GIRL DINNER: Weird Little Books
About this Event
Join us for GIRL DINNER: Weird Little Books edition! Let’s snack and chat about 3 wild little one-sit reads!
Definitions:
Girl Dinner - A light meal consisting of pre-made snacks and/or easy-to-prepare foods that satisfies ephemeral cravings while also allowing the diner to reject the confines and strictures of patriarchal dinner tables and actualize a spread that mimics an offering to Gaia. Usually involves some kind of charcuterie and/or fermented snack.
Weird Little Book - A book that is notably compact in size and highly idiosyncratic, bizarre, or unconventional in content. These books typically blend genres and leave readers feeling pleasantly unsettled. They can be read in a single sitting, and, despite their brevity, are stories that worm themselves into the reader’s noggin, taking up residency for all time.
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For this installment we’re marrying the off-kilter beauty of a Girl Dinner and the fever dream that is getting sucked into a surprisingly slim novel for an evening of delightfully chaotic conversation highlighting three weird little books: Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark, The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley, and The Housekeeper and The Professor by Yoko Ogawa/translated by Stephen Snyder. Your ticket gets you one of these books + a drink, with the option to purchase the other books at our meeting. Books available night-of or for in-store pick up ahead of time after July 25.
We’ll gather for lively conversation about all things sci-fi/dark fantasy/world literature, our favorite and least favorite tropes, and anything else that comes up! Expect smart takes, big laughs, and a room full of snacking queens.
About the books:
Option #1: Ring Shout:
P. Djèlí Clark's award-winning dark fantasy novella that gives a supernatural twist to the Ku Klux Klan's reign of terror, Ring Shout, returns now in paperback!
IN AMERICA, DEMONS WEAR WHITE HOODS.
In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.
Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.
Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?
Option #2: The Beauty:
Nominated for the Shirley Jackson and Saboteur awards, this game-changing story was chosen by Adam Nevill as one of his favourite horror short stories: “What a refreshing gust of tiny spores this novella explodes into, and I inhaled them all with glee”.
Somewhere away from the cities and towns, in the Valley of the Rocks, a society of men and boys gather around the fire each night to listen to their history recounted by Nate, the storyteller. Requested most often by the group is the tale of the death of all women.
They are the last generation.
One evening, Nate brings back new secrets from the woods; peculiar mushrooms are growing from the ground where the women’s bodies lie buried. These are the first signs of a strange and insidious presence unlike anything ever known before…
Discover the Beauty.
Option #3: The Housekeeper and The Professor:
From the beloved Japanese author Yoko Ogawa, this “deceptively elegant” (The New York Times) novel is Ogawa’s bestselling and most prolific work to date.
He is a brilliant math professor with a peculiar problem—ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory.
She is an astute young housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, who is hired to care for him.
And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor’s mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities—like the Housekeeper’s shoe size—and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.
The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.
Want an expertly crafted smörgåsbord? Check out these local faves and pick it up to go!
- EVO
- Accent on Wine
- Jackrabbit Filly
- Stems & Skins
Where is it happening?
USD 21.99
