Hi Everyone:

I'm looking forward to the meeting for Resilience coming up this Thursday starting at 6:30 pm at the library. As the room is on the first floor, you may bring food and non-alcoholic drink. The club policy for participating without reading the book is repeated below for any members who may have joined recently.

For August,to discuss The Underground Economist, we will be meeting at a pub as our regular room at the Toronto Reference Library is unavailable. I STRONGLY recommend to members who want to attend to RSVP, as notices for venue or date changes will only go to those who have RSVP'd yes on the meetup website. Our reservation is provisional, meaning that if another group wants to pay for the room, we will need to go elsewhere. As this is at a pub, remember only food and drink purchased at the venue are allowed, and we will be starting at 7pm, which is later than our usual time. Our discussion meeting ends at 9pm and Karaoke starts at 9:30.

Also below is a short list of what some new(ish) members have been reading.

Cheers
Rose


Upcoming books

August - The Undercover Economist

September - The Psychopath Test
See the website for details and to RSVP.


http://www.meetup.com/Non-fictionBookclubToronto/messages/boards/thread/28765172
Policy on attending meetings without reading the selected book.

Going to a book club meeting without having read the book is like going to a hockey game without a stick.

This is a book club, not a general discussion club. We meet to discuss non-fiction books we have selected and read together. Discussions with informed participants are much more interesting and productive. Therefore we encourage meeting participants to have read the book.

If you haven't read the book you are still welcome to attend. In this case we ask that -
1. To the extent you wish to speak in the discussion, prepare by reading book reviews (try goodreads, Amazon, etc), watching videos of interviews with the author discussing the book if they are available, and finding other related material which you are welcome to share with other members by posting a comment on the event page.
2. If you want to ask others for a recapitulation of the book, come early and do so before the meeting starts. Taking meeting time to simply repeat the content of the book is unfair to members who have read the book.
3. Comments should mostly focus on the book itself. In small groups, digressions that are unwelcome by the group are easier to control from the floor. In a group of our typical size (around 20), it's difficult to know whether particular digressions are welcome by other than a few participants, so the larger the group the more we avoid lengthy digressions. We often meet at a nearby pub after the meeting, and there free digression is not only permitted but welcome, as well as mixed with drinks, food and socializing.



Here's what some people who joined after May 11 have been reading...
Year Zero: a history of 1945, by Ian Buruma
Journal of a Crazy Lady, from the Bookvetter website.
The Devil in the White City - Erik Larson
Debt: a history
28 Seconds: A true Story of Addiction
The Elephant Whisperer
A Short History of Byzantium, by John Julius Norwich (we read a book by the same title)
The Alchemist - Paul Coelho
Toxin Toxout: Getting Harmful Chemicals Out of Our Bodies and Our World
The big leap
Six Days of War by Michael Oren.
The United States of Paranoia by Jesse Walker.