A Better Book Club

Group Activity: Keeper of Lost Things Jr. Sleuths  For October book club, we are going to do a group activity where we pretend that we have been by Anthony Peardew and his Keeper of Lost Things organization to discover the true story behind several items that were found in an old estate sale.     What you need to bring :  Please bring 1 item or photo that has special meaning to YOU and place it  in  a clear plastic zip lock baggie (no bigger than gallon size).  As some of you in book club are related, the item should be something that NO ONE ELSE in the club would know about.  What will happen : When you arrive for book club, please place your items on the designated table  and during our pre-dinner and before our book club discussion time, everyone will have an opportunity to quickly examine the items on the table and will be asked to write on a Post It Note ONE GUESS they think might be TRUE about each item.    If everyone shows up to book club, each item will have 6 possible guesses

  The Trees by Percival Everett  Summary by Reading Group Choices: Percival Everett’s  The Trees  is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till. The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot. As the bodies pile up, the MBI detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried. In this bold, provocative book, Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, and does so in

1. What were your thoughts about this book as you discovered that there were both the Deal with Devil concept combined  with Aliens, alongside of the main character, Katrina, being revealed as transgender? And what about the donut shop? *** Den of Geek Interview: First, what brought together the two very different speculative fiction tropes—soul-bargaining and stargates—together into the same story for you? How did you create a universe in your head where both things worked without contradicting each other? Ryka Aoki: I respect both science fiction and fantasy, but I had honest intentions and reasons to mix them in  Light from Uncommon Stars . I was a little bit worried about how people would accept this—or not. But I’ve been thrilled with how readers have embraced and accepted this book. I think this book might resonate with readers because we  all  hold seeming contradictions. In the book, Shizuka Satomi mentions how great pieces of music contain such different-sounding sections and