February 12, 2024, 2-4pm - Fellows and External Fellows Alistair MacLeod, No Great Mischief (1999) Discussion Leader: Meg Fox The first (and only) novel by a great Canadian short story writer, No Great Mischief (1999) was published when Alistair MacLeod was in his mid-sixties. Chronicling the lives of several generations of Scottish immigrants on Cape […]
March 4, 2024, 2-4pm – Fellows and External Fellows Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (2022) Discussion Leader: Sara Shettleworth This book is filled with strange creatures and strange experiments; Yong is interested in what animals perceive, what they might communicate to us if they could. Humans […]
April 1, 2024, 2-4pm – Fellows and External Fellows William Carlsen, Jungle of Stone: The Extraordinary Journey of John L. Stephens and Frederick Catherwood and The Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya (2017) Discussion Leader: Jim Gurd This book by journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist William Carlsen, who follows in the footsteps of […]
May 6, 2024, 2-4pm – Fellows and External Fellows Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and The New Human (2022) Discussion Leader: William Logan Mukherjee is an accomplished and engaging writer and an oncologist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his earlier book on cancer. Here he presents the history […]
June 3, 2024, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows Helen Macdonald, H Is for Hawk (2014) Discussion leader: Peter Alberti Are you ready for a strange but compelling read? Already a classic of nature writing, this award-winning work is also the unflinchingly honest memoir of a young British poet and historian who retreats from the […]
July 8, 2024, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007) Discussion Leaders: Linda Hutcheon, Michael Hutcheon Have you ever felt uneasy about (or even alienated by) the directions classical music took in the twentieth century? Well, then, this is the book for you. Writing […]
September 9, 2024, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood (2016) Discussion Leader: Linda Hutcheon A modern retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest the novel was commissioned by Random House as part of its Hogarth Shakespeare series. This very funny, satiric tale “centres on theatre director Felix who loses his job with Makeshiweg Theatre and […]
October 7, 2024, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet by George Monbiot (2022) Discussion Leader: Sara Shettleworth This book by an award-winning writer on environmental issues documents the ways in which the world’s system of agriculture and food distribution is exacerbating the effects of climate change. His […]
November 4, 2024, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer (2017) Discussion Leader: John David Stewart Rated by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of the year in 2017, this story by investigative […]
December 2, 2024, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows Culture: The Story of Us from Cave-Art to K Pop by Martin Puchner (2023) Discussion Leader: Meg Fox Harvard literary historian Martin Puchner demonstrates that culture is never, as we too often assume, a possession, differentiated and marked by geographic boundaries, rooted in clearly delineated histories of inheritance […]
January 6, 2024, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis (2015) Discussion Leader: Meg Fox André Alexis offers “an utterly compelling and affecting look at the beauty and perils of human consciousness “in this amusing but serious novel that was shortlisted for Canada Reads 2017 and won the 2015 Giller Prize. […]
February 3 2025, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows Mapping the Darkness: The Visionary Scientists who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep by Kenneth Miller (2023) Discussion Leader: Daphne Maurer The history and findings of research on sleep, told through the work of four central characters. Hard to put down, and of course relevant to everyone. […]
March 3 2025, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows Homelands: A Personal History of Europe by Timothy Garton Ash (2023) Discussion Leader: David Milne Winner of the 2024 Gelner Prize, Homelands was chosen as the best book in international affairs by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Taking his subject from the […]
April 7, 2025, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (1974) Discussion Leader: Molly Wills Successful both as literature and as a thought experiment, this classic of speculative fiction illuminates different sides of human nature in two opposing political and economic worlds. On the planet of Urras an ancient […]