What we’re about
This is a biweekly group devoted to reading and discussing modern literature. Our goal is to read through modern classics - sometimes in series, and sometimes breaking up longer works into multiple parts that we discuss across two or more meetings. Our current theme is speculative fiction: fantastic fiction including science fiction, fantasy, horror, magical realism, slipstream, surrealism, weird fiction, etc.
Over the years, we've tackled series on the works of James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Vladimir Nabokov. We've devoted entire years to specific themes: a year on works from Latin American and Portuguese language writers, one spent reading African and African diaspora writers, another on central and eastern European literature, and another on works from east, south, southeast, and central Asian literature. And, every once in a while, we just throw in whatever book seems interesting to folks in group. Come join our ever-growing group to meet with friendly people and talk about great books!
Upcoming events
25
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
독수리다방, 서대문구 연세로 36, Korea, al, KRJoin us as we continue our tour through speculative literature by discussing Dick's classic novel!
Publisher's description:
"The classic sci-fi novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which inspired two major motion pictures: Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049.
By 2021, the World War has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remain covet any living creature, and for people who can’t afford one, companies build incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep. They’ve even built humans. Immigrants to Mars receive androids so sophisticated they are indistinguishable from true men or women. Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans can wreak, the government bans them from Earth. Driven into hiding, unauthorized androids live among human beings, undetected. Rick Deckard, an officially sanctioned bounty hunter, is commissioned to find rogue androids and 'retire' them. But when cornered, androids fight back—with lethal force."
If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:
https://tinyurl.com/mv2m7usp
Our plan is to meet at Dokdabang Cafe (독수리 다방) in Sinchon, which is on the 8th floor of the building indicated on the map linked to on this page. The address of Dokdabang is 36, Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03776. Below are Kakao Maps and Naver Maps links to the cafe:
https://kko.kakao.com/-U2GDIbg1b
https://naver.me/G7KDxJuu
If you plan to attend this meeting and would like updates you can join our ‘Reading Modern Lit active’ OpenChat on KakaoTalk. Feel free to leave and return to this chat based on your activity. The purpose of this chat is to better gauge who plans to attend our meetings as there are often no-shows.
Reading Modern Lit (active)
https://open.kakao.com/o/gaqP0Hre6 attendees
Light, by M. John Harrison
독수리다방, 서대문구 연세로 36, Korea, al, KRJoin us as we continue our tour through speculative literature by discussing this dark and sublime masterpiece by Harrison!
Publisher's description:
"In M. John Harrison’s dangerously illuminating new novel, three quantum outlaws face a universe of their own creation, a universe where you make up the rules as you go along and break them just as fast, where there’s only one thing more mysterious than darkness.
In contemporary London, Michael Kearney is a serial killer on the run from the entity that drives him to kill. He is seeking escape in a future that doesn’t yet exist—a quantum world that he and his physicist partner hope to access through a breach of time and space itself. In this future, Seria Mau Genlicher has already sacrificed her body to merge into the systems of her starship, the White Cat. But the “inhuman” K-ship captain has gone rogue, pirating the galaxy while playing cat and mouse with the authorities who made her what she is. In this future, Ed Chianese, a drifter and adventurer, has ridden dynaflow ships, run old alien mazes, surfed stellar envelopes. He “went deep”—and lived to tell about it. Once crazy for life, he’s now just a twink on New Venusport, addicted to the bizarre alternate realities found in the tanks—and in debt to all the wrong people."
If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:
https://tinyurl.com/55mzd6rc
Our plan is to meet at Dokdabang Cafe (독수리 다방) in Sinchon, which is on the 8th floor of the building indicated on the map linked to on this page. The address of Dokdabang is 36, Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03776. Below are Kakao Maps and Naver Maps links to the cafe:
https://kko.kakao.com/-U2GDIbg1b
https://naver.me/G7KDxJuu
If you plan to attend this meeting and would like updates you can join our ‘Reading Modern Lit active’ OpenChat on KakaoTalk. Feel free to leave and return to this chat based on your activity. The purpose of this chat is to better gauge who plans to attend our meetings as there are often no-shows.
Reading Modern Lit (active)
https://open.kakao.com/o/gaqP0Hre3 attendees
The Bloody Chamber, by Angela Carter
독수리다방, 서대문구 연세로 36, Korea, al, KRJoin us as we continue our tour through speculative literature by discussing Carter's classic short story collection!
Publisher's description:
"For the 75th anniversary of her birth, a Deluxe Edition of the master of the literary supernatural’s most celebrated book—featuring a new introduction by Kelly Link, the author of the national bestseller The Book of Love and the Pulitzer Prize finalist Get in Trouble.
Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, Kelly Link, and other contemporary masters of supernatural fiction. In her masterpiece, The Bloody Chamber—which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan’s 1984 movie The Company of Wolves—she spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition."
If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:
https://tinyurl.com/4rtvzj3r
Our plan is to meet at Dokdabang Cafe (독수리 다방) in Sinchon, which is on the 8th floor of the building indicated on the map linked to on this page. The address of Dokdabang is 36, Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03776. Below are Kakao Maps and Naver Maps links to the cafe:
https://kko.kakao.com/-U2GDIbg1b
https://naver.me/G7KDxJuu
If you plan to attend this meeting and would like updates you can join our ‘Reading Modern Lit active’ OpenChat on KakaoTalk. Feel free to leave and return to this chat based on your activity. The purpose of this chat is to better gauge who plans to attend our meetings as there are often no-shows.
Reading Modern Lit (active)
https://open.kakao.com/o/gaqP0Hre5 attendees
The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien
독수리다방, 서대문구 연세로 36, Korea, al, KRJoin us as we continue our tour through speculative fiction by discussing O'Brien's surreal masterpiece!
Publisher's description:
"The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence.
Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and de Selby's view that the earth is not round but "sausage-shaped." With the help of his newly found soul named "Joe, " he grapples with the riddles and contradictions that three eccentric policeman present to him.
The last of O’Brien’s novels to be published, The Third Policeman joins O’Brien’s other fiction (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, and The Dalkey Archive) to ensure his place, along with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, as one of Ireland’s great comic geniuses."
If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:
https://tinyurl.com/3e683um6
Our plan is to meet at Dokdabang Cafe (독수리 다방) in Sinchon, which is on the 8th floor of the building indicated on the map linked to on this page. The address of Dokdabang is 36, Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03776. Below are Kakao Maps and Naver Maps links to the cafe:
https://kko.kakao.com/-U2GDIbg1b
https://naver.me/G7KDxJuu
If you plan to attend this meeting and would like updates you can join our ‘Reading Modern Lit active’ OpenChat on KakaoTalk. Feel free to leave and return to this chat based on your activity. The purpose of this chat is to better gauge who plans to attend our meetings as there are often no-shows.
Reading Modern Lit (active)
https://open.kakao.com/o/gaqP0Hre2 attendees
Past events
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