Friends Who Like To Read

This month we are reading…
—Toward Eternity by Anton Hur—

This book is a science fiction book about AI. Anton Hur is a translator and author. He is currently a judge for the International Booker Prize.

—SUMMARY—
Negotiating the terrain of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, a brilliant, haunting speculative novel from a #1 New York Times bestselling translator that sets out to answer the question: What does it mean to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology?

In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer. The body’s cells are entirely replaced with nanites—robot or android cells which not only cure those afflicted but leaves them virtually immortal. Exploring the nature of intelligence and the unexpected consequences of progress, the meaning of personhood and life, and what we really have to fear from technology and the future, Toward Eternity is a gorgeous, thought-provoking novel that challenges the notion of what makes us human—and how love survives even the end of that humanity.

—TRIGGER WARNINGS—
Death, Genocide, Violence

—LOCATION—
Paterson Coffee. It’s on the second floor!

—Feel free to come even if you didn't finish or read the book!!!!—

This month we are reading…
—The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong—

This book is expected to be quite emotional and it is on the longer side, so start sooner rather than later and take care of yourselves 🩷 This is a novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.

—SUMMARY—
The hardest thing in the world is to live only once…

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Vuong’s writing – formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness – are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.

—TRIGGER WARNINGS—
Death, Drug use, Mental Health, Racism, Suicide, Violence

—LOCATION—
Paterson Coffee. It’s on the second floor!

—Feel free to come even if you didn't finish or read the book!!!!—