Next time we're reading The Man with the Compound Eyes
Taiwainese speculative fiction for spring!
I had planned on sending this newsletter earlier, but with my birthday and the great weather, things got a little delayed… But here’s the invitation to our 102nd book club in May! We’re reading The Man with the Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-Yi, recommended to us by Han from Taiwan. I’m really excited to read this book and hope it will be fun to discuss as well!
Here are the important details:
We are meeting on the 1st of May at 20:00.
The book club is at Opzoomerstraat 12C, Studio Tideland
The book club is Bring Your Own Booze, so bring drinks (at least) for yourself.
Want to join? Email me at boredtodeathbookclub@gmail.com to reserve your seat. I will email you back with a confirmation. I only take email reservations because social media sign ups are a bit more uncertain.
The book club is free, but donations are welcome to help cover the location costs. You can buy me a coffee or use a tikkie. Everyone who has donated, thanks so much! It’s greatly appreciated.
What to read next if you enjoyed Jonathan Abernathy, You Are Kind
I’ll refer back to our The Employees recommendations from May (down below) for more workplace novel recommendations and will focus here on novels about dreams instead. At the book club it was mentioned that this book and the main character were reminiscent of our book club pick The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, which I think is a very apt comparison. Rest and be Thankful from Emma Glass would also be an interesting read besides this. It’s about a nurse who is suffering from insomnia and her work at the children’s ward is not going well…
Another book that could be interesting is Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun. I haven’t read it, but the summary talks about a dystopia where people are suffering from insomnia which leads to dream-like hallucinations. Could be fun!
Jonathan Abernathy, You Are Kind Recap
If I’d had to capture our book club discussion into a meme it would be the blonde lady trying to do math. We had Questions and not a lot of Answers, which was quite a lot of fun. I’m not entirely sure the book was divisive, but there were definitely different opinions. I think we did agree that the idea of the dream auditing felt a bit underused and wished it had gone weirder. Jonathan as a main character was complicated to root for, especially because he made very few decisions and because of that everything ended up wrong. His attitude gave a lot of us anxiety, which probably says more about us then the book. The world felt a little underdeveloped, as did the critique of late-stage capitalism, which was a shame because the premise had us hyped!
Already a quick heads up that June will be our last book club before the Big Summer Break which will last until our return in either late September or early October, depending on our book club’s wishes!