THE CRUELEST POLL: CHOOSE THE APRIL BOTM

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > THE CRUELEST POLL: CHOOSE THE APRIL BOTM

You chose . . . .poorly This poll is closed.
Irene Iddlesleigh by Amanda McKittrick Ros	2	6.45%
Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner	7	22.58%
Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio de Maria	14	45.16%
You Can't Win by Jack Black (not that Jack Black)	8	25.81%
Total:	24 votes

[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

THREE DAYS ONLY

These threads function primarily as an interest check. You can vote for more than one, but if you vote, and your choice wins, please participate.

1) Irene Iddlesleigh by Amanda McKittrick Ros

quote:

Nick Page, author of In Search of the World's Worst Writers, rated Ros the worst of the worst. He says that "For Amanda, eyes are 'piercing orbs', legs are 'bony supports', people do not blush, they are 'touched by the hot hand of bewilderment.'" J
. . . .
The Oxford literary group the Inklings, which included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, held competitions to see who could read Ros' work aloud for the longest length of time without laughing.[7]

Northrop Frye said of Ros' novels that they use "rhetorical material without being able to absorb or assimilate it: the result is pathological, a kind of literary diabetes".[11]

2) Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner

quote:

Go Down, Moses is a collection of seven related pieces of short fiction by American author William Faulkner, sometimes considered a novel. The most prominent character and unifying voice is that of Isaac McCaslin, "Uncle Ike", who will live to be an old man; "uncle to half a county and father to no one." Though originally published as a short story collection, Faulkner considered the book to be a novel in the same way The Unvanquished is considered a novel. Because of this, most editions no longer print "and other stories" in the title.

3) Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio de Maria

chernobyl kinsman posted:

do the twenty days of turin. it's big-dick lit enough to appease most of the child loving thread and it has enough trans-dimensional monsters to satisfy the genre fiction contingent

quote:

Written during the height of the 1970s Italian domestic terror, a cult novel, with distinct echoes of Lovecraft and Borges, makes its English-language debut.

In the spare wing of a church-run sanatorium, some zealous youths create "the Library," a space where lonely citizens can read one another�s personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls in "dialogues across the ether." But when their scribblings devolve into the ugliest confessions of the macabre, the Library�s users learn too late that a malicious force has consumed their privacy and their sanity. As the city of Turin suffers a twenty-day "phenomenon of collective psychosis" culminating in nightly massacres that hundreds of witnesses cannot explain, the Library is shut down and erased from history. That is, until a lonely salaryman decides to investigate these mysterious events, which the citizenry of Turin fear to mention. Inevitably drawn into the city�s occult netherworld, he unearths the stuff of modern nightmares: what�s shared can never be unshared.

4) You Can't Win by Jack Black (not that Jack Black)

quote:

You Can't Win is an autobiography by burglar and hobo Jack Black, written in the early to mid-1920s and first published in 1926. It describes Black's life on the road, in prison and his various criminal capers in the American and Canadian west from the late 1880s to early 20th century. The book was a major influence upon William S. Burroughs and other Beat writers. It was made into a film in 2015.
. . .
The book tells of Black's experiences in the hobo underworld, freight-hopping around the western United States and Canada, with the majority of incidents taking place from the late 1880s to around 1910. He tells of becoming a thief, burglar, and member of the yegg (safe-cracking) subculture, exploring the topics of crime, criminal justice, vice, addictions, penology, and human folly from various viewpoints, from observer to consumer to supplier, and from victim to perpetrator.
. . .
William S. Burroughs first read the book as an adolescent and cited You Can't Win as influential in his life and writing, mentioning the autobiography in his 1953 book Junkie.[3] The book was republished in 2000 in the Nabat series of radical autobiographies, by AK Press, with an introduction by Burroughs.

# ? Apr 2, 2018 15:20

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 2, 2024 05:56

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

*hands in a wrinkled napkin that just says "babyfucker" on it*

# ? Apr 2, 2018 15:34

ulvir: Jan 2, 2005

Mel Mudkiper posted:

*hands in a wrinkled napkin that just says "babyfucker" on it*

# ? Apr 2, 2018 16:53

apophenium: Apr 14, 2009

That Turin book sounds interesting

# ? Apr 2, 2018 17:44

chernobyl kinsman: Mar 18, 2007; a friend of the friendly atom; Soiled Meat

apophenium posted:

That Turin book sounds interesting

NPR posted:

The Library is where The Twenty Days begins, with De Maria's narrator, a self-made investigator into the "collective psychosis" of the citizens of Turin following the appearance of The Library and the strange events surrounding it . There was the smell; the vinegary stink that no one could explain. The insomnia which seemed to grip the entire city. The noises � the far-away screaming and the war-cries � that were equally inexplicable.

And then, of course, the murders. Lots of murders. People picked up by the ankles and bashed to pieces against curb stones and the plinths of statues. Bloody, horrific murders, witnessed by blurry-eyed somnambulants whose testimony was too bizarre to believe. The nation heard about it, then the world. Scapegoats were found and imprisoned. The terror seemed to end.

Except ... maybe not. And we follow De Maria's investigator as he talks to some of those witnesses. As he meets with lawyers and survivors, nuns, the mayor and an art critic-cum-parapsychologist who lives like a hermit in the hills above the city, each one of whom is both reluctant to speak � or even think � about the horrors that Turin suffered, but who also just can't stop.

# ? Apr 2, 2018 19:29

MockingQuantum: Jan 20, 2012

drat, I should have looked into Twenty Days of Turin more closely, I voted for the Faulkner but now I kinda wish I'd voted for that

# ? Apr 2, 2018 19:45

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Given how much people here love making GBS threads on bad writing I was expecting more takers for Irene Iddlesleigh

# ? Apr 3, 2018 05:34

ulvir: Jan 2, 2005

there�s a difference between loving to poo poo on bad writers and wanting to read terrible books. I absolutely hate the latter.

# ? Apr 3, 2018 09:03

A human heart: Oct 10, 2012

That McKittrick Ros book only looks 'terrible' in the sense that it's a somewhat outsider writer doing unconventional purple prose. It's much more interesting than whatever genre trash people are making let's read threads about.

# ? Apr 3, 2018 09:57

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

You are a coward, Hieronymous Alloy.

# ? Apr 3, 2018 11:17

A human heart: Oct 10, 2012

CestMoi posted:

You are a coward, Hieronymous Alloy.

I don't really understand the reasoning for not using Babyfucker when there has been a thread with a joke about child loving in the title on the front page of this forum for about four years

# ? Apr 4, 2018 00:29

chernobyl kinsman: Mar 18, 2007; a friend of the friendly atom; Soiled Meat

turin wins close htread

# ? Apr 4, 2018 22:53

Cloks: Feb 1, 2013; by Azathoth

I want to start doing these, I vote for babyfucker.

Second choice Turin.

# ? Apr 5, 2018 04:58

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Y'all are why I drink.

Twenty Days of Turin it is. I'll get a thread up soonish.

# ? Apr 6, 2018 03:47

chernobyl kinsman: Mar 18, 2007; a friend of the friendly atom; Soiled Meat

can you use the ghosts tag again. i like the ghosts tag

# ? Apr 6, 2018 05:28

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 2, 2024 05:56

mike12345: Jul 14, 2008; "Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries."

Twenty days of turin sounds awesome, how have I never heard about this

# ? Apr 6, 2018 21:58

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > THE CRUELEST POLL: CHOOSE THE APRIL BOTM