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yes

14 (82.4%)

no

3 (17.6%)

Total Members Voted: 16

Voting closed: July 12, 2005, 09:51:44 pm

[Choop]

IN

Let's do Franny and Zooey first - I've never read it either, and would like to.

Crap though - this means the Stephenson I'm working on will have to take the back burner for a bit. Oh, well!

[jough]

Okay, from that list I can see that I will not be the one lone voice of dissent suggesting we do not read any Grisham or something.

I'd be up for heck, just about any of those, even though I've already read most of the list of things you haven't.  

I mean, I could read Naked Lunch or Tropic of Cancer any day of the week.

[AugustWest]

Albert Camus/The Plague
See previous post

William Burroughs/Naked Lunch
This is great, but it's almost poetry rather than prose.  I think it would be hard to discuss.

Leonard Cohen/Beautiful Losers
Tompson Highway/Kiss of the Fur Queen
Don't know 'em

F. Scott Fitzgerald/The Great Gatsby (actually I read this in Gr. 9, but it's been a long long time)
I've always been kind of meh about Fitzgerald.  Gimme Faulkner or Steinbeck instead.

Henry Miller/Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn
Mordecai Richler/Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
Salman Rushdie/Satanic Verses
Haven't read any of these, willing to...

John Steinbach/Grapes of Wrath
JD Salinger/Franny and Zooey
Hunter S. Thompson/Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
See above.

Joseph Conrad/Heart of Darkness
This is great, but not a novel...

Margaret Atwood/Handmaiden's Tale
Douglas Coupland/Microserfs or Generation X
Michael Cunningham/The Hours
Katherine Dunn/Geek Love
Bret Easton Ellis/American Psycho
Timothy Findlay/The Wars
Alasdair Gray/Something Leather
Mark Haddon/the curious incident of the dog in the night-time
John Lancaster The Debt of Pleasure
Anne Marie MacDonald/The Way the Crow Flies
Miriam Toews/a complicated kindness
Sylvia Plath/The Bell Jar
Have not read, but am willing to read.

William Golding/Lord of the Flies
Aldous Huxley/Brave New World
Good books, but kind of 9th grade.

Alice Sebold/The Lovely Bones
This was very good, but a little self-consciously literary for me


Chuck Palahniuk - haven't read anything by him, but want to.
Read a couple, would read more.

Timothy Findlay - I've read all of his stuff but would read it again
Margaret Atwood - I've read most of her stuff, but am open to re-reads
Katherine Dunn - I've just re-read Geek Love, and want to read other stuff by her.
Miriam Toews - I've only read a complicated kindness but have always wanted to read her other stuff.
Don't know these folks, so I'm game.

As far as my suggestions:


I love Umberto Eco, but his works probably wouldn't lend themselves to this sort of discussion.  Tom Robbins is always fun.  I'm a big fan of John LeCarre, you can't go wrong with his writing.  If we wanted to go a little bit lighter, Donald Westlake and Lawrence Sanders are great.  Classic wise, what about Flannery O'Conner or some of the lesser trod works of Mark Twain?

Non-fiction is good too, you know.

On edit: Franny and Zooey is wonderful.  I love it and everybody should read it.  I'm not sure how well it lends itself to message board type discussions, but I'm game if that's what we want to go with.  If we do, I would suggest that we combine it with some other of Salinger's short works, perhaps Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters.

And if we're going to consider a recently historical writer like Salinger, what about Vonnegut?  Why not read Cat's Cradle or Schlachthaus Funf?

[jough]

Ah, let's stop all this fuck*ng around and just get right to Finnegans Wake.

[AugustWest]

Ah, let's stop all this fuck*ng around and just get right to Finnegans Wake.

I'm game, but I don't think I can finish it in a month.

[Bozack]

Andalucia and I have actually been talking about Finnegans Wake a lot lately. As it turns out, she is smart enough to read it and I am Not. I just bought a copy, and I keep battering myself against it like an idiot puppy but I can't break through to the narrative yet. I've been having so much trouble I've actually written a short story about a man who can't read Finnegans Wake.
However, if I had all of your support, and if I could ask Andalucia for help in a way so that it wasn't obvious to her that I'm actually an idiot and in fact totally bullshit all of the conversations where she says smart things and I say smart things back, I'm totally down.
I am down with Franny and Zoey, I am down with Leonard Cohen a lot, I am down with Camus, I have read Rushdie but would love to read it again. I would also love to read, again, "And The Ass Saw the Angel," by Nick Cave, which I think would be awesome because it would instantly divide the group into those who love it and those who want to kill it. I would love to read "The Master and Margarita" again, I would like to read more Faulkner, I would like to read more Nick Tosches, probably "In The Hand of Dante," but I am all about that dang old Plague for right now.

[side_show]

Books that have been seconded thus far:

J D Salinger/Franny and Zooey
Albert Camus/the Plague
Tropic of Cancer/ Henry Miller
Beautiful Losers/Leonard Cohen
Satanic Verses/ Saliman Rushdie

and  author Chuck Palahniuk
(August, can you suggest which book to start with?  I was stood frozen at the book store the last time I looked at his books and couldn't decide between Choke and Diary, and ended up leaving empty handed)

And um, Finnegans Wake - are we serious about this one?  I have to agree that it's pretty dense reading.  (Bozack, I know you're being ernest, but Jough, do I sense some sarcasm?

Everyone, if you see a book that someone's posting that looks like a good read, make a post to second it, as you have with some of mine.  If we've got two or more posts in favour, then I'm adding the book to the sort list, if we have any votes against a book it cancels out a "for" vote.  Hence why Naked lunch isn't on the above list.

I would like to second August's suggestion of Vonnegut, but my vote would be for Breakfast of Champions, because I love that book so damn much, but then I haven't read Cat's Cradle, so I could swing that way.

I would also like to second August's suggestion of Tom Robbins, but since I haven't actually read him, need someone to suggest a title.

I'm opposed to all things Faulkner due to the fact that the Oprah Book Club is currently reading three Faulkner books, and also because of some forced reading of his stuff during university which didn't sit well with me.

[side_show]

Also seconding Bozack's mention of "And The Ass Saw the Angel," by Nick Cave - haven't read it, but am interested in it.

[side_show]

edited my double posting

[AlohaDawg]

While I'll most likely read the threads I'm a pretty slow reader and tend to shy away from book clubby books. My SO has been in one at Teaism for well over a year now and the only book they've read that sounded even vaguely interesting to me was Tipping Point.

Looking at the lists above, I realize that I'm actually probably not in y'alls league. I'll probably chuckle at the posts but I doubt I can keep up with you and spend my absolute minimum necessary time on or in the water (10 hours/week). Plus ditto the comment on 'book clubby' books.

[pmcd9]

I think you should take all of the books that have gotten seconds and make a poll and let us choose which book to read.

Also, i'm in.

~Paul

[CortJstr]

1) Cat's Cradle is my favorite book ever

2) Breakfast of Champions, while great, assumes you've read other Vonnegut (and know who Kilgore Trout is). If not it will be much less satisfying.

3) Cat's Cradle is being made into a movie and Leonardo DiCaprio is already on board. So if you want to be seen reading this and not have people assume it's because of the movie I suggest you start sooner rather than later. Assuming the project doesn't fall through and/or suck out loud like the other Vonnegut movies.

4) Sirens of Titan is every bit as good as Slaughterhouse Five in my opinion and less likely to make you look like you're in 10th grade.

[andalucia]

Oh, I voted for I'm in, but forgot to comment.  

Alrighty.
Out of the secondeds, I've read Franny and Zooey several times, but I'd be game for reading it again, since I'm sure I'd enjoy discussing it with you guys (even though I think it is somewhat silly)

I guess I'd be down for rereading the Plague as well, even though I'd probably make myself read it in French again, because when read The Stranger, I started in English, and it was terrible bad news, since there's really no translating some parts of it, and I'm suspicious of translations in general.  But I need to work on my French anyways.
I'm not in if we do a Henry Miller.  I've tried to read him many times and I just can't.  I hate him very very much.
I would be very down with the Cohen or the Rushdie, since both of those are on my list as well.  I have my doubts about Rushdie, but Leonard Cohen and I are Friends, in that he grew up near where I live and went to the school I go to and wrote for the paper I write for.  We have like a special bond, you dig?

Also I feel obliged to reply to a few things here:

Andalucia and I have actually been talking about Finnegans Wake a lot lately. As it turns out, she is smart enough to read it and I am Not.

Patently untrue.  I got to 80 pages from the end.  I guess I may as well finish it some day, since it'd only take a couple more months.  Would I be smarter then than I am now?

I just bought a copy, and I keep battering myself against it like an idiot puppy but I can't break through to the narrative yet. I've been having so much trouble I've actually written a short story about a man who can't read Finnegans Wake.
However, if I had all of your support, and if I could ask Andalucia for help in a way so that it wasn't obvious to her that I'm actually an idiot and in fact totally bullshit all of the conversations where she says smart things and I say smart things back, I'm totally down.

Your story is a fine story, and also I would like you for your tales of Magic P.a.n.t.s even if you did turn out to be secretly dumb.

Books I have been remiss in avoiding and would like to read:
Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Any Gertrude Stein.  I've tried, but I need motivation such as a community of judgemental peers.
Pynchon, especially Gravity's Rainbow, cause that was what I told myself I'd read after Finnegans Wake so haven't gotten to it yet.
Baldwin, Go Tell it on the Mountain.  I read this or part of it a couple years ago, but now that I've read more of his books I think I'd get more out of it.

But you can ignore me, because none of those are really light summer reading.

[AugustWest]

Assuming the project doesn't fall through and/or suck out loud like the other Vonnegut movies.

Hey!  Both Slaughterhouse Five and Mother Night were pretty darn good movies.

[arkabee]

the way i've always understood book club thingees:

some asshole chooses a book, and you READ it dammit, and then you meet at someone's house and you DISCUSS it whether you like it or not.

or you quite the book club.

in the interim, you get to bitch and whine and moan and complain about
(not limited to and in no specific order)
what book got picked
what book didn't get picked
how the devilled eggs sucked at so and so's house
how big a bitch the person who chose the book last week was and who elected her king anywas?
how big an asshole the guy was when he said he didn't like the book you picked out when it was your turn
what is with your neighbors?  you think their son may get your papered pomerian pregnant one of these days by god and you'll do something about it.

and you KEEP complaining about it until you stop wanting to read books that OTHERWISE YOU PROBABLY WOULD NOT HAVE READ ANYWAYS.

i'm not voting, i'm not suggesting books, and i'm sure as hell not going to say "oooooh, i don't know if i'd be in your book club if you choose _that_ book" because if so and so picks a CRAPPY BOOK and makes BAD DEVILLED EGGS, then either i can READ THE BOOK or NOT.

if i DO read it, then i SHARE A COMMONALITY with everyone else who had to read a crappy book and get the nasty devilled egg gas ever.

there is a very good chance that i have never read a single book that any of you have ever read.  and there's a better chance that if i have, that i don't remember it.

my recommendation: forget democracy and pick a book.  make this thread or other threads open to anyone who wants to join the club, and start the topic with: here is your friggin book you worthless maggots, now read it or shut up.

then, i dunno maybe there can be a vote on this part, SOMEONE else can choose a vote next time.

but by god if i don't get to complain about devilled eggs then i don't want to be part of your club anyways.



one serious request:  no religious explanatory or training documents.  please?  because EVERYTIME i try to "get into" a religion something very bad happens to me.  for instance, this weekend (since it's a book thread, sort of) i started reading "Hardcore Zen".  great book, by the way.  30 years, i've heard "desire is suffering", tried to understand it, tried to research it (on occassion), totally never got it.  got 1/4 of the way through to book, and i "get it".  maybe.

so then my 2+ years lady says it'd be best to have a break with 99.9999% odds of being permanent.

so can there be no Religious Documentation?  because i want to read some books that there is no way in hell i would read otherwise, but i don't want to have a brain aneurysm while being struck by lightning during an audit by the IRS.


ps- i'm not trying to be bitchy, i'm trying to be helpful and _trying_ to be funny doing it.

yesterday, i backed into a parked trailer.  the trailer is parked in the exact same spot the pickup i backed into was parked.  the damage to my car is pretty near, and in somes exactly, the damage that was recently fixed from my backing into a pickup.  i'm having a _hard_time_ with being funny.