The Millennialish Book Club

This is a follow-up to December's Holiday Book Grab Bag (the 10th annual)! It's a very popular meeting because it's so different since everyone's read a different book. You'll be briefly reviewing whichever book you won and then read in December--let us know what you thought of it! There are no right or wrong opinions, and it's a great opportunity to increase our TBR (To Be Read) stacks for the new year.

And if you couldn't attend the Book Grab Bag, that's fine too; feel free to bring a book you've read over the past few months that you want to share with the group that we haven't read together. The more the merrier!

You'll get the Zoom invitation link closer to the meeting date.

A literary juggernaut since its publication nearly one year ago, this re-telling of the iconic Mark Twain tale The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has garnered resounding acclaim. 70,000 people giving it a 4.5/5 overall rating is a darn strong indicator of a good read. A Pulitzer and Booker Prize finalist, this popular literary fiction work is bound to create prolonged conversation among us!

The Zoom invitation will be shared closer to the meeting date.

From Goodreads:

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view.

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.

This second book from the Sri Lankan author won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2022, a win also noteworthy for being the first by independent press publisher Sort of Books. Categorized as magical realism, queer, fantasy mystery, historical fiction, it's a cross-genre story that reviewers have characterized as fun, unique, zesty, informative, original, challenging, and page-turning. Now you have a sense of its flavor. What will we think amongst ourselves? This should be a good discussion!

The Zoom invitation will be shared closer to the meeting date.

From Goodreads:

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.

Ten years after his prize-winning novel Chinaman established him as one of Sri Lanka’s foremost authors, Shehan Karunatilaka is back with a “thrilling satire” (Economist) and rip-roaring state-of-the-nation epic that offers equal parts mordant wit and disturbing, profound truths.

Published almost 40 years ago, this selection has earned the label of "modern classic" among book critics and bibliophiles. We'll be reading not just one book, but technically three of them in one cover. But don't let that knowledge daunt you--readers say the stories move quickly with plenty of energy. So be it. Let's delve into some mysteries set right here in the Big Apple itself and see if we can recognize the city we enjoy and call home!

From Goodreads:

The remarkable, acclaimed series of interconnected detective novels – from the author of 4 3 2 1: A Novel.

The New York Review of Books has called Paul Auster’s work “one of the most distinctive niches in contemporary literature.” Moving at the breathless pace of a thriller, this uniquely stylized triology of detective novels begins with City of Glass, in which Quinn, a mystery writer, receives an ominous phone call in the middle of the night. He’s drawn into the streets of New York, onto an elusive case that’s more puzzling and more deeply-layered than anything he might have written himself. In Ghosts, Blue, a mentee of Brown, is hired by White to spy on Black from a window on Orange Street. Once Blue starts stalking Black, he finds his subject on a similar mission, as well. In The Locked Room, Fanshawe has disappeared, leaving behind his wife and baby and nothing but a cache of novels, plays, and poems.