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
26
The Word for World is Forest, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Location not specified yetJoin us as we continue our tour through speculative fiction by discussing Le Guin's seminal ecological novel!
Publisher's description:
"Hugo Award Winner, 1973
Long before Avatar, Ursula K. Le Guin was writing science fiction with a strong ecological edge, the benchmark of which was the 1973 novella, The Word for World is Forest. Now, with the continuing trend toward human rights and green issues, the time is right for new fans to be moved by this Hugo-winning classic.
In this thought-provoking story, the existence of the peaceful Athsheans is altered when their world is conquered by the bloodthirsty yumens. Pressed into servitude, they find themselves at the mercy of their brutal masters…until desperation leads them to launch a retaliatory strike. But in defending their lives, they will threaten the very foundations of their society. And once the killing starts, there is no turning back."
If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:
https://tinyurl.com/tfzwmvxu
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
The Hearing Trumpet, by Leonora Carrington
독수리다방, 서대문구 연세로 36, Korea, al, KRJoin us as we continue our tour through speculative fiction by discussing this novel by the surrealist painter and writer Leonora Carrington!
Publisher's description:
"An old woman enters into a fantastical world of dreams and nightmares in this surrealist classic admired by Björk and Luis Buñuel.
Leonora Carrington, painter, playwright, and novelist, was a surrealist trickster par excellence, and The Hearing Trumpet is the witty, celebratory key to her anarchic and allusive body of work. The novel begins in the bourgeois comfort of a residential corner of a Mexican city and ends with a man-made apocalypse that promises to usher in the earth’s rebirth. In between we are swept off to a most curious old-age home run by a self-improvement cult and drawn several centuries back in time with a cross-dressing Abbess who is on a quest to restore the Holy Grail to its rightful owner, the Goddess Venus. Guiding us is one of the most unexpected heroines in twentieth-century literature, a nonagenarian vegetarian named Marian Leatherby, who, as Olga Tokarczuk writes in her afterword, is 'hard of hearing' but 'full of life.'"
If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:
https://tinyurl.com/uczdspes
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/gaqP0Hre4 attendees
Pedro Páramo, by Juan Rulfo
독수리다방, 서대문구 연세로 36, Korea, al, KRJoin us as we continue our tour through speculative fiction by discussing this absolute classic of Mexican literature!
Publisher's description:
"The highly influential masterpiece of Latin American literature, now published in a new, authoritative translation, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel García Márquez.
A masterpiece of the surreal that influenced a generation of writers in Latin America, Pedro Páramo is the otherworldly tale of one man’s quest for his lost father. That man swears to his dying mother that he will find the father he has never met—Pedro Páramo—but when he reaches the town of Comala, he finds it haunted by memories and hallucinations. There emerges the tragic tale of Páramo himself, and the town whose every corner holds the taint of his rotten soul. Although initially published to a quiet reception, Pedro Páramo was soon recognized as a major novel that has served as a touchstone text for writers including Mario Vargas Llosa and José Donoso. Now published in a new translation from the definitive Spanish edition by celebrated Rulfo scholar Douglas J. Weatherford, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel García Márquez, this new edition of the novel cements its place as one of the seminal literary texts of the twentieth century."
If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:
https://tinyurl.com/sd987u6x
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
Book TBA
Location not specified yetJoin us as we
Publisher's description:
If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:
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/gaqP0Hre1 attendee
Past events
170
