[nesfa-reading-group] Potential reading choices for February 2025

Thu Oct 3 19:27:01 EDT 2024

Just a note about Hoopla - this is a pay as you go per item database for the subscribing library and they usually restrict borrowing to town residents only (Needham has a subscription and this is what we do).

— Gay Ellen
Sent from my iPad

> On Oct 3, 2024, at 5:37 PM, Wesley Brodsky <wesbrodsky at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hello Everybody;
> "The Futurological Congress" is
> Listed in Old Colony Library Network as
> Digital Format: HOOPLA E BOOK
> Vendor: hoopla
> Available: Unlimited
> I suppose the download is valid for a limited duration
> -Wes
> ________________________________________
> From: reading-group <reading-group-bounces at lists.nesfa.org> on behalf of Melody Friedenthal <friedenthalmelody at gmail.com>
> Sent: Thursday, October 3, 2024 1:24 PM
> To: NESFA Reading Group
> Subject: Re: [nesfa-reading-group] Potential reading choices for February 2025
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Although I have rarely been involved with your group, I am on the emailing list and noticed you've been talking about Lem's Futurological Congress.  So, just a note to say a really weird movie was made which was  simply called The Congress. Starring actress Robin Wright, who plays an actress named Robin Wright. Part live action and part animated.
> 
> Regards,
> Melody Friedenthal
> 
> On Thu, Oct 3, 2024 at 12:30 PM Gay Ellen Dennett <gayellendennett at gmail.com<mailto:gayellendennett at gmail.com>> wrote:
> The last two are widely available in different formats in the Minuteman Network (and can be gotten via ILL), the Lem book will be harder to find, as I'm only seeing 3 copies total in Minuteman, which probably means that the other Networks may have the same issue.
> 
> --Gay Ellen (lurking while on the Reference Desk, and counting this as a question😉)
> 
> On Thu, Oct 3, 2024 at 11:56 AM Gloria Lucia Albasi <trebbiana61 at gmail.com<mailto:trebbiana61 at gmail.com>> wrote:
> Here are my three suggestions for our group to vote on. Dave Grubbs has assured me that these haven’t been read as group choices. Yet.
> 
> Thank you,
> Gloria
> 
> 
> (1) The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem
> 
> “The Futurological Congress is a 1971 black humour science fiction novel by Polish author Stanisław Lem. It details the exploits of the hero of a number of his stories, Ijon Tichy, as he visits the Eighth World Futurological Congress at a Hilton Hotel in Costa Rica. The book is Lem's take on the science fictional trope of an apparently Utopian future that turns out to be an illusion.
> 
> The book opens at the eponymous congress. A riot breaks out, and the hero, Ijon Tichy, is hit by various psychoactive drugs that were put into the drinking water supply lines by the government to pacify the riots. Ijon and a few others escape to the safety of a sewer beneath the Hilton where the congress was being held, and in the sewer he goes through a series of hallucinations and false awakenings, which cause him to be confused about whether or not what's happening around him is real. Finally, he believes that he falls asleep and wakes up many years later. The main part of the book follows Ijon's adventures in the future world — a world where everyone takes hallucinogenic drugs, and hallucinations have replaced reality.”
> 
> — Wikipedia
> 
> 
> (2) Infomocracy by Malka Older
> 
> “It's been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global micro-democracy. The corporate coalition party Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything's on the line.  With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have so much to gain?”
> 
> — Google Books
> 
> 
> (3) Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
> 
> “Pattern Recognition is a novel by science fiction writer William Gibson published in 2003. Set in August and September 2002, the story follows Cayce Pollard, a 32-year-old marketing consultant who has a psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols. The action takes place in London, Tokyo, and Moscow as Cayce judges the effectiveness of a proposed corporate symbol and is hired to seek the creators of film clips anonymously posted to the internet.
> 
> The novel's central theme involves the examination of the human desire to detect patterns or meaning and the risks of finding patterns in meaningless data. Other themes include methods of interpretation of history, cultural familiarity with brand names, and tensions between art and commercialization. The September 11, 2001 attacks are used as a motif representing the transition to the new century. Critics identify influences in Pattern Recognition from Thomas Pynchon's postmodern detective story The Crying of Lot 49.”
> 
> — Wikipedia
> 
> 
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