The February meeting, the first of 2016, was held on Feb. 3rd. We read and discussed Robert Browning’s poem “A Toccata of Galuppi’s”.

After this, we decided we had had enough poetry for a while, and one member suggested we read some short stories by Alice Munro, a Canadian writer who is famous for her short stories and who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013, the most recent of a long list of awards and prizes.

As none of us have read any stories by this writer, I have selected the story “To Reach Japan”, which is the first story in the collection “Dear Life“. You can buy it on Amazon Japan (the Kindle version is more expensive than the paperback, for some reason, but you can also buy a 2nd-hand edition for 700 yen).

Our next meeting will be March 2nd, and we will read and discuss “To Reach Japan”. One question we will no doubt be discussing is why that is the title when the story takes place in Canada and none of the characters go to Japan, plan to go to Japan or have ever been to Japan.

To change the subject, I’m getting rid of about 300 books, mostly in English but some in Japanese. They are listed on my blog and on Amazon Japan.  You are of course welcome to buy them on Amazon, but my main purpose is to find a new home for these books, so if you are interested in any of them, please let me know and I will glad to let you have them for free.

All my books are listed here (this list is constantly updated): http://bit.ly/sheffners2ndhandbooks

The books in Japanese are listed  separately here: http://bit.ly/myjapanesebooksforsale

All profits from these sales go to charity. Both lists are updated regularly.

Enjoy this life and see you in March.