September 01, 2023

2023-24 Update

Hello Bookenders,

As you can see below, the last post on this blog was a while ago. Currently our club is primarily communicating via our Discord and mailing list, please feel welcome to join either (or both!) for updates on our monthly reads and social events! Our first meeting for the 2023-24 school year will be mid-September. The details will be announced soon through the previously mentioned channels, if you have any questions you can email us at bookendsuoft@outlook.com

Come and hang out for snacks and some bookish discussion, we're looking forward to seeing you all there!

Cheers,

Mia, Marcio, and Eunice

April 20, 2019

Upcoming Summer & Nominations

20 April 2019

 

Hello Bookenders,


We hope you’re all looking forward to the end of exams and to the summer when, among other things, there will be time for reading whatever you want!

We'll be continuing Bookends meetings over the summer, for the second year in a row. For our three themes, we're going with the runners-up from our vote at the beginning of the year. They are the following:
  1. Contemporary genre (June)
  2. Lesser-known books from a popular author (July)
  3. LGBTQ+ books (August)
Please send in your suggestions for books under any of these themes. In particular, if you have a contemporary recommendation, let us know by next Saturday April 27th. We'll get back to you with a poll deciding June's book and meeting after that.

Cheers,

Mia and Connie

March 03, 2019

Our book for March is...

Hello Bookenders,


Thank you to everyone who voted and came out to our last meeting!

Our book of the month for March is S. by Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams. A story within a story, margin notes, and papers slipped in between the pages help to solve the mystery of the Ship of Theseus and its enigmatic author. In case you are a bit lost on where to start, have a look at this spoiler-free reading guide for some optional tips on how to navigate.

Pick up a copy and join in on our discussion later in the month!

Cheers,

Connie and Mia

January 28, 2019

Our book for February is...

Hello Bookenders,


Thanks to everyone who came out to our last meeting discussing An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield and who voted on our upcoming international/translation read!

Our book for February is The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Written in the first half of the 20th century and eventually published in the second, this supernatural and satirical novel critiquing Soviet life is now considered to be a modern Russian classic.

Pick up a copy and we hope you'll join us for our discussion next month!


Until then,

Mia and Connie



November 16, 2018

November Book of the Month Meeting

Hello Bookenders,


According to the poll results, the best time for our next meeting is Friday, November 23rd at 3pm in SS 2120. We'll be discussing our book of the month, The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro.

In the meantime, hope you're all managing to bear with this snowy weather!

 
Cheers,

Connie and Mia

October 22, 2018

The sci-fi/fantasy book of the month is...

Hey Bookenders,


Thanks to everyone who made it out to our meeting last Friday. We had a great discussion about our mystery pick and we certainly ended the film screening on a suspenseful note!

The votes are in and the November book of the month for the theme of sci-fi/fantasy is... The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Published in 2015, this fantasy novel is the acclaimed author Ishiguro's newest release after over a decade. You can pick up a copy at the Toronto Public Library, at one of the U of T libraries, or elsewhere in time for our meeting in mid-November. We'll be sending out a poll before then to decide on the best time.

Wishing you luck in the rest of midterm season,

Connie and Mia



October 18, 2018

Meeting this Friday and November Nominations

Hello Bookenders,


As per last week's poll, our meeting to discuss The Girl on the Train will be Friday, October 19th at 3pm in SS 2120. Afterwards, we will be heading over to Robarts' Media Commons Theatre to screen the movie adaption.

We will also be voting on our November sci-fi/fantasy pick at the meeting (thank you to all who sent awesome suggestions in!). If you aren't able to come and would still like to vote, we are including the nominations below. Feel free to email us your vote to be counted by Friday.

Hope to see you a lot of you then!

Cheers,

Mia and Connie


The Snow Child
by Eowyn Ivey, 2012, 404 pages

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.


Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley, 1818, 288 pages


At once a Gothic thriller, a passionate romance, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of science, Frankenstein tells the story of committed science student Victor Frankenstein. Obsessed with discovering the cause of generation and life and bestowing animation upon lifeless matter, Frankenstein assembles a human being from stolen body parts but; upon bringing it to life, he recoils in horror at the creature's hideousness. Tormented by isolation and loneliness, the once-innocent creature turns to evil and unleashes a campaign of murderous revenge against his creator, Frankenstein.


The Buried Giant
by Kazuo Ishiguro, 2015, 345 pages

The Romans have long since departed, and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. But at least the wars that once ravaged the country have ceased. The Buried Giant begins as a couple, Axl and Beatrice, set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen for years. They expect to face many hazards — some strange and other-worldly — but they cannot yet foresee how their journey will reveal to them dark and forgotten corners of their love for one another. Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge and war.


The Golem and the Jinni

by Helene Wecker, 2013, 486 pages

Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic and dies at sea on the voyage from Poland. Chava is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbor in 1899. Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert, trapped in an old copper flask, and released in New York City, though still not entirely free. Ahmad and Chava become unlikely friends and soul mates with a mystical connection. Marvelous and compulsively readable, Helene Wecker's debut novel The Golem and the Jinni weaves strands of Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, historical fiction and magical fable, into a wondrously inventive and unforgettable tale.