September Meetup

The material for this month's gathering is below. Look forward to seeing you there. **Book: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab.** France, 1714: In a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name. **Movie: Dog on Trial (Le Proces du Chien), (2024).** Available on SBS on Demand. Avril, a young lawyer specializing in animal defense, goes to great lengths to save her client, a repeat-offender dog, from capital punishment. This dog helps Avril accept her own human complexity. **Podcast: How limitations in life, love and creativity can actually set you free. Conversations Podcast (ABC), 26 June 2026**. Science writer David Epstein on why freedom can be the enemy of success and how we can all benefit from less choice, not more. We live today with vastly more freedom of choice than our ancestors. But there’s also plenty of research telling us all this choice is making us more anxious, overwhelmed and less creative. In his book, *Inside the Box*, David makes the case for how constraints can unlock creativity and satisfaction. And why after writing this book he now believes that narrowing your options can truly set you free.