EVENING BOOK CLUB
For our May meeting, we’ll be reading Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro. A near-future with robots, much uncanniness, and heartbreak to spare, all in the hands of a Nobel Prize-winning master. Come join us for the conversation!
When: Wednesday 4th May 7-8 p.m.
Where: Online via Zoom.
Sign Up: Click here, or email anna@wls.org.nz to sign up for a library copy and the meeting link
The Blurb: Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
Some links!
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A short Guardian review revealing Ishiguro’s “dirty secret.”
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Here’s Ishiguro explaining that the book originally started as an idea for a children’s book—until his daughter, the novelist Naomi Ishiguro, told him it was...not appropriate.
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His Nobel Prize lecture, in text and video—a lovely writer's story and a call to rethink what makes ‘good’ literature, anyway.
COMING UP:
Wednesday 1 June:
Something New Under the Sun, by Alexandra Kleeman
Wednesday 6 July:
PAST TITLES:
Here are the books we’ve read and enjoyed! want to read them in your own book club? Contact anna@wls.org.nz about checking out a free book club set of any title.
March 2022
Lea Ypi, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History
“When you see a system change once, it’s not that difficult to believe that it can change again."
February 2022
Sue Orr, Loop Tracks
"The first time I got on an aeroplane, I was sixteen years old and pregnant."
April 2022
Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly
"There comes a time of night when it becomes okay to sit on the ground, even away from parks and boulders and other natural sitting spots."
December 2021
Doireann Ní Ghríofa, A Ghost in the Throat
“This is a female text, written in the twenty-first century. How late it is. How much has changed. How little.”
November 2021
Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You
“Maybe we’re just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn’t it in a way the nicest reason to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine?”
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