
Organizer Alma Sinan, a longtime member of the Association for Gravestone Studies, describes the group as “a different sort of book club, for those of us who are interested in cemeteries, gravestones, mourning customs, and death and dying.”
She encourages guests to join them for coffee and conversation. The cost is free, but Alma asks that you purchase something from the cafe in appreciation for them allowing us to host the meeting there.
You can link up with the Book Club and check out their upcoming selections on Meetup.com.
I’m so honored by this! This is the second time Wish You Were Here has been chosen as a book club selection. I love the idea that my work inspires people to talk about cemeteries.
If you’re nowhere near Toronto, you can still read along with the book club. Here’s a description of Wish You Were Here:
Almost every tourist destination has a graveyard. You go to Yosemite National Park: there’s a graveyard. You go to Maui: graveyards everywhere you look. The Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park: both graveyards. The number one tourist destination in Michigan has three cemeteries. America’s best-preserved Gold Rush ghost town has five. Gettysburg is a National Park because it has a graveyard. Some graveyards are even tourist destinations in themselves: the Old Jewish Cemetery of Prague, the colonial burying grounds of Boston, and Kennedy’s eternal flame in Arlington National Cemetery. Jim Morrison’s grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery ranks in the top five tourist sites of Paris.
Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel contains 35 graveyard travel essays, which visit more than 50 cemeteries, churchyards, and grave sites across the globe.
Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel is available from Amazon or CreateSpace. Autographed and inscribed copies can be ordered directly from me through my bookshop.