October's book discussion "The Dream Hotel" by Laila Lalami

My apologies for the late post but we will be reading "The Dream Hotel" by Laila Lalami. Thanks Meg for the recommendation! We will be meeting a little earlier for our October and November meetup. Hopefully you all can still make it! We will be meeting at Griffin Gardens for our October (weather permitting), if not we will meet elsewhere.

**Also meetings are back to $5. This helps offset the Meetup membership fee (thanks for understanding). Cash app $griffingardens Venmo @griffin-gardens or you can pay cash in person.

Synopsis:
A novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.