The Ruby is excited to host the third meeting of its Graphic Lit Book Club! Whether you’re a graphic novel and graphic memoir enthusiast, you’ve always hoped to dive into the world of long-form graphic narratives, or you’re just looking for your next great read, we’re thrilled to have a space for discussing graphic literature in a cozy book club setting.
Co-hosted by Rubies Zareen Choudhury and Rebecca Rubenstein, Graphic Lit Book Club will meet from 6:00 - 7:30 pm, with light snacks and tea provided.
For our February gathering, we’ll be reading and chatting about The Reddest Rose: Romantic Love from Ancient Greeks to Reality TV by Liv Strömquist, a "collection of humorous comics essays about how historical and societal shifts have altered — and perhaps destroyed — 'romantic love.'"
Read more about the book below, and snag your copy from a local comic book shop, an independent bookstore, or even your local library. You can also hop into the #graphic-lit-book-club channel on The Ruby Discord to see if anyone has a copy to lend out. For anyone unable to attend (or who wants to talk about all things graphic lit in between meetings), we’ll be keeping the conversation flowing on Discord.
This is a gathering for Ruby members with the occasional member-invited guest
About The Reddest Rose (from Fantagraphics):
"The deceptively simple through-line for Swedish media personality and activist Liv Strömquist's The Reddest Rose is the question: Why does Leonardo DiCaprio date an endless string of 20-something models? Her answer — in the form of this collection of well-researched, humorous comics essays — tracks how philosophers and artists, from the Ancient Greeks to Beyoncé, conceptualized romantic love. Strömquist's signature characters, drawn in a flat, blocky style, ask each other questions and offer sharp commentary as they guide readers throughout history and the change in societies' values, from showing love/loving to getting love/being loved. (Poet Hilda "H.D." Doolittle — who was so love-stricken by a man taking off his glasses that she believed they viewed dolphins together in another dimension — lends the book its title.) Lord Byron, Socrates, Byung-Chul Han, Ezra Pound, Slavoj Žižek, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Ariadne, and many others have cameos. For the first time in English, in The Reddest Rose, Strömquist wonders: in a rationalist, consumerist world, can romantic love survive?"
*This is an intimate gathering of Ruby members