The all-star edition of London Reads returns tonight with a discussion of the book, Wonderfull.
While the main goal of London Reads is to encourage a love of reading within the greater London community, one lucky author will earn the coveted honour of penning the most popular Canadian novel of 2008-09 as selected by readers from the Forest City.
The second of five public ‘book club’ events is scheduled for tonight (Dec. 3) at Landon Branch, London Public Library, 167 Wortley Road. The presentation begins at 7 p.m.
The London Reads selection of Wonderfull by William Neil Scott is led by London Free Press Editor-In-Chief Paul Berton and Western alumna Adria Iwasutiak.
Book Description:
Wonderfull is a delightful novel that tells the lives, history and stories of the East coast village of Garfax. This is not an ordinary place – nor are these ordinary stories.
Garfax is a village that does not exist on any map. It is a community that has been erased by government historians who deemed that it had no historical significance or contribution to justify its existence. The people of Garfax, however, remained after the historians left. And although Garfax does not exist to the outside world, it is brimming with magic, inhabited by people filled with stories and a yearning
for a future.
The characters in Wonderfull are quirky and endearing. Central to the story is Emma Brodie, a woman who remembers the future and sets off a chain of events that affects the whole village when she takes to the bay in a stolen boat for seven days and seven nights. Garfax is populated by wonderful and whimsical characters including Sara whose hair does not dry after being abandoned in the rain, or Cadmus who visits other times and places while sleepwalking and whimsical dead uncles who daily play dominoes in the kitchen . Occupying a place where its inhabitants are caught in the present and continue to search for the future, the writing of Wonderfull is lyrical, metaphorical, engaging, and, as the title aptly suggests, full of wonder.
Future London Reads book club events
January 14
Gratitude by Joseph Kertes
Celebrity Readers: London Public Library Program & Community Relations Coordinator Delilah Deane Cummings and Western President Paul Davenport
February 11
The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill
Celebrity Readers: Rogers Television News Director George Clark and Western Alumna Ashley White
March 11
Exit Lines by Joan Barfoot
Celebrity Readers: A News Entertainment Editor Janice Zolf and Western Professor Mike Atkinson