Book Club Digest #6

"What is OUR unique voice? How do we find it? What is it for? Does it matter if we never speak? If we stop speaking? Does it matter if we go silent? Does it matter if we ALL go silent?" In this meeting, champion Tim Smith shared his insights into the beloved American children's classic A Wrinkle in Time, which explores themes of individuality, conformity, religion, good and evil, and what it means to be a "different" or "gifted" child. 

 A few references that came up in the course of our discussion:

What is a "tesseract"? This is actually a real concept in geometry, a term for a four-dimensional cube. Here are some artists' imaginings of a tesseract (in 2 dimensions, of course):

From scienceabc.com

Logo of the British band “Tesseract”

On the planet Uriel (named for an angel in Christian mythology, coincidentally), the three "witches" Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which appear as divine creatures that seem to be a cross between a centaur and a pegasus, both creatures out of Greek myths:

Centaur

Pegasus

It was observed that the main character of children's books are often kids who feel "different," who don't "fit in." One of our members mentioned the Chinese children's classic “Pipilu and the Taming of the Rabbit”《皮皮鲁驯兔记》 by Zheng Yuanjie 郑渊洁, in which a naughty child discovers that he is much better liked if he wears a magical rabbit's suit:

From the movie adaptation of “Pipilu and the Taming of the Rabbit”

Liu Cixin's short story “The Rural Teacher” 《乡村教师》 was recommended. You can read it in Chinese here or on the app WeChat Read 微信读书. 

Also, The Wandering Earth, based on Liu Cixin's novel of the same name, was released last week. This is the first major Chinese sci fi blockbuster and as such is a cultural landmark. You can read about in here, in Sixth Tone.