BOOK CLUB | SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5 | 11 AM–1 PM | FREE
Illiterati: Gen X Book
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Illiterati: Gen X Book Club will meet at FUSION on Sunday, October 5, from 11 AM–1 PM. The October discussion will be on Orbital by Samantha Harvey.
The 2024 winner of the Booker Prize, Orbital explores the experience of six astronauts aboard the International Space Station over a single day. The book, written with the care of a nature writer, uses the astronauts' collective perspective to reflect on humanity's relationship with Earth, climate change, and the meaning of life, all while circling the globe sixteen times.
This month's Illiterati read is a loving meditation on the feelings of being removed from where it's all at, watching Life happen from so far afield that it loses relevance, not only to the observers but to perspective itself, while nevertheless insisting on defining our existential center. ISS astronauts, soon to be a bygone marker of a bygone era of our bygone species, reflect through port windows on the gravity of their earthly scenario.
If that doesn't apathetically scream Gen-X to you like Michael Hutchence rolling rat-haired young ladies and Djarum clove cigarettes around on the floor of Dogs in Space, helping reinforce our firm crush on any collaboration between the supposedly opposed hard and soft sciences, I don't know what will.
Illiterati are also launching a New Media component to our reading series. A week or two after each book reading we plan to meet for a group screening of the story's film adaptation. Prepare yourself for lively, non-disrespectful discussion and snacks!
***BYO snacks and drinks!
This book club is FREE and open to the public!
All are welcome. The club will be discussing books related to Generation X. You're welcome to BYO snacks and drinks. Later in the season Novel Point Coffee will also be open next door. Look in the photos section on Meetup.com for the current reading list. If you have reading suggestions please send them to genxbookclub@gmail.com, and keep in mind:
Authors should be born between 1960 and 1980. Outliers will want good reasons to be included. Any books over 400 pages may be discussed over multiple months.
Folks are welcome to attend even if they haven't finished the book, and audio versions are fair game.
Gen X Book Club is looking for discussion above agreement, but being mean will not be tolerated. Disagreement can be lovely as long as it remains respectful.
ABOUT ILLITERATI: GEN X BOOK CLUB
“Things are weird. The adults are all gone. We've been left to fend for ourselves by the light of an empty fridge.
Gen X was made for this. We got ourselves to the mall food court, looking for each other without appearing to care. Let's read Gen X literature. Let's discuss it as if it's real. As our ultimate rebellious act in a dying world we'll make it so.
Now that we've found a couple of interested slackers we'll crack open Eggers, Wurtzel, Safran Foer. Hewlett & Martin. If all goes well and follows in reasonable order we'll start with early Gen X authors and move to the later. Maybe rinse occasionally with something hopeish from outside the timeline, like Allie Brosh.
But when does it all go well and follow in reasonable order?”