Book Club Schedule (April, May, June, & July 2023) + Giveaway
[ID: Three books sitting on a spread of open pages with scrabble tiles spelling the month of each read. The one on the left is The Labyrinth’s Archivist, a black book with a close up image of a woman’s face, the middle is Being Heumann, with a photograph of a woman in the wheelchair, and the right is Finding Gene Kelly, a pink cover with an illustration of two people in Paris. The books are surrounded by greenery, baby's breath, and page confetti.]
EDIT JUNE 4, 2023: Since many of our members are delayed reading BEING HEUMANN we’ve changed our discussion dates. We will now be discussing BEING HEUMANN in June and FINDING GENE KELLY in July (instead of June). Follow @libraryofdreaming for more updates.
Hello, bookish friends! I’m happy to announce that we have selected our book club picks for the next three months. Read on for full descriptions and affiliate links:
April’s Read:
[ID: A close up view of a woman of color's face with dark eye makeup and black lips. A map is superimposed on her face with cosmological symbols.]
The Labyrinth’s Archivist by Day Al-Mohamed
Representation: a scifi novella with a blind main character based on the author’s own experience
Summary: Walking the Labyrinth and visiting hundreds of other worlds; seeing so many new and wonderful things – that is the provenance of the travelers and traders, the adventurers and heroes. Azulea has never left her home city, let alone the world. Her city, is at the nexus of many worlds with its very own “Hall of Gates” and her family are the Archivists. They are the mapmakers and the tellers of tales. They capture information on all of the byways, passages and secrets of the Labyrinth. Gifted with a perfect memory, Azulea can recall every story she ever heard from the walkers between worlds. She remembers every trick to opening stubborn gates, and the dangers and delights of hundreds of worlds. But Azulea will never be a part of her family’s legacy. She cannot make the fabled maps of the Archivists because she is blind.
The Archivist’s “Residence” is a waystation among worlds. It is safe, comfortable and with all food and amenities provided. In exchange, of course, for stories of their adventures and information about the Labyrinth, which will then be transcribed for posterity and added to the Great Archive. But now, someone has come to the Residence and is killing off Archivists using strange and unusual poisons from unique worlds whose histories are lost in the darkest, dustiest corners of the Great Archive. As Archivists die, one by one, Azulea is in a race to find out who the killer is and why they are killing the Archivists, before they decide she is too big a threat to leave alive.
Trigger/content warnings: ableism, murder, violence, poisoning, threat of torture
May’s Read:
[ID: A book cover with a greyscale photo of a woman in a wheelchair posing with her hand on her chin. Yellow font spells out the title and author with a subheading in white saying, “An unrepentant memoir of a disability rights activist”.]
Being Heumann by Judith Huemann with Kristen Joiner
Representation: memoir with polio and wheelchair user representation
Summary: One of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her personal story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and just be human.
A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn't built for all of us and of one woman's activism—from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington—Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann's lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society.
Paralyzed from polio at eighteen months, Judy's struggle for equality began early in life. From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a "fire hazard" to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her a teacher's license because of her paralysis, Judy's actions set a precedent that fundamentally improved rights for disabled people.
As a young woman, Judy rolled her wheelchair through the doors of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in San Francisco as a leader of the Section 504 Sit-In, the longest takeover of a governmental building in US history. Working with a community of over 150 disabled activists and allies, Judy successfully pressured the Carter administration to implement protections for disabled peoples' rights, sparking a national movement and leading to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Candid, intimate, and irreverent, Judy Heumann's memoir about resistance to exclusion invites readers to imagine and make real a world in which we all belong.
Trigger/content warnings: ableism, violence
June’s Read:
[ID: A pink book with an illustration of a woman and a man in front of the Eiffel Tower surrounded by a border of pink and red flowers. The man is wearing a yellow vest and the woman is wearing a black dress.]
Finding Gene Kelly by Torie Jean
Representation: an adult romance featuring a heroine with endometriosis based on the author’s personal experience
Summary: When five-year-old Evie O’Shea married her next-door neighbor in the wedding of the century, she had no idea she was swearing an oath to love the man who would grow into the bane of her existence until the end of time. Or that in ten years time, she’d start a long and winding journey to an eventual endometriosis diagnosis.
Now, aged twenty-six, Evie O’Shea lives in Paris, balancing precariously close to her Charlotte Lucas birthday. A burden to her parents, with no prospects and no money, Evie’s humdrum life needs a shake-up.
Enter Liam Kelly, the man Evie married at the age of five and promptly divorced at seven when he had the audacity to throw a muddy football at her while she was reading Eloise in Paris. Clad in a Henley and equipped with toned forearms and eye crinkles that rival Gene Kelly himself, Evie is determined to keep her ultimate temptation at a distance while she flails wildly navigating life, love, and endometriosis on the banks of the Seine.
But when a family announcement shakes up Evie's world weeks before her brother’s wedding, Evie seeks Liam’s help to get through the wedding with some semblance of sanity intact.
Her request? Fake date.
Making a deal with the Devil always comes with a cost, though, and when Liam’s conditions which include elaborate backstories and practice dates, reignite passions her disease smothered long ago, Evie has to learn to fight for her dreams and break free from her life measured in ibuprofen pills and heating pad settings. Or else risk being alive but never truly living.
Trigger/content warnings: endometritis, chronic pain, medical trauma, internalized ableism, ableism, infertility, sexual references, open door sex scenes, vomiting, guilt-tripping parents.
Please note: THE LABYRINTH’S ARCHIVIST and FINDING GENE KELLY are self-published, so they may not be available at your local library and there’s no audio version. They’re available as ebooks free through a trial of Kindle Unlimited and there is a way to use a “read to text” function using the Kindle or Kindle app.
Giveaway!
I (@LibraryOfDreaming) am giving away some copies to those of you who would like to join in but can’t fit buying a copy of THE LABYRINTH’S ARCHIVIST and/or FINDING GENE KELLY in your budget. Please comment here, on Instagram, or email ChronicallyIconicBookClub@Gmail.com with your preferred edition (ebook or physical), your country of origin, and Instagram username.
Disclaimer: THE LABYRINTH’S ARCHIVIST and FINDING GENE KELLY must be available on your country’s Amazon. You must be over 18 or have a guardian’s permission. I will be randomly giving away as many copies as I can fit in my budget. This giveaway is very unofficial and not associated with the authors or Amazon.