The March Edition

Springtime is just around the bend...

Matchbook Book Club presents: The March Edition Dear Members, Apologies for this late distribution of the newsletter! Springtime is here (or is it? Looking outside this morning when it was actually snowing, does put a damp in our optimistic outlook on warmer days!) and it's that time of year where we look forward to a new batch of books! I'll look forward to the days we can all enjoy the patio, go have a a picnic outside, or take a bike ride around places like High Park or Toronto Islands...I guess we'll just have to be a little more patient! Thank you to everyone who attended this month's meeting at the super yummy Lisa Marie's! We discussed Cheryl Strayed's "Dear Sugar", which for many was a wonderful read, and there were those who found it to be "just okay"! We shared a bit of our personal experience and saw how it related to many of the advice being given, and overall there were great takeaways from the book (recall Tomas Transtromer's Sister Life passage). A great book to pass it on to family and friends! Good times at Lisa Marie's! This month's theme: Man Booker International Longlist! Thank you to everyone who cast in their votes: while there were plenty of great ones to choose from and to add on our to-read list, this title came out as promising. Fingers crossed it makes it to the shortlist like last year's pick! Enjoy! Summary: Andreas lives his whole life in the Austrian Alps, where he arrives as a young boy taken in by a farming family. He is a man of very few words and so, when he falls in love with Marie, he doesn't ask for her hand in marriage, but instead has some of his friends light her name at dusk across the mountain. When Marie dies in an avalanche, pregnant with their first child, Andreas' heart is broken. He leaves his valley just once more, to fight in WWII - where he is taken prisoner in the Caucasus - and returns to find that modernity has reached his remote haven. . . Like John Williams' Stoner or Denis Johnson's Train Dreams, A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler is a tender book about finding dignity and beauty in solitude. An exquisite novel about a simple life, it has already demonstrated its power to move thousands of readers with a message of solace and truth. It looks at the moments, big and small, that make us what we are. Translated by Charlotte Collins.