book club

i'll be reading ellison's "invisible man" for class this semester, maybe we could organise around that...

a chapter a week, and no reading ahead!!

who's interested?

tho it mught be better to start with something shorter...

i haven't r3ad invisible man...

non-fiction maybe?

And I think Umberto Eco's new book and Invisible Man are both good suggestions...

It seems that fiction is easier to discuss than non-fiction...there's more room for interpretation.

i need to know more.

i would like to try to do this, if i can't keep up with y'all i'll just try again on the next one (i don't read much, unfortunately, but maybe this will help me keep at it)

"It is April 1204, and Constantinople, the splendid capital of the Byzantine Empire, is being sacked and burned by the knights of the Fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion, one Baudolino saves a historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story.

Born a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino has two major gifts--a talent for learning languages and a skill in telling lies. When still a boy he meets a foreign commander in the woods, charming him with his quick wit and lively mind. The commander--who proves to be Emperor Frederick Barbarossa--adopts Baudolino and sends him to the university in Paris, where he makes a number of fearless, adventurous friends.

Spurred on by myths and their own reveries, this merry band sets out in search of Prester John, a legendary priest-king said to rule over a vast kingdom in the East--a phantasmagorical land of strange creatures with eyes on their shoulders and mouths on their stomachs, of eunuchs, unicorns, and lovely maidens.

As always with Eco, this abundant novel includes dazzling digressions, outrageous tricks, extraordinary feeling, and vicarious reflections on our postmodern age. This is Eco the storyteller at his brilliant best."

the english translation will be available for shoplifting on Oct. 15

I was in a real-world reading club about ten years ago, for a while. It was generally middlebrow literary stuff - most Booker nominees would have been ideal. The mechanism, which I mention as a possible one to use here, is that we would agree a term's list in advance (it was run in a local college so took those breaks), and we would know what book we were going to discuss each week at least a month before. Someone would sort of lead/introduce each book, we would all be given a chance for our say, and general open discussion was pretty limited. Since there is no time/space limit here, that stuff is irrelevant, and anyone can put in their comments anytime. However, I would not be interested if it's a chapter-a-week basis. I'd rather say that we will open discussion of Book A (nominations and voting for a list, maybe) on, say, November 1st; talk about book B will begin on Nov 8th (or after whatever agreed interval); and so on.

A list means that those without time for a book a week can pick and choose, setting the dates way in advance gives us time to find and read the book at our own pace, and we aren't imposing an intolerably slow rate for others - if you're fast and have time you can leave it until October 30th to start reading! We could make nominations for books we'd be interested in doing - maybe put all those that get two nominations to a vote to compose the advance list.

I'll post some things I fancy reading tomorrow, see if any are of wider interest.

I ought to leave the question of discussion frequency up to the employed swine among us, as I actually have nothing to do BUT read lately, but the potential for chaos in a weekly setup appeals to me--the result would be a nicely decentralized discussion system. I imagine that there would be concurrent discussions on several different books- which i find more in the spirit of ile than a monolithic READ THESE PAGES BY FRIDAY sorta system.

and i second Ned's alternating fiction with non-fiction idea.
i have been feasting on the bloated corpse of fiction for too long, and have grown fat and listless.

Fiction:
Faulkner - Sound and The Fury
Thomas Pynchon - Crying of Lot 49
Proust - Swann's Way
Italo Calvino- If on a winter's night a traveler
Joyce - Dubliners
Nabokov - Pale Fire
Dostoevsky - Notes From Underground
Tolstoy - Death of Ivan Ilych
Solzhenitsyn - Matryona's House
a bunch from the 20th century Russian Reader edited by Clarence Brown

Non-Fiction:
Stephen Hawkins - A Brief History of Time
Brian Greene - The Elegant Universe
G.K. Chesterton - Orthodoxy
George Smoot - Wrinkles in Time

but I'm open to pretty much anything not very bad

and a shorter list of non-fiction:
Gilbert Adair - Surfing The Zeitgeist (criticism)
Will Self - Sore Sites (on architecture - remaindered in the UK)
Keith Waterhouse - English Our English (on good writing)
Jon Savage - England's Dreaming (on punk)
Ronin Ro - Have Gun Will Travel (on Death Row Records)

More nominations? Votes on those already suggested (not just by me, obviously - Baudolino by Umberto Eco should also be counted, I think)? Who is interested at all?

(since this is something which would need a whole crop of threads, wouldn't it require its own board?)

How about if we start voting for what to read? Not to close off nominations, but how about we name five books, either already mentioned or new, that we want to do. The ones that get most support can be the first couple we do, and then we can reassess continuing, schedules and selection processes after that. By the way, do tell me to bugger off if you don't like my taking charge if this - I really don't want to seem as if I'm imposing anything on anyone.

My five, all from my own list, unsurprisingly:
Steve Erickson - Tours Of The Black Clock
Richard Powers - Galatea 2.2
George Konrad - The Loser
Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana - Zeke & Ned
Will Self - Sore Sites (on architecture - remaindered in the UK, but may not be available in the US - anyone know? If it isn't available, I'll have Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian as my reserve choice!)

Well, the title alone, after all. :-)

Here are my nominations (chosen because they're on my list, anyway, and they seem like books people here could be interested in and entertained by):

Empire Falls by Richard Russo
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
Number9Dream by David Mitchell
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
and I'll second Blood Meridian, since I've never read any Cormac McCarthy

It's quite possible some of these books aren't available yet outside the U.S. (oh, and Martin, it looks like Sore Sites would be tough to get here), so I'll have Rules of Attraction (as I haven't read any Bret Easton Ellis, either), as my alternate.

We read some classic book club books and some not so classic:

Diary of a Geisha by Arthur Elgar
The White Bone
'Tis by Frank McCourt
Bridget Jones' Diary (summer book club on the beach selection)
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (! -- X-mas holiday homework selection)
The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
Seabiscuit: An American Legend
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Letham
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
A script written by one of our members
and a bunch of others I don't recall.

We took turns hosting and whoever was hosting chose the book. It was all very casual -- reading the book was optional, even for the hostess, but again, this was more of a social thing than most book clubs.

I'm terrible about reading the books in time, but it seems to me that it might be fun for you to conduct at least part of the ILE book club as a live internet chat at an agreed time or times, and you could always post the transcript for people to continue responding to later.

Jonathan Lethem / Motherless Brooklyn (and)
Ellison / The Invisible Man

and suggest:

A L Kennedy / So I am Glad (hello david howie).
Doris Lessing / Martha Quest
(and)
Alan Warner / Morvern Callar (because there's so my hype around the film and it puts me off a bit but I'd quite like to force myself to read it).

But I don't care if you ignore these. I'd rather have the incentive to read something I probably otherwise wouldn't.

Curiously, Morvern Callar was one of the first books we did and also received one of the worst overall ratings (yes, we marked books out of 100 in a kind of only semi-joking way). I remember one of my female friends objections was that it was clearly written by a man as the idea of warming one's knickers on the kettle was v.unrealistic.

Books that got the highest approval:

THE WIND UP BIRD CHRONICLE by Haruki Murakami
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes

Books that got the highest disapproval:
Morvern Callar by Alan Warner
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland
Hotel World by Ali Smith (though by this stage there were only about three of us in attendance)

Books that divided us most:
The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Night by Elie Weisel
The Inimitable Jeeves by PG Wodehouse
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

Honorary mention for 'interesting discussion':
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Now that I've left London they are planning on starting it up again. With Roy Keane's autobiography.

nonfiction:
I dunno. Primary source social theory type shit. Or perhaps something about the Beatles *ducks*

who wants to go first?

500 posts by tomorrow morning otherwise I'll wear a burka.

"Don Quixote" by Cervantes
"Ada, or Ardor" by Nabakov
Anything by Murakami
The new Umberto Eco
and since I've been on a Nabakov kick lately, any of the classic Russian authors would be great to get an idea of his influences.

However, I will go along with just about anything. I haven't seen the Self book on architecture here in the US, though I typically look in the fiction section, so that might be why.

(I don't quite understand how in the world one book will ever be chosen)

But seriously, I'm up for any Pynchon; it'd be fantastic to revisit Invisible Man and some of the "easier" Nabokov. And Virginia Woolf and Michael Ondaatje. And I keep meaning to check into Dostoevsky.

No to Blood Merde!ian and to Delillo.

Nabokov and Dostoyevsky seem popular, though without a particular book emerging. Invisible Man is going strongly (can I confirm that we are all thinking Ralph Ellison? I presume so). I'm not sure there is a veto available, and I'm guessing that if this is a runner people will drop in and out depending on the books selected.

I've read loads of the books being nominated (including that), A, but that's not such a bad thing. I did think Portrait a bit dull - FW and U are too ambitious, I think (and we have a genuine Joyce expert in our midst, so there is a risk of imbalance), but Dubliners would get my support.

Perhaps we should codify the "rules" of the club before picking the books. Are we set on reading one book per month? I would prefer to read one book every three weeks, but I am not going to press my case, especially since it is better to err on the side of too much time instead of not enough. If we choose to do one book per month, then we should conduct the surveys once every three or four months, and pick either three or four books each time. I know you have stated similar sentiments above, Martin, and, seeing as there is plenty of interest, we should decide on these matters soon. This will give some direction to this thread and the ones that follow. If we, for instance, decide to choose four books every four months, then it will be much easier to sort through this thread to reach some sort of consensus.

Has anyone else read this? Is it as appalling as it looks?

i stole it from Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago, but i'm a little scared to read it alone.

Pnin - if we want something on the lighter side. It's pretty funny, a great store, and not as "difficult" as other Nabakov.

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight - a little harder to follow, but not particularly long, and would probably inspire some good discussion/arguments.

Pale Fire - again, would inspire good discussion, and I didn't really find it as hard to follow as some others seem to think it would be.

Those would be my top recommendations of the ones I've read.

A question about the rules of the book club: Would there be an assignment of a few chapters per week, or would be reading and discussing at our own pace?

sorry to be oblique, but just in case spoilers are an issue

Maybe two threads a month? One for an established classic, and one for something more contemporary? That way, people could pick and choose, or do both.

On Ondaatje, I haven't read anything before "In The Skin of A Lion," which I'm way more than willing to reread for the third time. But aside from that, I nominate "Coming Through the Slaughter" which is "about" Buddy Bolden. "English Patient" suxors, so we shall keep at arm's distance.

And Pynchon may not be so feasible after all... either a 600+ page tome with incredibly dense writing in only a month, or a dense 150 page novel (still with dense writing) over one month, and IMO Lot 49 is a two week book.

And I am a Joyce/Ulysses expert-in-training.

I can't believe anyone would read Divine Secrets -- ew ew ew!

But it's the concluding part of the epic fantasy trilogy for Lifetime network watchers. (The preceding two parts are of course Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes; together, set in the mythic land known as the American South, they allow everyone a chance to escape from their humdrum lives -- as well as being the only fantasy works acceptable to mainstream critics that aren't written in Spanish).

Jody Beth and I conferred and would like to suggest Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential for the nonfiction section of all this. All food-happy people should read it, I think!

Yes, and leave it to the New York Times Book Review to compare Bourdain to Iggy Pop (that noted culinary authority). Hmmm.

If enough of the the ILE group were to settle on a Penguin book to read I could get copies at massive discount - We could settle up with Paypal.
(please, don't anybody ask for individual copies of anything - I just can't do it)

I'll put another vote in for Invisible Man, as I've never read it.
Also I'd recommend "Twelve Bar Blues" by Patrick Neate which won last years Whitbread Novel Award and would appeal to many here as it has a musical bent. Surprisingly I can't find mention of it on ILX.

Oh my.

Bourdain is definitely his own style of crabby bastard, I'll grant you.

"What kind of glue-sniffing, crackhead mesomorphs you got working for you? You don't have an order for me? What?! I called the shit in myself... I spoke to a human! I didn't even leave it on the tape! And you're telling me you don't have my order? I got three fucking produce companies! THREE! AND IT'S ALWAYS YOU THAT FUCKS ME IN THE ASS!"

I take the point about the price of a brand new book like the Eco, but surely if we give it a month or two it will be reasonably easily available in libraries? Invisible Man is going very strongly, so that might be the first choice. Let's set a deadline for votes - how about midnight on Friday? That's 48 and a quarter hours from now...

Hey, has everyone/anyone read _Going After Cacciato_?

-- Andrew Thames

Yeah, Juneteenth came out last year to mixed reviews, some hailed at as genius others thought the way the executor had cut and pasted to come up with a final copy was v. obvious and that this should not even be considered an Ellison book. Haven't read it so can't tell you either way.

I'd rather order X number of one or the other - just because I'm easily confused. I think it would be better to all be reading the same edition as we can refer to page numbers if need be.

This is totally an non-profit offer by the way. I'll abuse the company post for mailing out (Hi Googling employer!)
I guess you could send me something interesting in the post if you didn't want to use paypal. Cool CDR's, Books and original artworks accepted.

If anyone is interested, mail me - I'll leave it a week or so and then order copies.
Is this a good idea? I may live to regret it but f*ck it I'm willing to give it a go...

You have definitely got the right Invisible Man, haven't you..?

someone should do a thread and when ppl read it we can add our thoughts to it (after a certain date of course (a month, say), so that no endings shall be given away).

On this one, shall we say that we will open a thread for comments one month from now, on NOVEMBER 11th? If we prefix all threads relating to this book club activity 'Book Club:' we'll be able to find them all again easily, so this one could be called Book Club: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. I'll start the thread if no one else does, but I see no reason why it matters who starts it. I see no need at all for rules within it either - it's pointless thinking we can avoid spoilers within it, obviously.

(I was thinking of making a feature that would regenerate the New Answers page for any point throughout history, though it's be kind of scuppered by Greenspun not exporting message times)

Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The Idiot
Brett Easton Ellis - Glamorama
Steve Erickson - Tours Of The Black Clock
James Joyce - Portrait or Dubliners
AL Kennedy - So I Am Glad
Jonathan Lethem - Motherless Brooklyn
Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian
Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana - Zeke & Ned
Vladimir Nabokov - Ada, Lolita, something else?
Michael Ondaatje - Coming Through The Slaughter
Thomas Pynchon - ?

You have one vote each. If you vote for an author without a specific book, please say what book or books you'd like. We'll give it a couple of days (especially as some only visit ILE in the week).

I'm still waiting for people to tell me I'm mismanaging this. So long as there aren't lots of complaints, I'll carry on.

I rilly want to read V./Mason&Dixon, but I think at this point it's a bit of a pipe dream to get through a fat Pynchon in a month. So my vote goes to The Idiot.

And Leeeeeeee, there isn't a deadline: there is a date before which comments are abominated. It is true that if you want to chip in, finishing a month late is likely to mean you can't get much discussion. And it's not like you have to worry about being marked anyway, since the first book doesn't count to the final ILE Book Club Award.

If I've got one vote I'll vote Motherless Brooklyn, re-reading it may enlighten me as to exactly why it is such a great novel.

But if I could vote for one author I'd say Chuck Palanhuik (sp?), as I believe he's the most U&K author of recent decades...

(Plinky can you mail me, not sure you got my last mail)

I'm going to vote for Motherless Brooklyn too, I think. I've read one Lethem (Gun With Occasional Music) and fancy this. I've read The Idiot before.

But we'll see about that. Can I submit my NaNoWriMo effort from next month when it's written? I wish to make Dan larf.

Do you think you're the billionth person to write a Modernist piece, Ned?

*throws tantrum*

Given the slightly underwhelming response to our previous book, it might be good if anyone else actually reading/planning to read this said so, pour encourager les autres.

the public library has motherless brooklyn, i'll get it next week when it's open

My feeling on future books is that if this next one isn't an utter flop, so it does look worth continuing, I think that while we're getting round to the January book (Baudolino by Umberto Eco), we should be sorting out the next couple of choices via some sort of nomination and voting method. And thinking again about schedules, whether monthly suits us best, and so on. I suspect that monthly is about right.

How about this for a selection method: opening up nominations for a week, say a maximum of three nominations each, then a week of voting, say each of choosing five of the nominated books. The top three would be our next three books. I'm open to other proposals, but would be happy to continue to coordinate if no one else is keen to take over.

mb is going pretty quickly - if i can't finish this one on time, the only possible explanation is that i sux0r

Except that I expected Motherless Brooklyn to be about the recent attempt to kidnap Victoria Beckham, and I feel cheated.

But: Nory tells me she's just finished it, so it seems you will have at least one conversant.

And "Motherless Brooklyn" in two days, people! (Or is just me and Martin?)

*starts hoiking phlegm into back of mouth*

I'd rather not read comics because I live in a fairly rural area and don't have much spending money so I'd have a really hard time getting them.

I notice that Newsweek, or some such big but possibly dumb mag, chose Lethem as its only author in its 100 people for the new millenium. Leaving aside the question of what the fuck sort of notion that list is in the first place, I do wonder what exactly sets this writer ahead of the pack. Motherless Brooklyn has lots of good points, but what is it that makes this author stand out? I can't see exactly what separates this from, for instance, Lawrence Block's Evan Tanner books - Tanner doesn't sleep, which strikes me as a gimmick/device/trope (delete to taste) very comparable to MB's protagonist's Tourette's. I'm not sure that Lethem makes any better use of this dominant notion. (I should note that I am a big admirer of Block, so this isn't too negative.) Actually, the disease as defining characteristic, its dominance, reminded me rather more of Stephen Donaldson's leprous protagonist.

On a mechanical genre level, I think it's rather lacking - the resolution with the giant was dramatically weak and unconvincing, for instance, and the ending is far too close to "and we all lived happily ever after".

I'm being too negative here. I expect that is because I get the impression that Lethem is regarded very, very highly, and I don't see that he is better than some other crime writers with real literary qualities - Block and James Lee Burke, for instance. I liked this well enough, but why the fuss?

Part of the car chase in the first scene takes place 3 blocks from my apartment, and he got the details exactly right.

Agreed that the denouement was lacking.

about the ending: as i was approaching it, the basic 'whodunnit' chain of events was fairly clear, but i was hoping for more to be spelled out. which of course it was, but maybe a little too well, or a little too easily - the lionel/julia meetup at the lighthouse= too convenient? i kept wondering if other readers were resenting having everything laid out so neatly.

overall i enjoyed reading this, i kept thinking "this would make a pretty good movie." the first two chapters or so (the background stuff, setting the scene) were particularly well written, i thought.

Pynchon, V.
Odaatje, Coming through the slaughter
Frank Miller, Batman: Year One (if we do end up doing comix, I think it may be riper ground for discussion than DKR)

The suggested process, from which there has been no dissension, is this: anyone can nominate a maximum of three books, over the next week - so nominations close after Christmas Eve. There is no point in using your nomination on something someone else has already nominated. When I get a chance, soon after Christmas, I'll list all those nominated, and we can get on with voting. Shall we allow five votes each?

I may not be online too much for periods over Christmas - spending lots of time with my girlfriend, I hope - so if anyone else is keen to take over this facilitatorish role, it's a good time to say so!

i tried to stick to a partial book club reading program:
i've read invisible man, and i just finished Baudolino last night. am i the only one who's read it?

[hello inter-friendlies!]

So once again, please keep it going. If for some reason you can't/don't want to, thanks for doing it thus far, it was much more valuable than some of you can ever imagine.

I am one of those people who helped to nominate books initially and then didn't participate. I didn't lose interest. I never finished Invisible Man! I am a jerk.

So....

Uncle Tom's Cabin, anyone?

yes

must revisit a library tomorrow for the first time in like 18 months tho

i'm in!

deadline? 2 weeks?

Let's give ppl time to find and read the book; I say Aug 1.

okay! are we allowed to post as we read? i think there's probably little danger of spoiling?

Last time I think we had a separate thread to actually talk about the book. Let me look...

Book Club: Invisible Man

lol at the revive

k this sounds good.

oh wow bummer i missed invisible man!

I'm in! I'll have it read over the weekend after the bar exam, when my brane is running like an out-of-control sports car down a mountain, and will need something to slow down on.

It's available free online if you want to read it that way, google for "uncle tom's cabin text".

AAGH

i forgot about this till just now

are we still down? i think maybe an uncle toms cabin discussion thread should be started

Okay, I'm a sucker for this kind of thing, so I'm in.

Isn't it meant to be quite difficult to get the original version since there've been so many abridged versions? Someone told me that once

i dunno but im hitting up the local library in t-15 mins so ill let u know

We should still do this, but remember that the deadline to finish the book is Aug 1; I don't think we're in any rush to start a thread.

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/StoCabi.html

theres no rush but it might be a decent idea to pique interest & allow ongoing commentary

im not gonna start it obv but i hope someone will

i will do this unless i start reading it and decide it sucks, at which point i will read something else.

COMMITMENT THY NAME IS ME

Well, I can see where the English major thing didn't pan out.

i started to read it online but there were, like, too many commas

i spend way 2 much time on em but there is no way im reading this fucking thing at a computer myself

GOT IT YO

who is with me?

Is this actually happening?

i'm going to reread this book and post about it even if noone else does.

K. I'm your Huckleberry.

yay!

I've read two chapters. So at this rate I might be done by Christmas.

(I'll try to do better, though.)

could we extend the deadline *? i'd like to participate but i'll be on holiday for the next week sans pc/book.

*to say, 20th aug?

Mickey and I had like a two-person Russian lit bookclub thing last summer! It was way fun.

This incarnation looks interesting:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61ynMoMf06L.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51PKYGVNWWL._SL500_BO2,204,203,200_PIlitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg

I like NOrton Critical Editions too.

I'm still reading, so I'm all for extending deadline... Aug. 20. Hey, I might actually finish by then! Maybe.