Dear categories list, The Topos Institute is excited to announce a virtual book club for "The Joy of Abstraction", Eugenia Cheng's new category theory book. Members of this list doubtless do not need to join this book club, but we urge you to pass this on to anyone you know who might benefit from it. "The Joy of Abstraction" is an introduction to category theory for anyone who wants to get into the formality of the subject but does not necessarily have the mathematical background to read a standard textbook. Part 1 starts gently, so that readers can build up to the formality of rigorous mathematics even if they haven't encountered it before. Part 2 gets into formal rigorous category theory, including limits and colimits, duality, functors, natural transformations, and the Yoneda lemma. Mathematics is a communal enterprise, and when learning new concepts, sometimes it just helps to be able to ask an expert. We also envision category theory and mathematics as an inclusive community, and want to give everyone the opportunity to get involved. So we were thrilled when Eugenia offered to partner with us to host a book club giving readers the opportunity to ask her questions. The book club will proceed at an approximate rate of one chapter per week, beginning this month. We invite readers to submit questions for each chapter according to a published schedule, with questions for the first chapter accepted until Sunday February 19th. We will then collate the questions and Eugenia will make a video each week addressing the questions for that chapter. Readers will remain anonymous when asking the questions so we hope they will hesitate to ask questions that might feel "stupid". We welcome any question that comes from wanting to understand something more! For more information about the book see here: https://youtu.be/96t4dFSm0Xk Kind regards, Brendan [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]