Are you joining us to discuss The Lonely Hearts Hotel?
Ready for depression, Secret Santa and a massive poll for February?
In a week we’ll come together for the last book club of the year and discuss The Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O’Neill. I had kind of forgotten what a wild ride this book was and should maybe have given some warnings for explicit and depressing content. I hope it was still enjoyable/beautiful/interesting nonetheless and can’t wait to hear all of your takes on the novel!
What you need to know if you are joining our upcoming book club
We are meeting on the 6th of December at 20:00.
Our location is Opzoomerstraat 12C, Studio Tideland
The book club is Bring Your Own Booze, so bring drinks (at least) for yourself.
The book club is pay what you can which will help me to cover the location and snack costs. You can buy me a coffee or use a tikkie.
If you have snack ideas or other suggestions, hit me up!
Most importantly:
If you can’t make it, please let me know! I have some more people on the waiting list and I would love to inform them as early as possible.
What are we reading in February?
We’re skipping January as it’s too close after the holidays and will be back in February for our first book club of 2024. For this one I asked all of you to nominate a book from your TBR and I got loads of responses! To prevent making an endless newsletter, I have found some great reviews to sum up the books we nominated. You can always click through to read more about them. I’ve divided them up into 3 polls which means you get 3 votes! The top books from the online vote will move to our book club vote for final consideration.
I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman
‘Holy shit. I’m unwell’ - 5 stars
Black Butterflies - Priscilla Morris
‘Have Wikipedia on hand for this one!’ - 4 stars
Parable of the Sower - Octavia E. Butler
‘More like "Parable of the RAPEYRAPERAPERAPE!"' - 1 star
Sea of Tranquility - Emily St. John Mandel
‘i do not know how to review this book.’ - 5 stars
Sharks in Time of Saviours - Kawai Strong Washburn
‘I was not expecting the absolute gut punch of this book.’ - 5 stars
The Lost Daughter - Elena Ferrante
‘i'm spending my time reflecting on what it means to be a woman and mentally disintegrating because of it.’ 4 stars
Nightcrawling - Leila Mottley
‘But nope, no explosions here.’ - 2 stars
The Copenhagen Trilogy (Childhood / Youth / Dependency) - Tove Ditlevsen
‘sure, the new york times said this was one of the best books of the year, but more importantly my friend did.’- 4 stars
Strega - Johanne Lykke Holm
‘It’s carried almost entirely by the force of its symbolism and imagery, and wow is it beautiful imagery, but I also have no idea what just happened.’ - 3 stars
Checkout 19 - Claire-Louise Bennet
‘There was one paragraph she wrote about having your period for like 20 years and still leaking every month, and that was the only relatable and good part.’ - 1 star
Bear - Marian Engel
‘Speaking of bear smut, it takes forEVER to get to the "mane event" (pun intended).’ - 1 star
Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi
‘Seriously, white men are the devil.’ - 4 stars
Make sure you get in 3 votes and if I have forgotten any of your nominations, I’m so sorry! They were scattered over Instagram and my mail, so I did my best to find all of them but I have the sneaky suspicion that some might have fallen through the cracks.
Secret Santa
Also don’t forget about our Secret Santa book swap thingamajig. All the details are in our previous newsletter, but it comes down to bring a book to swap and please wrap it so we don’t know what it is! Write some buzzwords on it and you’re done! I’m still thinking of the logistics of how to swap. Will it be a free for all or a preference list or… if you have the good ideas, then let me know!
And a little November book recommendation for all of you reading until the end!