Help us pick the next Book of the Month! Vote early, vote often, vote for as many books as you might want to read or talk about. 1) Convenience Store Woman by Sakaya Murata quote:Convenience Store Woman (Japanese: コンビニ人間, Hepburn: Konbini Ningen) is a 2016 novel by Japanese writer Sayaka Murata. It captures the atmosphere of the familiar convenience store that is so much part of life in Japan. The novel won the Akutagawa Prize in 2016.[4] Aside from working as a writer, Murata worked at a convenience store three times a week, basing her novel on her experiences. It was first published in the June 2016 issue of Bungakukai.[5] It was published as a book in July 2016 by Bungeishunjū. quote:Keiko Furukura is a 36-year old woman who has been working part-time at a convenience store, or konbini, for the last 18 years. She has known since childhood that she is "different" and that expressing her own views and actions is inexplicable and distressing to others, and causes problems. 2) My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante quote:The Neapolitan Novels begin in 2010 when the son of an old friend telephones the main character, a woman in her 60s named Elena (familiarly called "Lenů"). Elena's childhood friend Lila (a nickname for "Raffaella") has disappeared, and her son is unable to find her. Elena recognizes this behavior as something Lila, in her later years, has always talked about doing, and believes her disappearance to be a conscious decision. In the spirit of their loving but ambivalent ways towards each other, Elena begins to put on paper everything she can remember about Lila, beginning in 1950s Naples. 3) Travels with Charlie by John Steinbeck quote:Travels with Charley: In Search of America is a 1962 travelogue written by American author John Steinbeck. It depicts a 1960 road trip around the United States made by Steinbeck, in the company of his standard poodle Charley. Steinbeck wrote that he was moved by a desire to see his country on a personal level because he made his living writing about it. He wrote of having many questions going into his journey, the main one being "What are Americans like today?" However, he found that he had concerns about much of the "new America" he witnessed. 4) Fourth Mansions by RA Lafferty quote:Fourth Mansions was inspired by Teresa of Ávila's Interior Castle, and contains quotations from the book, which Lafferty uses as chapter headings. The Interior Castle is a metaphor for an individual's soul; its different rooms, different states of the soul. In the middle of the Castle the soul is in the purest state, which equals Heaven. Lafferty uses more complex symbols in telling a many-sided tale of an individual's reaching towards Heaven or Truth. The novel concerns a time of great change, when four forces – in the form of secret societies – contend to control the next phase of humanity's history. In the middle is Fred Foley, an innocent reporter. One of these forces intends to unleash a deadly virus on the US, the others attempt to stop them. A revolution by Mexican migrants, the craft of "mind weaving" and a strange group of "Patricks", all apparently tramps but with great resources, appear in the center of a narrative. Illuminatus! repeated several of the themes of this book, including the plague and secret society elements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Mansions 5) The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien quote:The Third Policeman, originally published in 1944, is the singularly strange crowning work in the fiction of the great Irish humorist Flann O'Brien. It opens with a tale of robbery and murder committed by its nameless narrator, who intends to use the proceeds of the crime to publish his commentaries on the writings of a plainly cracked philosopher named de Selby -- who theorizes that the earth is actually shaped like a sausage and that the phenomenon of night is a form of industrial pollution.
|
|
# ? Mar 26, 2021 16:04 |
|
|
# ? May 11, 2024 14:19 |
|
Voted Fourth Mansions because A human heart is a big fan.
|
# ? Mar 27, 2021 17:07 |
|
Third Policeman is pretty amazing and should be read by more people. Just be aware that the de Selby storyline is almost exclusively told via footnotes, which may annoy some people.
|
# ? Mar 28, 2021 02:29 |
|
quantumfoam posted:Third Policeman is pretty amazing and should be read by more people. Though I love footnotes. Gimme dat Pale Fire poo poo.
|
# ? Mar 29, 2021 20:53 |
|
quantumfoam posted:Third Policeman is pretty amazing and should be read by more people. Oh, I hope the ebook handles it in a non annoying way. Guess I'll go ahead and check now, it seems like it's gonna win.
|
# ? Mar 30, 2021 00:00 |
|
you can't put two genuinely cool authors in the same poll, that's going to split the good book vote!
|
# ? Mar 30, 2021 06:12 |
You can vote for more than one!
|
|
# ? Mar 30, 2021 12:46 |
how do I checkmark op
|
|
# ? Mar 30, 2021 16:05 |
edit: one more day of voting!
|
|
# ? Mar 31, 2021 13:16 |
|
Convenience Store Woman and The Third Policeman have both been on my radar.
|
# ? Apr 1, 2021 02:59 |
Third Policeman by a hair. I'll get a thread up either tonight or this weekend.
|
|
# ? Apr 1, 2021 12:25 |
|
You can't discuss The Third Policeman without mentioning Flann O'Brien's The Dalkey Archives. Lots of stuff inside Third Policeman got used in The Dalkey Archives. So I plan on doing so when the April 2021 BotM thread gets created.
|
# ? Apr 4, 2021 00:46 |
|
|
# ? May 11, 2024 14:19 |
quantumfoam posted:You can't discuss The Third Policeman without mentioning Flann O'Brien's The Dalkey Archives. Sorry! It'll go up tomorrow
|
|
# ? Apr 4, 2021 04:07 |