Explore book clubs, author readings & more.
Who says Monday mornings can’t be fun? Are you looking to join a book club but don’t know where to start?
Join us for Monday Morning Book Club! Just have the book read before the meeting and drop in!
Whether you are well-seasoned in Book Clubs or have never been in one, we invite you to participate in our Monday Morning Book Club at the Learning Lab on the 2nd floor of Lynn Valley Library. This will be a group-led Book Club.
Here's what we're reading and discussing:
January 16: What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
February 20: The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
March 20: French Braid by Anne Tyler
April 17: Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
May 15: Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou
June 19: The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
No registration required. For more information about Monday Morning Book Club, call 604-984-0286, ext. 8144 or email campbella@nvdpl.ca.
Location:
Monday, March 20, 2023 - 10:00am to 11:00am
Do you love to talk about what you’re reading? Join a book club to share your thoughts and hear what others have to say about books that spark discussion, curiosity, and debate! Discover new “Books to Talk About” and join a community of booklovers at NVDPL. Simply read the book and join us at the meeting!
Register online for the time and location that’s most convenient for you to receive meeting instructions and information in advance of the discussion! Join us every month or just for the meetings you prefer. If you miss a meeting but still want to discuss the book, you can also join us at a different time or location. Click here to see all six Books to Talk About book clubs.
Copies of the next book will be available to pick-up from Capilano Library. All books are offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Copies are also available in other formats, such as print, ebook, audiobooks, and more. Ask staff to help you find a copy!
2022–2023 Schedule for the Capilano Tuesday Evening Book Club:
My Conversations with Canadians by Lee Maracle
September 27 at 7:30pm
On her first book tour at the age of 26, Sto:lo author Lee Maracle was asked a question from the audience, one she couldn't possibly answer at that moment. But she had been thinking about it ever since. As time passed, she has been asked countless similar questions, all of them too big to answer, but not too large to contemplate. These questions, which touch upon subjects such as citizenship, segregation, labour, law, predjudice and reconcilliation (to name a few), are the heart of My Conversations with Canadians. In prose essays that are both conversational and direct, Maracle seeks not to provide any answers to these questions she has lived with for so long. Rather, she thinks through each one using a multitude of experiences she's had as a Canadian, a First Nations leader, a woman and mother and grandmother over the course of her life. Learn more.
Care Of by Ivan Coyote
October 25 at 7:30pm
In the early days of the coronavirus lockdown, like every artist and creator, writer and storyteller Ivan Coyote was faced with a calendar full of cancelled shows and a heart full of questions around what now? To keep busy while figuring out what to write about next, Ivan began to answer the backlog of mail and correspondences that had come in while they were on the pre-pandemic road: emails, letters, direct messages on social media, soggy handwritten notes found tucked under the windshield wiper of their car after a gig, all of it. In Care Of, Coyote combines the most moving and powerful of these letters with the responses they've sent in the months since the lockdown. Learn more.
Rabbit Foot Bill by Helen Humphreys
November 22 at 7:30pm
Canwood, Saskatchewan, 1947. Leonard Flint, a lonely boy in a small farming town befriends the local tramp, a man known as Rabbit Foot Bill. Bill doesn't talk much, but he allows Leonard to accompany him as he sets rabbit snares and to visit his small, secluded dwelling. Being with Bill is everything to young Leonard--an escape from school, bullies and a hard father. So his shock is absolute when he witnesses Bill commit a sudden violent act and loses him to prison. Fifteen years on, as a newly graduated doctor of psychiatry, Leonard arrives at the Weyburn Mental Hospital, both excited and intimidated by the massive institution known for its experimental LSD trials. To Leonard's great surprise, at the Weyburn he is reunited with Bill and soon becomes fixated on discovering what happened on that fateful day in 1947. Based on a true story. Learn more.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
January 24 at 7:30pm
Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known. Winner of the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Learn more.
Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
February 28 at 7:30pm
With sharp turns and charming characters, this debut thriller by Annishinabe author Boulley centers 18-year-old Daunis Fontaine, who loves and fits into her community but yearns for official citizenship in the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. A lover of both science and hockey, Daunis had planned on going away for college, but after her uncle overdoses on meth and her grandmother has a stroke, she stays closer to her Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan home, negotiating a complex familial situation having to do with her deceased Annishinabe father and the infiltration of meth into her community. Winner of the American Library Association’s 2022 Printz and Morris Awards. Learn more.
Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant? By Roz Chast
March 28 at 7:30pm
In her first memoir, renowned New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies--an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades--the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. Learn more.
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
April 25 at 7:30pm
The remarkable story of J. P. Morgan's personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white to leave a lasting legacy that enriched the nation. Historical fiction based on true events. Learn more.
What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J.A. Chancy
May 23 at 7:30pm
At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster. Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and—at the same time—an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit. Learn more.
Location:
Tuesday, March 28, 2023 - 7:30pm
Hey, kids in grades 4-7! This Book Club’s for YOU!
We’re meeting every second Wednesday on Zoom to discuss nominated titles for the 2023 Red Cedar Book Awards! Kids in grades 4-7 are invited to join the Red Cedar Book Club and choose who wins British Columbia’s Red Cedar Book Award. The Club will discuss the nominated titles, do fun activities, write reviews and more. Choose what books you want to read from the fiction and non-fiction nominees lists, and vote for your favourite in the spring. Winners are announced in June.
Find more info and this year’s nominated titles at www.redcedaraward.ca. NVDPL will feature virtual author presentations by Red Cedar nominated authors in 2022 – stay tuned!
Registration required. Register online or call 604-984-0286, ext. 8141.
Location:
Wednesday, March 29, 2023 - 3:45pm to 4:30pm
Ted Barris, author of several bestselling Canadian military history books, will speak about his most recent title: Battle of the Atlantic: Gauntlet to Victory.
The Battle of the Atlantic, Canada’s longest continuous military engagement of the Second World War, lasted 2,074 days, claiming the lives of more than 4,000 men and women in the Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Canadian merchant navy. The years 2019 to 2025 mark the eightieth anniversary of the longest battle of the Second World War, the Battle of the Atlantic. It also proved to be the war’s most critical and dramatic battle of attrition.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
Registration required. Register online, call 604-984-0286 ext. 8116, or email myhillm@nvdpl.ca.
Location:
Wednesday, March 29, 2023 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Kids! Get your hands on the newest book and read it first!
Advance Reading Copies are books that haven’t even been published yet. In this club, you will have the chance to read and review brand new books that haven’t even hit the shelves! You’ll get an exclusive sneak peek at unpublished books and choose one to take home and review. At each meeting, we’ll discuss the books we’ve read. Books will appeal to kids in grades 4-7.
Books will be available for pick up at Lynn Valley, Capilano and Parkgate libraries.
Registration required. Register online or call 604-984-0286, ext. 8141.
Location:
Thursday, March 30, 2023 - 4:00pm to 4:45pm
Do you love to talk about what you’re reading? Join a book club to share your thoughts and hear what others have to say about books that spark discussion, curiosity, and debate! Discover new “Books to Talk About” and join a community of booklovers at NVDPL. Simply read the book and join us at the meeting!
Register online for the time and location that’s most convenient for you to receive meeting instructions and information in advance of the discussion! Join us every month or just for the meetings you prefer. If you miss a meeting but still want to discuss the book, you can also join us at a different time or location. Click here to see all six Books to Talk About book clubs.
Copies of the next book will be available to pick-up from Parkgate Library. All books are offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Copies are also available in other formats, such as print, ebook, audiobooks, and more. Ask staff to help you find a copy!
2022–2023 Schedule for the Parkgate Tuesday Afternoon Book Club:
What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J.A. Chancy
October 4 at 2:30pm
At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster. Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and—at the same time—an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit. Learn more.
My Conversations with Canadians by Lee Maracle
November 1 at 2:30pm
On her first book tour at the age of 26, Sto:lo author Lee Maracle was asked a question from the audience, one she couldn't possibly answer at that moment. But she had been thinking about it ever since. As time passed, she has been asked countless similar questions, all of them too big to answer, but not too large to contemplate. These questions, which touch upon subjects such as citizenship, segregation, labour, law, predjudice and reconcilliation (to name a few), are the heart of My Conversations with Canadians. In prose essays that are both conversational and direct, Maracle seeks not to provide any answers to these questions she has lived with for so long. Rather, she thinks through each one using a multitude of experiences she's had as a Canadian, a First Nations leader, a woman and mother and grandmother over the course of her life. Learn more.
Care Of by Ivan Coyote
December 6 at 2:30pm
In the early days of the coronavirus lockdown, like every artist and creator, writer and storyteller Ivan Coyote was faced with a calendar full of cancelled shows and a heart full of questions around what now? To keep busy while figuring out what to write about next, Ivan began to answer the backlog of mail and correspondences that had come in while they were on the pre-pandemic road: emails, letters, direct messages on social media, soggy handwritten notes found tucked under the windshield wiper of their car after a gig, all of it. In Care Of, Coyote combines the most moving and powerful of these letters with the responses they've sent in the months since the lockdown. Learn more.
Rabbit Foot Bill by Helen Humphreys
February 7 at 2:30pm
Canwood, Saskatchewan, 1947. Leonard Flint, a lonely boy in a small farming town befriends the local tramp, a man known as Rabbit Foot Bill. Bill doesn't talk much, but he allows Leonard to accompany him as he sets rabbit snares and to visit his small, secluded dwelling. Being with Bill is everything to young Leonard--an escape from school, bullies and a hard father. So his shock is absolute when he witnesses Bill commit a sudden violent act and loses him to prison. Fifteen years on, as a newly graduated doctor of psychiatry, Leonard arrives at the Weyburn Mental Hospital, both excited and intimidated by the massive institution known for its experimental LSD trials. To Leonard's great surprise, at the Weyburn he is reunited with Bill and soon becomes fixated on discovering what happened on that fateful day in 1947. Based on a true story. Learn more.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
March 7 at 2:30pm
Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known. Winner of the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Learn more.
Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
April 4 at 2:30pm
With sharp turns and charming characters, this debut thriller by Annishinabe author Boulley centers 18-year-old Daunis Fontaine, who loves and fits into her community but yearns for official citizenship in the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. A lover of both science and hockey, Daunis had planned on going away for college, but after her uncle overdoses on meth and her grandmother has a stroke, she stays closer to her Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan home, negotiating a complex familial situation having to do with her deceased Annishinabe father and the infiltration of meth into her community. Winner of the American Library Association’s 2022 Printz and Morris Awards. Learn more.
Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant? By Roz Chast
May 2 at 2:30pm
In her first memoir, renowned New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies--an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades--the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. Learn more.
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
June 6 at 2:30pm
The remarkable story of J. P. Morgan's personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white to leave a lasting legacy that enriched the nation. Historical fiction based on true events. Learn more.
Location:
Tuesday, April 4, 2023 - 2:30pm
Come meet other comics and manga fans!
Each month, we’ll read graphic novels or manga from a different genre, and meet to discuss, compare, and snack!
Graphic Novel & Manga Book Club is open to anyone ages 10-16.
Registration required. Register online or call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175.
Questions? Email Jessie at hawkesj@nvdpl.ca
Location:
Tuesday, April 4, 2023 - 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Paws 4 Stories is a St. John Ambulance Therapy Dog Community Service.
In this program, children have the opportunity to read to a friendly, certified therapy dog. Reading to a therapy dog can be motivating and especially beneficial for children who are hesitant or anxious about reading.
Ages 6-12. Sessions are 15 minutes in length. Children can sign up for a maximum of 2 sessions each.
Registration required. Stop by the Children's Desk or call Lynn Valley Library to register: 604-984-0286, ext. 8141.
Registration is first-come, first-served, though priority will be given to those who have not participated before.
Location:
Wednesday, April 5, 2023 - 4:30pm to 5:30pm
Do you love to talk about what you’re reading? Join a book club to share your thoughts and hear what others have to say about books that spark discussion, curiosity, and debate! Discover new “Books to Talk About” and join a community of booklovers at NVDPL. Simply read the book and join us at the meeting!
Register online for the time and location that’s most convenient for you to receive meeting instructions and information in advance of the discussion! Join us every month or just for the meetings you prefer. If you miss a meeting but still want to discuss the book, you can also join us at a different time or location. Click here to see all six Books to Talk About book clubs.
Copies of the next book will be available to pick-up from Parkgate Library. All books are offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Copies are also available in other formats, such as print, ebook, audiobooks, and more. Ask staff to help you find a copy!
2022–2023 Schedule for the Parkgate Wednesday Evening Book Club:
Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
October 5 at 7:00pm
With sharp turns and charming characters, this debut thriller by Annishinabe author Boulley centers 18-year-old Daunis Fontaine, who loves and fits into her community but yearns for official citizenship in the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. A lover of both science and hockey, Daunis had planned on going away for college, but after her uncle overdoses on meth and her grandmother has a stroke, she stays closer to her Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan home, negotiating a complex familial situation having to do with her deceased Annishinabe father and the infiltration of meth into her community. Winner of the American Library Association’s 2022 Printz and Morris Awards. Learn more.
Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant? By Roz Chast
November 2 at 7:00pm
In her first memoir, renowned New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies--an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades--the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. Learn more.
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
December 7 at 7:00pm
The remarkable story of J. P. Morgan's personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white to leave a lasting legacy that enriched the nation. Historical fiction based on true events. Learn more.
What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J.A. Chancy
February 1 at 7:00pm
At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster. Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and—at the same time—an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit. Learn more.
My Conversations with Canadians by Lee Maracle
March 1 at 7:00pm
On her first book tour at the age of 26, Sto:lo author Lee Maracle was asked a question from the audience, one she couldn't possibly answer at that moment. But she had been thinking about it ever since. As time passed, she has been asked countless similar questions, all of them too big to answer, but not too large to contemplate. These questions, which touch upon subjects such as citizenship, segregation, labour, law, predjudice and reconcilliation (to name a few), are the heart of My Conversations with Canadians. In prose essays that are both conversational and direct, Maracle seeks not to provide any answers to these questions she has lived with for so long. Rather, she thinks through each one using a multitude of experiences she's had as a Canadian, a First Nations leader, a woman and mother and grandmother over the course of her life. Learn more.
Care Of by Ivan Coyote
April 5 at 7:00pm
In the early days of the coronavirus lockdown, like every artist and creator, writer and storyteller Ivan Coyote was faced with a calendar full of cancelled shows and a heart full of questions around what now? To keep busy while figuring out what to write about next, Ivan began to answer the backlog of mail and correspondences that had come in while they were on the pre-pandemic road: emails, letters, direct messages on social media, soggy handwritten notes found tucked under the windshield wiper of their car after a gig, all of it. In Care Of, Coyote combines the most moving and powerful of these letters with the responses they've sent in the months since the lockdown. Learn more.
Rabbit Foot Bill by Helen Humphreys
May 3 at 7:00pm
Canwood, Saskatchewan, 1947. Leonard Flint, a lonely boy in a small farming town befriends the local tramp, a man known as Rabbit Foot Bill. Bill doesn't talk much, but he allows Leonard to accompany him as he sets rabbit snares and to visit his small, secluded dwelling. Being with Bill is everything to young Leonard--an escape from school, bullies and a hard father. So his shock is absolute when he witnesses Bill commit a sudden violent act and loses him to prison. Fifteen years on, as a newly graduated doctor of psychiatry, Leonard arrives at the Weyburn Mental Hospital, both excited and intimidated by the massive institution known for its experimental LSD trials. To Leonard's great surprise, at the Weyburn he is reunited with Bill and soon becomes fixated on discovering what happened on that fateful day in 1947. Based on a true story. Learn more.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
June 7 at 7:00pm
Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known. Winner of the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Learn more.
Location:
Wednesday, April 5, 2023 - 7:00pm
Looking for a book club with a digital twist? Join us at Libby Book Club! We pick top reads from the Libby app by OverDrive and discuss them every month on Zoom.
Register online to receive meeting instructions and information in advance of the discussion. Join us every month, or just for the meetings you prefer. Copies of these titles are available as both eBooks and audiobooks in Libby. Contact info@nvdpl.ca if you need help getting a copy.
2022–2023 Schedule for Libby Book Club:
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel (September 8 at 10:30am)
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (October 6 at 10:30am)
Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung (November 3 at 10:30am)
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green (December 1 at 10:30am)
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (January 5 at 10:30am)
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (February 2 at 10:30am)
All the Quiet Places by Brian Thomas Isaac (March 2 at 10:30am)
Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li (April 6 at 10:30am)
The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner (May 4 at 10:30am)
The Mermaid from Jeju by Sumi Hahn (June 1 at 10:30am)
We're hosting this virtual program on Zoom. Register online to receive a link to join the meeting. What you'll need to attend: A computer with microphone (or headphones) and webcam, or your smartphone/tablet.
Location:
Thursday, April 6, 2023 - 10:30am to 11:30am
Not your average book club!
In this friendly book club, we read Advance Reading Copies of soon-to-be-published books and share our reviews! We meet monthly to discuss our books with fellow bibliophiles.
Read & Review Teen Book Club is for grades 7-12.
Registration required. Register online or email Jessie at hawkesj@nvdpl.ca for info.
Location:
Thursday, April 6, 2023 - 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Do you love to talk about what you’re reading? Join a book club to share your thoughts and hear what others have to say about books that spark discussion, curiosity, and debate! Discover new “Books to Talk About” and join a community of booklovers at NVDPL. Simply read the book and join us at the meeting!
Register online for the time and location that’s most convenient for you to receive meeting instructions and information in advance of the discussion! Join us every month or just for the meetings you prefer. If you miss a meeting but still want to discuss the book, you can also join us at a different time or location. Click here to see all six Books to Talk About book clubs.
Copies of the next book will be available to pick-up from Lynn Valley Library. All books are offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Copies are also available in other formats, such as print, ebook, audiobooks, and more. Ask staff to help you find a copy!
2022–2023 Schedule for the Lynn Valley Wednesday Afternoon Book Club:
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
October 12 at 2:30pm
The remarkable story of J. P. Morgan's personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white to leave a lasting legacy that enriched the nation. Historical fiction based on true events. Learn more.
What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J.A. Chancy
November 9 at 2:30pm
At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster. Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and—at the same time—an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit. Learn more.
My Conversations with Canadians by Lee Maracle
January 11 at 2:30pm
On her first book tour at the age of 26, Sto:lo author Lee Maracle was asked a question from the audience, one she couldn't possibly answer at that moment. But she had been thinking about it ever since. As time passed, she has been asked countless similar questions, all of them too big to answer, but not too large to contemplate. These questions, which touch upon subjects such as citizenship, segregation, labour, law, predjudice and reconcilliation (to name a few), are the heart of My Conversations with Canadians. In prose essays that are both conversational and direct, Maracle seeks not to provide any answers to these questions she has lived with for so long. Rather, she thinks through each one using a multitude of experiences she's had as a Canadian, a First Nations leader, a woman and mother and grandmother over the course of her life. Learn more.
Care Of by Ivan Coyote
February 8 at 2:30pm
In the early days of the coronavirus lockdown, like every artist and creator, writer and storyteller Ivan Coyote was faced with a calendar full of cancelled shows and a heart full of questions around what now? To keep busy while figuring out what to write about next, Ivan began to answer the backlog of mail and correspondences that had come in while they were on the pre-pandemic road: emails, letters, direct messages on social media, soggy handwritten notes found tucked under the windshield wiper of their car after a gig, all of it. In Care Of, Coyote combines the most moving and powerful of these letters with the responses they've sent in the months since the lockdown. Learn more.
Rabbit Foot Bill by Helen Humphreys
March 8 at 2:30pm
Canwood, Saskatchewan, 1947. Leonard Flint, a lonely boy in a small farming town befriends the local tramp, a man known as Rabbit Foot Bill. Bill doesn't talk much, but he allows Leonard to accompany him as he sets rabbit snares and to visit his small, secluded dwelling. Being with Bill is everything to young Leonard--an escape from school, bullies and a hard father. So his shock is absolute when he witnesses Bill commit a sudden violent act and loses him to prison. Fifteen years on, as a newly graduated doctor of psychiatry, Leonard arrives at the Weyburn Mental Hospital, both excited and intimidated by the massive institution known for its experimental LSD trials. To Leonard's great surprise, at the Weyburn he is reunited with Bill and soon becomes fixated on discovering what happened on that fateful day in 1947. Based on a true story. Learn more.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
April 12 at 2:30pm
Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known. Winner of the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Learn more.
Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
May 10 at 2:30pm
With sharp turns and charming characters, this debut thriller by Annishinabe author Boulley centers 18-year-old Daunis Fontaine, who loves and fits into her community but yearns for official citizenship in the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. A lover of both science and hockey, Daunis had planned on going away for college, but after her uncle overdoses on meth and her grandmother has a stroke, she stays closer to her Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan home, negotiating a complex familial situation having to do with her deceased Annishinabe father and the infiltration of meth into her community. Winner of the American Library Association’s 2022 Printz and Morris Awards. Learn more.
Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant? By Roz Chast
June 14 at 2:30pm
In her first memoir, renowned New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies--an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades--the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. Learn more.
Location:
Wednesday, April 12, 2023 - 2:30pm
Hey, kids in grades 4-7! This Book Club’s for YOU!
We’re meeting every second Wednesday on Zoom to discuss nominated titles for the 2023 Red Cedar Book Awards! Kids in grades 4-7 are invited to join the Red Cedar Book Club and choose who wins British Columbia’s Red Cedar Book Award. The Club will discuss the nominated titles, do fun activities, write reviews and more. Choose what books you want to read from the fiction and non-fiction nominees lists, and vote for your favourite in the spring. Winners are announced in June.
Find more info and this year’s nominated titles at www.redcedaraward.ca. NVDPL will feature virtual author presentations by Red Cedar nominated authors in 2022 – stay tuned!
Registration required. Register online or call 604-984-0286, ext. 8141.
Location:
Wednesday, April 12, 2023 - 3:45pm to 4:30pm
Settle in with a cuppa home brew and chat with other book folk. We’ll supply the titles; you just have to read the book and join us for an afternoon of discussion.
All are welcome to the Afternoon Tea Book Club. Whether you are well-seasoned in book clubs or have never been in one, we invite you to participate. If you need help locating a copy of the book, call your local branch!
March 9: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial while her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath Effia in the Castle's women's dungeon.
April 13: Fayne by Ann-Marie MacDonald
In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Bell is growing up at Fayne, a vast and lonely estate straddling the border between England and Scotland, where she has been kept from the world by her adoring father. However, Charlotte's passion for knowledge and adventure will take her to the bottom of family secrets and to the heart of her own identity.
May 11: Horse by Geraldine Brooks
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history; from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history.
This event will take place in person in the Enid Dearing Room at Parkgate Library, with a hybrid Zoom option available upon request.
Registration required. Register online or call 604-929-3727, ext. 8166 for more information.
Location:
Thursday, April 13, 2023 - 1:30pm to 3:00pm
Do you love to talk about what you’re reading? Join a book club to share your thoughts and hear what others have to say about books that spark discussion, curiosity, and debate! Discover new “Books to Talk About” and join a community of booklovers at NVDPL. Simply read the book and join us at the meeting!
Register online for the time and location that’s most convenient for you to receive meeting instructions and information in advance of the discussion! Join us every month or just for the meetings you prefer. If you miss a meeting but still want to discuss the book, you can also join us at a different time or location. Click here to see all six Books to Talk About book clubs.
Copies of the next book will be available to pick-up from Lynn Valley Library. All books are offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Copies are also available in other formats, such as print, ebook, audiobooks, and more. Ask staff to help you find a copy!
2022–2023 Schedule for the Lynn Valley Thursday Evening Book Club:
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
October 13 at 7:30pm
Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known. Winner of the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Learn more.
Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
November 10 at 7:30pm
With sharp turns and charming characters, this debut thriller by Annishinabe author Boulley centers 18-year-old Daunis Fontaine, who loves and fits into her community but yearns for official citizenship in the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. A lover of both science and hockey, Daunis had planned on going away for college, but after her uncle overdoses on meth and her grandmother has a stroke, she stays closer to her Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan home, negotiating a complex familial situation having to do with her deceased Annishinabe father and the infiltration of meth into her community. Winner of the American Library Association’s 2022 Printz and Morris Awards. Learn more.
Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant? By Roz Chast
January 12 at 7:30pm
In her first memoir, renowned New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies--an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades--the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. Learn more.
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
February 9 at 7:30pm
The remarkable story of J. P. Morgan's personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white to leave a lasting legacy that enriched the nation. Historical fiction based on true events. Learn more.
What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J.A. Chancy
March 9 at 7:30pm
At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster. Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and—at the same time—an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit. Learn more.
My Conversations with Canadians by Lee Maracle
April 13 at 7:30pm
On her first book tour at the age of 26, Sto:lo author Lee Maracle was asked a question from the audience, one she couldn't possibly answer at that moment. But she had been thinking about it ever since. As time passed, she has been asked countless similar questions, all of them too big to answer, but not too large to contemplate. These questions, which touch upon subjects such as citizenship, segregation, labour, law, predjudice and reconcilliation (to name a few), are the heart of My Conversations with Canadians. In prose essays that are both conversational and direct, Maracle seeks not to provide any answers to these questions she has lived with for so long. Rather, she thinks through each one using a multitude of experiences she's had as a Canadian, a First Nations leader, a woman and mother and grandmother over the course of her life. Learn more.
Care Of by Ivan Coyote
May 11 at 7:30pm
In the early days of the coronavirus lockdown, like every artist and creator, writer and storyteller Ivan Coyote was faced with a calendar full of cancelled shows and a heart full of questions around what now? To keep busy while figuring out what to write about next, Ivan began to answer the backlog of mail and correspondences that had come in while they were on the pre-pandemic road: emails, letters, direct messages on social media, soggy handwritten notes found tucked under the windshield wiper of their car after a gig, all of it. In Care Of, Coyote combines the most moving and powerful of these letters with the responses they've sent in the months since the lockdown. Learn more.
Rabbit Foot Bill by Helen Humphreys
June 8 at 7:30pm
Canwood, Saskatchewan, 1947. Leonard Flint, a lonely boy in a small farming town befriends the local tramp, a man known as Rabbit Foot Bill. Bill doesn't talk much, but he allows Leonard to accompany him as he sets rabbit snares and to visit his small, secluded dwelling. Being with Bill is everything to young Leonard--an escape from school, bullies and a hard father. So his shock is absolute when he witnesses Bill commit a sudden violent act and loses him to prison. Fifteen years on, as a newly graduated doctor of psychiatry, Leonard arrives at the Weyburn Mental Hospital, both excited and intimidated by the massive institution known for its experimental LSD trials. To Leonard's great surprise, at the Weyburn he is reunited with Bill and soon becomes fixated on discovering what happened on that fateful day in 1947. Based on a true story. Learn more.
Location:
Thursday, April 13, 2023 - 7:30pm
Interested in reading more books by LGBTQ+ authors?
Join Queerly Quilled, the library’s first teen-led book club! Each month we meet at the Lynn Valley library to select and discuss queer books, craft, and snack.
Queerly Quilled is for teens grades 8-12.
No registration required. Questions? Email Jessie at hawkesj@nvdpl.ca
Location:
Friday, April 14, 2023 - 4:00pm to 5:15pm
Who says Monday mornings can’t be fun? Are you looking to join a book club but don’t know where to start?
Join us for Monday Morning Book Club! Just have the book read before the meeting and drop in!
Whether you are well-seasoned in Book Clubs or have never been in one, we invite you to participate in our Monday Morning Book Club at the Learning Lab on the 2nd floor of Lynn Valley Library. This will be a group-led Book Club.
Here's what we're reading and discussing:
January 16: What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
February 20: The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
March 20: French Braid by Anne Tyler
April 17: Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
May 15: Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou
June 19: The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
No registration required. For more information about Monday Morning Book Club, call 604-984-0286, ext. 8144 or email campbella@nvdpl.ca.
Location:
Monday, April 17, 2023 - 10:00am to 11:00am
Book buddies is a one-on-one reading program to help young readers get more comfortable.
We match up developing readers with teen volunteers to read together and play literacy games for 30 minutes each week.
Book buddies is available for kids ages 6-11; participants must be able to attend all four sessions.
Registration required. Register in person at the Capilano Library children’s information desk or by calling 604-987-4471, ext. 8175.
Location:
Tuesday, April 18, 2023 - 3:30pm to 5:00pm
Paws 4 Stories is a St. John Ambulance Therapy Dog Community Service.
In this program, children have the opportunity to read to a friendly, certified therapy dog. Reading to a therapy dog can be motivating and especially beneficial for children who are hesitant or anxious about reading.
Ages 6-12. Sessions are 15 minutes in length. Children can sign up for a maximum of 2 sessions each.
Registration required. Stop by the Children's Desk or call Lynn Valley Library to register: 604-984-0286, ext. 8141.
Registration is first-come, first-served, though priority will be given to those who have not participated before.
Location:
Wednesday, April 19, 2023 - 4:30pm to 5:30pm
Do you love to talk about what you’re reading? Join a book club to share your thoughts and hear what others have to say about books that spark discussion, curiosity, and debate! Discover new “Books to Talk About” and join a community of booklovers at NVDPL. Simply read the book and join us at the meeting!
Register online for the time and location that’s most convenient for you to receive meeting instructions and information in advance of the discussion! Join us every month or just for the meetings you prefer. If you miss a meeting but still want to discuss the book, you can also join us at a different time or location. Click here to see all six Books to Talk About book clubs.
Copies of the next book will be available to pick-up from Capilano Library. All books are offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Copies are also available in other formats, such as print, ebook, audiobooks, and more. Ask staff to help you find a copy!
2022–2023 Schedule for the Capilano Thursday Afternoon Book Club:
Care Of by Ivan Coyote
September 15 at 2:00pm
In the early days of the coronavirus lockdown, like every artist and creator, writer and storyteller Ivan Coyote was faced with a calendar full of cancelled shows and a heart full of questions around what now? To keep busy while figuring out what to write about next, Ivan began to answer the backlog of mail and correspondences that had come in while they were on the pre-pandemic road: emails, letters, direct messages on social media, soggy handwritten notes found tucked under the windshield wiper of their car after a gig, all of it. In Care Of, Coyote combines the most moving and powerful of these letters with the responses they've sent in the months since the lockdown. Learn more.
Rabbit Foot Bill by Helen Humphreys
October 20 at 2:00pm
Canwood, Saskatchewan, 1947. Leonard Flint, a lonely boy in a small farming town befriends the local tramp, a man known as Rabbit Foot Bill. Bill doesn't talk much, but he allows Leonard to accompany him as he sets rabbit snares and to visit his small, secluded dwelling. Being with Bill is everything to young Leonard--an escape from school, bullies and a hard father. So his shock is absolute when he witnesses Bill commit a sudden violent act and loses him to prison. Fifteen years on, as a newly graduated doctor of psychiatry, Leonard arrives at the Weyburn Mental Hospital, both excited and intimidated by the massive institution known for its experimental LSD trials. To Leonard's great surprise, at the Weyburn he is reunited with Bill and soon becomes fixated on discovering what happened on that fateful day in 1947. Based on a true story. Learn more.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
November 17 at 2:00pm
Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known. Winner of the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Learn more.
Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
January 19 at 2:00pm
With sharp turns and charming characters, this debut thriller by Annishinabe author Boulley centers 18-year-old Daunis Fontaine, who loves and fits into her community but yearns for official citizenship in the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. A lover of both science and hockey, Daunis had planned on going away for college, but after her uncle overdoses on meth and her grandmother has a stroke, she stays closer to her Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan home, negotiating a complex familial situation having to do with her deceased Annishinabe father and the infiltration of meth into her community. Winner of the American Library Association’s 2022 Printz and Morris Awards. Learn more.
Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant? By Roz Chast
February 16 at 2:00pm
In her first memoir, renowned New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies--an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades--the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. Learn more.
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
March 16 at 2:00pm
The remarkable story of J. P. Morgan's personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white to leave a lasting legacy that enriched the nation. Historical fiction based on true events. Learn more.
What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J.A. Chancy
April 20 at 2:00pm
At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster. Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and—at the same time—an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit. Learn more.
My Conversations with Canadians by Lee Maracle
May 18 at 2:00pm
On her first book tour at the age of 26, Sto:lo author Lee Maracle was asked a question from the audience, one she couldn't possibly answer at that moment. But she had been thinking about it ever since. As time passed, she has been asked countless similar questions, all of them too big to answer, but not too large to contemplate. These questions, which touch upon subjects such as citizenship, segregation, labour, law, predjudice and reconcilliation (to name a few), are the heart of My Conversations with Canadians. In prose essays that are both conversational and direct, Maracle seeks not to provide any answers to these questions she has lived with for so long. Rather, she thinks through each one using a multitude of experiences she's had as a Canadian, a First Nations leader, a woman and mother and grandmother over the course of her life. Learn more.
Location:
Thursday, April 20, 2023 - 2:00pm
Celebrate Poetry Month with two local poets!
Award-winning poets Susan Alexander and Rhona McAdam weave themes of spirituality, environment, food and family into powerful readings that will move, delight and inspire you.
Rhona McAdam’s most recent poetry collection is Larder (Caitlin Press, 2022) which draws heavily on her food studies at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy, and her long involvement in food security and organic farming.
Susan Alexander is the author of two collections of poems and her work has received multiple awards, most recently the Vancouver Poet Laureate’s City Poems Contest.
Books will be available for purchase and range from $10-20. Cash, cheques, and e-transfers accepted.
Registration required. Register online or call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175.
Location:
Saturday, April 22, 2023 - 2:00pm to 3:00pm
Book buddies is a one-on-one reading program to help young readers get more comfortable.
We match up developing readers with teen volunteers to read together and play literacy games for 30 minutes each week.
Book buddies is available for kids ages 6-11; participants must be able to attend all four sessions.
Registration required. Register in person at the Capilano Library children’s information desk or by calling 604-987-4471, ext. 8175.
Location:
Tuesday, April 25, 2023 - 3:30pm to 5:00pm
Do you love to talk about what you’re reading? Join a book club to share your thoughts and hear what others have to say about books that spark discussion, curiosity, and debate! Discover new “Books to Talk About” and join a community of booklovers at NVDPL. Simply read the book and join us at the meeting!
Register online for the time and location that’s most convenient for you to receive meeting instructions and information in advance of the discussion! Join us every month or just for the meetings you prefer. If you miss a meeting but still want to discuss the book, you can also join us at a different time or location. Click here to see all six Books to Talk About book clubs.
Copies of the next book will be available to pick-up from Capilano Library. All books are offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Copies are also available in other formats, such as print, ebook, audiobooks, and more. Ask staff to help you find a copy!
2022–2023 Schedule for the Capilano Tuesday Evening Book Club:
My Conversations with Canadians by Lee Maracle
September 27 at 7:30pm
On her first book tour at the age of 26, Sto:lo author Lee Maracle was asked a question from the audience, one she couldn't possibly answer at that moment. But she had been thinking about it ever since. As time passed, she has been asked countless similar questions, all of them too big to answer, but not too large to contemplate. These questions, which touch upon subjects such as citizenship, segregation, labour, law, predjudice and reconcilliation (to name a few), are the heart of My Conversations with Canadians. In prose essays that are both conversational and direct, Maracle seeks not to provide any answers to these questions she has lived with for so long. Rather, she thinks through each one using a multitude of experiences she's had as a Canadian, a First Nations leader, a woman and mother and grandmother over the course of her life. Learn more.
Care Of by Ivan Coyote
October 25 at 7:30pm
In the early days of the coronavirus lockdown, like every artist and creator, writer and storyteller Ivan Coyote was faced with a calendar full of cancelled shows and a heart full of questions around what now? To keep busy while figuring out what to write about next, Ivan began to answer the backlog of mail and correspondences that had come in while they were on the pre-pandemic road: emails, letters, direct messages on social media, soggy handwritten notes found tucked under the windshield wiper of their car after a gig, all of it. In Care Of, Coyote combines the most moving and powerful of these letters with the responses they've sent in the months since the lockdown. Learn more.
Rabbit Foot Bill by Helen Humphreys
November 22 at 7:30pm
Canwood, Saskatchewan, 1947. Leonard Flint, a lonely boy in a small farming town befriends the local tramp, a man known as Rabbit Foot Bill. Bill doesn't talk much, but he allows Leonard to accompany him as he sets rabbit snares and to visit his small, secluded dwelling. Being with Bill is everything to young Leonard--an escape from school, bullies and a hard father. So his shock is absolute when he witnesses Bill commit a sudden violent act and loses him to prison. Fifteen years on, as a newly graduated doctor of psychiatry, Leonard arrives at the Weyburn Mental Hospital, both excited and intimidated by the massive institution known for its experimental LSD trials. To Leonard's great surprise, at the Weyburn he is reunited with Bill and soon becomes fixated on discovering what happened on that fateful day in 1947. Based on a true story. Learn more.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
January 24 at 7:30pm
Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known. Winner of the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Learn more.
Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
February 28 at 7:30pm
With sharp turns and charming characters, this debut thriller by Annishinabe author Boulley centers 18-year-old Daunis Fontaine, who loves and fits into her community but yearns for official citizenship in the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. A lover of both science and hockey, Daunis had planned on going away for college, but after her uncle overdoses on meth and her grandmother has a stroke, she stays closer to her Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan home, negotiating a complex familial situation having to do with her deceased Annishinabe father and the infiltration of meth into her community. Winner of the American Library Association’s 2022 Printz and Morris Awards. Learn more.
Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant? By Roz Chast
March 28 at 7:30pm
In her first memoir, renowned New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies--an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades--the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. Learn more.
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
April 25 at 7:30pm
The remarkable story of J. P. Morgan's personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white to leave a lasting legacy that enriched the nation. Historical fiction based on true events. Learn more.
What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J.A. Chancy
May 23 at 7:30pm
At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster. Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and—at the same time—an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit. Learn more.
Location:
Tuesday, April 25, 2023 - 7:30pm
Hey, kids in grades 4-7! This Book Club’s for YOU!
We’re meeting every second Wednesday on Zoom to discuss nominated titles for the 2023 Red Cedar Book Awards! Kids in grades 4-7 are invited to join the Red Cedar Book Club and choose who wins British Columbia’s Red Cedar Book Award. The Club will discuss the nominated titles, do fun activities, write reviews and more. Choose what books you want to read from the fiction and non-fiction nominees lists, and vote for your favourite in the spring. Winners are announced in June.
Find more info and this year’s nominated titles at www.redcedaraward.ca. NVDPL will feature virtual author presentations by Red Cedar nominated authors in 2022 – stay tuned!
Registration required. Register online or call 604-984-0286, ext. 8141.
Location:
Wednesday, April 26, 2023 - 3:45pm to 4:30pm
Paws 4 Stories is a St. John Ambulance Therapy Dog Community Service.
In this program, children have the opportunity to read to a friendly, certified therapy dog. Reading to a therapy dog can be motivating and especially beneficial for children who are hesitant or anxious about reading.
Ages 6-12. Sessions are 15 minutes in length. Children can sign up for a maximum of 2 sessions each.
Registration required. Stop by the Children's Desk or call Lynn Valley Library to register: 604-984-0286, ext. 8141.
Registration is first-come, first-served, though priority will be given to those who have not participated before.
Location:
Wednesday, April 26, 2023 - 4:30pm to 5:30pm
