TBB BOTM OCTOBER: THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT BY SA'S OWN GENERAL BATTUTA

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > TBB BOTM OCTOBER: THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT BY SA'S OWN GENERAL BATTUTA

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

Welcome earthlings to the Awful Book of the Month!
In this thread, we choose one work of ~~literature~~ absolute crap and read/discuss it over a month. If you have any suggestions of books, choose something that will be appreciated by many people, and has many avenues of discussion. We'd also appreciate if it were a work of ~~literature~~ complete drivel that is easily located from a local library or book shop, as opposed to ordering something second hand off the internet and missing out on a week's worth of reading. Better yet, books available on e-readers.

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.

:siren:

For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM me. :siren:

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
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

Current:

Book Barn's General Battuta -- The Traitor Baru Cormorant

http://www.amazon.com/Traitor-Baru-Cormorant-Seth-Dickinson/dp/0765380722

quote:

Case in point: Max Gladstone was the first author with whom I shared Seth Dickinson�s debut novel, The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Not because I�m Max�s editor and he�s a cool guy and we�ve become good friends�all of that is true, but I don�t ask every author I work with to send me a quote for every book I edit. Like I said, when it comes to obtaining blurbs, I try to match the writer to the book. In this instance, knowing Max the way I do, I had a strong hunch he�d be as enthusiastic for Seth�s novel as I was.

Seldom have I underestimated anyone so spectacularly.

This is the blurb Max wrote that appears on the back cover of The Traitor Baru Cormorant:

quote:
�Dickinson has written a poet�s Dune, a brutal tale of empire, rebellion, fealty, and high finance that moves like a rocket and burns twice as hot. The Traitor Baru Cormorant is a mic drop for epic fantasy.�

�Max Gladstone, author of the Craft Sequence

Pretty awesome, right? Any SF/F novelist will tell you they�d give a kidney for an endorsement like that. A poet�s Dune? Moves like a rocket and burns twice as hot? A mic drop for epic fantasy? Heck, most debut novelists would cut out the kidney themselves to have any one of those descriptions on their book jacket. But all three in the same blurb? That�s gold.

Here�s the thing, though. That was the Gladstone blurb I chose for Seth�s jacket. Max gave me others, and each one was more insane than the last.

quote:
�In the first chapter of this book, Seth Dickinson turns a colonial analogue of the revolutionary fascists from V for Vendetta loose on LeGuin�s Earthsea. You want to see what he does next.�

Okay, that one�s pretty cool too. Great comparisons, awesome juxtaposition, and a promise that these merely scratch the surface of the novel. But then Max wrote this:

quote:
�This is the part where you tell me you don�t want to read a fantasy novel about an accountant, of all things, who doesn�t even do any swordfighting, and I�ll break your nose with this book, strap you into that creepy forced-viewing chair from A Clockwork Orange, and save you from a horrible mistake. You might as well spare yourself the trouble. I�m no good at setting noses.�

Now I�m wondering, what�s going on here? From the threat of violence and the reprogramming imagery, I can only assume Max has taken the Incrastic philosophy described in Seth�s novel to heart, and he will use these same methods when negotiating his next book contract. But I digress. Let�s continue:

quote:
�The Traitor Baru Cormorant breaks fantasy open: a brilliantly written gauntlet thrown to ossified visions of the genre�s possibilities. If face-huggers infected George R. R. Martin, Howard Zinn, and James C. Scott, producing glistening murderous offspring which then mated somehow�this is the book the single surviving spawn of that horrid union�s brood clutch would write. Read it.�

At this point, I�m terrified. But I�m also perversely intrigued. If I hadn�t already read The Traitor Baru Cormorant, this might well make me pick it up. And that�s what a blurb is supposed to do, after all. But my slightly depraved sensibilities aren�t the issue. As the editor, I have to think outside myself, imagine what will work best across the largest number of people.

But then there�s my personal favorite, which appeared simply as the subject of the email Max sent me containing all those other quotes:

quote:
�Can my blurb just be, �Jesus loving Christ, Marco, where did you find this guy?��

Ah, to live in a world where that could be a cover quote!

http://www.tor.com/2015/09/15/the-art-of-the-blurb-or-step-away-from-the-traitor-baru-cormorant-max-gladstone/

About the Author

General Battuta posted:

No, in my opinion. I think Ark is a lot better than Gap.

I really like the spaceship chase in Redemption Ark, it's neat.

General Battuta posted:

Aaaa I LOVED that game. I must've been eight or ten when we played it, so my brother and I would just stare over my dad's shoulders and tell him what to do.

I don't know if it was legitimately hard as hell, or just hard because we were tiny children, but we were stuck in the avian lair with the watermelons for months. And then the game put you on a timer and rushed you through the awesome octospider lair

General Battuta posted:

I really want to make the corvette swarm happen, but I am so, so bad at flying Rebel ships.

General Battuta posted:

What is best in life? To swarm your enemies, see them ruptured in vacuum, and order the devastation of their worlds.

General Battuta posted:

I was worried about the stray cats I always hear whining and mewing outside, because of all the cold and snow, but yesterday I saw the mournful creatures parading down the alley and they're all fat and sleek and just like to complain

General Battuta posted:

You don't have to use Tinder, you can just talk to people you meet in the course of your day to day life and social occasions, accepting that all human relationships are on some level a product of coincidence and that it's more important to build friendships out of what's there than to seek out some illusionary, instantaneous spark of connection

General Battuta posted:

Me too! I want to be a boat.

Discussion, Questions & Themes:

Pacing

Discussion is fine, but please use spoiler tags.

References and Further Reading

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 12:51 on Oct 12, 2015

# ¿ Oct 5, 2015 02:36

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 15, 2024 10:00

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

If North Korea is any example, life doesn't even have to be particularly good.

Revolutions almost never succeed without significant external support and military aid.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 13:58

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

Need suggestions for next month.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2015 12:51

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

Xotl posted:

I regret that I'm getting this one too late to participate, but I did order it just because of the good word I've seen here. Best of luck on your career, Seth.

The thread won't close. Discussion on books of the month can always continue.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2015 06:01

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

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Its only available to order on Amazon but I think "Voices from Chernobyl" by Svetlana Alexievich would be good. It's interesting, relevant, short, and she did just win the Nobel Prize.

OK that will go in the poll but I need more suggestions than just that

# ¿ Oct 28, 2015 00:29

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > TBB BOTM OCTOBER: THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT BY SA'S OWN GENERAL BATTUTA