¶¡ÏãÔ°AV Reads is a virtual book club created to connect alumni—and the greater ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV community—with one another over the discussion of books. There is no cost to join. All you need is the book and some reading time. Check out our current book below!
Why should you join?
- Connect with fellow alumni—and ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV community members—across industries, generations and countries in an online social environment.
- Discover new books! It’s an opportunity to experience new authors and explore different genres. You’ll even get a chance to vote on which upcoming titles you want to read.
- Reading is good for you!
How it works
- Sign up for the book club—it’s free!
- Pick up a copy of the current book and start reading. Book selections are read over eight weeks; a suggested reading schedule is provided.
- Sign into the forum and join the discussion, guided by a moderator. Access to discussions are available 24/7—you can participate from anywhere in the world.
Join us in reading Amanda Peters' powerful debut novel, The Berry Pickers. Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, this novel is a riveting story about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.
READING PERIOD: October 11 - December 13
Suggested reading schedule:
- By October 25, finish reading through Chapter 3
- By November 1, finish reading through Chapter 6
- By November 7, finish reading through Chapter 9
- By November 22, finish reading through Chapter 12
- By November 29, finish reading the book
About the book
For fans for Celeste Ng and Ann Patchett, The Berry Pickers is a stunning debut novel about two families' mysteries and secrets and how they interconnect.
A four-year-old girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that remains unsolved for nearly fifty years
July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, is seen sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of a field before mysteriously vanishing. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, who was the last person to see Ruthie, is devastated by his sister’s disappearance, and her loss ripples through his life for years to come.
In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as an only child in an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, while her mother is overprotective of Norma, who is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem to be too real to be her imagination. As she grows older, Norma senses there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she pursues her family’s secret for decades.
NEXT BOOK: HORSE
Next up, join us in reading Pulitzer Prize-winning-author Geraldine Brooks' novel, Horse. Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.
About the book
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history.
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
By using this service, you acknowledge that you have read and understood the privacy statement at the bottom of the page and that you consent to the storage and access of your personal information, as described below, outside of Canada solely for those purposes.
Privacy statement
¶¡ÏãÔ°AV uses PBC Guru, a third-party service provider hosted outside of Canada (specifically in the USA), in order to provide the Online Book Club as a service to ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV alumni. Your use of the Online Book Club is voluntary.
In order to confirm your eligibility and provide you access to PBC Guru, PBC Guru will collect your name, e-mail address, the year you graduated from ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV, the program of study in which you graduated, and a password.
PBC Guru may ask you for additional personal information, such as personal preferences to allow you to customize your user session profile, or to subscribe you to notifications, etc. It is your choice whether or not to provide this additional information, and you are solely responsible for ensuring you have read and understood PBC Guru’s privacy policy in regards to any information you have chosen to provide them.
PBC Guru may share some of the information you provide with ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV, such as your name and email address; and general categories or topics of books you are interested in. ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV collects this information under the authority of section 26(c) of BC’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA).
¶¡ÏãÔ°AV may use your contact information to update its donor and alumni mailing lists, which are used by ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV to inform donors and alumni about University news, events and initiatives, including fundraising.
By using this service, you acknowledge that you have read and understood the above privacy statement and that you consent to the storage and access of your personal information, as described above, outside of Canada solely for those purposes.
Should you have any questions or concerns regarding the information collected and used, or the privacy and security of your personal information, please contact us alumni@sfu.ca.
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About PBC Guru
PBC Guru manages professional book clubs for companies, libraries and alumni associations. They will moderate our book club to help make this program a great experience for all participants. If you have any questions, please email them info@pbc.guru or visit their website at
¶¡ÏãÔ°AV book club bursary
Our goal is for all ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV community members have access to this initiative. If you would like to access one of a limited number of books through our no questions asked bursary program, please email alumni@sfu.ca