Men & Their Books: Westmount CRC Book Club; Strathroy, Ontario

Trudy Joldersma and Leny Dekker got us started in early 2003. Windflower by Gabrielle Roy was the first book on my list in February 2003. At present we are mostly men with only three women left, all Dutch born, as are the five men except for myself. (I’m from New Jersey.) I am the only remaining member from the early days.

Recently we read Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict, and even our 89-year-old Roman Catholic lady plowed through it, though she found it much too heavy (her favorite was Grahame's Wind in the Willows, which we did twice). In fact ,only a few of us got much from the Pope's fine Bible study.

We were helped a good deal in choosing books until recently by Margaret Burdick, a member of Salvation Army background who recently retired from the club. The library provides a book bag for clubs, and in that way we were able to discuss Wild by Cheryl Strayed. Our last book was DuMaurier's Rebecca, and we take up Kidd's The Invention of Wings next.

A few other titles:
Camera Obscura by Nicolaas Beets                 
Now They Call Me Infidel by Nonie Darwish             
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
A Separate Peace by John Knowles            
Obasan by Joy Kogawa
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese