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 2011: January: John Keats, Endymion Febuary/March: Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote April: Laurell K. Hamilton, Obsidian Butterfly May: Richard A. Knaak - Diablo #1: Legacy of Blood June: Pamela Britton - On The Move July: Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep August: Louis L'Amour - Bendigo Shafter September: Ian Fleming - Moonraker October: Ray Bradbury - Something Wicked This Way Comes November: John Ringo - Ghost December: James Branch Cabell - Jurgen 2012: January: G.K. Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday Febuary: M. Somerset Maugham - Of Human Bondage March: Joseph Heller - Catch-22 April: Zack Parsons - Liminal States May: Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood June: James Joyce - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man July: William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch August: William Faulkner - The Sound & The Fury September/October: Leo Tolstoy - War & Peace November: David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas December: Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night 2013 January: Walter M. Miller - A Canticle for Liebowitz Febuary: Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination March: Kazuo Ishiguro - Remains Of The Day April: Don Delillo - White Noise May: Anton LeVey - The Satanic Bible June/July: Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell August: Michael Swanwick - Stations of the Tide September: John Wyndham - Day of the Triffids October: Shirley Jackson - The Haunting of Hill House November: Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory December: Roderick Thorp - Nothing Lasts Forever 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 Current: The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault This book tells the story of the Peloponnesian War and the rise and fall of Athens from the viewpoint of Alexias, a young man who grows up in wartime, who experiences his city's joys and terrors, grows into a soldier and athlete, and falls in love -- with another man. Which is, of course, perfectly natural and depicted as such, this being classical Athens; but such a frank and unashamed portrayal was revolutionary when this book was first published, in 1956, fifty-eight years ago, before Stonewall, before gay rights, before almost any notion of the modern gay rights movement. Revolutionary for its mores, enthralling and entertaining, this book is both historical fiction that seems perfectly set in its time, and a work of political revolution when it was written. Available on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Wine-Mary-Renault/dp/0375726810 About the Author quote:Born at Dacre Lodge, 49 Plashet Road, Forest Gate, Essex (now in London), Renault was educated at St Hugh's College, Oxford, then an all-women's college, receiving an undergraduate degree in English in 1928. In 1933 she began training as a nurse at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. During her training she met Julie Mullard, a fellow nurse with whom she established a lifelong romantic relationship. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Renault Discussion: This thread is for general discussion of anything you think of while reading this book. Whether you liked it or hated the book, whether you liked or hated the author personally, other books it reminds you of, that thing your dad did that one time, how Foucault's theory of discourse provides a useful lens to discuss gender relationships in the text, farts, whatever. The biggest problem we've had with the Book of the Month has been lack of participation, so just saying something that demonstrates you've actually read a page or two shows people that everyone else is doing it and encourages the next guy to jump into our nice warm lake as well. Questions & Themes: I think there are a few different angles one might approach this book. A couple possible starting points -- One angle is just as a story and a depiction of classical Athens. How accurate is it? Do you think it did a good job of bringing Athens to life? Is having Socrates in a novel weird or cool, and does she pull it off or not? What does Renault do as a writer that works well, or doesn't, and why? Another angle is to look at it through a contemporary lens. Is she just writing an idealized gay relationship? Is it overdone or something that needed to be done? (see, e.g.,http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/01/07/130107fa_fact_mendelsohn ). Is this book just holding a mirror up to modernity and showing us a flaw in our society by contrast with another, or is it doing something more, or different, or what? Is any of its fire lost now that gay rights are less controversial? Further Reading: If people like this book and just want more, or if discussion flags, we can expand into some of her other works (The King Must Die maybe?) or other historical fiction authors (Graves? O'Brian?) for a compare-and-contrast of their styles and approaches. 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! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 23:42 |
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# ¿ May 16, 2024 20:53 |
Poutling posted:About a sixth of the way through. It's been a long time since I've studied classical history so my knowledge base is rusty, I remember the major names and wars but not much of the finer details - out of curiosity, HA - what made you pick this one rather than let's say, The King Must Die which would probably have been a more accessible work for people who don't know much about Ancient Greek history? Heh, I made the decision, asked myself the same question, and had to think about it for a *long* time. Partly, it's that I wanted to re-read this one and I've read The King Must Die pretty recently. Partly it's that The King Must Die is probably an easier book. It's a little closer to fantasy and involves, well, if not less scholarship, a different kind of scholarship that's more about mythology and anthropology and inference than it is about actual historical records and things we know for relative certain. And the converse of that -- which was probably the deciding reason -- is that this is a more thematically complex book and I think it probably has more to talk about. The jacket quote on my ancient paperback copy says quote:THE GLORY OF ANCIENT GREECE Someone -- probably one of my parents -- had underlined that last sentence. And that's really the thing. With this one there are a few levels to talk about if we want to -- both the book itself and the politics and time it talks about and is set in, as well as any analogies or comparisons we want to think about between either of those and the present day. I also think that you don't *necessarily* need to know much about ancient greek history to get this one -- she teaches what you need. You might get more from a re-read if you've read Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon, etc. The first time I read this I hadn't read any ancient greek history, and it is a pretty different book coming back to it a couple decades later, after having read Xenophon, etc. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Jul 5, 2014 |
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# ¿ Jul 5, 2014 21:05 |
Well, my fear with deciding the book of the month that far in advance is that we might get a participation drop. Last month, for example, I put up a book that had been the second runner up the month before -- People's History of the United States -- and it got the lowest overall amount of discussion so far. I don't know if it was just a bad selection or what but I think part of it is that the people who had voted for it the month prior all sortof drifted away and forgot about Book Barn in the intervening month. Having everybody vote then go "ok, go read this book NOW" helps with that. I do try to nominate a lot of books that are relatively easy to find and/or free on kindle. In lieu of firm advance warning, I will say that my plan for next month's nominees is basically to repost the same poll from last month except with a book by Nadine Gordimer swapped out for Renault.
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# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 14:55 |
Crashbee posted:If you're going to do that you may as well swap out the two books which received the lowest number of votes as well, since it seems unlikely they'd receive the four/five-times increase in support needed to win. Yeah. Any other suggestions for books before the next poll goes up? Despite this being a relatively slow month I'd like to try female authors again, so further nominations appreciated. Maybe Iris Murdoch? Isak Dinesen? It'd be a help to point out specific books too -- I haven't read any Gordimer for example so don't know which of her books to list. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Jul 24, 2014 |
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# ¿ Jul 24, 2014 14:12 |
Riddle of the Sands is a great spy novel but yeah it's probably best for following month since male author -- maybe we can do spy novels in September?
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# ¿ Jul 24, 2014 18:20 |