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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 2015, refer to archives] 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 March: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin April: The Conference of the Birds (مقامات الطیور) by Farid ud-Din Attar May: I, Claudius by Robert Graves June: Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky July: Ficcionies by Jorge Luis Borges August: My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber September: The Peregrine by J.A. Baker October: Blackwater Vol. I: The Flood by Michael McDowell November: Aquarium by David Vann December: Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight [Author Unknown] 2018 January: Njal's Saga [Author Unknown] February: The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle March: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders April: Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio de Maria May: Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov June: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe July: Warlock by Oakley Hall Current: All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriott Book available here: https://www.amazon.com/Creatures-Great-Small-James-Herriot/dp/0312965788 audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/Bios-Mem...ASAAEgI47_D_BwE kindle deal low price version for the first three books (this one plus two of the three sequels: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0060QM0CY/   About the book: This is the first (collected) volume of James Herriott's short stories about life as a veterinarian in rural Yorkshire in the 1930's and 1940's. Each story generally centers around an animal with a specific medical issue. The early stories feature more farm animals but the later ones feature more personal pets as the nature of his practice changed. It's not all saving sick animals, though; there's a heavy slice-of-life element to these stories also, as Herriott opens a window on life in his place and era. These books have always been a personal favorite of mine since I was a small child and we'd listen to them on NPR's Radio Reader. They're comfort food, but there's some meat here too; each short story is excellently well crafted and polished; you can tell Herriott spent decades polishing these stories over beers at the local pub before setting them down in print. Word of warning; usually he saves the animal, but sometimes the animal does die! You'll laugh, you'll cry, there are adorable cats About the Author  James Alfred "Alf" Wight, OBE, FRCVS (3 October 1916 – 23 February 1995), known by the pen name James Herriot, was a British veterinary surgeon and writer, who used his many years of experiences as a veterinary surgeon to write a series of books each consisting of stories about animals and their owners.[1] He is best known for these semi-autobiographical works, beginning with If Only They Could Talk in 1970, which spawned a series of movies and television series. Wight intended for years to write a book, but with most of his time consumed by veterinary practice and family, his writing ambition went nowhere. Challenged by his wife, in 1966 (at the age of 50), he began writing. After several rejected stories on other subjects like football, he turned to what he knew best. In 1969 Wight wrote If Only They Could Talk, the first of the now-famous series based on his life working as a vet and his training in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. His first approach brought a phone call from Anthea Joseph who was deputy chair of a publishing house.[4] Owing in part to professional etiquette, which at that time frowned on veterinary surgeons and other professionals from advertising their services, he took a pen name, choosing "James Herriot" after seeing the Scottish goalkeeper Jim Herriot play for Birmingham City in a televised game against Manchester United. If Only They Could Talk was published in the United Kingdom in 1970 by Michael Joseph Ltd, but sales were slow until Thomas McCormack, of St. Martin's Press in New York City, received a copy and arranged to have the first two books published as a single volume in the United States. The resulting book, titled All Creatures Great and Small, was a huge success, spawning numerous sequels, movies and a successful television adaptation. Themes quote:In his books, Wight calls the town in which Herriot lives and works Darrowby, a composite of Thirsk, Richmond, Leyburn and Middleham.[12] He also renamed Donald Sinclair and his brother Brian Sinclair as Siegfried and Tristan Farnon respectively, and used the name "Helen Alderson" for Joan Danbury. Pacing Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law. Please post after you read! Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion. References and Further Reading Much of the BBC series is available online: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x55j70u (first episode) Note the presence of Peter Davison in the supporting cast; he would go on to star as the Fifth Doctor in original-series Doctor Who. Final Note: Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Aug 14, 2018 |
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Aug 1, 2018 13:02
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Those are really chill and relaxing, I remember having read them as a kid.
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Aug 1, 2018 18:50
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anilEhilated posted:Those are really chill and relaxing, I remember having read them as a kid. Read them again now! We all deserve a break these days
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Aug 1, 2018 19:04
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Oh, man, I read these as a kid until the bindings fell apart, and haven't thought about them in ages. Thanks for the choice  
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Aug 3, 2018 01:48
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anilEhilated posted:Those are really chill and relaxing, I remember having read them as a kid. Oh yeah. Some of the earliest stuff I can recall reading that wasn't specifically kid's books.
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Aug 6, 2018 15:32
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I found this image of Peter Davison as Tristan Farnon:
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Aug 6, 2018 16:53
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All time Herriott stories: that one about the ghost, the little Yorkie that that rich lady had, literally anything involving Tristan
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Aug 6, 2018 17:21
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Nikita Khrushchev posted:All time Herriott stories: that one about the ghost, the little Yorkie that that rich lady had, literally anything involving Tristan My personal favorites are the ones where he tries to save the animal and then despite everything the animal dies and then he's like "twenty years later, antibiotics came along, and now no dog will ever die from that again" His greatest tale remains the Artificial Bovine Vagina but that isn't in this collection, it's in one of the later ones (Lord God Made Them All I think).
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Aug 6, 2018 17:31
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quote:JAMES HERRIOT IS back, thank goodness, and just in time. What with terrorism, the economy in shreds, and my car falling apart, I desperately need the balm of some escapist literature. Robert Ludlum and Stephen King needn't apply. When I want bullets and gore I can pick up the newspaper or watch TV. I'd rather escape to better times, to the Yorkshire Dales, to ride with this great-hearted country veterinarian across "the miles of heathery moorland and the rounded summits of the great hills slumbering into the sunshine." https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...m=.881720be6066
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Aug 6, 2018 17:33
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The audiobooks for this series are an absolute joy, by the way, and pair well with Stardew Valley for a chill and upbeat evening. I'm curious, do we know which of these stories are drawn most closely from Wight's actual experiences?
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Aug 6, 2018 19:05
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Kestral posted:The audiobooks for this series are an absolute joy, by the way, and pair well with Stardew Valley for a chill and upbeat evening. I suspect all of them, but dramatized a bit. For example, the actual dude who Seigfried was based on didn't talk to Wight for years because he felt he'd been unfairly caricatured as a rage monster(I believe they eventually reconciled)
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Aug 6, 2018 19:13
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Oh I'm very here for this. I still sometimes use Herriot-isms in daily speech, like "what did you do, shoot up through the floorboards?"
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Aug 6, 2018 21:33
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Ohhh poo poo, my mother used to read this to me when I was a wee lad. It was like Bob Ross mixed with a country vet. I should give it another go.
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Aug 7, 2018 18:14
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I'd also, non-ironically, like to talk about the craft of these stories. One nice thing about Herriott's writing is that it's workmanlike, in the best sense: you can see each part of the story, fitting together into a clean, polished, spare whole, like mission-style furniture : no frills, just clean lines and solid construction. The very first story in the collection is a good example of what I'm talking about. 1) The core narrative, the "hook", is straightforward: the physical challenge of birthing a cow. A complex birth with a difficult presentation. Gotta save that baby cow. It's a visceral, elemental, immediately attention grabbing, but in a positive way. Man Vs. Cow Vs. Death. 2) The second layer to the story, the comic counterpoint: "Mr. Bromfield says. . . . " ; no matter the vet's struggle, the world is gonna keep giving him poo poo about it 3) the main hook resolves: baby cow saved! Life brought into the world! Death averted! TOTES ADORBS BABY COW 4) the comic layer, though -- not resolved! The farmer still prefers that loving Bromfield! No, you're still gonna get laughed at. But, y'know what -- that's ok. Baby cow saved. That's what matters. It's not a particularly nuanced story; there aren't multiple levels of irony; this isn't O'Henry or Saki or Twain or anything. But there's definitely craft here. Herriott knows what he's doing.
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Aug 10, 2018 01:07
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omg i can't get hold of a copy of this but i basically know it off by heart anyway. hello friends
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Aug 12, 2018 00:16
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I'd also, non-ironically, like to talk about the craft of these stories. 
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Aug 12, 2018 00:16
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this broken hill posted:this is the best post you've ever made HA is a treasure. I love James Herriott
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Aug 12, 2018 04:07
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Nikita Khrushchev posted:literally anything involving Tristan THE drat THING'S making GBS threads EVERYWHERE
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Aug 12, 2018 04:32
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This is SO nice, they had the three books in one for Kindle several months ago. I returned to those stories like you go back to an old friend. One thing that struck me was the difference antibiotics made, as when the stories started they weren't available.
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Aug 13, 2018 23:48
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Zola posted:This is SO nice, they had the three books in one for Kindle several months ago. There may be one more volume -- generally they're published in four separate volumes, All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Things Wise and Wonderful, and The Lord God Made them All. The last volume is probably the weakest overall but it brings things up to the then-"modern" era and includes the story of the Artificial Bovine Vagina which is, I cannot emphasize this enough, one of the great works of English humor writing.
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Aug 13, 2018 23:57
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I got this copy, it has the first three books, it's gone back up but it was $2.99. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0060QM0CY/ (This is a plain Amazon link, it doesn't give me clicks or anything)
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Aug 14, 2018 00:01
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Zola posted:I got this copy, it has the first three books, it's gone back up but it was $2.99. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0060QM0CY/ (This is a plain Amazon link, it doesn't give me clicks or anything) Thanks ! Added to the top post I should have set up amazon link kickbacks for myself a long time ago
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Aug 14, 2018 00:03
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Yeah, the price went back up, but check it now and then, they may well put it on special again. I've gotten a lot of great reads this way
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Aug 14, 2018 00:09
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quote:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8913071/James-Herriot-the-wild-years.html I think the comparison with Wodehouse is apt; like Wodehouse, reading these stories today almost seems like stepping through a door into Narnia. Just like the halcyon era of Bertie Wooster had already been blown apart in the trenches of WW1 by the time Wodehouse was writing, the idyllic country life Herriott writes about had already almost entirely faded away or changed by the time he started writing in the late sixties.
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Aug 14, 2018 00:19
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Ahahha holy poo poo the same vet practice is still going and there's a new, current tv show documentary about it https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5016662/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgrJlCAH588 alpaca birth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGDMrBomsf4
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Aug 14, 2018 00:28
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I never considered the potential Wodehouse influence and now I'd like to read them again with that in mind. I get the same feeling from listening to a Wodehouse audiobook as I do from Herriott's stories, so I might look for an audiobook of it. An interesting comparison would be the way wealth is depicted in both series. Herriott makes it abundantly clear that being wealthy is no guarantee of someone being good with animals or competent, and Wodehouse is constantly satirizing the idle rich. Some interesting class stuff going on there.
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Aug 14, 2018 05:13
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I loved these books when I first 'met' them as a pre-teen in the late 70s, and then watching the series on PBS through the 80s -- it always seemed to land on PBS during the autumn into the winter, so many of my associations with the books and series is cosy autumn nights leading down into Christmas and New Year's. Every time I've revisited the books it's been during that time of year. Fun facts -- * the reason Tristan gets so much screen time in the series is that Christopher Timothy badly broke his leg very early in filming (so badly he was afraid the series project would be cancelled). To compensate, and especially since you mostly see him stood still or propped up against something in the early series, they gave Tristan/Peter Davison a lot more to do. * My best friend's mum was assistant head at a little school in Pennsylvania, and God knows how or when, but she'd become friends with Brian Sinclair, so she had him come and speak to a school assembly once. Apparently he was great fun, and had a good time talking trash about his brother and Wight (all in jest, no worries!) and of course vehemently denied that he/Tristan was ever as naughty as the books made him out to be (all the while confirming it). Will confirm that amongst the best stories are the Raynes' ghost (if you ever get a chance, do visit one or more of the old ruined abbeys up in Yorkshire -- or, heck, get yourself up to Yorkshire on a driving tour -- Herriot's writing about the wildness and beauty is so excellent and evocative), Georgina the cat (noted above with the It's making GBS threads, Jim!), and Tricki Woo (and his cousin the pig). Will also confess that even now, there are certain stories I can't bring myself to revisit (the hugely mean man who's only friend in the world is his little cat that tragically dies  )The ones that always frustrated me are when he visits his larger-than-life pal who always plies him with so much food and drink he gets ill...as someone with a very small appetite who feels very ill herself if I eat too much in one go, I always feel frustrated for him in those episodes. Ms Boods fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Aug 19, 2018 |
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Aug 19, 2018 10:01
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Ms Boods posted:The ones that always frustrated me are when he visits his larger-than-life pal who always plies him with so much food and drink he gets ill...as someone with a very small appetite who feels very ill herself if I eat too much in one go, I always feel frustrated for him in those episodes. Oh my god, yeah. I read the books long before I started learning about alcohol and how to deal with it, and every new experience I had with hangovers or with endess stomach-roiling party food consumed in a drunken haze, I vaguely remembered Herriot talking about downing hot dogs and pickled onions and desperately trying not to heave while that guy bellowed about the Indian restaurant they're headed to next.
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Aug 19, 2018 12:27
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at one point there's a story about a romanichal family whose pony has laminitis and iirc there was zero racism in it and they were treated by the narrative as no different to all the other delightful yorkshire eccentrics. i appreciated that
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Aug 20, 2018 02:04
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this broken hill posted:at one point there's a story about a romanichal family whose pony has laminitis and iirc there was zero racism in it and they were treated by the narrative as no different to all the other delightful yorkshire eccentrics. i appreciated that There's also the extremely sympathetic presentation of the Russian POW's in one of the later books. Herriott at least gives the sense of being one of those Mr. Rogers / Bob Ross types who just reflexively liked everybody. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Aug 20, 2018 |
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Aug 20, 2018 15:41
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I just bought the three-book Kindle set and I'm disappointed that it's an omnibus rather than three separate books. Regardless, I look forward to reading at least the first and my girlfriend will also because we've just gotten kittens and become obsessed with all things animal. I hope the mean man little cat story is not in the first book.
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Aug 22, 2018 13:57
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Just started my next semester (lit 1  ), I'm going to see if they can get this in the library.
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Aug 27, 2018 23:27
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Gosh, this is lovely so far. I'm halfway through the audiobook and it's equal parts charming, emotionally affecting and genuinely funny. Herriott is a drat fine writer, and the cast of characters are so well-drawn I have vivid mental pictures of each one when they appear in the stories. Seconding that Tristan stories are probably the best ones - where I just left off, he accidentally sent a tin full of cow poo poo to a farmer who already hated them. This is really classic stuff, from a truly bygone age.
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Aug 29, 2018 00:49
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We will be starting up the next month's book soon but please feel free to continue discussion in this thread since I know people got started with it a bit late. The party don't stop just because the month does!
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Aug 31, 2018 04:15
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this broken hill posted:at one point there's a story about a romanichal family whose pony has laminitis and iirc there was zero racism in it and they were treated by the narrative as no different to all the other delightful yorkshire eccentrics. i appreciated that It's chapter 59 in the first book (near the end!). This story was included in Season 1, Episode 5 of the TV series, "Out of Practice". The show gives it an interesting twist, actually: Siegfried is presented as initially racist -- reminding James to get payment in advance -- but the Roma family themselves are shown as rigorously, and very consciously, presenting money up front before James or Siegfried can even ask. The prose story presents it a little less starkly -- Seigfried says "get the brass if you can" as James leaves instead of giving a lecture about it -- but the same twist of the gypsy paying right up front before they even get out of the car, and Siegfried getting the negative portrayal, is present; the effect is to acknowledge and immediately discredit anti-Roma racism, and then the story moves on. One thing that the story brings out to a greater degree than the television version though is Herriott's affection for the family and the pony. And then Siegfried does, in fact, save the pony -- first with a surprise treatment, then by very carefully educating the three girls in the family on an exact course of treatment and exercise for the pony, and then the girls do a scrupulous job of after-care, and the pony is saved.
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Aug 31, 2018 04:33
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I got into this really, really late in the game ... by which I mean that I started it during my shift last night. (Seventeen patients in four hours followed by a nice lull!) It's fantastic and utterly charming. The chapter where he diagnoses the old man's lab with liver cancer and ascites to sleep and refuses payment was heartbreaking.
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Aug 31, 2018 12:47
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I really love this so far and I'll certainly finish it. Every other story becomes "the one I want to discuss" but right now I'm just past the bit where he and Tristan had to shove the uterus back into a cow. EDIT: Suggestion for a future month is Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey, which is available on Project Gutenberg.
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Sep 5, 2018 18:22
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I'm perhaps 80% done and love it, but my favorite bit is still from the very beginning. "My mind went back to that picture in the obstetrics book. A cow standing in the middle of a gleaming floor while a sleek veterinary surgeon in a spotless parturition overall inserted his arm to a polite distance. He was relaxed and smiling, the farmer and his helpers were smiling, even the cow was smiling. There was no dirt or blood or sweat anywhere. "That man in the picture had just finished an excellent lunch and had moved next door to do a bit of calving just for the sheer pleasure of it, as a kind of dessert. He hadn’t crawled shivering from his bed at two o’clock in the morning and bumped over twelve miles of frozen snow, staring sleepily ahead till the lonely farm showed in the headlights. He hadn’t climbed half a mile of white fell-side to the doorless barn where his patient lay." This so perfectly parallels the transition from medical academics to medical practice. Beautiful.
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Sep 6, 2018 20:16
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i found my big red leather book of herriott and this weekend i intend to read it all 
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Sep 6, 2018 23:34
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tetrapyloctomy posted:I'm perhaps 80% done and love it, but my favorite bit is still from the very beginning. Everyone who liked this first volume, I strongly suggest rolling forward into the remaining three others. They're mostly more of the same but each moves forward a bit chronologically -- just as the first book has the overarching "plot" of Herriott's courtship and marriage, the second and third bring the action forward through WW2, and the final volume covers post-war; it's probably the weakest overall volume because it doesn't have War Drama to stiffen it, but it has my overall favorite Herriott story, the tale of the Artificial Bovine Vagina.
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Sep 7, 2018 03:03
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