Hot Off the Press Winter/Spring 2021
Our Hot Off the Press book discussion class is celebrating its tenth year!
Join the new 2021 session, launching January 13th!
If you love a book conversation that’s lively and engaging, where we talk about the book thoroughly and thoughtfully, then this class is for you. Led by long-time teacher and publishing professional Lynn Rosen, this class tackles brand new literary fiction.
Class conversations include analysis of the book as well as background information provided by Lynn about the author and the book’s path to publication. We talk serious book talk, but have a lot of laughs too!
The 2021 session of HOTP includes five class meetings in which we will be reading some recent award winning new books.
CLASS DATES/TIME:
Class meets virtually via Zoom on Wednesday evenings from 7pm EST to 8:30pm EST on:
January 13
February 10
March 10
April 7
May 5
CLASS COST & LOGISTICS:
LOCATION: via Zoom; link to be provided to participants.
COST: $165
Books are not included in the cost.
Email lynn@lynnrosen.com to register. Payment can be made by check or Venmo.
Special Offer: If you’re new to the program and want to try out a class or two, contact lynn@lynnrosen.com and we’ll arrange that for you.
CLASS READING SCHEDULE:
January 13
Shugie Bain by Douglas Stuart
WINNER OF THE 2020 BOOKER PRIZE
Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher’s policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city’s notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love,
February 10
A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet
Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction
One of the New York Times‘ Ten Best Books of the YearPulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet’s new novel follows a group of twelve eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their families at a sprawling lakeside mansion. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group’s ringleaders—including Eve, who narrates the story—decide to run away, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside.
March 10
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year
A bold feat of imagination and empathy, this novel gives flesh and feeling to a historical mystery: how the death of Shakespeare’s 11-year-old son, Hamnet, in 1596, may have shaped his play “Hamlet,” written a few years later. A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a tender and unforgettable re-imagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, and whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time.
April 7
Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri, translated by Morgan Giles
A powerful masterwork from one of Japan’s most brilliant outsider writers, Tokyo Ueno Station is a book for our times and a look into a marginalized existence in a shiny global megapolis. This book won the National Book Award for literature in translation. This deft translation is a welcome and necessary addition to the translated Japanese canon, which unfolds in the memories of a deceased narrator occupying the eponymous train station. The book is an observation of Japan at the gateway of its capital, at multiple thresholds of shifting eras, told in the bardo of a mourning father and compatriot, reciting his surroundings and circumstances as if a prayer, a mantra.
May 5
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER
Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he’s ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family. Infinitely inventive and deeply personal, exploring the themes of pop culture, assimilation, and immigration—Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu’s most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet.
