Book Club #5: February
First Folio February and Lunar New Year reads
stay with me. while the sky is still golden,
hold the ladder so i can climb, & from
the highest rung, i can scrape away a drizzle
of light to wear around my neck. alone
is the star i follow. in love & in solitude:
alone is the home with the warmest glow.
- from 'February & my love is in another state' by José Olivarez
In Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Benedick is described as having a 'February face/ So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness', and certainly this dreadful weather is living up to the month's reputation. I did manage to brave the rains to see Shakespeare's First Folio at Senate House Library - this copy, printed in 1623, has a rare uncorrected printing error on page 333 of Othello, where 'and hell gnaw his bones' is repeated from the preceding page. If you haven't seen it yet, the First Folio will make one last appearance at Senate House on Feb 28.
What's up
Leaked e-mails reveal political censorship at 2023 Hugo Awards; hundreds of Chinese voters disenfranchised
Barbican backs out of hosting London Review of Books talk about Gaza war
Royal Society of Literature, under fire from authors' petition, refers itself to Charity Commission
What's on
Northcliffe Lecture: Rachel Cusk discusses her short story 'The Stuntman' (UCL, March 8)
London Book Fair (Olympia London, March 12 to 14 - I'll be going to the first two days of this, hit me up if you plan to go)
London Review of Books Winter Lecture - Hazel V. Carby: Remembering the Future (St James Clerkenwell, March 13)
Valuing Knowledge: In Conversation with Sotheby's, with rare books and manuscripts specialist Gabriel Heaton (Safra Lecture Theatre, King's College London, March 13)
Daunt Book Festival ft. Sathnam Sanghera, Xinran, etc. (Daunt Books Marylebone, March 14 and 15)
A Bookshop of One's Own, a discussion of the iconic feminist Silver Moon Women's Bookshop with co-founder Jane Cholmeley (Gay's The Word, March 21)
What's out
Today is the 15th day of Lunar New Year - Yuan Xiao Jie, the Chinese Lantern Festival - so here are a couple of new East Asian/South-east Asian fantasy novels for your Year of the Dragon reading! Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan is set in the semi-submerged city of Tiankawi, where humans co-exist uneasily with immigrants fleeing the polluted waters - sirens, kelpies, water dragons, and more. In The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo, set in 1908 Manchuria, an immortal fox spirit in the guise of a young woman sets out to avenge the death of her child.
Pulitzer finalist Kelly Link makes her novel debut with The Book of Love, in which three teenagers mysteriously return from the dead in the seaside town of Lovesend. In her memoir I Heard Her Call My Name, Lucy Sante chronicles how she came out as transgender at the age of 67.
Finally, Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford has been out for a while in the UK but just got its US release, and I will take any excuse to rave about this 1920s noir set in an alternate-history America where Indigenous people continue to hold power in the city of Cahokia. It's only February but this is already one of the best books of the year for me.
Next up...
In a belated Lunar New Year vein, we will be reading The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu for our next meeting on March 6, 8.10pm, in Freddie’s. Do get in touch if you would like to suggest a short story for the book club.
Happy reading,
Olivia
(I'm on Instagram with more book reviews - @ohomatopoeia)