coles

Pretty stoked to attend this festival in late October, Tickets are available and most events are at the Christ Church Cathedral. Hoping to have time to read some of the titles in advance. 

Summer Update 'Cause baby you're a firework

Some how between our little forays to Europe and here in North America we managed to gather in each other's gardens and enjoy some really interesting books written by three women including Elizabeth Hay (Late Nights on the Air), Beverly McLachlin (Full Disclosure) and finally another Elizabeth by the name of Elizabeth Berg (The Story of Arthur Trulov). 

We are gearing up for the fall with two titles lined up including Hannah Kent's Burial Rights and The Painted Girls by Toronto based author Cathy Marie Buchanan. 

Cathy Marie Buchanan is joining us!

Canadian author Cathy Marie Buchanan is
joining us via Skype to discuss the creative process
she used to write The Painted Girls later this fall. Can't
wait! 

Spring 2019 Update

Ottawa's Long Awaited Spring is Just Around the Corner

Lois, Tiff and Betty have hosted this winter for amazing discussions on three books
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
Educated by Tara Westover
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

All very different topics and very interesting perspectives from our members.  Next month we will turn to a local Ottawa writer and read Late Nights on the Air by Elizabeth Hay.

Happy New Year!

Grey and Gold by Florence Carlyle (1910)

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and have included read more books as one of their New Year's Resolutions! We get to hang out with the boys in the boat in a couple of weeks.  Anyone interested in rowing next summer?