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What The Port Credit Book Club, Port Credit, Ont.

Who The current members are Valerie Bernrot, Irene Buechner, Karen Caskey, Linda Clements, Deana Goulin, Marguerite Jackson, Marilyn MacLean, Donna McCullagh, Susan Meredith, Adele Newton, Krystyna Ostrowska, Karen Petersen, Jean Stackhouse, Ray Strachan, Ann Strickland-Clark, Dianna Tyndorf and Jan Woolfrey.

This is an impressive group of women, many of them retired, and most of whom happened to find themselves living in the same townhouse development in Port Credit, a community west of Toronto. Among the members are six former or current educators, including one ex-principal, the head of a high-school English department and the current chief executive officer of Ontario's Education Quality and Accountability Office. There's also an executive with Research in Motion, the head of infectious diseases at a nearby major hospital and a former university professor.

The club, says its co-founder and administrator, Ann Strickland-Clark, was started about six years ago, "shortly after the majority of us moved into this new development.... The originating couple are a displaced Englishwoman who immigrated to move in here, leaving a much-loved book club behind, and who had vowed the first thing she would do, once settled, would be to form another, and an equally keen head of English department in a local school."

M.O. This is a women-only club, mainly due to the male predilection for non-fiction. The club meets in members' homes, with the host providing snacks, wine and coffee.

It's not always easy getting everyone together. "We meet every month, except when it is obvious that there will be too few of us around to comprise an ill-defined and shifting quorum," Strickland-Clark says. "These occasions are usually in cottage time or snowbirding months.

"The books are chosen by suggestion and vote," she adds, "and we like to have several months booked in advance for those who have a lot of time on their hands. We have read novels by and about Canadians, Indians, French, Afghans, Biafrans and Brits, not forgetting the Portuguese José Saramago and his Blindness. Only very occasionally have we wandered from novels, once reading Eat, Pray, Love — condemned as chick lit by several sterner members — and Infidel, the story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, recommended by our Dutch member."

Last month's book was Ghostwalk, a thriller by British historian Rebecca Stott. Strickland-Clark admits she "bullied" her group into reading the book after she returned to England and attended a meeting of her former book club, and Stott was there to discuss her work.

"Recently," Strickland-Clark says, "we have started to award marks. Being kindly Canadians, we rarely award fewer than 5, and since we are so discriminating in our choices, the average marks are generally pretty high."

The highest mark they've given was a 9 for Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières ("which we were rather late getting around to," admits Strickland-Clark); the lowest went to The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai — a 6.5.

What other Canadian book clubs are reading this month

The Book Buddies Book Club, Cambridge, Ont.: The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill

Rosemary's Book Babes, Harrow, Ont.: Plain Truth, by Jodi Picoult

Brock House Friday Book Club, Vancouver: Saturnalia, by Lindsey Davis

What is your book club reading? Tell us in an e-mail sent to webbooks@globeandmail.com and we'll consider your club for a profile in Clubland.