Reading Across the Multiverse

We invite you to join us for our annual town hall! In order to get a better idea of how the group should look moving forward, we'd like to collect and discuss feedback from members.

Our next meetings:

• September: Legendborn by Tracy Deonn (she/her)
• October*: Cursed Bunny: Stories by Bora Chung (she/her), Trans. Anton Hur (he/they)
• November**: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (he/him)

*Please note this meeting will occur on the 2nd Sunday of October instead of the 3rd.
**Please note that we'll be taking suggestions for next year's selections at this meeting

Cover photo by Emre Can Acer: https://emrecanacer.com/

Our September selection is Legendborn by Tracy Deonn (she/her).

Our next meetings:

• October*: Cursed Bunny: Stories by Bora Chung (she/her), Trans. Anton Hur (he/they)
• November**: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

*Please note this meeting will occur on the 2nd Sunday of October instead of the 3rd.
**Please note that we'll be taking suggestions for next year's selections at this meeting

From Simon & Schuster:
"Filled with mystery and an intriguingly rich magic system, Tracy Deonn’s YA contemporary fantasy reinvents the King Arthur legend and “braids together Southern folk traditions and Black Girl Magic into a searing modern tale of grief, power, and self-discovery” (Dhonielle Clayton, New York Times bestselling author of The Belles).

After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.

A flying demon feeding on human energies.

A secret society of so called 'Legendborn' students that hunt the creatures down.

And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a 'Merlin' and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.

The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.

She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight."

Simon & Schuster:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Legendborn/Tracy-Deonn/The-Legendborn-Cycle/9781534441613

Bookshop.org:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/legendborn-tracy-deonn/16263267?ean=9781534441613

Barnes & Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/legendborn-tracy-deonn/1136314591?ean=9781534441613

**This meetings occurs on the 2nd Sunday of October instead of the 3rd!**

Our October selection is Cursed Bunny: Stories by Bora Chung (she/her) trans. Anton Hur (he/they).

Our next meeting:

• November*: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (he/him)

*Please note that we'll be taking suggestions for next year's selections at this meeting

From Honford Star:
"Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society.
Anton Hur’s translation skilfully captures the way Chung’s prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous. Winner of a PEN/Heim Grant and shortlisted for the 2022 Booker International Prize."

Honford Star:
https://www.honfordstar.com/cursed-bunny

Bookshop.org:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/cursed-bunny-stories-bora-chung/18578834?ean=9781643753607

Barnes & Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cursed-bunny-bora-chung/1138650414?ean=9781643753607

Our November selection is The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (he/him).
Please note that we will be taking suggestions for next year's reading selections.

Our next meeting:
January: TBD

From W. W. Norton & Company:
"Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida—war photographer, gambler, and closet queen—has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to the photos that will rock Sri Lanka."

Tor W. W. Norton & Company:
https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324064824

Bookshop.org:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-seven-moons-of-maali-almeida-shehan-karunatilaka/18834287?ean=9781324064824

Barnes & Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-seven-moons-of-maali-almeida-shehan-karunatilaka/1142215894?ean=9781324064824