Next Wednesday we’re back to discuss When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Sòla. I’m knee deep in the mountains and curious to see where it goes and what you all make of it.
What you need to know if you are joining our upcoming book club
We are meeting on the 1st of November 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 December?
I was in the mood for something epic and wintery and sprawling so I went with historical fiction. Don’t know if that makes sense, but here are the nominees for next month:
The Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O’Neill
Two babies are abandoned in a Montreal orphanage in the winter of 1910. Before long, their talents emerge: Pierrot is a piano prodigy; Rose lights up even the dreariest room with her dancing and comedy. As they travel around the city performing clown routines, the children fall in love with each other and dream up a plan for the most extraordinary and seductive circus show the world has ever seen.
Separated as teenagers, sent off to work as servants during the Great Depression, both descend into the city's underworld, dabbling in sex, drugs and theft in order to survive. But when Rose and Pierrot finally reunite beneath the snowflakes after years of searching and desperate poverty the possibilities of their childhood dreams are renewed, and they'll go to extreme lengths to make them come true. Soon, Rose, Pierrot and their troupe of clowns and chorus girls have hit New York, commanding the stage as well as the alleys, and neither the theater nor the underworld will ever look the same.
Trust by Hernan Diaz
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
Homework
Not really homework, but during the House of Leaves book club we had two really fun ideas that I already mentioned in the previous newsletter and on Instagram. I got a lot of responses already but wanted to give you all some extra time to think about it.
Idea 1: For the January book club we want to read a book from your TBR. I already have some great suggestions, but if you’d like to nominate one, please let me know! You can email me or let me know at the book club. Some things to keep in mind is the length of the book because anything over 400 pages is hard and availability. A lot of books will take several weeks to deliver, which makes it less suitable for the book club. I’ll check the latter, so if you can keep the page count in mind, that would be great!
Idea 2: For the December book club, we want to do a Secret Santa with the people who want to join. So you’ll bring a book from your book closet that you are willing to part with, wrap it and write some buzz words on the wrapping so people will have an idea of what the book is about. You exchange your book for another one and everyone will go home with a new book! You don’t have to join and if you have multiple books you’d like to swap, that is also fine, but we thought it would be a fun way to round out the book club year. I’ll ask at the book club who wants to join, so you’ll have some time to think about it! Again some things to keep in mind: No book club books for swapping because the chances we have it are BIG and try to pick a book you think people will like, so don’t use it as a way to get rid of your old textbooks :D
October Book Recommendation
Who would I be if I didn’t recommend a spooky book for spooky season?
The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
Gracetown, Florida
June 1950
Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.
Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.
Here’s a sneaky second horror recommendation for the ones who read all the way through to the end.