Stitch on 20/7/2006 at 19:08
Also A: To ensure variety I'd like to suggest a rule that if an author's book is selected then other books by that author are off limits for a year or so afterwards. Thoughts?
Also B: Now that we have the ability to create a poll with more than nine options do we want to throw away the previous "one suggestion per person, first come first serve" rule? Opening things up to more than nine candidates might get unweildy, but it would be closer to the way ignatios and I initially envisioned this thing.
Also C: Scots, somewhere you said you had just picked up <U>The Blind Assassin</U> by Margaret Atwood. That would make an excellent candidate I'd be happy to reread.
ignatios on 20/7/2006 at 19:28
Quote Posted by Stitch
Also A: To ensure variety I'd like to suggest a rule that if an author's book is selected then other books by that author are off limits for a year or so afterwards. Thoughts?
Agreed. I meant to bring this up earlier at some point but apparently failed to do so. I was also thinking we could do this with obvious genre fiction, i.e. if someone suggested Neuromancer, no other cyberpunk suggestions would be allowed that month.
In all honesty though, I don't think it'll be a huge problem. The selections for August were pretty great and I'm really happy with how things are going so far.
TTLG kicks ass.
Rug Burn Junky on 20/7/2006 at 19:36
After reading the cliches of a typical noir detective novel, I'm pretty well convinced that a great follow up would be (
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375724834/sr=8-4/qid=1153423485/ref=pd_bbs_4/002-1010825-6518443?ie=UTF8) Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem, both as an interesting modern counterpoint, and to carry over discussion from one to the next with some sort of flow, while not beating a dead horse by being too similar in form or genre.
Quote Posted by Amazon Reviewer
Pop quiz. Please complete the following sentence: "There are days when I get up in the morning and stagger into the bathroom and begin running water and then I look up and I don't even recognize my own _." If you answered face, then your name is obviously not Jonathan Lethem. Instead of taking the easy out, the genre-busting novelist concludes this by-the-numbers string of words with toothbrush in the mirror.
This brilliant sentence and a lot of other really excellent ones compose Lethem's engaging fifth novel, Motherless Brooklyn. Lionel Essrog, a detective suffering from Tourette's syndrome, spins the narrative as he tracks down the killer of his boss, Frank Minna. Minna enlisted Lionel and his friends when they were teenagers living at Saint Vincent's Home for Boys, ostensibly to perform odd jobs (we're talking very odd) and over the years trained them to become a team of investigators. The Minna men face their most daunting case when they find their mentor in a Dumpster bleeding from stab wounds delivered by an assailant whose identity he refuses to reveal--even while he's dying on the way to the hospital.
Detectives? Brooklyn? Is this the same Lethem who danced the postapocalypso in Amnesia Moon? Incredibly, yes, and rarely has such a departure been pulled off with this much aplomb. As in the "toothbrush" passage above, Lethem sets himself up with the imposing task of making tired conventions new. Brooklyn accents? Fuggetaboutit. Lethem's dialogue is as light on its feet as a prize fighter. Lionel's Tourette's could have been an easy joke, but Lethem probes so convincingly into the disorder that you feel simultaneously rattled, sympathetic, and irritated by the guy. Sure, the story is a mystery, but Motherless Brooklyn could be about flower arranging, for all we care. What counts is Lionel's tic-ridden take on a world full of surprises, propelling this fiction forward at edgy, breakneck speed.
Regardless, I'm about to set off on Lethem's (
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385500696/sr=8-1/qid=1153423485/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-1010825-6518443?ie=UTF8) Fortress of Solitude any day now.
Stitch on 20/7/2006 at 19:40
If that gets picked I swear to god I'm bowing out and starting a book club that only Noid and Ulukai are invited to.
Paz on 20/7/2006 at 19:43
Whilst I don't know how these pseudo-rules will pan out, I do plan to get my BIG SLEEP on next month so I think that allows me a suggestion!
I'd like to put forward The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It's set in sexy Barcelona just after WW2/The Spanish Civil War, the aftermath of which HANGS LIKE A HANGING THING over the plot. Said plot involves a young chap who picks out a book for his tenth birthday and gets embroiled in a mystery regarding the tome itself and the life of the enigmatic author. We follow this guy through his life as various ODD SHENANIGANS develop around him.
It's kind of Eco/Calvino-ey, but without quite so much of the LOOK AT MY MASSIVE LITERARY COCK overtone which those authors can bring (overtones which I quite like, I must stress). Not that it's 'simple' or whatever, just more straightforward in its approach. It's also slightly gothic in a "Spanish Catholicism" sense (not a lipstick and eyeliner sense).
Amazon manage to make it sound a bit shit - but it's not.
It was also featured on (hggnnhh) Richard & Judy in the UK - but that doesn't make it shit either.
Stitch on 20/7/2006 at 19:55
Quote Posted by Paz
Whilst I don't know how these pseudo-rules will pan out, I do plan to get my BIG SLEEP on next month so I think that allows me a suggestion!
You're allowed a suggestion no matter what, the rule is just a reinforcement of good faith that if you suggest a book, you plan to read whatever is voted through.
Rug Burn Junky on 20/7/2006 at 20:10
Quote Posted by Stitch
If that gets picked I swear to god I'm bowing out and starting a book club that only Noid and Ulukai are invited to.
y u so hurtful?
Besides, don't diss my Brooklyn homeboy. You're just pissy that you can't find a good book set in Madison. ;)
Stitch on 20/7/2006 at 20:21
don't worry guys rbj and i sorted all this out over icq
EVERYTHING'S COOL
Aerothorn on 21/7/2006 at 02:00
I've actually been meaning to read Lolita, if only as a window into a friend's mind (I kid you not).
I'm told there's a copy of The Big Sleep somewhere in the house so that is nice:)
Anyway, yeah, since some people actually voted for it I'd happilly resubmit Steve Sherill's The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break.
And yes, I agree with the 'one book per author per year' rule, lest we get a rush of Tom Clancy fans and this turns into the Tom Clancy Book Club.
I'd also recommend a James Morrow book - while I've already read and loved This Is The Way The World Ends, that's probably a bit too political for book club - might spiral into a nuclear proliferation debate). So maybe Towing Jehovah or Only Begotten Daughter - both have recieved much praise and sound interesting.
And, last but not least, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. I've always meant to finish a pynchon book and tried starting this a year or two ago but just wasn't in the mood - but would be willing to give it a shot, and Pynchon's books are known as being imminently discussable (as well as very polarizing). Plus, unlike Gravity's Rainbow and company, it's short.
If that's way too many suggestions, choose whichever ones sound best.
Stitch on 21/7/2006 at 03:15
Fantastic suggestions, mang. We'll narrow it down if we have to.
