East London Bookclub For Dummies (Stratford)

Welcome to our June Book Club event!

The votes are in! Our book for June will be On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41880609-on-earth-we-re-briefly-gorgeous

Note: we are meeting at a pub, and they do require you purchase a drink while you're there. It doesn't have to be alcoholic, but it is the price of us using the pub. Thanks for your understanding! :)

PLEASE NOTE, WE'RE NOW IN THE KING EDWARD VII PUB, JUST A MINUTE WALK ALONG FROM FROM THE OLD PUB :)

Happy reading, see you there!

Welcome to our July Book Club event!
The theme for this month is Classic Adventure! We have voted and our book for this month is Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne!!

When an unidentified “monster” threatens international shipping, French oceanographer Pierre Aronnax and his unflappable assistant Conseil join an expedition organized by the US Navy to hunt down and destroy the menace. After months of fruitless searching, they finally grapple with their quarry, but Aronnax, Conseil, and the brash Canadian harpooner Ned Land are thrown overboard in the attack, only to find that the “monster” is actually a futuristic submarine, the Nautilus, commanded by a shadowy, mystical, preternaturally imposing man who calls himself Captain Nemo. Thus begins a journey of 20,000 leagues—nearly 50,000 miles—that will take Captain Nemo, his crew, and these three adventurers on a journey of discovery through undersea forests, coral graveyards, miles-deep trenches, and even the sunken ruins of Atlantis. Jules Verne’s novel of undersea exploration has been captivating readers ever since its first publication in 1870, and Frederick Paul Walter’s reader-friendly, scientifically meticulous translation of this visionary science fiction classic is complete and unabridged down to the smallest substantive detail.

PLEASE NOTE, WE'RE NOW IN THE KING EDWARD VII PUB, JUST A MINUTE WALK ALONG FROM FROM THE OLD PUB :)

Happy reading, see you there!

Image by freepik