CLS Book Club // “Playground” by Richard Powers

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https://charlestonlibrarysociety.org/event/cls-book-club-playground-by-richard-powers/

CLS Book Club— "Playground" by Richard Powers

CLS Book Club is FREE, in-person, and open to the public—and also member-researched and led through thoughtfully curated discussion. Whether you’ve finished the book, are thinking about starting it, or couldn’t make it past the halfway point, please join us.

RSVP is required via the form below so that we can plan for seating.

About Book Club

Offered a few times a year, the CLS Book Club seeks to explore various topics, authors, and diversity within its book selections. Under this objective, Book Club also offers space for conversation, perspectives, and discourse to aptly deliver a synopsis on the panorama of characters and and narratives present in Playground. This Book Club will presented and presided over by a dynamic panel consisting of Diana Hambleton, Clare Meyer, Tina Wardrop and Susan Porter. After their exploration of the book, the floor will open to questions and discussion.

About the Book

Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.

They meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, whose deposits of phosphorus once helped to feed the world. Now the tiny atoll has been chosen for humanity’s next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But first, the island’s residents must vote to green light the project or turn the seasteaders away.

Set in the world’s largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.

Please note that the authors of our selections ARE NOT in attendance.

For a copy of the book, check out our catalog here, or shop local at Buxton Books.