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Welcome goonlings 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 April: Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling May: Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima June:The Vegetarian by Han Kang July:Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees August: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov September:Siddhartha by Herman Hesse October:Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse November:Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain December: It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis 2017: January: Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut February: The Plague by Albert Camus March: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin April: The Conference of the Birds (مقامات الطیور) by Farid ud-Din Attar May: I, Claudius by Robert Graves June: Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky July: Ficcionies by Jorge Luis Borges August: My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber Current: The Peregrine by J.A. Baker Book available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0053TI8KC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 About the book: quote:JA Baker’s The Peregrine is 50 years old, but it feels as if it were written yesterday. In the half century since its publication, this fierce little book has only tightened its talon grip on us. It reads now as uncannily prophetic: of the Anthropocene (our geological age, in which human activity is now the dominant influence on the environment), of extinction events, of dark ecology – even of virtual reality. In ancient Rome a haruspex was a person trained in a form of divination based on inspecting the entrails of sacrificed animals. Baker’s book – strewn as it is with eviscerated birds, obsessed as it is with prediction – is a text of killing and foretelling: of seeing the future in blood and guts. It has haruspicated our present, and I suspect its prescience is not yet all used up. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/15/the-peregrine-by-ja-baker-nature-writing About the Author He's the guy who wrote this book. quote:Reading “The Peregrine,” we learn nothing about Baker’s father and mother, his sexual preferences, or his domestic arrangements, except that he travels by bicycle. Until 2013, when Baker’s brother-in-law, Bernard Coe, and the ornithologist John Fanshawe gave Baker’s papers to the University of Essex, little was known. In addition to letters, mainly to schoolboy friends, and maps of his ornithological sightings, the archive contains meticulous bird-watching diaries, spanning the years from which Baker drew on to write “The Peregrine,” as well as partial and full typescript copies of that book, and a later one, “The Hill of Summer,” published in 1972, which is a more general appreciation of the geography and landscape of Essex. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-beauty-of-j-a-bakers-the-peregrine Pacing Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion. References and Further Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peregrine_falcon Final Note: Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book!
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Sep 4, 2017 17:26
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I know, missed chance for the Falconry tag! Working on it. edit: falconry achieved Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Sep 4, 2017 |
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Sep 4, 2017 17:30
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I bought this for someone just a couple weeks ago, I'll have to see if I can mooch it back off them before the month is out. I've wanted to read this since I first heard of it maybe a year ago.
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Sep 4, 2017 22:32
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I read this earlier in the year as my wildcard for the book challenge thread. It was extremely chill. I kinda wished I had waited until I went on my annual trip to northern Wisconsin so I could have read it on a boat by the lakeside while actual eagles flew around above me.
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Sep 5, 2017 16:33
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Looks intriguing, I'm in.
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Sep 5, 2017 18:33
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quote:
https://www.ttbook.org/book/werner-herzogs-required-reading-peregrine quote:Baker's prose reads as laconic, but it is also rich, sensuous and occasionally extravagant. The enormous technical accomplishment of The Peregrine reveals a paradox at the heart of the greatest descriptive writing: as the language becomes more passionately exact, it becomes simultaneously more transparent, falling away instantly as it launches you into the reality it attends. It transports us far from the "human taint", deep into the unfolding actuality of the living world. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Sep 6, 2017 |
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Sep 6, 2017 04:42
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just checked this out of the library. thrilled that it's short enough that i may even have time to read it
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Sep 7, 2017 03:12
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Huh, I grew up in Essex not far from Chelmsford and I've never heard of this book. Definitely going to have to pick up a copy.
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Sep 10, 2017 08:20
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in case any of you are on the fence about this book, i have to say that it scratches many of the same itches that people like whitman do for me; it's just wonderfully and beautifully written.
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Sep 12, 2017 05:47
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I just gotta finish this other book that I'm like 70% done with and then I'll get right on it, I promise.
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Sep 12, 2017 08:55
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I have to admit that given the subject matter, I didn't think a book could be written beautifully enough to just keep on holding my attention. It's not exactly something I would read in one sitting; I keep wanting to start and stop and restart so I can keep revisiting the imagery. Even the random cuts to "Bird Facts 101" aren't that distracting.
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Sep 14, 2017 11:49
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yeah the prose is incredibly beautiful and i love the melancholy on every page the birds are cool too
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Sep 14, 2017 15:26
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I've been going through it slowly, I'm a little overwhelmed with books and hurricanes and side-projects, but I'm hoping to throw in some effort-posts this weekend.
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Sep 14, 2017 15:29
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My feverishly distracted addle-brain made this hard to read except very slowly and in small sections, but goddamn does it rule. It's one of the few books I seek a copy of in every bookstore I go into. No luck yet.
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Sep 18, 2017 04:19
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Past the introductions (which make up like 20% of my Kindle version) and just into the narrative itself. Goddamn this is some beautiful prose, makes me want to just gently caress off from work and family and hang around outdoors all day.
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Sep 19, 2017 08:52
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Holy gently caress. December 24th The day hardened in the easterly gale, like a flawless crystal. Columns of sunlight floated on the land. The unrelenting clarity of the air was solid, resonant, cold and pure and remote as the face of the dead. Near the brook a heron lay in frozen stubble. Its wings were stuck to the ground by frost, and the mandibles of its bill were frozen together. Its eyes were open and living, the rest of it was dead. All was dead but the fear of man. As I approached I could see its whole body craving into flight. But it could not fly. I gave it peace, and saw the agonized sunlight of its eyes slowly heal with cloud. No pain, no death, is more terrible to a wild creature than its fear of man. A red-throaded diver, sodden and obscene with oil, able to move only its head, will push itself out from the sea-wall with its bill if you reach down to it as it floats like a log in the tide. A poisoned crow, gaping and helplessly floundering in the grass, bright yellow foam bubbling from its throat, will dash itself up again and again on to the descending wall of air, if you try to catch it. A rabbit, inflated and foul with myxomatosis, just a twitching pulse beating in a bladder of bones and fur, will feel the vibration of your footstep and will look for you with bulging, sightless eyes. Then it will drag itself away into a bush, trembling with fear. We are the killers. We stink of death. We carry it with us. It sticks to us like frost. We cannot tear it away.
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Sep 25, 2017 08:55
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Need suggestions for next month.
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Sep 25, 2017 13:23
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Need suggestions for next month. I've been thinking about reading Lucien of Samosata's True History ever since I heard a lady rave about it earlier this summer, I haven't read it yet though, so I suppose I can't really make a recommendation! wikipedia posted:A True History or A True Story (Ancient Greek: Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα, Alēthē diēgēmata; Latin: Vera Historia) is a parody of travel tales, by the Greek-speaking Assyrian author Lucian of Samosata, the earliest known fiction about travelling to outer space, alien life-forms and interplanetary warfare. Written in the 2nd century, the novel has been referred to as "the first known text that could be called science fiction".[1][2][3][4][5] The work was intended by Lucian as a satire against contemporary and ancient sources, which quote fantastic and mythical events as truth.
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Sep 26, 2017 09:58
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I’m reading this book, The Peregrine, and it’s extremely boring.
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Sep 26, 2017 19:56
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Bandiet posted:I’m reading this book, The Peregrine, and it’s extremely boring. I'm still waiting for mine to arrive (lol) but I think it looks rad as gently caress!
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Sep 26, 2017 20:00
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Bandiet posted:I’m reading this book, The Peregrine, and it’s extremely boring. I've been reading a few pages every night before I go to sleep "Goddam" I think to myself as I fall asleep "Those are some stone-cold awesome bird words" Kinda like Proust but with a lot more bird murder
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Sep 26, 2017 20:03
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Need suggestions for next month. I see you hit up a Zelazny book a couple of years back; what about Lord of Light?
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Sep 26, 2017 20:12
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I've been reading a few pages every night before I go to sleep Pretty much, but Proust is only boring in between story arcs. I’ve already fallen asleep reading this book both in the evening and in the middle of the day.
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Sep 26, 2017 20:58
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If you want something suitably weird for October, how about Arthur Machen's The Three Impostors?
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Sep 27, 2017 20:44
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Next month should be Blackwater by Michael McDowell. It has been described as Faulkner with incestuous sea monsters
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Sep 28, 2017 15:01
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Next month should be Blackwater by Michael McDowell. That doesn't sound good.
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Sep 29, 2017 00:00
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A human heart posted:That doesn't sound good. Also described as The Hundred Years of Solitude of the paperback horror genre
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Sep 29, 2017 00:30
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Are you talking about the 1st in the series or the 900 page full collection?
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Sep 29, 2017 12:55
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Unless the divine lightning strikes with inspiration it's probably gonna be Frankenstein It seems like a copout I know but it's free, we've never picked it, and female author
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Oct 3, 2017 20:07
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your "its free" boner is exhausting and claustrophobic If you are gonna do public domain at least do something a little avant garde like Carmilla or The King in Yellow
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Oct 3, 2017 20:16
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I thought I already did Carmilla? Maybe it was just a poll option We get like 2x the participation with books that are free downloads, goons don't believe in spending money or in libraries apparently Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Oct 3, 2017 |
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Oct 3, 2017 20:18
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Like, I guess I am wondering what exactly goons would talk about in something like Frankenstein since it already exists as a cultural ur-text you could write a thesis on without even having read it. I think there has to be some element of discovery to BOTM if the discussion is going to be fruitful
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Oct 3, 2017 20:35
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Like, I guess I am wondering what exactly goons would talk about in something like Frankenstein since it already exists as a cultural ur-text you could write a thesis on without even having read it. You'd think, but a lot of people still get surprised when you point out something as simple as "hey, it was written by a woman." On some level it's so well-known that nobody actually knows that much about it. Also I saw this:  and it reminded me of  still valid points you raise as book yoda, reconsider i will
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Oct 3, 2017 20:45
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Next month should be Blackwater by Michael McDowell. can we do this instead of frankenstein which everyone and their pet turtle has read fifteen times
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Oct 3, 2017 22:19
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