The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
D&D [Book Club] : FIRST MEETING 8\5! WE'RE READING LOBIZONA BY ROMINA GARBER!
Jokerman
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
BOOK CLUB
OUR FIRST SELECTION!
Some people ARE illegal.
Lobizonas do NOT exist.
Both of these statements are false.
Manuela Azul has been crammed into an existence that feels too small for her. As an undocumented immigrant who's on the run from her father's Argentine crime-family, Manu is confined to a small apartment and a small life in Miami, Florida.
Until Manu's protective bubble is shattered.
Her surrogate grandmother is attacked, lifelong lies are exposed, and her mother is arrested by ICE. Without a home, without answers, and finally without shackles, Manu investigates the only clue she has about her past—a mysterious "Z" emblem—which leads her to a secret world buried within our own. A world connected to her dead father and his criminal past. A world straight out of Argentine folklore, where the seventh consecutive daughter is born a bruja and the seventh consecutive son is a lobizón, a werewolf. A world where her unusual eyes allow her to belong.
As Manu uncovers her own story and traces her real heritage all the way back to a cursed city in Argentina, she learns it's not just her U.S. residency that's illegal. . . .it’s her entire existence.
What is it?
The Intention of Book Club will be for all of us to nominate a book (Be it Non-Fiction or Fiction) and to meet up every friday and discuss the book.
I don't know if I can read an entire book in a week! Doesn't that seem a bit intense?
We'll be discussing a section of the book unspoilered once a week. For most books, I figure we'll get through it in a month but there's no strict time limits.
What book will we choose?
Everyone who wants to join will need to submit a suggestion for the first book club. The guidelines are under 300 pages, please, and be readily available (IE in Print) and in English.
It would be appreciated if the book is available in an ereader format, but it is not a requirement.
What are the Deadlines?
Signup will be until midnight, 7/23 EST.
Sounds Great! How do I join?
Just post below with !Signup and then the title and author of your nomination.
What if we can't decide?
Then I will pick, and everyone will probably hate it. So lets aim for a consensus here.
What are the rules?
We'll meet up every friday to discuss the agreed upon reading for the week. Feel free to drop in and comment as you read, but please keep it spoilered until Friday.
Jokerman on
+4
Posts
Is one a week a bit too ambitious? Might be nice to accommodate the busy/slow/distracted reader? Just a thought.
Top of the head nomination: Slade House by David Mitchell as a short light bit of fun fiction I very much enjoyed a while back.
My choice for bookclub would be manhunt: the 12 day chase for Lincolns killer. I've been meaning to read it for ages so this will be just what I needed.
Nooo like, idealy over the course of a month but like I said, it could be adjusted based on the size of the book.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
I will read whatever is chosen as I am super unpicky. I nominate Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy.
--Werewolf book!
NIXONLAND
NIXONLAND
it's, like, 850 pages.
I have a non-fiction nomination, So Lovely a Country Will Never Perish: Wartime Diaries of Japanese Writers.
It's, like the title says, a wide ranging selection of pro and anti war diaries of ordinary Japanese citizens during the war years. Its one of my favorite books about the Pacific War, both confirming some western narratives about Japanese feelings about the war while showing how ridiculous other mainstream narratives really can get. More than anything its deeply human - a newspaper man privately mourns his role in publishing what he knows are lies, a scholar of western literature celebrates war against the country that racially discriminated against him when he attended university, a Tokyo resident who endures years of wartime horrors finally cries finding out the animals at the Tokyo Zoo have been euthanized, opponents to the government privately deride the war as their only possible act as defiance, a sure death sentence if their diaries are searched by the thought police.
I’m picky but I like to expand my horizons. So far I don’t really want to read any of the suggestions but I don’t have an awesome suggestion so I will read whatever thing and see how it turns out. Even if it’s an 850 page book about Nixon.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
About a quarter of that is bibliography, though I will admit I didn't realize it was quite that long when I suggested it (I've only read it on ebook.)
Manhunt or anything McCarthy would be good.
I am almost certainly consuming this via audiobook, and was trying to figure out if there's a way to get page lengths for things. Googling seems to return results from Goodreads, I think.
Before I talk about the book, I want to talk about the Author. Max Gladstone studied Chinese Literature at Yale and eventually lived in rural China for 2 years. After that he worked for the Berkman Center for Internet and Policy Law, where he realized that the legal profession has a lot in common with wizardry. Specifically, you're learning a dead arcane language (latin phrases), researching in old tomes, engaging in battle against another wizard/lawyer, etc. There are a lot of parallels. So he built a world around the idea of magic and legal practice being very similar.
The story: Alt Coulumb, home to over four million, is the last remaining city in the new world under the power of the divine. Kos, the God of Fire and patron of Alt Coulumb, suddenly and unexpectedly dies. Enter Tara, a self taught practitioner of The Craft, the combination legal and magical system of the world. Tara has just been cast out from the equivalent of Yale after only two months, but with her degree. And she's offered a job by Keletrhes, Albrecht, and Ao (premier Craft firm) to investigate the death. Tara is overseen by her mentor in the firm, and is aided by a varied cast including a vampire pirate captain, a novice priest of Kos, a gargoyle, a partner level lich, and a human who lets the God of Justice possess her as a way to make a living.
Personally, one reason I really like Max Gladstone's work is that a lot of his descriptions could easily be lines in a poem.
Or I could go in blind knowing ziltch about Slade House and give it a chance.
Old Man and the Sea is short, and would be nice to share it.
If you'd like a physical copy, please consider buying it from your local independent bookseller. If you don't have a local bookstore, Bookshop.org is a wonderful website that helped keep my local bookstore afloat during COVID times.
The book is broken up into four phases, so I'm thinking one phase a week.
On Friday, please post your thoughts and feelings on the book so far. I'll have some prompts for the conversation, but these are strictly optional. Please just share whatever you feel like sharing.
Do feel free to drop by and share small thoughts or quotes throughout the week, but I must ask that we maintain a STRICT spoiler policy until friday.
Having not had pre-warning to get the book in ready, maybe make this first session two weeks rather than one? I wouldn’t want people to be put off by time pressure
Initial thought is that I like the cover art a lot!
I'll try to get down to my local, quite lovely, bookstore on Monday, but folks in less urban areas might need shipping time.
we don't have that many folks, so we could probably play it by ear.
In the meantime, should we do like a little Zero Week thing? Kind of introduce ourselves and our taste in reading? I'll go first.
I'm a 36 year-old guy who lives in Coastal Georgia. I used to be a pretty voracious reader, but I've definitely lapsed a lot in the past 10-5 years. I mainly like Non-fiction, but I'm open to reading anything honestly.
I enjoy the works of Kurt Vonnegut, Mary Roach, and John Scalzi.
I read a lot of queer and feministy SciFi and Fantasy, typically that tend to have conflict resolution that through mean more complicated than direct violence. Not generally dystopian.
Also most novels that has been nominated for a Hugo, outside of sad puppy slates, for the last decade.
Authors Becky Chambers, Ian M Bank, Arkady Martine, Ann Leckie. Some Le Guin, Jemisin when I'm feel up for breaking that last rule.
Lobizonas seens like it will be a refreshing change from my normal fare. 😅
Lobizonas sounds interesting. The discussion over in the book thread does not fill me with confidence but I'm considering reading the sequel to A Deadly Education and this sounds probably at least as good as that.
I tried reading Book of the New Sun, and I just couldn't finish it, I'm not even sure why.
I've read some non-fiction. Mostly science related.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Sorry about that! Keep in mind that I am really, really critical and have the unfortunate habit of writing scathing reviews of books that other people actually quite like. Wouldn't have done it had I known it was everyone's bookgroup book ;_; --and actually even if you end up not liking it, there's definitely enough there that there's a very interesting discussion to be had about what elements you might have liked to change.
General Comments (Not specific spoilers, but spoiled for length)
I'm fairly interested in discussing some of the later sections of the book, but it's kind of hard to do without plot spoilers, so I guess I'll leave that discussion until getting to it.
Remember, no spoilers until friday! if you want to share a thought or a quote throughout the week, make sure it's spoilered.
camping with the family this week.
A few thoughts so far:
The weird eyes are a nice hook, but the idea of her thinking they are just a natural thing that can be ‘cured’ somehow by surgery is pretty laughable when she is aware that they emit light.
The whole lantinx immigrant viewpoint is one very alien to me as a middle class white Englishman so that’s nice to read. The frustration of so many factors in your life being entirely out of your control comes through strong.
I like a good mystery so the setup so far is plenty intriguing. Here’s hoping the payoff works out.
And random amusing aside, I look to my right while writing this and notice this happy chappy with familiar looking eyes on a French grocery bag.
First, a meta note: the audiobook is terrible. I bought the ebook and sprang for whispersync as I’d never tried it before and, in case the writing was bad, I have a higher tolerance for bad writing in audio format. I only listened to a few minutes of the book while doing some laundry and woof. The audio is weirdly tinny, like the narrator literally phoned it in, and their reading is somehow both flat and overly dramatic.
On to the actual book:
Hogweres being in the Everglades is amusing. I guess if you want to put a magic school in Florida that’s the best pick. I’m intrigued to find out how that happened and why it’s a combo of ancient and overgrown semi-modern. Also what’s up with the Zs.
The writing is…very dramatic. I know I said the narrator was overly dramatic but I consider that a feat seeing how much melodrama is already in the text. I get that the ICE raid is the worst thing that’s ever happened to the MC but every moment of her life seems to be The Most Dramatic Moment Yet. Maybe this is a YA thing and I’m just old. I dunno.
Oddly, the things that do seem really dramatic and weird don’t seem to bother the MC at all. I get that she’s sheltered but it seems like she should know there’s something legitimately weird (and not “ugly” or whatever) about literally glowing eyes. Also she’s just like, “Oh. Red smoke Z. Okay. Moving on. Nothing to question there.”
At the same time, though, I know the power of growing up with out-of-the-ordinary things such that they become normal to you, so I just keep reminding myself of that.
The Spanish really bothers me. A word or phrase here and there, fine, cool, maybe I learn a new word. But having multiple sentences of key dialog in a foreign language with only occasional direct translations seems bad to me. All of it bugs me because I always feel the need to translate foreign language text if at all possible while reading. I’m glad I got the ebook so that I can just highlight and auto-translate, but it still takes me out of the book. Given that there’s often a translation or paraphrase offered the author clearly doesn’t expect the reader to know Spanish so I’m not sure why there’s so much of it. I guess at Hogweres they only speak English, so maybe it ends in phase I? Time will tell.
Edit: one sentence stood out to me in a not good way:
I know what the author meant but when I read it I immediately pictures grandma shooting water out of the centers of her eyes. If the MC is a werewolf I guess Perla is a mermaid?
Phase one Thoughts:
That's not to say I'm not intrigued with what Phase 2 has to offer. As we descend into probable Hogweres, I am curious to unravel the mystery of the Z's, more on Manu's father, and maybe the mystical and political culture of Argentina? Also what kind of secret clinic was Manu's mother working at? was it an abortion clinic? Do the Z pills have special powers aside from knocking people out? Is ICE using Dementors? Do the Z pills help hide them from Dementors at ICE?
Next meeting will be 8/12. Please spoiler anything after Phase 2, but feel free to talk about Phase 1 without any spoilers.
I think one of the things that really hit for me was the immigrant angle. Especially reading about the ICE raid made me feel so overwhelmed. It just felt very real, like it's already got the start of a magical setting, but then to get what I'm sure is a terrifyingly real experience for some people was very different from the aforementioned Books That Shall Not be Named, where it was like "alright, mundane life sucks, now magic!"
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
I guess doing literal undocumented immigrant is thing is somewhat new to me, but there are a lot of parallels in genre fiction to outsider classes who live in constant fear of police. Vampire/werewolf, mutant, AI, psycic, witch, romani, mud lark... set in contemporary America with explicitly as an undocumented latina as text is new, but thematically it's a bit old hat.
Not digging into the eyes thing, and just kinda assuming there's medical treatment for it, without doing a lot if research into trying to find what that would look like or what would cause glowy eyes, doesn't sound like a thing a person does.
The Spanish insertion stuff was a but heavy handed, but fine... sure.
We'll see how the magic school thing works out.