2024 – The last BSFG year! Marthe’s contract at Bonn is over! 😦
LAST BSFG READ December 13, 5pm: “Going Postal” by Terry Pratchett, 4pm: quiet reading. After 6pm: SECRET SANTA!!!
November 19, 5pm (Seminarraum 7): “The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle” by Stuart Turton (chosen by BSFG members), 4pm some quiet reading
October 25, 5pm (2.025): “Ocean’s Godori” by Elaine U. Cho 4pm: Quiet reading
September 26: “Sacred and Terrible Air” by Robert Kurvitz (chosen by BSFG members) (4pm: Quiet reading (anything!), 5pm: meeting)
August 27: “Klara and the Sun” by Kazuo Ishiguro (4pm: Quiet reading (anything!), 5pm: meeting)
July 22: “Starter Villain” by John Scalzi (4pm: Quiet reading (anything!), 5pm: meeting)
June 24: “Prophet Song” by Paul Lynch (4pm: Quiet reading (anything!), 5pm: meeting)
May 29: “Deep Wheel Orcadia” by Harry Josephine Giles
April 23 “The Ten Percent Thief” by Lavanya Lakshminarayan (chosen by BSFG members)
March 15: “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel
February 22: “The Stardust Thief” by Chelsea Abdullah (chosen by BSFG members)
January 22: “Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief” by Rick Riordan
2023
December: “Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries” by Heather Fawcett (chosen by BSFG members)
November: “The Secret History” by Donna Tart
October 17: “The Three-Body Problem” by Liu Cixin (chosen by BSFG members)
September 5: “Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley
August: read a previous BSFG read!
July 24: “The Goblin Emperor” by Katherine Addison
April 27: “Legends & Lattes” by Travis Baldree
March 28, 5pm: “Borne” by Jeff VanderMeer
February 23, 5pm, Room B: “Babel” by R.F. Kuang
2022
December 14, 5pm, Room 1.007 (!!!) (Celtic Department): Erin Morgenstein “The Night Circus”
November 16, 5 pm, Room 1.006 (Celtic Department!!!): P. Djèlí Clark “A Master of Djinn”
October 18, pm, 5pm, Room 1.006 (Celtic Department!!!): Anne Rice “Interview with the Vampire” + Movie (1994) at 6pm!
September 13, 5pm (online): Read a previous BSFG read!
August 16, 5pm: J.R.R. Tolkien (IN PERSON!!!): “The Hobbit”; August will our Tolkien month in preparation for the release of the new series in September. Check out the audiobook of “The Hobbit” read by Andy Serkis!
July 20, 5pm: Susanna Clarke: “Piranesi”; weird weird weird, statues, weird, I don’t want to spoiler you!
June 15, 5pm: Douglas Adams: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”: You wanted classics, you’re getting classics. Great fun! Why not try out the Audioversion read by Stephen Fry?
May 31, 5pm (CHANGED DATE!): Yoon Ha Lee: “Phoenix Extravagant”: queer, artsy, dystopian?
April 27, 5pm: H.G. Wells “The War of the Worlds” + “The Time Machine”: Let’s read some books by the daddy of scifi!
March 22, 5pm: Darcy Little Badger “Elatsoe” — Lipan Apache YA fantasy / paranormal YA with an aro/ace protagonist and a cute doggo as sidekick!
February 24, 2022, 4pm: Michelle Paver “Dark Matter” — Arctic horror? A ghost story? Queer?
January 20, 4pm: Brandon Sanderson “The Emperor’s Soul” — can you fake a soul?
2021
December 9, 4pm: T. Kingfisher “The Raven and the Reindeer” — Andersen fairy tale retelling but make it queer! Talking Ravens! Reindeers!
November 25, 4pm: Neil Gaiman “Sandman” — Listen to the audiobook! If you like, you can also check out the comic(s)
October 28, 4pm: Silvia Moreno-Garcia “Mexican Gothic”, a young woman investigating if her cousin’s husband is really trying to murder her cousin, Gothic horror beware!
24.9.21, 4pm: Robert Holdstock “Mythago Wood”, Celtic fantasy / myth, archetypes in a mysterious forest
31.8.21, 4pm: Yevgeny Zamyatin “We”, intelligent and very old dystopia that Orwell and Huxley copied a lot from!
15.7.21 (Thur), 4pm: Leigh Bardugo “Six of Crows”, a motley crew, high stakes, an ambitious heist, YA fantasy at its finest!
10.6.21 (Thur), 4pm: Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett “Good Omens”, the end of the world is nigh, the antichrist has risen, can a Queen loving demon and a wayward angel stop it?
11.5.21 (Tue), 4pm: Madeline Miller “Song of Achilles”, Greek mythology, retelling, gay af, beautiful prose, prepare to have your heart broken!
13.4.21 (Tue), 4pm: Ann Leckie “Ancillary Justice”, sci-fi that will mess with your mind and you will second guess why you try to find gender everywhere. A complex book, but reading! Date/time will be announced soon, doodle is coming in March.
04.03.21: Octavia E. Butler “Kindred”, a Black woman in the 70s travels through time and meets her slave owning ancestor, masterpiece, highly influential, TW/CW: slavery, violence, racism. 4pm Discord.
04.02.21: TJ Klune “The House in the Cerulean Sea”, Douglas Adams + Umbrella Academy + Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children + 1984, queer, wholesome, funny! 3pm (!!), Discord
07.01.21: C. L. Polk “The Midnight Bargain” — Jane Austen meets romance meets fantasy meets feminism! 4pm, via Discord!
2020
03.12.20: Neil Gaiman “Stardust” — funny, feminist fairy tale! 4pm, Discord. + 8pm “Stardust” movie night
03.11.20: Frank Herbert “Dune” — highly influential sci-fi, 2020 movie was delayed to 2021, 4pm Discord; 8pm “Dune” (1984)
22.10.20 Reread previous reads! Discord, 4pm or write a little review in one of the subchannels
03.09.20 Mary Robinette Kowal “The Calculating Stars” – Alternate History, Sci-fi set in 1952, dystopia?, 4pm Discord, 8pm movie night with “Hidden Figures”
13.08.20 NK Jemisin “The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms” – Enslaved Gods, a heterogenous Empire, Othering. 4pm Discord
14.07.20 Genevieve Cogman “The Invisible Library” – various parallel universes more or less chaos-infested, book heists, dragons, funny! 4pm, via Discord
11.06.20 Becky Chambers “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” – sci-fi, humanistic, funny, queer, and wholesome! 4pm, via Discord!
07.05.20 Dianna Wynne Jones “Howl’s Moving Castle” – witches, old crones, flamboyant metrosexual wizards and a lot of cleaning! 4pm, VIA DISCORD. Netflix watch party of the movie at 8pm 🙂
09.4.20 Natasha Pulley “The Watchmaker of Filigree Street” – magical realism, romance, Victorian London, a cute mechanical octopus named Katsu, a Japanese watchmaker. 4pm, VIA DISCORD.
24.03.20 Seanan McGuire “Every Heart a Doorway” (173 pages) & Nnedi Okorafor “Binti” (96 pages) & Martha Wells “All Systems Red” (144 pages) – Novella edition – Representation is easy? — You can also decide only to read one or two of the novellas, 4-6pm, VIA DISCORD.
04.02.20 Philip K Dick “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” – 4-8pm, Room A + MOVIE NIGHT (I will bring popcorn)/// Talk about Katherine Arden’s “The Bear and the Nightingale”
09.01.20 Naomi Novik “Uprooted” – Fairy tale-ish fantasy standalone novel inspired by Slavic / Russian mythology, 4-6pm, Room D /// Talk about Jay Kristoff, 6pm FIELD TRIP to “The Art of Books” (Bonner Talweg)
2019
06.12.19 V.E. Schwab “A Darker Shade of Magic” – 18th century, four Londons, magic, 4-6 pm, Room A (!) & UGLY SWEATER DAY /// Talk about Harry Potter, Glühwein!
07.11.19 Hank Green “An Absoluteley Remarkable Thing” – social media, is it sci-fi???, 4-6 pm, Room B /// Talk about Maggie Stiefvater & her “Raven Cycle”
09.10.19 Ursula Le Guin “The Lathe of Heaven” – Sci-Fi where a man can change the world in his dreams, 4-6pm, Room E /// Talk about Philip Pullman
04.09.19 Kirsty Logan “The Gloaming” + Bridget Collins “The Binding” – Queer Summer Reads, 6-8 pm + Pub, Room E
01.07.19 Rebecca Roanhorse “Trail of Lightning” – Indigenous urban fantasy, 4-6 pm, Room 1.006 (Celtic Department) /// Talk about Juliet Marillier / Stephanie Garber
17.06.19 Meg Elison “Book of the Unnamed Midwife” – Feminist / Queer dystopia, 4-6pm, Room A as we will skype with the author!
21.05.19 Terry Pratchett “The Wee Free Men” – Comic fantasy with Witches and Wee Scotsmen, 4-6 pm, Room 1.006 (Celtic Department) /// Talk about Leigh Bardugo’s “Grishaverse”
30.04.19 Roshani Chokshi “The Gilded Wolves” – Poco, fin-de-siècle YA fantasy, 4-6pm, Room 1.006 (Celtic Department) /// Talk about Brandon Sanderson
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