Online Queer Book Club (formerly East Bay Queer Book Club)

(*** Meetings are always on the 2nd Sunday of the month)

This month we will read and discuss "A Discovery of Witches" by Deborah Harkness.

Book Description:
"Deborah Harkness’s sparkling debut, A Discovery of Witches, has brought her into the spotlight and galvanized fans around the world. In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and a descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782, deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont.

Harkness has created a universe to rival those of Anne Rice, Diana Gabaldon, and Elizabeth Kostova, and she adds a scholar's depth to this riveting tale of magic and suspense. The story continues in book two, Shadow of Night, book three, The Book of Life, and the fourth in the series, Time’s Convert."

***

Please join us for some good discussion and social time. The night of the event you will be able to access the discussion using the provided link. Please be advised that you will need to have a Zoom account set-up and logged in to participate. We encourage all attendees to experiment with the platform before the event, if you have any questions please contact one of the organizers in advance and we will do our best to assist you.

There is never any pressure to have the book completed (or read at all) in order to participate. We would just love to have you, and it can be enjoyable to hear about the book and talk to some cool people.

***

Book Selection:

At this meeting we will take recommendations for future book club reads. Please spend some time beforehand thinking of any books that might be appropriate for the group to read. The only criteria is that any book recommended should be written by a queer individual and/or contain queer subject matter and/or characters. However, it is highly encouraged that books offered for consideration be representative of diverse perspectives and communities.

Before making a suggestion, please take a moment to check the list of books previously read by this group to make sure your selection can be considered:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aN4BaPn1buIHZ1lryih4lMduPt4ShEIdaQLCyea3okQ/edit?usp=sharing

(*** Meetings are always on the 2nd Sunday of the month)

This month we will read and discuss "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee.

Book Description:
"The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature."

***

Please join us for some good discussion and social time. The night of the event you will be able to access the discussion using the provided link. Please be advised that you will need to have a Zoom account set-up and logged in to participate. We encourage all attendees to experiment with the platform before the event, if you have any questions please contact one of the organizers in advance and we will do our best to assist you.

There is never any pressure to have the book completed (or read at all) in order to participate. We would just love to have you, and it can be enjoyable to hear about the book and talk to some cool people.

***

Book Selection:

At this meeting we will take recommendations for future book club reads. Please spend some time beforehand thinking of any books that might be appropriate for the group to read. The only criteria is that any book recommended should be written by a queer individual and/or contain queer subject matter and/or characters. However, it is highly encouraged that books offered for consideration be representative of diverse perspectives and communities.

Before making a suggestion, please take a moment to check the list of books previously read by this group to make sure your selection can be considered:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aN4BaPn1buIHZ1lryih4lMduPt4ShEIdaQLCyea3okQ/edit?usp=sharing

(*** Meetings are always on the 2nd Sunday of the month)

This month we will read and discuss "Lakelore" by Anna-Marie McLemore.

Book Description:
"Everyone who lives near the lake knows the stories about the world underneath it, an ethereal landscape rumored to be half-air, half-water. But Bastián Silvano and Lore Garcia are the only ones who’ve been there. Bastián grew up both above the lake and in the otherworldly space beneath it. Lore’s only seen the world under the lake once, but that one encounter changed their life and their fate.

Then the lines between air and water begin to blur. The world under the lake drifts above the surface. If Bastián and Lore don’t want it bringing their secrets to the surface with it, they have to stop it, and to do that, they have to work together. There’s just one problem: Bastián and Lore haven’t spoken in seven years, and working together means trusting each other with the very things they’re trying to hide."

***

Please join us for some good discussion and social time. The night of the event you will be able to access the discussion using the provided link. Please be advised that you will need to have a Zoom account set-up and logged in to participate. We encourage all attendees to experiment with the platform before the event, if you have any questions please contact one of the organizers in advance and we will do our best to assist you.

There is never any pressure to have the book completed (or read at all) in order to participate. We would just love to have you, and it can be enjoyable to hear about the book and talk to some cool people.

***

Book Selection:

At this meeting we will take recommendations for future book club reads. Please spend some time beforehand thinking of any books that might be appropriate for the group to read. The only criteria is that any book recommended should be written by a queer individual and/or contain queer subject matter and/or characters. However, it is highly encouraged that books offered for consideration be representative of diverse perspectives and communities.

Before making a suggestion, please take a moment to check the list of books previously read by this group to make sure your selection can be considered:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aN4BaPn1buIHZ1lryih4lMduPt4ShEIdaQLCyea3okQ/edit?usp=sharing

(*** Meetings are always on the 2nd Sunday of the month)

This month we will read and discuss "Ten Steps to Nanette: A Memoir Situation" by Hannah Gadsby.

Book Description:
"There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself,” Hannah Gadsby declared in their show Nanette, a scorching critique of the way society conducts public debates about marginalized communities.
Gadsby grew up as the youngest of five children in Tasmania, where homosexuality was illegal until 1997. After moving to mainland Australia and receiving a degree in art history, they found themselves adrift, working itinerant jobs and enduring years of isolation punctuated by homophobic and sexual violence. When Gadsby was twenty-seven, a friend encouraged them to enter a stand-up competition. They won, and so began their career in comedy.
Gadsby became well known for their self-disparaging humor, but in 2015, as Australia debated the legality of same-sex marriage, they started to question this mode of storytelling, beginning to work on a show that would transform their career and would become “the most-talked-about, written-about, shared-about comedy act in years” (The New York Times).

Harrowing and hilarious, Ten Steps to Nanette traces Gadsby’s growth as a queer person, their ever-evolving relationship with comedy, and their struggle with late-in-life diagnoses of autism and ADHD, finally arriving at the backbone of Nanette: the renouncement of self-deprecation, the rejection of misogyny, and the moral significance of truth-telling.

***

Please join us for some good discussion and social time. The night of the event you will be able to access the discussion using the provided link. Please be advised that you will need to have a Zoom account set-up and logged in to participate. We encourage all attendees to experiment with the platform before the event, if you have any questions please contact one of the organizers in advance and we will do our best to assist you.

There is never any pressure to have the book completed (or read at all) in order to participate. We would just love to have you, and it can be enjoyable to hear about the book and talk to some cool people.

***

Book Selection:

At this meeting we will take recommendations for future book club reads. Please spend some time beforehand thinking of any books that might be appropriate for the group to read. The only criteria is that any book recommended should be written by a queer individual and/or contain queer subject matter and/or characters. However, it is highly encouraged that books offered for consideration be representative of diverse perspectives and communities.

Before making a suggestion, please take a moment to check the list of books previously read by this group to make sure your selection can be considered:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aN4BaPn1buIHZ1lryih4lMduPt4ShEIdaQLCyea3okQ/edit?usp=sharing