Book Club
HOW IT WORKS
Order the book and you'll automatically be enrolled in book club.
We'll email you to let you know when your book comes in.
Before the event, we'll email you a reminder that book club's coming up.
Bada bing, bada boom!
WHAT TO EXPECT
Book clubs will be led by one of the store owners and will be an interactive group discussion.
-
The store will be closed for regular shopping during book club so please don’t be late
-
15% discount on books (no merch or prints) up to 30 minutes after the event
-
Buying the book online is your "ticket"
-
When you arrive for book club, check in at the desk with your name
WHAT TO BRING
We encourage you to bring your own fold-out chair or cushion for the floor. Our small shop has limited space and limited seating options.
​
Feel free to bring non-alcoholic beverages, but please avoid bringing snacks.​
​
​
THERE ARE RIVERS IN
THE SKY
By Elif Shafak
Wednesday, September 25th
7:00pm-8:00pm
Literary Fiction - Historical Fiction
​
In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.
In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Ninveveh and Its Remains.
In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazhidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time.
In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.
CATALINA
By Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Thursday, September 26th
7:00pm-8:00pm
Literary Fiction
When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfilment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen.
​
But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her own complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world that has no place for the undocumented; her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires.
​
She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties and secret societies—which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper’s skepticism: she is both fascinated and repulsed.
​
Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation.
​
Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?
