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Interleave new BoTM nominations with re-runs of earlier BotM winners. Not everyone is able to get BotM books in time to contribute like Sandwolf mentioned. And I think I applaud ulmont's brave re-nomination of Bear by Marian Engel for may 2022 botm.
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Mar 12, 2022 01:02
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*speaking Frenchly* "Let them read Bear!"
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Mar 12, 2022 01:47
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ulmont posted:I think it's also really tough to find a book that we haven't read and that sparks conversation. Not every month can be about bear-loving as part of Stella getting her groove back, after all. Don't mess with success, change it to the Erotic Book of the Month
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Mar 12, 2022 01:57
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Oh yeah since april 2022 is taxes due month for the USA, I'd like nominate A PRINCE OF SWINDLERS for the April 2022 BotM. It is a light mystery crime short story fiction collection where rich british assholes are the victims so it's essentially victimless crime, available in multiple formats and editions ranging from free to $$, and it operates on old-school logic that most modern readers will just brain-freeze over. And for june 2022 botm, I nominate either Lucian of Samosata's A TRUE STORY or one or possible both of his vicious character assassination pieces about different Roman Empire era religious fraudsters (ALEXANDER THE ORACLE-MONGER & THE DEATH OF PEREGRINE). A True Story is pretty funny and for every classic mythos reference you pick up on there will be 30 other references lost to time that fly past, plus it has one of the first examples of interstellar warfare in fiction. All 3 Lucian stories are copyright expired by roughly 1500 years. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Mar 12, 2022 |
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Mar 12, 2022 11:13
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Sandwolf posted:Based on some issues I’ve had and I’ve seen around, if you could get the BotM out like the last week of the prior month, it’d give folks a chance to find a physical copy or finish their prior books without picking up something new beforehand? I really wanted to read Depeche Mode but I copy doesn’t come in until March 22nd or something.
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Mar 12, 2022 19:52
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Sandwolf posted:Based on some issues I’ve had and I’ve seen around, if you could get the BotM out like the last week of the prior month, it’d give folks a chance to find a physical copy or finish their prior books without picking up something new beforehand? I really wanted to read Depeche Mode but I copy doesn’t come in until March 22nd or something. Hrm. What about if we picked books on a sort of rolling basis, e.g., at the end of March we're picking the book for May and the book for April has been known for all of March? The idea has been that the threads just stay open and it's fine if conversation spills over into subsequent months, but maybe people feel like if they miss THE month there's no point? If people know the May book in April will they skip the April book? ulmont posted:I think it's also really tough to find a book that we haven't read and that sparks conversation. Not every month can be about bear-loving as part of Stella getting her groove back, after all. This has been my fear, that I've put forward all the good books I know of and now we're just left with the leftovers, but I want to believe that no matter how many good books we read, there's always the Next Good Book out there. It is getting harder and harder to come up with good suggestions though.
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Mar 12, 2022 22:33
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There are only so many books in the world, and only a small percentage of them are good. Of course you'd eventually run out.
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Mar 12, 2022 22:39
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I know you're not taking nominations at the moment but Slowness by Milan Kundera is the best thing I've read this year, if you're looking for the next good book. It's short which may or may not be a good thing.
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Mar 12, 2022 22:52
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Maybe keeping a single thread and changing the title every month would help, as people could bookmark it and keep up with it even if they spend a lot more time reading their bookmarked threads than looking at the thread list?
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Mar 12, 2022 23:00
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About 70 pages in, "Portnoy's Complaint" is boring the gently caress out of me. Just remembered I bounced off "American Pastoral" after maybe five pages because Roth didn't shut up about baseball. Maybe I just don't like his writing at all! E: it's like I read a sentence and think "ughh I know exactly how the next ten pages are going to be" and then I read on and I was 100% correct. Except it wasn't ten pages, it was two, but it felt like ten pages. It's boring me twice, before reading and while reading, which I admit is pretty loving magical. 3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Mar 12, 2022 |
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Mar 12, 2022 23:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:This has been my fear, that I've put forward all the good books I know of and now we're just left with the leftovers, but I want to believe that no matter how many good books we read, there's always the Next Good Book out there. It is getting harder and harder to come up with good suggestions though. Nah, it's not good books, or not just good books. For example, Hogfather, Treasure Island, Ignition, WE, and the Jungle are all good books that I've read, and in at least a few of those cases I followed the thread, but I didn't have anything new to say; anything I had to comment on had already been covered by the time I saw it.
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Mar 12, 2022 23:39
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Hrm. What about if we picked books on a sort of rolling basis, e.g., at the end of March we're picking the book for May and the book for April has been known for all of March? I think a rolling nomination/selection is a good idea, it’ll give people more chance to have a book and have it ready to go when the month starts. I do think folks are less willing to resurrect old BotM threads just cuz it feels a bit less likely to encourage any convo. I think people skipping months has more to do with interest in that month’s particular book than anything. I also think the idea to keep changing the name of one thread is a good idea, it’s worse for folks who want to go back and read the thread for an older BotM but it will probably encourage more discussion.
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Mar 13, 2022 20:52
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Gripweed posted:There are only so many books in the world, and only a small percentage of them are good. Of course you'd eventually run out. the book of the month in this forum previously included a diablo tie novelisation, the idea that it's even covered a fraction of the good books out there is laughable
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Mar 14, 2022 01:06
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Per Google, there are approximately 130 million unique published books. If 0.01% of them are good -- one out of 10,000 -- and you read one per week, and assuming no new good books were published, you'd work through the supply of good books in about 250 years.
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Mar 14, 2022 01:28
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:This has been my fear, that I've put forward all the good books I know of and now we're just left with the leftovers, but I want to believe that no matter how many good books we read, there's always the Next Good Book out there. It is getting harder and harder to come up with good suggestions though. Okay, I'm curious, forgive the long post here, but: quote:BOTM MASTERLIST So this is it? Sorry - I'm sorry, I know this comes off as hostile, but it is a genuinely weird statement to read from you when paired with the BOTM list. e: gently caress my reading comprehension! It's list of good books that you know of, not the definitive statement on good books according to SA.  That's on me, I'm sorry.
StrixNebulosa fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 01:46
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List of suggested books that I think own: Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic Cyteen by CJ Cherryh Nightrider by David Mace Europe Central by William T Vollmann Centauri Device by M John Harrison Black Oxen by Elizabeth Knox Absolute Truths by Susan Howatch In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick Pattern Recognition by William Gibson Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler Erekos by AM Tuomala The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R Kiernan Imaginary Cities by Darran Anderson And I'm holding back when it comes to genre stuff like fantasy or sci-fi or romance. We can argue about whether these books are worth reading, which is good! I guarantee that everything on my list will give you SOMETHING to talk about for a month. Hell, if you want a comedy rec, Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh is one of my favorite garbage paranormal romance novels, and fascinating to read in how it's constructed as a stereotypical romance with weird plot elements.
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Mar 14, 2022 01:52
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Yo have you read Imaginary Cities?
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Mar 14, 2022 01:55
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Sandwolf posted:Yo have you read Imaginary Cities? Hell yeah, it's a cool book! Like you're peering into the mind of a genius who has Opinions and Thoughts on cities and their histories. When I moved it's one of the books that came with me instead of being kept in book storage at my folk's place.
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Mar 14, 2022 01:59
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Anyways, uh, the main reason I'm not super active in book of the month clubs is because I read entirely based on mood. If I'm not in the mood to read something I can't really do it - I have to force it and that turns it into a slog, and then I avoid reading, and whoops I'm not reading anything again. I've gotten a lot better at forcing myself to read on a daily basis so I am slowly plowing through my to-read list, but disrupting that to pick up a book for a month is tough. Also I'm a genre reader and BOTMs don't usually ask me to read stuff I'm interested in. This is not a fault of the club, and I have gone through the previously-read lists several times to find new stuff to read when I'm in the mood for something serious.
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Mar 14, 2022 02:08
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StrixNebulosa posted:Hell yeah, it's a cool book! Like you're peering into the mind of a genius who has Opinions and Thoughts on cities and their histories. When I moved it's one of the books that came with me instead of being kept in book storage at my folk's place. I definitely love the thoughts and opinions but I feel like the book could use a good editor, it’s too unfocused and I feel like halfway through a chapter it kinda feels like it’s off the plot from the original ‘theme’ of the chapter. Also I have to stop reading every page to google what certain things look like.
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Mar 14, 2022 02:18
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Sandwolf posted:Yo have you read
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Mar 14, 2022 02:24
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StrixNebulosa posted:Okay, I'm curious, forgive the long post here, but: I do have a few criteria I try to use when picking a new BOTM. quote:
Each of those is there for a reason -- I want a book that a lot of people will be able to read, that they might not have read otherwise without the BOTM, and that people will want to post or talk about after reading. Genre books generally don't make the cut because of #2, everyone's already read them so why have a new thread about it, but any book that meets at least one of those three criteria I'm generally willing to put into a poll or even outright pick if it meets the other criteria (Hogfather being a good example -- it fails 2 but wins on 1 and 3). The problem I was getting at in that post though was, yeah, I personally have only read a limited number of books -- thousands, sure, but still a finite number. Of those a smaller percentage meet those criteria and every month it gets harder and harder to pick a new book I haven't already thought of. I'm not averse to doing a book over again -- you'll see a few repeats on the list -- but it has the problem of violating #2 and #3, why are we making a second thread for a book we already talked about ? Will there be anything new to say or is it already talked out? That said, I would like the list of Books of the Month to be, aspirationally, a list of Good Books Worth Reading. When people come to Book Barn they're either 1) looking to talk about a book they just read, or 2) looking for suggestions of something good to read. Ideally, the archived list of Books of the Month is a good reference point for that, right at the top of the forum, a curated list of Books We Thought Were Worth the Trouble -- not the list of good books but at least a list of good books. This is one reason I've been reluctant to change the "new thread each month" format we've always used -- I like having the archived list of threads as a reference. I think what I'm going to try next is doing the rolling nominations process so we nominate books for April and May this month and then move forward nominating a month ahead of schedule to get people time to get up to speed. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 05:37
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For what it's worth, I really liked Living Alone, and I've used my powers to create a much better ePub than the one that's on Project Gutenberg if you ever want to do that one.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:24
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Rand Brittain posted:For what it's worth, I really liked Living Alone, and I've used my powers to create a much better ePub than the one that's on Project Gutenberg if you ever want to do that one. Please share, I grabbed it off Gutenberg but I haven't read it yet in large part because their epubs are always completely hosed and I'm already editing three other ebooks and don't have the energy to deal with another one. StrixNebulosa posted:List of suggested books that I think own: Honestly I'm torn on whether Cyteen is a good book club rec, because while it's excellent it's also massive -- I'm not sure if it's her longest work, but it's up there. OTOH there's a lot to discuss in there. I'd be tempted to recommend Voyager in Night but "how much of a headfuck is it" is probably not a good metric to choose book club books based on. And yeah, I generally don't participate in BOTM because one of: - I've already read that book and don't want to re-read it at the moment (or, sometimes, ever) - The book looks interesting but my current mood is incompatible with whatever the current book is, and while I might pick it up and read it later, there's no point in participating in the thread by then - The book looks completely uninteresting and I don't want to force myself to read something I hate - I am reading the book but have nothing to contribute to the thread that hasn't already been covered
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Mar 14, 2022 16:03
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ToxicFrog posted:Honestly I'm torn on whether Cyteen is a good book club rec, because while it's excellent it's also massive -- I'm not sure if it's her longest work, but it's up there. OTOH there's a lot to discuss in there. Pride of Chanur might be a better fit for the club, but after I saw "May: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Dame Rebecca West" in the list I decided that length requirements don't matter, Black Lamb is fuckin' HUGE. If they can read that in a month, Cyteen will be a breeze!
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Mar 14, 2022 16:08
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I honestly think the book club does a pretty good job even if it doesn't generate discussion (I quite frequently find myself in the "read it, but don't quite know how to formulate what I think" position) - I doubt I would have read stuff like Cellini, 1491, Blackwater or A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear otherwise and I loved all of those; I just don't really want to pop into the thread to say something really obvious and stupid.
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Mar 14, 2022 16:08
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StrixNebulosa posted:Pride of Chanur might be a better fit for the club, but after I saw "May: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Dame Rebecca West" in the list I decided that length requirements don't matter, Black Lamb is fuckin' HUGE. If they can read that in a month, Cyteen will be a breeze! Pride of Chanur is my #1 Cherryh rec for people wondering where to start, because it's short, relatively fast-paced, has a fun premise, and isn't as emotionally heavy as a lot of her A-U stuff; and if the reader wants more, there's four more books in that setting, and if they don't, it works fine as a standalone work. But I feel like Voyager would cause more thread discussion because reading it actually inflicts psychic damage.  I feel kind of like I want to reread both Cyteen and Voyager this year, but my to-read list keeps expanding faster than I can read books on it; I'm hundreds of books behind at this point. I need more of me.
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Mar 14, 2022 16:24
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I keep meaning to read the Books of the Month and then not doing it. I did finish Arcadia, but didn't particularly enjoy it or have much to say, so why post? Life is difficult.
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Mar 15, 2022 02:53
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ToxicFrog posted:Please share, I grabbed it off Gutenberg but I haven't read it yet in large part because their epubs are always completely hosed and I'm already editing three other ebooks and don't have the energy to deal with another one. This'll do it.
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Mar 16, 2022 00:17
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FINALLY got around to starting "Naiv. Super." (by Erlend Loe) and man is it nothing like I expected. From the back cover I thought it would be laugh-a-minute romp but it's something else. I don't quite know what, yet. Also I don't know how I didn't catch it back in the day. The original was published in 1996, and this translation from 2011 is the 14th impression. Pretty impressive.
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Mar 19, 2022 18:55
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Any news on the voting nominations for April 2022 & May 2022 book of the months? If discussion has been happening offsite, nothing has been shared here.
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Mar 24, 2022 05:55
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quantumfoam posted:Any news on the voting nominations for April 2022 & May 2022 book of the months? There’s a thread here.
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Mar 24, 2022 06:46
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Since it's fresh out of copyright, every publisher and their mum is putting out editions of The Sun Also Rises. This is a cute video exploring the highs and lows of cover design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UndnK4_isys
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Apr 11, 2022 02:09
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Read Normal People by Sally Rooney yesterday. I didn't realise just how popular the book/she is when I was reading it, although I knew it was well known since I keep seeing her mentioned in mainstream media. The book was all right. It was interesting throughout, although I kept wincing at the dialogue and I think the characters were quite thin and mechanical. Including Connell and Marianne - the secondary characters are so basic that they are basically props. I didn't find the structuring of Marianne and Connell's internal damage convincing, didn't feel like the repeated speedbumps in their relationship were justified, and didn't think it resolved in a very interesting way. It has a pretty straightforward damsel in distress climax followed by a chapter which could have come at any point in the book, in terms of character progression. Still it was enjoyable and interesting to read even if a lot of my interest was in me sort of critiquing what I was reading while I was reading it, which I'm usually not as conscious of. There were a few paragraphs here and there that I thought were insightful or funny, but I did have the sense that they were also something that I'd heard before, so it was more like I was being reminded of something I knew than seeing something in a new way. I might read another of hers to compare.
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Apr 20, 2022 12:16
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roomtone posted:Read Normal People by Sally Rooney yesterday.
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Apr 20, 2022 15:40
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I mean the ending being a non-ending is sort of the point, right? They won’t change, the same story will just keep playing out.
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Apr 20, 2022 17:09
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well, I just found the next book we need a lets read of. You thought John Ringo or Tom Kratman were bad? You ain't seen nothing until you've read Victoria: A novel of 4th Generation War. It opens with a female Episcopal bishop being burnt at the stake, which is portrayed as a good thing. It spirals from there.
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Apr 27, 2022 07:12
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Mycroft Holmes posted:well, I just found the next book we need a lets read of. You thought John Ringo or Tom Kratman were bad? You ain't seen nothing until you've read Victoria: A novel of 4th Generation War. It opens with a female Episcopal bishop being burnt at the stake, which is portrayed as a good thing. It spirals from there.  that's just the turner diaries for boomers in The Villages
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Apr 27, 2022 16:25
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Since I decided to buy a bunch of new Ikea Billys for my study (because I need more room for books), I have a) not done so b) spent more than they would've cost on new books.
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Apr 27, 2022 17:31
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https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1521035786463940608?s=20&t=enjWRhIqlNhYrfPvN847zg
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May 2, 2022 08:58
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