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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 2016, refer to archives] 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 August: All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriott September: The Magus by John Fowles October: I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara November: Arcadia by Tom Stoppard December: Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens 2019: January: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky February: BEAR by Marian Engel March: V. by Thomas Pynchon April: The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout May: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman June: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann Current: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach Book available here: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Fielding...=gateway&sr=8-1 About the book: quote:1At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. quote:A great deal of publicity focused on the story of the book's publication, as Harbach worked on the novel, his debut, for ten years, subsequently receiving an advance of more than $650,000 after a bidding war for the publishing rights.[3] Franchescanado posted:The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach blue squares posted:The Art of Fielding was fantastic! What's my next book? Franchescanado posted:I read The Art of Fielding as a wild card (from Mel Mudkiper). It was really good. Dragged in the middle a little bit, but it worked, since every character was hitting their rock bottom. Glad I read it while it was still summer. taco show posted:
screenwritersblues posted:The Art of Fielding has to be one of the better books that I read in a few years. It's not really a book about baseball, it's a book that revolves around baseball. crunk and white posted:college is awful, i just read a new book the art of fielding, it is about baseball and friendship and it is resonant and cool, really good & recommended barkingclam posted:The Art of Fielding has a petty big gay subplot and it's more than relatively recent. About the Author(s) quote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_Harbach Themes  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 https://twitter.com/ChuckTingle/status/1056047103053463554 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01JPE7UKE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0162637UU/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Ship-League-Baseball/dp/150126494X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Natural Final Note: Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Jul 3, 2019 |
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Jul 3, 2019 15:49
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| # ? May 5, 2024 02:04 |
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Your further reading links are from 1491, bud.
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Jul 3, 2019 16:18
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Idaholy Roller posted:Your further reading links are from 1491, bud. Isn't all reading further reading for all other reading? thanks, fixed
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Jul 3, 2019 16:54
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Got this from the library, I'll likely be starting next week. I'm excited!
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Jul 5, 2019 14:40
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Apparently it's just me. My last book dragged so I just got started. Polished off chapter 9 tonight and I'm really enjoying it.
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Jul 13, 2019 03:28
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c'mon folks! Five other people voted for this one!
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Jul 13, 2019 03:32
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I will add that it's substantially different from the other baseball injury story book I've read, which was Caught Stealing by Charlie Huston. Very different books, despite some baseball.
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Jul 13, 2019 03:52
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And I finished this off last night. It was a good read. It's about friendship and the difficulties of growing up and all of that. It was compulsively readable. It has a tendency towards shorter chapters which always makes me think, "Well, sure, I've got 3 minutes to finish off the next one." It feels very much a summer read. It's sort of intentionally light and does stick pretty close to well established guidelines for works about sport. I felt just a little cheated on one of the storylines. That being said, it's a good, enjoyable book I'll almost certainly wind up recommending. Despite the length, it reads quick, so anyone who was dithering about it can likely still get in under the bell!
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Jul 17, 2019 17:09
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Which storyline do you feel was unsatisfactory by the end?
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Jul 17, 2019 17:12
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Franchescanado posted:Which storyline do you feel was unsatisfactory by the end? Ultimately, I felt like Guert never had to deal with his consequences. With everyone else struggling to move on past college or past relationships, he never really does. I thought maybe he'd made a decision there, but he didn't.
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Jul 17, 2019 17:41
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Not quite finished with the book yet but it still feels like a lighter, twee-er, less experimental Infinite-Jest-But-About-Baseball to me Like, I've enjoyed reading it but I don't think the addiction narrative is remotely as fleshed out as IJ, and Henry's near-total inability to talk or express emotion (even as his interiority and thoughts become more and more crushing) feels like Hal Incandenza but without the weed/oedipal problems/personal trauma.
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Jul 18, 2019 13:16
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okay I finished and digging up affenlight at the end is like definitely an huge infinite jest reference lol. i googled harbach and the man has written too many essays about david foster wallace for that not to be on purpose overall a good book for sure
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Jul 19, 2019 03:06
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Need suggestions for next month. At the moment I'm leaning towards Treasure Island -- I want something accessible and out of copyright since participation is flagging a bit.
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Jul 22, 2019 11:51
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I just started this! I meant to start this earlier but Neuromancer at the start of the month took me much longer than I thought it would. I just got to the injury of Owen which i am sure is the basis for everything else.
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Jul 22, 2019 19:56
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Just finished this and I’ll echo the others in saying that it was a light and engaging summer read. For whatever reason my mind set this book at faber college and it was funny to imagine bluto and the rest of the gang running around in the background. Anyway, to me the ending was the books greatest weakness, as you see most of the characters simply settling for whatever path was directly in front of them and the previous drama all for naught. Hell even the biggest nail biter (affenlight) gets the biggest cop out ever and is totally unsatisfying. Henry’s ending too was anticlimactic, but I won’t spoil it for anyone still reading.
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Jul 23, 2019 00:23
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Ben Nevis posted:Ultimately, I felt like Guert never had to deal with his consequences. With everyone else struggling to move on past college or past relationships, he never really does. I thought maybe he'd made a decision there, but he didn't. Yeah that and Henry seeming so hollow? to me were my only real negatives. Enjoyable book otherwise I think, so much so that the guy who does the interlibrary loans at my work library (community college) is gonna read it since for some reason despite getting it first week of July they were gonna let me have it until the end of October??
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Jul 25, 2019 13:49
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Karl Sharks posted:Yeah that and Henry seeming so hollow? to me were my only real negatives. Enjoyable book otherwise I think, so much so that the guy who does the interlibrary loans at my work library (community college) is gonna read it since for some reason despite getting it first week of July they were gonna let me have it until the end of October?? ILL is a crazy beast. From what my librarians tell me, it's up to the library that loans it when it's due back. I've gotten books with 10 days and I have one now that's due back in September. They say the colleges are the most generous where the big city library is the least.
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Jul 25, 2019 14:43
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https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1154400545362329600
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Jul 25, 2019 15:39
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Ben Nevis posted:ILL is a crazy beast. From what my librarians tell me, it's up to the library that loans it when it's due back. I've gotten books with 10 days and I have one now that's due back in September. They say the colleges are the most generous where the big city library is the least. Yeah I've noticed that, since I tend to have like 2/3 books through that. It was just the longest I've seen so far I think.
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Jul 25, 2019 15:44
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I reread this one for the first time since... maybe 2013-2014? I loved it back when I first read it, and second time through it was just as good. One thing that struck me like a baseball to the head was that even though Owen was as integral to the plot as the other 4 characters, we never get anything from his point of view - it was all Schwartz, Pella, Henry, and Guert. The only times we get any insight from him were when he chastised Affenlight for the secrecy/repetitiveness of their trysts, and when he spoke at Guert's grave before they dug him up. All we really got about his and Affenlight's relationship were those two moments; from that we only get A's very insecure take on their relationship. Only at the end of the book do we see that it was an equally deep affection on Owen's side as well.
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Jul 26, 2019 16:54
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Chamberk posted:I reread this one for the first time since... maybe 2013-2014? I loved it back when I first read it, and second time through it was just as good. yeah I can understand the narrative decision to make Owen somewhat unknowable to the reader because it puts us in the shoes of Affenlight, and so many of their interactions are based on Affenlight's ignorance and projection (and how he imagines Owen wants him to act). but i did not like that owen felt like a Magical Gay Plot Device at times
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Jul 26, 2019 17:15
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| # ? May 5, 2024 02:04 |
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Yeah, I think some of that was deliberate. They bill Owen as Buddha so he has to be inscrutable.
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Jul 26, 2019 17:56
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