Join us and our host Adam for our monthly discussion on contemporary fiction! This club focuses on the literary and the relevant, reading novels of interest—whether due to critical praise or current context--which ask penetrating questions about the state of our world. Our selections will always include diverse voices and emphasize active discussion around contemporary society, culture, and history. Next up is George Saunders' A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

About A Swim in a Pond in the Rain:

In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.