Novel hosts the second virtual edition of its monthly A Novel Book Club this Wednesday, April 15th, to get together (on Zoom) and discuss John Le Carré’s 1963 novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, about a British agent being sent to East Germany as a “faux defector” to trap a powerful East German intelligence officer.
Last month, the book club group met on Zoom for the first time. Kat Leache, a social media marketing employee for Novel who also serves as the monthly book club’s leader, was happy with the turnout. “It was really fun,” she says. “It was in that first week of everyone realizing that life was not going to be normal for a while. And so it was kind of an on-the-fly effort.”
The book they discussed was Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, which centers around a devastating flu pandemic that swept up civilization as we know it.
“The selection was chosen in January,” says Leache. “When I chose that in January for the March meeting, I didn’t know that coronavirus would be the thing that it is. So that made it an interesting meeting on a couple of levels, not only because we’re virtual, but because of the contents of the book.
“The reason I chose Station Eleven was because I selfishly wanted to force myself to reread it because it’s one of my favorites and because that author had a book coming out the week after our meeting. It was all so strangely coincidental.”
For more information on joining Novel’s book club discussions, visit novelmemphis.com or follow them on social media. This month’s club meets on Zoom on Wednesday, April 15th, 7-8:15 p.m., free. Book club members can get 10 percent off the price of this month’s book, and Novel can ship it to you or you can pick it up curbside.