Fantasy & Science Fiction Book Club
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Fantasy & Science Fiction Discussion Group
Final Thursday Every Month Via Google Meet 6:30pm |
So, what's the book about?
Lauren Olamina's love is divided among her young daughter, her community, and the revelation that led Lauren to found a new faith that teaches "God Is Change". But in the wake of environmental and economic chaos, the U.S. government turns a blind eye to violent bigots who consider the mere existence of a black female leader a threat. And soon Lauren must either sacrifice her child and her followers -- or forsake the religion that can transform human destiny.
If this sounds like something you would like to read, you can get your copy of the book from the store for 15% off when you order with us: in store, online, over the phone (828.386.1219), or via email. Our booksellers will be happy to help you get the book in the format that you prefer!
Buy Online
We are open to the public again (Mon-Sat from 11am-7pm) so you can pickup orders at the register. However, you can also pickup your book using our pickup basket at the front door or the drive thru window. We offer free media mail shipping for orders $30+ and free local delivery (within Boone town limits). Getting your book to you as conveniently as possible is important to us!
Finally, you can RSVP on the Facebook event to get reminders & updates about any changes to the event! Do that here! You can also add it to your personal calendar--check out the event page to see our Google event calendar where you can RSVP! Reviews & Interviews
Parable of the Talents -- Publisher's Weekly
Why So Many Readers Are Turning to Octavia Butler’s Apocalypse Fiction Right Now --Slate.com VISIONS: IDENTITY; 'We Tend to Do the Right Thing When We Get Scared' -- nytimes.com Review: Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler -- Utopia State of Mind
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This month's book club pick is The Deep by Rivers Solomon. We will be meeting on Thursday, October 28th at 6:30 in an online video chat. You can RSVP to the event & get the chat link here. Rivers Solomon is the author of An Unkindness of Ghosts, and was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award finalist for Best New Writer. They graduated from Stanford University with a degree in comparative studies in race and ethnicity and hold an MFA in fiction writing from the Michener Center for Writers. Though originally from the United States, they currently live in Cambridge, England, with their family. Find them on Twitter @CyborgYndroid. So, what's the book about?
Yetu holds the memories for her people--water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners--who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly is forgotten by everyone, save one--the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.
Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities--and discovers a world her people left behind long ago. Yetu will learn more than she ever expected about her own past--and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they'll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity--and own who they really are.
If this sounds like something you would like to read, you can get your copy of the book from the store for 15% off when you order with us: in store, online, over the phone (828.386.1219), or via email. Our booksellers will be happy to help you get the book in the format that you prefer!
Buy Online
We are open to the public again (Mon-Sat from 11am-7pm) so you can pickup orders at the register. However, you can also pickup your book using our pickup basket at the front door or the drive thru window. We offer free media mail shipping for orders $30+ and free local delivery (within Boone town limits). Getting your book to you as conveniently as possible is important to us!
Finally, you can RSVP on the Facebook event to get reminders & updates about any changes to the event! Do that here! You can also add it to your personal calendar--check out the event page to see our Google event calendar where you can RSVP! Reviews & Interviews
'The Deep' Sings With Many Voices -- NPR.org
Book Review - The Deep by Rivers Solomon -- medium.com An Interview with Rivers Solomon -- pen.org Interview: Rivers Solomon -- lightspeedmagazine.com
Keep reading to find the summary, reviews of the book, interviews with the author, and info about how to buy your book from us in various formats.
The Summary
When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions.
Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny.
If this sounds like something you would like to read, you can get your copy of the book from the store for 15% off when you order with us: online, over the phone (828.386.1219), or via email. This title is also available from our audiobook partner, Libro.fm, as a DRM-free audiobook--buy it here.
You can pickup your book using our pickup basket at the front door or the drive thru window. We also offer free media mail shipping & local delivery (within Boone town limits). Getting your book to you as conveniently as possible is important to us! Finally, you can RSVP on the Facebook event to get reminders & updates about any changes to the event! Do that here! Reviews & Interviews
Octavia Butler’s Prescient Vision of a Zealot Elected to “Make America Great Again”
-- The New Yorker Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (Book Review) -- Black & Bookish Parable of the Sower -- Publisher's Weekly An Interview with Octavia Butler, 2004 -- by Joshunda Sanders for Africana.com & In Motion Magazine Octavia Butler: Writing Herself Into The Story -- for Code Switch by NPR 
Marlon James is a New York Times-bestselling author. His novels have won the 2015 Man Booker Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in fiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction, the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Minnesota Book Award.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf was named a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction in 2019 and has been named a best book of 2019 by The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, GQ, Vogue, and The Washington Post.
Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that’s come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that’s also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.
Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: “He has a nose,” people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard. As Tracker follows the boy’s scent–from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers–he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying? In the stunning first novel in Marlon James’s Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child.
If this sounds like something you'd like to read, you can get your copy of the book from the store or online with a 15% discount through the end of March. Remember, you can have it shipped directly to you or come pick it up in store!
Buy HereReviews & Interviews
"Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a Beast of a Book" -- NPR
"A Fantasy Set in Africa by Way of Hieronymus Bosch, Garcia Marquez, and Marvel Comics" -- The NY TIMES "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" -- The Guardian "Interview with Marlon James" -- The Nerd Daily
We'll meet at Foggy Pine Books on Thursday, March 26th at 6:30pm. There will be free wine and snacks for book club members to share. Bring a friend and come discuss the book with us, even if you weren't able to completely finish it or if you didn't like it. You can see the Facebook event & RSVP here. See you there!
 This month, we are diving into rising science fiction and fantasy star P. Djeli Clark's The Black God's Drums. P. (the P stands for Phenderson) Djeli Clark is the award winning and Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy nominated author of the novellas The Black God’s Drums and The Haunting of Tram Car 015. His stories have appeared in online venues such as Tor.com, Daily Science Fiction, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and in print anthologies including, Griots, Hidden Youth and Clockwork Cairo. He is a founding member of FIYAH Literary Magazine and an infrequent reviewer at Strange Horizons. When not writing speculative fiction, P. Djèlí Clark works as an academic historian whose research spans comparative slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic World. He melds this interest in history and the social world with speculative fiction. The Black God's Drums reflects the marriage of these interests as it brings an alternate New Orleans of orisha, airships, and adventure to life. In Clark's New Orleans, caught in the tangle of the American Civil War, the wall-scaling girl named Creeper yearns to escape the streets for the air--in particular, by earning a spot on-board the airship Midnight Robber. Creeper plans to earn Captain Ann-Marie’s trust with information she discovers about a Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon he calls The Black God’s Drums. But Creeper also has a secret herself: Oya, the African orisha of the wind and storms, speaks inside her head, and may have her own ulterior motivations. Soon, Creeper, Oya, and the crew of the Midnight Robber are pulled into a perilous mission aimed to stop the Black God’s Drums from being unleashed and wiping out the entirety of New Orleans.  If this sounds like something you'd like to read, you can get your copy of the book from the store or online with a 15% discount through the end of November. Click here to order online and remember, you can have it shipped directly to you or to the store for easy pick-up! You can also get the audiobook from our partner, Libro.fm! Click here to get yours! Reviews & Interviews"Interview: P. Djeli Clark" -- Lightspeed "Q&A With P. Djeli Clark" -- The Nerd Daily "Interview with P. Djeli Clark" -- The Hub "Review: The Black God's Drums" -- Locus Magazine “'The Black God’s Drums' Is A High Stakes Novella That Will Take You to the Skies" -- Black Nerd Problems "The Black God’s Drums: We Really Hope This Begins A Series" -- Fantasy Literature Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, this month we are meeting on November 21st at 7:30pm. There will be free wine and snacks for book club members to share. Bring a friend and come discuss the book with us, even if you weren't able to completely finish it or if you didn't like it. You can see the Facebook event & RSVP here.
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