Bloor West Classic Book Club

The Bloor West Classic Book Club meets once a month to discuss classic literature.

Accepting New Members!

New members are welcome to join our group. Please send me an email with some information about yourself if you're interested in joining including the following:

Name:
Age:
Occupation:
Favourite Novel (and why):
Willing to host meetings (Y/N)*:
Closest Intersection:
Why you wish to join:

*Please note that you must be willing to host meetings and live in the Bloor West Village / High Park general vicinity to participate.

Meeting Location

Meetings are held once a month on a weekday from 7pm to 9-10pm. All meetings are held at member's residences in the Bloor West Village / High Park area.

Membership Diversity

Members should be within the ages of 27-35. Meetings usually consist of four to ten participants at a time and members come from a diverse cultural and educational background - we have everything from literature majors and PHD students to teachers and accountants.

Choosing Books

We currently have a patented system, whereby books are chosen that all members want to read (what a 'novel' idea)! (I'm working on reducing my quantity of bad puns.)

We generally all have the opinion that books are meant to stimulate the mind, so our selections generally reflect that. It's acknowledged that the definition of "classic" is subject to interpretation, of which, we do our best.

Book List

1. Watership Down by Richard Adams
2. The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
4. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
5. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
6. Tess of D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
7. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
8. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
9. The Red and the Black by Stendhal
10. True at First Light by Ernest Hemingway
11. The Return by Joseph Conrad
12. Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
13. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
14. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
15. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
16. The Trial by Franz Kafka
17. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
18. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
19. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
20. Utopia by Sir Thomas More
21. A Disobedient Girl by Ru Freeman [non-classic pre-screen]
22. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
23. Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
24. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliot
25. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
26. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
27. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
28. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
29. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
30. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
31. The Human Factor by Graham Greene
32. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
33. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
34. Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
35. Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway
36. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
37. Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
38. Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
39. Washington Square by Henry James
40. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
41. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
42. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
43. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
44. The Iliad by Homer
45. The Odyssey by Homer
46. The Oresteia by Aeschylus
47. The Analects by Confucius
48. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
49. Republic by Plato
50. The Aeneid by Virgil

Complete Book List

In Summary

What makes us unique includes the way we choose books that all our members want to read and the fact that we read "classic" novels only. Carol Shields, Danielle Steele and Steven King have politely been asked to leave, while the spirits of Hemingway, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Salinger go about enriching our lives.

We hope to see you at one of our meetings, in the near future.

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