Chicago Nerds- Binti

For the November book discussion of the Chicago Nerd Social Club, we read Binti and Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor.

The first two parts of a novella trilogy, these works follow the titular character, a mathematically-gifted young woman who is the first of her people to travel off-planet for education. Along the way, she becomes a kind of unintentional liason with the warlike Meduse; Binti: Home follows her first return to Earth.

Brief notes and possible spoilers below:

Podcast #2- American Gods w/ While Reading and Walking's Leah von Essen

Happy to announce that our second podcast is live! We're joined by Leah von Essen from While Reading and Walking to talk about Neil Gaiman's American Gods, the television adaptation of which is premiering soon.

Download Directly (mp3) | RSS Feed | iTunes | Google Play

• 0- Introductions
• 2:42- Upcoming Events
• 4:42- Main Discussion
• 18:13- Thoughts on other Gaiman works & adaptations
• 25:14- "Hard Question" about belief & religion
• 32:25- Questions about Sandman & other gods appearing in American Gods
• 35:44- What else have you been reading?
• 38:08- Credits

Be sure to check out Leah's site, While Reading and Walking. You can also catch her on Book Riot, and I highly recommend following her on Twitter: @reading_while. Leah also mentions some reading projects like Read Diverse Books.

Besides American Gods, we reference many other works by Gaiman. Non-Gaiman references include:

• Fiction by Jorge Luis Borges
• Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• Binti and other works by Nnedi Okorafor
• The collection The Djinn Falls in Love, which includes stories by Gaiman, Okorafor, and many more.

Our events-reader this episode is Mary Auber from the Weird & Wonderful club, which meets at City Lit Books. You can find lots of meeting notes from Weird & Wonderful on Positron.

Our music is provided by Pelafina. Check them out on Facebook and Bandcamp!

Hope you like the show! Questions, comments? Sound off in the comments, or drop us a line at positronchicago@gmail.com.

Think Galactic- Kabu Kabu

For the August convocation of Think Galactic (all meetings of Think Galactic are august convocations, FWIW), we discussed stories from "Kabu Kabu" (2013) by Nnedi Okorafor.

This collection spans most of her career to date, and those who read the whole thing reported that it works best to think of it that way—shows Okorafor and her worlds developing. A number of these stories are also the seeds or extracts from larger works, sometimes obviously so: weren't complete as short stories, though they might compellingly introduce us to bigger stories.

We had a surprisingly short conversation on this collection; most of us didn't have particularly strong reactions to it. We griped about some weak editing and little writerly things, but also praised the atmosphere in some of the stories, as well as the different tone and folk-tale-like distance in a few.

Chicago Nerds: Lagoon

For the last meeting of the Chicago Nerds book club, we read and discussed Nnedi Okorafor's 2014 novel "Lagoon". It's an unusual first contact story--shape-shifting, primarily ocean-based aliens land just off the shore of Lagos, Nigeria, and then...stuff happens.

There is a lot, a confusing lot, going on in this novel--intentionally so, it would seem, with the chaos of the story meant to reflect, perhaps even praise, the chaotic nature of Lagos. Unfortunately, I  found that the intersection of many different codes, coupled with some rough areas in the writing, deflated the novel's impact. I'll try to expand that a bit below.

The biggest consensus from the group, I think, was something along the lines of "we really wanted to like it", but had too many issues in actually reading it. Definitely a worthy discussion, our reservations notwithstanding--possible spoilers below!