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Welcome earthlings to the Awful Book of the Month! In this thread, we choose one work of Resources: Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org - A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best. SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/ - A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here.  For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM me. Past Books of the Month [for BOTM before 2014, refer to archives] 2014: January: Ursula K. LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness February: Mikhail Bulgalov - Master & Margarita March: Richard P. Feynman -- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! April: James Joyce -- Dubliners May: Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- 100 Years of Solitude June: Howard Zinn -- A People's History of the United States July: Mary Renault -- The Last of the Wine August: Barbara Tuchtman -- The Guns of August September: Jane Austen -- Pride and Prejudice October: Roger Zelazny -- A Night in the Lonesome October November: John Gardner -- Grendel December: Christopher Moore -- The Stupidest Angel 2015: January: Italo Calvino -- Invisible Cities February: Karl Ove Knausgaard -- My Struggle: Book 1. March: Knut Hamsun -- Hunger April: Liu Cixin -- 三体 ( The Three-Body Problem) May: John Steinbeck -- Cannery Row June: Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood (Hiatus) August: Ta-Nehisi Coates -- Between the World and Me September: Wilkie Collins -- The Moonstone October:Seth Dickinson -- The Traitor Baru Cormorant November:Svetlana Alexievich -- Voices from Chernobyl December: Michael Chabon -- Gentlemen of the Road 2016: January: Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome February:The March Up Country (The Anabasis) of Xenophon March: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco Current: Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling quote:Plain Tales from the Hills (published 1888) is the first collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Out of its 40 stories, "eight-and-twenty", according to Kipling's Preface, were initially published in the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, Punjab, British India, between November 1886 and June 1887. "The remaining tales are, more or less, new." (Kipling had worked as a journalist for the CMG—his first job—since 1882, when he was not quite 17.) Historical Context: Kipling wrote these short stories while working as a journalist for the Lahore paper. About the Author quote:Joseph Rudyard Kipling (About this sound listen (help·info)) (/ˈrʌdjərd ˈkɪplɪŋ/ rud-yərd kip-ling; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)[1] was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling Discussion, Questions & Themes: quote:One reason for Kipling's power as a good bad poet I have already suggested--his sense of responsibility, which made it possible for him to have a world-view, even though it happened to be a false one. Although he had no direct connexion with any political party, Kipling was a Conservative, a thing that does not exist nowadays. Those who now call themselves Conservatives are either Liberals, Fascists or the accomplices of Fascists. He identified himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition. In a gifted writer this seems to us strange and even disgusting, but it did have the advantage of giving Kipling a certain grip on reality. The ruling power is always faced with the question, 'In such and such circumstances, what would you DO?', whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions. Where it is a permanent and pensioned opposition, as in England, the quality of its thought deteriorates accordingly. Moreover, anyone who starts out with a pessimistic, reactionary view of life tends to be justified by events, for Utopia never arrives and 'the gods of the copybook headings', as Kipling himself put it, always return. Kipling sold out to the British governing class, not financially but emotionally. This warped his political judgement, for the British ruling class were not what he imagined, and it led him into abysses of folly and snobbery, but he http://www.george-orwell.org/Rudyard_Kipling/0.html Pacing These are short stories, so no pacing rules. References and Further Reading I'm actually hoping people can suggest some good historical resources for reading about the British Raj in this period. Which Edition? Which Translation? Free Kindle edition here: http://www.amazon.com/Plain-Tales-Hills-Rudyard-Kipling-ebook/dp/B0082UL4L4 Final Note: If you have any suggestions to change, improve or assess the book club generally, please PM or email me -- i.e., keep it out of this thread -- at least until into the last five days of the month, just so we don't derail discussion of the current book with meta-discussion. I do want to hear new ideas though, seriously, so please do actually PM or email me or whatever, or if you can't do either of those things, just hold that thought till the last five days of the month before posting it in this thread. Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book!
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Apr 4, 2016 02:28
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I'll be interested to see what people make of these. A lot of these short stories are going to be fairly controversial. What sets them apart from Kipling's other works is that (to me at least) they seem his most honest and unclouded -- he was a young independent journalist, trying to make a reputation instead of trying to protect one. In some ways at least, he's more critical here of the British Empire and the British than he is critical of Indians and India. He's still wildly racist, of course, but to me at least he seems to be saying what he thinks, with honesty and a relative minimum of romanticization. The Orwell essay linked above gives an interesting lens to interpret Kipling but I'm not sure it's fully accurate either. In some ways, the Kipling of these stories and the Orwell of Shooting an Elephant seem closer to each other than either author would likely have liked to admit. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Apr 4, 2016 |
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Apr 4, 2016 02:32
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I've ran into that Orwell essay like half a dozen times over the past few months, which is odd, because it's such a sprawling, unconvincing mess. Orwell can't leave it at "he's a sentimental poet , and I believe the sentimental perspective to objectively wrong. He advocates for the Empire as a good force, while I believe it to be objectively evil", which would have at least made sense. Instead, he tries to bring some sort of an objective aesthetic judgement into the proceedings, dropping into "doubleplus ungoodbad" or whatever. We had a fairly interesting discussion about Kipling's poetry in the mil-hist thread just a while ago. Kipling (translated into Russian) is one of few poets I can properly appreciate.
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Apr 6, 2016 00:57
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Xander77 posted:We had a fairly interesting discussion about Kipling's poetry in the mil-hist thread just a while ago. Kipling (translated into Russian) is one of few poets I can properly appreciate. This brings up something I should probably put in my standard post -- If people are regular posters in other parts of SA that might be interested in a particular BOTM, feel free to proselytize and cross-post. TBB is one of the lowest-trafficked forums and one big reason for the BOTM is the hope that it'll draw people in.
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Apr 6, 2016 04:00
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Xander77 posted:I've ran into that Orwell essay like half a dozen times over the past few months, which is odd, because it's such a sprawling, unconvincing mess. Orwell can't leave it at "he's a sentimental poet , and I believe the sentimental perspective to objectively wrong. He advocates for the Empire as a good force, while I believe it to be objectively evil", which would have at least made sense. Instead, he tries to bring some sort of an objective aesthetic judgement into the proceedings, dropping into "doubleplus ungoodbad" or whatever. I think most people have a reflexive belief that good, insightful writing correlates with moral writing; that a good writer is on some level a good person or at least a wise person. Kipling challenges that assumption because of his frank racism and imperialism. But you can't easily dismiss him, either: he'll be racist as hell in one passage and then the next sentence say that the Brits are hopelessly out of touch and don't understand the native perspective at all, etc.. The first story in this collection is a good example - "Lispeth". It seems like a racist romanticization and then, wham, the English are all utter bastards.
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Apr 7, 2016 18:35
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Contrasting civilized vice with innate native whatever isn't particularly original. Which is probably why he hates European-educated natives with such a passion. Of course how exactly you're supposed to humor those native hosts towards the light if you hate the very idea is a bit unclear to me.
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Apr 7, 2016 20:36
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Xander77 posted:Contrasting civilized vice with innate native whatever isn't particularly original. Which is probably why he hates European-educated natives with such a passion. Of course how exactly you're supposed to humor those native hosts towards the light if you hate the very idea is a bit unclear to me. Oh he wrote a poem about that! What was the title? Something something burden . . . And yeah it's not an original approach but I think it's enough that it's problematic to dismiss Kipling as a *mere* racist. He's no Sax Rohmer. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Apr 7, 2016 |
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Apr 7, 2016 21:03
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:
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Apr 7, 2016 22:45
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Finally got around to starting this and am a few stories in by now; am finding it rather enjoyable. Come to think of it, although I'm sure I read some version of The Jungle Book and possibly some other kid-friendly stuff when I were a lad, and a great deal of his poetry last year, I don't think I'd actually read any of Kipling's prose as an adult before.
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Apr 14, 2016 08:47
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Xander77 posted:Jack London went to places Rohmer would probably be creeped out by, but I wouldn't dismiss him as a *mere* racist either. So? I think the "so" is "so they're still worth reading".
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Apr 17, 2016 04:14
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For next month, what about Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton, which inspired the eponymous current Broadway smash?
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Apr 18, 2016 15:39
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Plain Tales is pretty good so far. I didn't read any of the background stuff yet because I didn't want it to color my first impressions but dang a good number of these stories are more enjoyable than I would think Kipling would ever be. I'd say I'm six or seven stories in but the first one, Lispeth, is still my most favorite so far. I guess the biggest theme I can see when reading it in modern times is Kiplings views on race, which aren't that surprising. Why people are so hung up on an 1800's man having strong opinions about race I have no idea. Some of his stories come off as decently progressive while sure, a lot of others have a clear "us vs them" mentality. I don't think that inherently makes it not worth reading, if anything it makes it more interesting to read a skewed perception of the world the author thought was written neutrally. Cool book so far, good rec, definitely something I would not have picked on my own.
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Apr 20, 2016 19:01
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I feel like a Kipling discussion could go to a lot of interesting places, but limiting things to Plain Tales, which is (no pun intended) a fairly plain book, rather limits things.
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Apr 20, 2016 21:00
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Need more recommendations for next month's BOTM. EDIT: if you recommend something please give me a good couple sentences on why you think it would be a good pick Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Apr 23, 2016 |
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Apr 23, 2016 12:57
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Anyone up for some Mishima? Spring Snow is a bit of a doorstopper, bit maybe we could go with one of his shorter works? I would commit for that BOTM, since I've been planning on reading some Mishima in May. Temple of the Golden Pavilion looks especially interesting. It's a story of a zen monk that decides to burn down a temple in Kyoto because he feels tormented by it's beauty. It's based on a true story and Mishima extensively interviewed the real life perpetrator. Edit: HA what happened to your av?
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Apr 23, 2016 13:15
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mcustic posted:
Somebody paid $10 to change a bunch of mod avatars to this, I'm not "with it" enough to get the joke but it seems rude to change it back to my old one immediately
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Apr 23, 2016 13:43
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Somebody paid $10 to change a bunch of mod avatars to this, I'm not "with it" enough to get the joke but it seems rude to change it back to my old one immediately Well, now I want to go look it up 
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Apr 23, 2016 14:53
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How about something by Irvine Welsh, such as Trainspotting or Filth? Should be some interesting discussion to be had about working class life, drug addiction and the like.
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Apr 26, 2016 01:46
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