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Once you been to a few weddings, you realize ain’t nobody gives a damn if you readin’ custom vows or the 1987 “Let’s Go!” guide to Bahrain. Just use that stuff about Do/Don’t and Sickness or Health and you gonna get the job done.  -=RAY=-

Poll

Which book should be our first selection?

Albert Camus/the Plague
- 1 (4.3%)
Nick Cave/And the Ass Saw the Angel
- 1 (4.3%)
Leonard Cohen/Beautiful Losers
- 1 (4.3%)
Katherine Dunn/Geek Love
- 3 (13%)
Neil Gaiman/American Gods
- 5 (21.7%)
Chuck Palahniuk/Survivor
- 2 (8.7%)
Thomas Pynchon/Gravity's Rainbow
- 0 (0%)
Tom Robbins/Still Life with Woodpecker
- 0 (0%)
Salman Rushdie/The Satanic Verses
- 2 (8.7%)
J.D. Salinger/Franny and Zooey
- 8 (34.8%)

Total Members Voted: 22

Voting closed: July 26, 2005, 05:15:27 pm


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Author Topic: August TOUAMB Book o' the Month Poll  (Read 9161 times)

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St_Zartan

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August TOUAMB Book o' the Month Poll
« Reply #15 on: July 21, 2005, 06:51:19 pm »
Quote from: "AlohaDawg"
I think it would be very interesting to re-read some of the books I had to read for classes as an independent grownup....except Great Expectations. Boo to that.


I did that a couple of years ago with Moby Dick, and it was breathtaking.

Quote
...Central/South American writers on the shelves. I would love the excuse to read them...


Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the one everyone knows. And fair enough; he's terrific. One of my favorite writers / idea people in modern literature is Jorge Luis Borges. I wish more people discussed Julio Cortazar - Hopscotch is a fantastic piece of experimental fiction and A Certain Lucas was a feast of a book.

So there's three right there. Enjoy.
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AlohaDawg

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« Reply #16 on: July 21, 2005, 07:07:38 pm »
Back when I was better at Spanish (when  was studying) I read novellas and plays and essays by Cortazar, Unamuno, Jimenez and others...one that always stayed with me was Cortazar's "Axolotl".

Axolotl

Edited to add that I got to read all this stuff in Spanish, and it was groovy.
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V-Adore

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August TOUAMB Book o' the Month Poll
« Reply #17 on: July 21, 2005, 07:14:16 pm »
Quote from: "AlohaDawg"
Back when I was better at Spanish (when  was studying) I read novellas and plays and essays by Cortazar, Unamuno, Jimenez and others...one that always stayed with me was Cortazar's "Axolotl".

Axolotl

What a beautiful piece. (I am saddened that one of my first reactions was that the narrator was incorrect about axolotls being larvae -- the gills are retained throughout the life of the animal -- but one can't help one's education.) Lovely and luminous. Are there longer works by this author?

I would also second the Borges. What little I've read of him I loved, and I'd love to read more.
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AlohaDawg

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« Reply #18 on: July 21, 2005, 07:48:30 pm »
Nerdy, but insightful - maybe he had more in mind in using the term...from Dictionary.com...

Word History: The word larva referring to the newly hatched form of insects before they undergo metamorphosis comes from the Latin word lrva, meaning “evil spirit, demon, devil.” To understand why this should be so, first we need to know that the Latin word also was used for a terrifying mask, and in Medieval Latin it could mean “mask or visor.” Larva is therefore an appropriate term for that stage of an insect's life during which its final form is still hidden or masked, and New Latin lrva was thus applied in 1691 by Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who originated our system of classifying plants and animals. The word larva is first recorded in English in its scientific sense in 1768, although it had been used in its “spirit” sense in 1651 in a way that foreshadowed the usage by Linnaeus.
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St_Zartan

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August TOUAMB Book o' the Month Poll
« Reply #19 on: July 21, 2005, 08:04:06 pm »
Quote from: "V-Adore"
What a beautiful piece. (I am saddened that one of my first reactions was that the narrator was incorrect about axolotls being larvae -- the gills are retained throughout the life of the animal -- but one can't help one's education.) Lovely and luminous. Are there longer works by this author?


Yep - all his short stories are worth checking out, and fairly readily available (we studied one such collection, the name of which escapes me at the moment, in a short stories class - so hell, check your friendly neighborhood campus bookstore). The titles I mentioned above are actual novels.  

T DAWG if I had to guess, I'd say that he knew exactly what he was doing with that word. Well spotted.

Man, I am really wanting to go back and sink my teeth into these books again. It's been a while since I've really thought about them.
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V-Adore

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August TOUAMB Book o' the Month Poll
« Reply #20 on: July 21, 2005, 08:26:57 pm »
Nice.

And yes, to go on a totally thread-derailing nerd-rant: the emphasis of the axolotls as a larval state is pretty interesting in that context. The idea of an adult axolotl as the larval stage for something bigger, stranger, more human... I can dig it. Very much.
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AugustWest

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« Reply #21 on: July 22, 2005, 09:56:51 pm »
I'm also on board with the Borges, but I think it could present some practical difficulties.  I mean, what are the chances that all of us could go into the infinite library and find the right room, the right shelf and the right volume all of which contained a reasonable approximation of Borges?  What are the odds?
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Infinitely vast, infinitely detailed.

starlight

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August TOUAMB Book o' the Month Poll
« Reply #22 on: July 24, 2005, 09:37:32 pm »
Hee.  I read the Borges Collected Fictions book last November... it took me three months to finish it.  no, seriously.

I enjoyed a lot of the stories, but I must admit, I needed mood music and concentration to get into it.

The library one was one of the best :D
that + Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius and The Aleph.
I liked all of those.

As for this book club idea..... I'm a rather slow reader lately and have a large queue, so I'm not sure if I'll join this time.  I have joined forum book clubs before and enjoyed them, so perhaps sometime in the future.  maybe I'll lurk.
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side_show

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« Reply #23 on: July 25, 2005, 01:57:35 pm »
Last call, people!  Last call for voting!  I will declair a winner today in three hours.  Vote your little hearts out people.
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jough

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« Reply #24 on: July 25, 2005, 02:37:03 pm »
I already voted early and often.  But I can stuff some extra votes into the ballot box if you'd like.
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pmcd9

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« Reply #25 on: July 25, 2005, 03:08:48 pm »
Quote from: "jough"
I already voted early and often.  But I can stuff some extra votes into the ballot box if you'd like.

I'd rather stuff dollars into g-strings.

~Paul
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side_show

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« Reply #26 on: July 25, 2005, 05:22:00 pm »
Oh, Jough, whatever happened to your little devil horns?

It's official, or as official as it can get with comments like the one above

1st place goes to J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, get your copies and start reading people!  (as for me, I'll be reading it for the first time, and I got my copy for free cause my boss from when I worked at the used bookstore was going to throw it out due to the nibble marks through the cover and first few pages.)

And.... go!
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slink

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August TOUAMB Book o' the Month Poll
« Reply #27 on: July 25, 2005, 05:26:50 pm »
Quote from: "side_show"
nibble marks through the cover and first few pages.


That good huh?
I shall  go and look into it.
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FOOD CHAIN! GET USED TO IT!

side_show

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« Reply #28 on: July 25, 2005, 05:40:17 pm »
Inside the cover?

                                     "1978
             
               Kathy Birs

                           Love

                                 Your Mathu

                                          888-6743"


So not just nibbled, but nibbled with love.
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AlohaDawg

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« Reply #29 on: July 25, 2005, 06:50:41 pm »
You should have seen the nibbles on Kathy.
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