Hi, hello everyone! We’re super excited to bring you our discussion questions for The Tea Dragon Society! We adored reading these books this month, and we cannot wait to get discussing. Without anything further, let’s get into it!
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Happy September! We hope that you’re all doing well and that the month is treating you well so far. We’re really excited to announce that our October TeaTimeReads pick will be R.F. Kuang’s Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution — we know that this is a highly anticipated read for many, so we’re really looking forward to reading it with everyone!
Here is the full summary for Babel:
Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.
1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation — also known as Babel.
Babel is the world’s center of translation and, more importantly, of silver-working: the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation through enchanted silver bars, to magical effect. Silver-working has made the British Empire unparalleled in power, and Babel’s research in foreign languages serves the Empire’s quest to colonize everything it encounters.
Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, is a fairytale for Robin; a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge serves power, and for Robin, a Chinese boy raised in Britain, serving Babel inevitably means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to sabotaging the silver-working that supports imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide: Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence? What is he willing to sacrifice to bring Babel down?
Babel — a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal response to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell — grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of translation as a tool of empire.
Links for Babel: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound
We’ll be doing a loose reading schedule this month, but of course, feel free to read at your own pace.
Content Warnings for Babel: “period typical” racism, c slur, anti-asian rhetoric, antiblackness, war, gun violence, blood, murder, child abuse/neglect, slavery, colonization, gore, death of a parent, classism, sexism, suicide ideation, xenophobia, grief, hate crime, murder
As always, we hope that you’ll join us and we’re looking forward to discussion our September pick, The Tea Dragon Society with you all later this month
August really has slipped away into a moment in time, hasn’t it? Well, as it’s the end of the month you know what’s next — our monthly wrap up! Grab a cup of tea and see what we read and loved this month and what we’re looking forward to in September!
A quick reminder that Mary is on an indefinite hiatus, and you can catch up with her on @bookswithmary!
This month Caitlyn read 16 books, and Cossette read 31 books.
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Hello friends! We can’t believe that the month of August is almost over, time is flying. We have absolutely loved reading PORTRAIT OF A THIEF with everyone, and we’re super excited to share our discussion questions and thoughts with you!
A quick reminder that Mary is on an indefinite hiatus, and you can catch up with her on @bookswithmary!
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Hi friends! We’re so excited to announce that for our September TeaTimeReads pick, we’ll be reading THE TEA DRAGON SOCIETY by Kay O’Niell! With graphic novels being on the shorter side, we decided to read all three books in the series. We can’t wait to read and discuss with you!
Here is the full summary for The Tea Dragon Society:
From the award-winning author of Princess Princess Ever After comes The Tea Dragon Society, a charming all-ages book that follows the story of Greta, a blacksmith apprentice, and the people she meets as she becomes entwined in the enchanting world of tea dragons.
After discovering a lost tea dragon in the marketplace, Greta learns about the dying art form of tea dragon care-taking from the kind tea shop owners, Hesekiel and Erik. As she befriends them and their shy ward, Minette, Greta sees how the craft enriches their lives—and eventually her own.
Here is the full summary for The Tea Dragon Festival:
Rinn has grown up with the Tea Dragons that inhabit their village, but stumbling across a real dragon turns out to be a different matter entirely! Aedhan is a young dragon who was appointed to protect the village but fell asleep in the forest eighty years ago. With the aid of Rinn’s adventuring uncle Erik and his partner Hesekiel, they investigate the mystery of his enchanted sleep, but Rinn’s real challenge is to help Aedhan come to terms with feeling that he cannot get back the time he has lost.
Here is the full summary for The Tea Dragon Tapestry:
Join Greta and Minette once more for the heartwarming conclusion of the award-winning Tea Dragon series!
Over a year since being entrusted with Ginseng’s care, Greta still can’t chase away the cloud of mourning that hangs over the timid Tea Dragon. As she struggles to create something spectacular enough to impress a master blacksmith in search of an apprentice, she questions the true meaning of crafting, and the true meaning of caring for someone in grief. Meanwhile, Minette receives a surprise package from the monastery where she was once training to be a prophetess. Thrown into confusion about her path in life, the shy and reserved Minette finds that the more she opens her heart to others, the more clearly she can see what was always inside.
Told with the same care and charm as the previous installments of the Tea Dragon series, The Tea Dragon Tapestry welcomes old friends and new into a heartfelt story of purpose, love, and growth.
Links for The Tea Dragon Society: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound
Links for The Tea Dragon Festival: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound
Links for The Tea Dragon Tapestry: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound
We’ll be doing a loose reading schedule this month, but of course, feel free to read at your own pace.
Content Warnings for The Tea Dragon Society Series: blood, violence, abandonment, injury/injury detail, animal cruelty, animal death, confinement, death, memory loss
We hope that you have a lovely rest of the month and we look forward to reading THE TEA DRAGON SOCIETY in September!
Another month has come and gone, which means it’s time for another wrap up post! July was a pretty busy month for all of us but we’re excited to share what we read in July!
A quick reminder that Mary is on an indefinite hiatus, and you can catch up with her on @bookswithmary!
This month Caitlyn read 27 books, and Cossette read 25 books.
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Hi, hello everyone! Welcome back to another discussion question post! This month our book was The Heartbreak Bakery by A.R. Capetta, and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. We loved discussing this book, and if you’re interested in what we had to say, keep reading!
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Hi friends, we hope that you’re having a wonderful July so far and that you’re enjoying The Heartbreak Bakery! We’re thrilled to announce that our TeaTimeReads August pick is Grace D. Li’s debut novel PORTRAIT OF A THIEF!
Here is the full summary for Portrait of a Thief:
Ocean’s Eleven meets The Farewell in Portrait of a Thief, a lush, lyrical heist novel inspired by the true story of Chinese art vanishing from Western museums; about diaspora, the colonization of art, and the complexity of the Chinese American identity.
History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now.
Will Chen plans to steal them back.
A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents’ American Dream. But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible—and illegal—job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago.
His crew is every heist archetype one can imagine—or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down.
Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars—and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they’ve dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted attempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.
Equal parts beautiful, thoughtful, and thrilling, Portrait of a Thief is a cultural heist and an examination of Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary critique of the lingering effects of colonialism.
Links for Portrait of a Thief: Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop | IndieBound
Content Warnings for Portrait of a Thief: Death of a parent, hospitalization of a grandparent (minor), grief, violence, weapon descriptions
We’ll be doing a loose reading schedule this month, but of course, feel free to read at your own pace!
We’re big fans of Portrait of a Thief on the blog, so we could not be more excited to take a deep dive into this story and its characters! Enjoy the rest of July and we’ll see you again in August.
Hi, hello everyone!
We hope you’ve been having a great year so far. We wanted to do a quick announcement to say that teatimelit is going on a quick hiatus! Our hiatus will be from July 1st to July 15th, after which we will continue posting as normal! You can still contact us via our contact form, or our Twitter @teatimelits!
Further to this notice, Mary will be taking a leave of absence from posting on the blog effective immediately. She will resume posting again in November, but you can still follow along with her reads on Twitter (@bookswithmary), Instagram (@bookswithmary) and Goodreads (maryreading).
Our book club, tea time reads, will still go on as normal!
Have a lovely rest of your month!
Hi, hello friends and welcome to another monthly wrap up! All of us here at teatimelit are truly baffled that we are already halfway through the year – honestly, where has the time gone? But, halfway through the year means we have read some pretty amazing books, so keep reading to see what we picked up in June!
This month Caitlyn read 23 books, Cossette read 22 books, and Mary read 5 books.
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