Runners' club turns to reading for relaxation by Nathan Howes Special to the Beaver 23 | Friday, October 30, 2015 | OAKVILLE BEAVER | www.insideHALTON.com A love of reading and running has inspired a group of Oakville friends to start a book club. The Runners and Readers (R+R's) group held its bi-monthly meeting recently at a member's home near Upper Middle Road West to discuss its latest read, Spoonfed: My Life with the Spoons, written by the Spoons frontman Gordon Deppe. The Oakville musician and author attended the gathering to converse with the club members and answer questions on his 2014 effort. The R+Rs, which formed in January, meets every two months to wine and dine and share their thoughts on a selected publication. The club's name was chosen because the group of 10 has run together for several years as part of Canada Get Fit, a locally-based training organization. "We're all close friends in the running group, so we thought it would be interesting to have a book club that had a mix of male and female perspectives. We all come with different experiences and we all have different perspectives," said Kathy Rottar, club member. "I love to read and until the book club (meets), I nd that I get too busy with work and everything else. By having a book club, you actually focus and make time to read." Lynn Van Nest noted members take turns in hosting meetings and selecting books for the club to read and discuss. In addition to Spoonfed, R+Rs has read Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, Any Known Blood by Oakville's Lawrence Hill, Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins, The Day Of The Trif ds by John Wyndham and All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. The next book for the club will be Ride A Crooked Road by Toronto author Fletcher Douglas. "It's a variety of ction and non- ction. Gordon Deppe mistakes. I still got people's names wrong, dates wrong." The Spoons singer/songwriter said the book was well-received upon release, noting it's been a bestseller on Amazon "on and off quite a bit" alongside publications from Billy Idol. "It was much better than I thought. Even just reading the reviews, it made the whole thing worthwhile. It was amazing, the reaction to it," said Deppe. Spoonfed isn't a typical "sex stories and rock'n'roll kind of book," Deppe said, as it goes deeper and captures his feelings on issues such as being an outsider when he came to Canada and not speaking English, among other topics. "I tell people the '80s were like 10 years of Halloween. You have ridiculous stuff, you have funny stuff... we had some bad things happen as well. There are so many stories. It is just a great decade to write about," said Deppe. "Everybody should write a book about their life. It's an amazing thing. It's not only therapeutic, but it makes so much sense of all you've accomplished, why you are where you are and why this happened 10 years ago." Runners and Readers (R+R's) book club held its bi-monthly meeting on Thursday to chat with Oakville's Gordon Deppe, Spoons singer/songwriter, and discuss his 2014 book, Spoonfed: My Life with the Spoons. From left to right: Tom Nielsen, Mike Knapman, Bernie Woytiuk, Megan Crockett, Sue Glashan, Susan Bruce, Stephan Bruce, Gordon Deppe, Kathy Rottar, Lynn Van Nest, Suanne Nielsen, Sue Clark and Jim Clark. | photo by Nathan Howes -- special to the Beaver Unbroken is based on a true story. Unbroken was interesting because the individual who is in the book is actually a runner," said Rottar. During the meetings, members will share their opinions on the book, what kind of messages they got from it and how it was written, Rottar said. "The nice thing about a book club is that you read books you wouldn't have necessarily tried. We all have a type of book that we like, so we're trying different books. It actually broadens our horizons quite a bit," said Rottar. For example, Van Nest wouldn't have read Unbroken because it's about war, she said, which is "not something that I (thought) I would enjoy, but I really enjoyed it." Prior to the meeting, Deppe chatted with the Oakville Beaver about his autobiographical book. The idea for Spoonfed goes back to 1995 when the Spoons released a best-of album and Deppe was writing liner notes and stories at the record label's request, he said. "The reaction I got from those stories from fans was so good. They said, `We want to hear more of that.' So I started thinking, `Maybe there is some interesting stuff.' So over the years I kept writing these blogs and put them on the Spoons' websites," said Deppe. Because he wrote material for the book for many years, the process of putting it together was "very dif cult," Deppe said. "The last little bit is like cramming for an exam. It's a lot of work. The problem with autobiographies is you have to be correct on a lot of things, like names, timelines, you can't just write what you want," said Deppe. 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