Category Archives: Readings

Tuesday, September 22, 2015
7:00pm-9:00pm
Alumni Room
UBC Medical Student & Alumni Centre (MSAC)
2750 Heather Street, Vancouver, BC  Canada  V5Z 4M2
(Corner of 12th and Heather)

SHORTLISTED 2014 – Scotiabank Giller Prize

Miriam Toews is beloved for her irresistible voice, for mingling laughter and heartwrenching poignancy like no other writer. In her most passionate novel yet, she brings us the riveting story of two sisters, and a love that illuminates life.

You won’t forget Elf and Yoli, two smart and loving sisters. Elfrieda, a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, happily married: she wants to die. Yolandi, divorced, broke, sleeping with the wrong men as she tries to find true love: she desperately wants to keep her older sister alive. Yoli is a beguiling mess, wickedly funny even as she stumbles through life struggling to keep her teenage kids and mother happy, her exes from hating her, her sister from killing herself and her own heart from breaking.

But Elf’s latest suicide attempt is a shock: she is three weeks away from the opening of her highly anticipated international tour. Can she be nursed back to “health” in time? As the situation becomes ever more complicated, Yoli faces the most terrifying decision of her life.

All My Puny Sorrows, at once tender and unquiet, offers a profound reflection on the limits of love, and the sometimes unimaginable challenges we experience when childhood becomes a new country of adult commitments and responsibilities. In her beautifully rendered new novel, Miriam Toews gives us a startling demonstration of how to carry on with hope and love and the business of living even when grief loads the heart.

(from http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/228422/all-my-puny-sorrows#9780345808028 )

Discussion facilitated by George Fetherling, a prolific poet, novelist, cultural commentator and memoirist. He has published 50 books of poetry, fiction, criticism, history and biography, including the novel Walt Whitman’s Secret and the poetry collection The Sylvia Hotel Poems

Supported by the Public Education Program, UBC Department of Psychiatry and the Institute of Mental Health.

REVIEWS

Globe & Mail Review of All My Puny Sorrows by Jared Bland

Hold that date! – Our next reading will be on November 24, 2015

Wednesday, November 12, 2014
7:15pm – 9:00pm Gibson Room, Green College, UBC

Canadian novelist and biologist Ann Eriksson will be reading from her new novel, High Clear Bell of Morning, a gripping tale of a father’s love and the extent to which he will go to protect his daughter with schizophrenia.  Ann combines a background in ecology with her life experiences to create works of fiction grounded in nature and populated with compelling characters.

High Clear Bell of Morning illustrates the strain on families facing mental illnesses, and draws attention to the inadequate system that is meant to help. At the same time, it celebrates the natural world and sends a cautionary warning of what we all have to lose.

More about the book :
http://www.douglas-mcintyre.com/book/high-clear-bell-of-morning

About Ann Ericksson:
http://www.anneriksson.ca/

June 11, 2014, 7:15-9:00pm
Gibson Room, Green College

For the June meeting of the Lucid Book Club and Reading Series, we will be featuring a diverse group of writers and mental health practitioners from the local communities, presenting their writing projects. The event will showcase a variety of work, ranging from memoir to poetry, fiction and self-help.

     Continue reading →

May 14th 2014
7:15-9:00pm
Coach House, Green College 

For this Lucid Book Club and Reading Series Meeting, local author Timothy Taylor will be joining us to discuss his latest novel, The Blue Light Project.  Psychiatric commentary will also be provided by Dr. Randall White, director of the BC Psychosis program at UBC Hospital.

Our meeting will be focusing specifically on the mental health aspect of mass delusions within the book, and how time periods affect the delusions people suffer from.  Participants may find it helpful to read the following article in conjunction with the book: http://aeon.co/magazine/altered-states/how-reality-caught-up-with-paranoid-delusions/

April 9, 2014,  7:15pm – 9:00pm at the Coach House, Green College UBC

Local author Daniel Kalla will be joining us to read from his most recent novel Rising Sun, Falling Shadow, and discuss his dual career as an emergency room physician and writer.

Daniel Kalla produces engrossing novels with an intensity that matches the challenge of his other role as Department Head of Emergency Medicine at an urban teaching hospital in Vancouver. His first five novels, medical thrillers, focus on themes that lie at the heart of his professional life, delving into topics as diverse as superbugs, pandemics, addiction, DNA evidence and patient abuse. His seventh novel, The Far Side Of The Sky, is a historical novel set against a startling, yet little known, chapter of the Second World War, when 20,000 Jews fled Germany to find shelter in only one city: Shanghai, “The Paris of the East”. His latest, Rising Sun, Falling Shadow, continues the story – A story of espionage, betrayal, and one family’s struggle to survive in war-torn Shanghai.

“A vivid, realistic novel that rewards the emotional investment it encourages.” –The Vancouver Sun

“Despite its grim subject matter, this gripping historical novel communicates a hopeful message about the power of love and friendship to overcome hatred.” — Booklist

Author reading sponsored by Canada Council, Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library and UBC Department of Psychiatry.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014- 7:15 pm

Writer and Lucid Book Club participant Lenore Rowntree will be reading from and leading a discussion about Bad Animals: A Father’s Accidental Education in Autism by Joel Yanofsky, winner of QWF Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction
“A veteran book reviewer, Yanofsky has spent a lifetime immersed in literature (not to mention old movies and old jokes), which he calls shtick. This account of a year in the life of a family describes a father’s struggle to enter his son’s world, the world of autism, using the materials he knows best: self-help books, feel-good memoirs, literary classics from the Bible to Dr. Seuss, old movies, and, yes, shtick. Funny, wrenching, and unfailingly candid, Bad Animals is both an exploration of a baffling condition and a quirky love story told by a gifted writer.”

Writers… show their capacity for greatness when they point their talent at something they love. Joel Yanofsky has done just that: written a marvellous book about a child he adores — his son.

– David Gilmour, author of The Film Club

Feel free to email us with any questions or comments at lucidreadinggroup@gmail.com, and be sure to check out our blog: blogs.ubc.ca/lucid for updates!

Thank you for supporting Lucid!