What We’re Reading: Sept. 2020

This summer we read several novels that sparked intriguing discussions in our Ghost Class book club, including Anjali Sachdeva’s All the Names They Used for God, Sam J. Miller’s Blackfish City, and Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl.

More recently, Anna-Claire found A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker “eerily prescient,” and Jeannette Ng’s Under the Pendulum Sun left a “weirdly big impression” on Niv and is LP’s current read. 

Niv also finished Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (“shocked face emoji”) and Scott Hawkins’ The Library at Mount Char. 

Jenny expects to have nightmares about Alex Jennings’ “Unkind of Mercy” (from New Suns, edited by Nisi Shawl) for a good long while. (That’s a compliment.)

A few of us have turned to poetry: Matthew found Whereas: Poems by Layli Long Soldier to be “really well done,” and Jenny has been swept up in Khadijah Queen’s Anodyne.

A few have “Raysed” the dead with old favorites: Matthew reread Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, and Sam A. reread Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, which was the first Raymond Carver collection he ever read.

And a few are reading things entirely unrelated to SFF: Sam A. recommends Brooke Gladstone’s The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time, and Jenny is savoring Disability Visibility, edited by Alice Wong.

Ahead: LP and Shingai are planning to check out Dhonielle Clayton’s The Belles, and we’ll be choosing our next book club book. Suggestions welcome!