I'd also like to know the information about next meeting. Btw, is this the only place to keep people posted about the book club?

Next meeting, Wednesday, 11 October. We meet at THE PARK restaurant, 6:30 pm.

We also have a WeChat group, Kunming Book Club. You can download a epub file our next book.

We also post an announcement in GoKunming.com 's events section.

Next book: Lovell' s History of the Opium War

Thank you very much for the info! I will try to make myself there next Wednesday.

Next book club meeting: Wednesday 1 November, 1830,THE PARK. The book is THE DINNER.

My take:
THE DINNER, by Herman Koch, begins a bit slowly but then progresses to a wonderful sardonic portrayal of the behaviour of the type of people who have money, reputation, fine clothes, perhaps a 'successful' political career, and a rather stupid narcissism, who maintain a deeply false image of themselves by walking into expensive restaurants and having waiters and restaurant managers grovel before them. I read about 50 pages and found myself laughing more and more at the very fine observations of behavior, then I took a nap, looking forward to the mounting ridiculousness of these clowns when I woke up. Then, when I woke up, I found that the nature of the story changed abruptly to very dark considerations of urban brutality and hypocrisy, and revelations about the, literally insane, violent characters, who are not at all what I had thought they were - with continuing spurts of absurd, dark, violent humor. I did nothing that day but read this fine novel, beginning to end - I found it as much of a page-turner as any good detective story, except that it was brilliant, original and a really significant contribution to anyone interested in modern urban life and the hollow pretensions and dangers of the stupidly rich and famous.
Example: psychotic man beating school principal to a pulp, looks up to find he is being watched by many students, spots his son, waves and smiles, without stopping.
Herman Koch is a very fine, observant, intelligent writer.

The next book club meeting will be on Wednesday, November 15, 18:30, at The Park. The book will be SEX AT DAWN, by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, available (VPN needed) from docs.google.com (downloadable) and, apparently, elsewhere.
The Kunming Book Club has a wechat group in which many regular attendees participate, but is open to all. Readings, locations and times of meets are chosen by attendees. New participants welcome.

JT: saw your post and decided to check out the book (only about 20% through the text, people go to restaurants and bars to socialize....20% food, 80% socialize....so putting so much emphasis on the ambience and the food seems a strange way to relate to the situation.

Behaviour of waiters about food, appreciation or lack of it for what they are doing, character of one particular character evident in description of his gestures etc., role he plays in society, what an asshole he is, over all nature of the whole restaurant/scene in relation to how society is organized and the falsity of roles played - seems to me it is wonderfully evocative and very funny. But if you don't see it now, wait till you read more, things change quite a lot, especially concerning the very observant observer of all of this, he's not who you think he is. The humor stays but turns black, and much is revealed. Imagine an honest kid like Holden Caulfield discovering this, no wonder he was going nuts.

Re THE DINNER, I kept hoping someone from NAKED LUNCH wd join them. Or maybe the crew of the Fjord Elk....

We ought to tead MOBY DICK some time.

Alien, Taejon, evetyone, you can get SEX AT DAWN from the torrent site Demonoid.pw

. I will post a version to the WeChat group Kunming Book Club tonight or tomorrow.