Reading Modern Literature

Join us as we continue our tour through speculative fiction by discussing Ballard's classic novel of dystopian class warfare!

Publisher's description:

"Harsh and ingenious! High Rise is an intense and vivid bestiary, which lingers unsettlingly in the mind." ―Martin Amis, New Statesman

When a class war erupts inside a luxurious apartment block, modern elevators become violent battlegrounds and cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on 'enemy' floors. In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle."

If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:

Join us as we continue our tour through speculative fiction by discussing the newly published version of qntm's viral sensation!

Publisher's description:

"NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Humanity is under assault by malevolent 'antimemes'—ideas that attack memory, identity, and the fabric of reality itself—in this whip-smart tale of science-fiction horror, an entirely reimagined and expanded version of the beloved online novel.

'Utterly brilliant . . . a dazzling, confusing novel with a highly effective, creeping sense of dread . . . I can’t recommend it enough.'—Charlie Jane Anders, The Washington Post

'[An] unforgettable, mind-bendingly brilliant novel.'—The Guardian

They’re all around us, hiding in plain sight.

One could be in the room with you now, just to your left. You could be seeing it right now—but from this second to the next, you’ll forget that you did. If you managed to jot down a note, the paper would look blank to you afterward.

These entities can feed on your most cherished memories, the things that make you you—and you’ll never even know anything changed.

They can turn you into a living ghost—make it so you’re standing next to your spouse, screaming in their ear, and they won’t know you’re there.

They’re predators equipped with the ultimate camouflage, living black holes for information, able to consume our very memories of their existence.

And they aren’t just feeding on us. They’re invading.

But how do you fight an enemy when you can never even know that you’re at war? How do you contain something you can’t record or remember?

Welcome to the Antimemetics Division.

No, this is not your first day."

If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find an epub of it here:

Join us as we continue our tour by discussing this essential collection by Borges!

Publisher's description:

"'These brief Ficciones have to be read one at a time, and slowly; then they throb with uncanny and haunting power.' —The Atlantic Monthly

The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the gargantuan powers of imagination, intelligence, and style of one of the greatest writers of this or any other century.

Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal’s abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and the iconography of eternal return. More playful and approachable than the fictions themselves are Borges’s Prologues, brief elucidations that offer the uninitiated a passageway into the whirlwind of Borges’s genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy. To enter the worlds in Ficciones is to enter the mind of Jorge Luis Borges, wherein lies Heaven, Hell, and everything in between."

If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:

Join us as we continue our tour through speculative fiction by discussing Ogawa's dream-like, melancholy exploration of memory!

Publisher's description:

"Finalist for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award

A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, from the acclaimed author of The Housekeeper and the Professor.

On an unnamed island, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses. . . . Most of the inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few able to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young writer discovers that her editor is in danger, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards, and together they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past. Powerful and provocative, The Memory Police is a stunning novel about the trauma of loss.

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * TIME * CHICAGO TRIBUNE * THE GUARDIAN * ESQUIRE * THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS * FINANCIAL TIMES * LIBRARY JOURNAL * THE A.V. CLUB * KIRKUS REVIEWS * LITERARY HUB"

If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here: