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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 Current: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin https://twitter.com/jpbrammer/status/837377129071378433/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Book available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC11GA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 About the book: quote:The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia is a 1974 utopian science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, set in the same fictional universe as that of The Left Hand of Darkness (the Hainish Cycle). The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1974,[1] won both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1975,[2] and received a nomination for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1975.[2] It achieved a degree of literary recognition unusual for science fiction works due to its exploration of many ideas and themes, including anarchism and revolutionary societies, capitalism, individualism and collectivism, and freedom versus imprisonment. Themes and Background quote:Le Guin's foreword to the novel notes that her anarchism is closely akin to that of Peter Kropotkin's, whose Mutual Aid closely assessed the influence of the natural world on competition and cooperation.[20] Le Guin's use of realism in this aspect of the work further complicates a simple utopian interpretation of the work. Anarres is not a perfect society, and Le Guin's The Dispossessed seems to argue that no such thing is possible.[citation needed] However, life in Anarres, in her view, is far more free, just, meaningful, and satisfying than life in the main countries of Urras (or in their Earth counterparts when the book was written: the capitalist West and the communist East).[citation needed] quote:It has been suggested that Le Guin's title is a reference to Dostoyevsky's novel The Possessed,[11] although Dostoevsky's title means possessed by demons. Other commenters point to hardship caused by lack of resources as a plausible reference. The people of Anarres are "dispossessed" in the sense that they have no personal material possessions, since all goods are held in common. In contrast, the working class majority of Urras are "dispossessed" in the sense that they do not have access to the wealth which has been created with their labor. Much of the philosophical underpinnings and ecological concepts came from Murray Bookchin's Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971), according to a letter Le Guin sent to Bookchin.[21] Anarres citizens are dispossessed not just by political choice, but by the very lack of actual resources to possess. Here, again, Le Guin draws a contrast with the natural wealth of Urras, and the competitive behaviors this fosters.[22] Pacing Just read, then Post. Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion. References and Further Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Scarcity_Anarchism http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/dispossessed.html Final Note: Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Mar 6, 2017 |
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Mar 6, 2017 04:24
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Ottermotive Insanity posted:I think that's the point. You give up something regardless of which planet you're on. Either you lose the generic gamble and get hosed over by a hierarchical society or you don't wager where no one loses but no one wins either. It also ties into LeGuin's Taoist beliefs -- there's no perfect system, but there are two opposing systems, each of which contains in itself the seeds of its own destruction and transformation into the other system. That said, I think LeGuin probably *did* believe she was representing Anarres more positively than she was Urras, so it's an interesting puzzle to think out why. Personally, I'd point to the relative opportunity for and response to change on each planet respectively. For another angle, keep in mind that this book was published in 1974, roughly eight years after Heinlein won the Hugo for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It's hard not to see this book as a direct response. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 06:10
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Need suggestions for next month. Can't be fantasy/SF since we just did that.
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Mar 21, 2017 02:40
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USMC_Karl posted:Well, I just finished it and couldn't really take part, but it looks like you haven't done Zorba the Greek yet. I thought it was a ton of fun as a book, and it wasn't particularly hard to read. It seemed to me that you could discuss a little of it as well. That's a neat thought. It'll go in the poll. I have to wonder if anybody at all, when it came out, realized how screamingly gay it was I still see "Zorba's" greek restaurants all over, it was a huge novel back in the day. And I encourage anyone who's read a BOTM recently enough to remember it to participate. Or even dredge up old BOTM threads if you want to commment after the fact. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Mar 21, 2017 |
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Mar 21, 2017 03:42
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Twerkteam Pizza posted:Can I put in Underground by Murakami in for BOTM? Suggest anything you want, sure. In fact, *please.* It helps a lot if you give me a couple of sentences as a "why would a goon want to read this book" blurb because I haven't read everything! (The only Murakami I've read was the bird one). I usually take a few suggestions + a few of my own contenders and make the poll that way. If a suggestion doesn't make the poll it doesn't necessarily mean I don't like that book, I might just have decided to, for example, pick all female authors for a month, or all nonfiction, etc.; I rarely know what's going to be in the poll till I make it.
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Mar 21, 2017 06:09
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