An Intro To Book Club: ‘The Testaments’

Nerdette

Welcome to the Nerdette Book Club! It’s just like a normal book club but in podcast form, and you provide your own booze.

In this episode, we're taking a look back at Margaret Atwood's 1985 dystopian novel 'The Handmaid's Tale' before sending you out to read Atwood's brand new sequel, 'The Testaments.'

What are the rules of a book club podcast, you ask? Well, after this 'Handmaid’s Tale' refresher, we're all going to read 'The Testaments' together over the next three weeks — and talk about what’s happening, why a sequel to a 35 year old book is relevant today and whether the bastards really will get us down.

And we’ll do it in three chunks. Here are your assignments:

• By Friday Sept. 20, read The Testaments through Chapter 23 (pages 1-133)

• By Friday Sept. 27, read The Testaments through Chapter 46 (pages 134-282)

• By Friday Oct. 4, finish The Testaments (pages 283-end!)

• Listen to this podcast each of those Fridays!

Joining Nerdette’s Greta Johnsen is the wonderful Jill Hopkins, host of the Morning Amp on WBEZ’s sister station Vocalo, and the delightful Heather Havrilesky, who writes the Ask Polly advice column for New York Magazine. And hey, we want your crazy interpretations too! Share your thoughts with us by recording your voice with your smartyphone. (Please be succinct!) Then email the audio file to [e-mail], preferably by Tuesday evenings. You may hear yourself in an episode!

And when you need to tweet or Instagram something really important about the club, just use #NerdetteBookClub on the internets, and so will we.

OK let’s do this!