For January’s Book Club meeting we’ll be discussing Divergent by Veronica Roth. In a dystopian version of Chicago, at age 16 everyone takes mandatory tests to determine their fate and are thus divided into five factions: Abnegation, meant to uphold selflessness; Amity, for the peaceful; Candor, for the honest; Dauntless, for the brave; and Erudite, for the intelligent. Some tests, however, come back indeterminate—or, as they call it, Divergent. Being Divergent is dangerous, and we follow Beatrice Prior in how this changes her life.

Set to become a movie in spring 2014, Divergent also won Favorite book of 2011 in 2011′s Goodreads Choice Awards.

What we discussed at the last Book Club meeting:

For December’s Book Club meeting we discussed Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Ancillary Justice is a tale of war crimes with stunning astropolitical scope. It’s a military thriller, a mystery, and a revenge story about sentient starships and hive minds.

We found Ancillary Justice to be complex in all the right ways, though hard to encapsulate in a back cover description. The setting was wonderfully detailed and just alien enough, yet still sensible and logical, with some great concepts including languages that did and didn’t consider gender and an AI that often misgenders people it meets. When starships inhabit human bodies in an annexation, they become near-omnipresent. But not always enough so.

When: Monday, January 13th, 2013 — 6:30pm-7:30pm
Where: Filter 1373-75 N Milwaukee Ave Chicago, IL Cost: Free