On the second Monday of every month, Interabang Books will lead an in-person meeting centered around a selection from the BFI Film Classics series. Join Interabang to share your opinions on the film, the author's interpretations, and develop a better understanding of some of your new favorite films! Everyone is welcome!

The September selection for the BFI Book Club is Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, an essay by Mark Sanderson.

This August, we'll be reading:

• "Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt" by Orisanmi Burton

• Graphic novel "Big Black: Stand at Attica" by Frank "Big Black" Smith, adapted and illustrated by Jared Reinmuth Améziane

  If you're free on August 31st at 4 p.m., please join us for our group discussion at Pan African Connection whether you've finished the reading or not! (we had attendees who weren't able to do any of the reading but still sat in, listened, and made great contributions to our conversation ♥️)
  
  @deepvellumbooks has "Tip of the Spear" in stock and should have "Big Black: Stand at Attica" in by next week
  @whosebooks is ordering "Tip of the Spear"
  @luckydogbooks_oakcliff has both books available for online order on their page: https://bookshop.org/shop/luckydogbooks (link in our bio!)
  *if you purchase either book from Lucky Dog Books' bookshop.org website above, you can show your receipt at any Lucky Dog Books location for a 15% rebate against a normal purchase with them!
  
  ⭐️We're planning to host an event this Black August for people in the community to come write letters to local incarcerated folks. please keep an eye out for a future post announcing a date and time for our letter writing group!

Let's Gab About Books Together, our LGBTQIA2S+ Book Club has selected the August Book Club Pick.

Join us in reading Hijab Butch Blues. A queer hijabi Muslim immigrant survives her coming-of-age by drawing strength and inspiration from stories in the Quran in this daring, provocative, and radically hopeful memoir. This searingly intimate memoir in essays tells a universal story of courage, trust, and love, celebrating what it means to be a seeker and an architect of one’s own life.

Let's Gab About Books Together is led by our community book club facilitator Liz @redearthbetweenmytoes.

Sign up and get your book using the link in the bio. Are you a library reader, already have the book, or you maybe you prefer audio books (libro.fm to support local), no worries you can still join. Just drop us a message and let us know you are coming.

On the fourth Monday of every month, Bookseller Stuart McCommon will lead an in-person meeting centered around a new or past nonfiction title. Join Interabang Books to share your opinions and glean a deeper or different understanding of books from other readers. Everyone is welcome!

August's book club selection is A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter.

Join us for our first ever Cookbook Book Club! Grab the featured cookbook from Whose Books, select a recipe, and bring your dish to the book club meet up at CocoAndré. We will all come together to break bread in celebration of great food and great people.

The new Plot Twist Book Club for August is here! We are reading The Writing Retreat.

A claustrophobic and “audacious psychological thriller debut” (Publishers Weekly), The Writing Retreat expertly explores the dark side of female relationships, fame, and the desire to have our stories told.

Plot Twist is led by community facilitator Leslie @ohyeahireadthat.

Sign up and get your book using the link in the bio. Are you a library reader, already have the book, or you maybe you prefer audio books (libro.fm to support local), no worries you can still join. Just drop us a message and let us know you are coming.

Join us for a special Book Club with the Author event!

Gabriella Gamez, author of *The Next Best Fling*, will be in-house to discuss her writing journey and her debut romantic comedy novel.

About the book: Two broken hearts decide that the best way to get over their first loves is with a no-strings-attached relationship in this spicy and charming debut romance. Don't miss this fun night of book talk and the opportunity to get your book autographed!

On the second Monday of every month, Interabang Books leads an in-person meeting centered around a selection from the BFI Film Classics series. Join Interabang to share your opinions on the film, the author's interpretations, and develop a better understanding of some of your new favorite films! Everyone is welcome!

Book Club Meeting:

Monday, August 12, 2024 6PM Screening at Texas Theatre: Saturday, July 27 at 5PM This BFI Film Classics study of Tokyo Monogatari/Tokyo Story (1953) reveals the making, meaning and legacy behind Ozu Yasujiro's masterpiece. Ozu's moving family drama is universally acknowledged as one of the most significant Japanese films ever made. In its complex portrait of human motivation and lively sense of social space, it offers a profound and poignant insight into the generational shifts of post-war Japan. Alastair Phillips provides an in-depth analysis of the film and its key locations - the city of Tokyo, the town of Onomichi and the coastal resort of Atami - with a discussion of its representation of Japanese society at a time of great cultural change.

Drawing upon Japanese and English language sources, he situates the film within various contemporary critical and industrial contexts and examines the multiple international dimensions of Tokyo Story's long after-life to understand its enormous contribution to global film culture.

See Monkey and Dog website for which book we'll explore!

Read with us! Bring anything you want to read and connect with likeminded book lovers 📖 📚

We'll spend about 30-40mins reading! After, we'll share a bit about what we've read or learned. 🤓

NOTE: Please be respectful and arrive on time so we can start on time, or cancel so your spot can be given to others 🙏

To support our local coffee shop providing their space to us, purchase of 1 item per person is not required but encouraged ☕️🍰🍛

Who are we?

Don’t Be Strangers is a podcast + community championing authenticity, vulnerability and self awareness. We fight adult loneliness and emotional disconnect 👊🏼 Our mission is to create spaces that foster deep, purposeful conversations and connection by providing thoughtful events for the curious and creative.

Join us as we discuss The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (2020).

BOOK SUMMARY:
A book that explores literature’s power to transport and transform us, The Midnight Library makes poignant fodder for the kind of avid readers that make up a book club. The premise is an intriguing one: imagine you could retrace every fork in the road over the course of your life, and lead any of the lives you might have lived if you’d made different choices. What would you change? Well, reading the books that stock the shelves of the Midnight Library allows you to do just that. A delightful dose of magical realism, The Midnight Library asks questions about regret and fate that won’t fail to get you reminiscing.

A limited number of copies of the book are available in the CV Library in PHA.

If joining virtually, a Teams link will be emailed an hour before the event.

Pizza included.

House Points: 25

On the fourth Monday of every month, Bookseller Stuart McCommon will lead an in-person meeting centered around a new or past nonfiction title. Join Interabang Books to share your opinions and glean a deeper or different understanding of books from other readers.

Everyone is welcome!

July's book club selection is The Infernal Machine by Steven Johnson.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

A sweeping account of the anarchists who terrorized the streets of New York and the detective duo who transformed policing to meet the threat—a tale of fanaticism, forensic science, and dynamite from the bestselling author of The Ghost Map

Steven Johnson’s engrossing account of the epic struggle between the anarchist movement and the emerging surveillance state stretches around the world and between two centuries—from Alfred Nobel’s invention of dynamite and the assassination of Czar Alexander II to New York City in the shadow of World War I.
 
April 1914. The NYPD is still largely the corrupt, low-tech organization of the Tammany Hall era. To the extent the police are stopping crime—as opposed to committing it—their role has been almost entirely defined by physical force: the brawn of the cop on the beat keeping criminals at bay with nightsticks and fists. The solving of crimes is largely outside their purview.
 
The new commissioner, Arthur Woods, is determined to change that, but he cannot anticipate the maelstrom of violence that will soon test his science-based approach to policing. Within weeks of his tenure, New York City is engulfed in the most concentrated terrorism campaign in the nation’s history: a five-year period of relentless bombings, many of them perpetrated by the anarchist movement led by legendary radicals Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman. Coming to Woods’s aide are Inspector Joseph Faurot, a science-first detective who works closely with him in reforming the police force, and Amadeo Polignani, the young Italian undercover detective who infiltrates the notorious Bresci Circle.
 
Johnson reveals a mostly forgotten period of political conviction, scientific discovery, assassination plots, bombings, undercover operations, and innovative sleuthing. The Infernal Machine is the complex pre-history of our current moment, when decentralized anarchist networks have once again taken to the streets to protest law enforcement abuses, right-wing militia groups have attacked government buildings, and surveillance is almost ubiquitous.

July Plot Twist is here. This month our Mystery Book Club is reading The Bones of Our Story One by Carol Goodman and it promises to be full of drama. Grab the book in store or listen on libro.fm. If you already have the book or are a library readers, now worries we invite you to join us.

About the book:

It's been twenty-five years since the shocking disappearance of a female student and the distinguished Creative Writing professor who died while searching for her. The Briarwood College community has never forgotten the double tragedy. Now, the college President is bringing together faculty, donors, and alumni to honor the victims from all those years ago. On a cold December weekend after the fall semester has ended, guests gather on the vacant campus for the commemoratory event. But as a storm descends, people begin to depart, leaving a group of alumni who were the last ones taught by the esteemed professor. Recriminations and old rivalries flare as they recall the writing projects they shared as classmates, including chilling horror stories they each wrote about their greatest fears.

The perfect book club for those who prefer the twilight hours! The book choices will appeal to a broad audience and range from non-fiction to literary fiction. This month's book: Girls of Flight City by Lorraine Heath

The July "Let's Gab About Books Together" book club pick is here. This month we are reading How It Works Out by author Myriam LaCroix. Swing by the shop to pick up a copy of the book. If you are a library reader or you already read the book, please feel free to join us. All are welcomed.

About the book:

When Myriam and Allison fall in love at a show in a run-down punk house, their relationship begins to unfold through a series of hypotheticals. What if they became mothers by finding a baby in an alley? What if the only cure for Myriam's depression was Allison's flesh? What if they were B-list celebrities, famous for writing a book about building healthy lesbian relationships? How much darker--or sexier--would their dynamic be if one were a power-hungry CEO, and the other her lowly employee? From the fantasies of early romance to the slow encroaching of violence that unravels the fantasy, each reality builds to complete a brilliant, painfully funny portrait of love's many promises and perils. Equal parts sexy and profane, unsentimental, and gut-wrenching, How It Works Out is a genre-bending, arresting, uncanny exploration of queerness, love, and our drive for connection, in any and all possible worlds.

Led by co-owner and adult book buyer, Lori Feathers, Interabang Books hosts a monthly book club with an interesting and lively discussion about a fiction title. July's book club selection is Beyond the Door of No Return by David Diop.

Book Details

A Finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature

One of The Atlantic’s 10 Best Books of 2023

A Financial Times Best Book of 2023 | Named a best book of the year by Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews

“A hypnotic, powerful historical novel in which stories nest within one another like dolls . . . It all coheres mesmerizingly.” —Clémence Michallon, The New York Times Book Review

“Stunningly realized . . . Exquisite . . . A spellbinding novel.” —Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King

The thrilling and deeply moving new novel by David Diop, winner of the International Booker Prize.

Paris, 1806. The renowned botanist Michel Adanson lies on his deathbed, the masterwork to which he dedicated his life still incomplete. As he expires, the last word to escape his lips is a woman’s name: Maram.

The key to this mysterious woman’s identity is Adanson’s unpublished memoir of the years he spent in Senegal, concealed in a secret compartment in a chest of drawers. Therein lies a story as fantastical as it is tragic: Maram, it turns out, is none other than the fabled revenant. A young woman of noble birth from the kingdom of Waalo, Maram was sold into slavery but managed to escape from the Island of Gorée—a major embarkation point of the transatlantic slave trade—to a small village hidden in the forest. While on a research expedition in West Africa as a young man, Adanson hears the story of the revenant and becomes obsessed with finding her. Accompanied by his guide, he ventures deep into the Senegalese bush on a journey that reveals not only the savagery of the French colonial occupation but also the unlikely transports of the human heart.

Written with sensitivity and narrative flair, David Diop’s Beyond the Door of No Return is a love story like few others. Drawing on the richness and lyricism of Senegal’s oral traditions, Diop has constructed a historical epic of the highest order.

Second Tuesday Book Club

Tuesday, July 9 at 7pm
Hybrid, meeting in-person at Schimelpfenig Library and on Zoom

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
Available as Print | eBook | eAudiobook

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words.

Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and with the Great War looming, the book reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. Inspired by actual events, author Pip Williams has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell this highly original story.

Interabang Books hosts a monthly book club centered around the BFI Film Classics series that introduces, interprets, and celebrates landmarks of world cinema. July's book club selection is Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon, by John David Rhodes.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) is the most important film in the history of American avant-garde cinema and one of the most significant and influential films in the whole of film history. It was made by Maya Deren and her then husband Alexander Hammid in their bungalow above Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles for a mere $274.90.

The artistic collaboration between Deren and Hammid – which was by all accounts harmonious – finds its distorted and unhappy reflection in the vision of the tormented female protagonist in Meshes of the Afternoon. The film's focus – through a series of intricate and interlocking dream sequences – on female experience and the domestic sphere link it to the Hollywood melodramas of
the period, while its unsettling atmosphere of dread, death and doubles makes it a counter-cinematic cousin to film noir. The film has made its influence felt not only on the entire subsequent history of experimental film and video production, but also on the work of Hollywood auteurs. It is a touchstone of women's film-making, of modernist cinema and of modern art.

John David Rhodes traces the film's history back into the lives of Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, but in particular that of Deren. He places special significance on the film as a culmination of Deren's abiding interest in modernism and her intense engagement in socialist politics. Rhodes argues that while the film remains a powerful point of reference for the feminist film-makers and experimentalists who have claimed it as their birthright, it also offers itself as an example of political art in the broadest terms. In Rhodes's original study, Meshes of the Afternoon emerges as a film that is not only artistically ingenious, but also rich in historical significance and political potential.

Monday, July 1 at 3pm
Hybrid, meeting in-person at Haggard Library and on Zoom

Read and discuss great books you’ve read. Check out past recap book lists here on the blog.

Join us for the inaugural meeting of the Noname Book Club DFW Chapter!

The Noname Book Club connects community members both inside and outside carceral facilities with radical books. Each month, we uplift two books written by Black, indigenous, and other people of color.

JUNE PICK: The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi

Book Details

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history

In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective.

Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process.

Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.

Follow Noname Book Club DFW on Instagram to keep up with each month's book picks. https://www.instagram.com/nonamebookclubdfw/

We're thrilled to announce that author Marcela Fuentes will be joining us for our June Book Club to discuss her debut novel, "Malas". This is a book club you won't want to miss!

This month our romance book club is reading indie author Ofelia Martinez’s Hiding in Smoke. Ofelia Martinez writes romance with Latinas on top. This second chance high-steam, contemporary rock star romance contains adult content. Get the book in store or on our website to join. If you already have a copy or if you are a library reader please feel free to join us, just drop us a note to let us know you are coming.

Interabang's Nonfiction Club is a monthly book club centered around a new or past nonfiction title. June's selection is Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

ABOUT THE BOOK

From the New York Times bestselling author of World of Wonders, a lyrical book of short essays about food, offering a banquet of tastes, smells, memories, associations, and marvelous curiosities from nature

In Bite by Bite, poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil explores the way food and drink evoke our associations and remembrances—a subtext or layering, a flavor tinged with joy, shame, exuberance, grief, desire, or nostalgia.

Nezhukumatathil restores our astonishment and wonder about food through her encounters with a range of foods and food traditions. From shave ice to lumpia, mangoes to pecans, rambutan to vanilla, she investigates how food marks our experiences and identities and explores the boundaries between heritage and memory.

Bite by Bite offers a rich and textured kaleidoscope of vignettes and visions into the world of food and nature, drawn together by intimate and humorous personal reflections, with Fumi Nakamura’s gorgeous imagery and illustration.

Join us for our Plot Twist Mystery Book Club for the month of June led by Leslie Chatman!

Interabang Books hosts a monthly book club centered around a selection from the BFI Film Classics series, which aims to introduce, interpret, and celebrate landmarks of world cinema. June's book club selection is a critical look at The Wachowskis' The Matrix, by Joshua Clover.

BOOK

The Matrix (1999), directed by the Wachowski sisters and produced by Joel Silver, was a true end-of-the-millennium movie, a statement of the American zeitgeist, and, as the original film in a blockbusting franchise, a prognosis for the future of big-budget Hollywood film-making.

Starring Keanu Reeves as Neo, a computer programmer transformed into a messianic freedom fighter, The Matrix blends science fiction with conspiracy thriller conventions and outlandish martial arts created with groundbreaking digital techniques. A box-office triumph, the film was no populist confection: its blatant allusions to highbrow contemporary philosophy added to its appeal as a mystery to be decoded.

In this compelling study, Joshua Clover undertakes the task of decoding the film. Examining The Matrix's digital effects and how they were achieved, he shows how the film represents a melding of cinema and video games (the greatest commercial threat to have faced Hollywood since the advent of television) and achieves a hybrid kind of immersive entertainment. He also unpacks the movie's references to philosophy, showing how The Matrix ultimately expresses the crisis American culture faced at the end of the 1990s.

Join us for our community pride book club. Out first read is "Canto Contigo" and it includes a special evening with the author Jonny Garza Villa Book Club Meet Up Friday, June 7th 6PM @ Whose Books Meet the author 7PM

Led by co-owner and adult book buyer, Lori Feathers, Interabang Books hosts a monthly book club with an interesting and lively discussion about a fiction or non-fiction title each month. June's book club selection is James by Percival Everett.

Welcome to the next chapter of our Social Book Club at DFW Young & Social! This session, we dive into the captivating world of "Exhalation" by Ted Chiang, an anthology of short stories that explore the boundaries of technology, humanity, and the universe itself.
In "Exhalation," Chiang presents thought-provoking narratives that challenge our perceptions of existence and identity. Each story is a meticulously crafted exploration of philosophical questions, wrapped in the engaging format of science fiction. Join us as we discuss these compelling tales, unraveling themes of free will, memory, and the essence of change.
Schedule:

• 7:00 to 7:15 PM - Arrive, socialize, and get comfortable.

• 7:15 to 7:30 PM - Quick recap of our last discussion.

• 7:30 to 8:30 PM - Deep dive into conversation over the stories “Darcey’s Patent Automatic Nanny”, “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling”, and “The Great Silence”.

RSVP on MeetUp or on our official Membership Management System!

The DFW Young & Social Book Club is a haven for book enthusiasts of all sorts, always open for new members to jump in. No matter where we are in the book, you're welcome to join and add your voice to our lively discussions. Whether you're turning the first page or eagerly awaiting the next chapter, come and be part of a group that celebrates the wonder of reading. Bring your thoughts and let's revel in the shared experience of a good book.

May 26th @bookclubwithhaewon will be hosting a book swap Apprentice Oak Cliff. Bring a book, swap a book ! Any left over books can be donated to Apprentice.