ILB Autumn Group read POLL

The Stranger's Child for me, basically 'cos I've already got it.

While we're deciding things, can anyone advise how other book group discussions work? Does it need a master of ceremonies? Except for the lovely interlude where the pinefox mc'ed for us, my feeling is that we've been a bit too haphazard.

voted Vila-Matas

I'm thinking Villa-Matas too - not sure how I'll get my library to buy a new directions paperback tho'.

Littell sounds like WWII p0rn, we could debate on the 'value' of doing a thing like this. Plus my library already has this so you know...not sure if i should vote for my own choice.

voted bouvard and pecuchet because it is lolsome, but would try to find time in my crazy schedule for thackeray too.

Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!

anything but the Kindly Ones!

If you guys read Bartleby, I'll read one of his others

Just voted for the Mieville.

JM have you actually read 'the kindly ones'? there was a copy at work the other day i could have taken and i still i just ... no.

embassytown i just read.

vanity fair i am still hoping to get around to before october. when would we be doing this thing?

Haven't read it, only glanced at it in a shop, but everything about it puts me off--the hype, the size, the subject matter, the bits of prose I did read from it, the apparent pornographic delight in suffering, etc

voted nabokov on a whim, would be happy with vila-matas, flaubert, hollinghurst, mieville.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

A tie! Can I switch my vote to Ada, if we're now needing to choose between the 2 winners? (I think I voted Didion before)

i picked up my copy of 'ada' when i was visiting my parents last week and then put it down again, oh well. when would we start this, will i have time to find another copy

Ada has some lovely bits but it's probably my least favourite Nabokov. Still, I'd rather look at it again than ever read another Miéville book.

harsh!

embassytown was pretty okay. on the other hand, i am the only person smart enough in the world to recognise that 'kraken' is seven or eight times more interesting and better than 'the city and the city', so disregard my opinion.

also i just gave away my copy so we can't read that one

Ah right, I was trying to remember who it was who'd recommended Embassytown - it must've been you thomp. I really disliked The City and The City, but on the basis of your recommendation, you'll be delighted to know, I'm going to give Embassytown a shot.

i don't think i mentioned it here? on tumblr i called it 'fairly rigorous fun'. i don't know. i feel like, having read the three doorstop books in my teens, i have put in enough effort with the china miéville corpus that any further reading is largely negligible. i'm not sure he's very good, though.

Oh right, must've been someone else. Whoever it was made it sound sufficiently better than other stuff I've read of his to make it perhaps worthwhile. I feel I want to like him for some reason. Taking genre and trying to do something new with it maybe?

he's really 70s though!

i mean, a lot of what he's doing is straight out of the new wave playbook; a lot of the time he reads like he's trying to roll things back to that. i don't think he ever quite succeeds in the synthesis of old and new, but generally i think he fails interestingly. but i'm not sure he's actually good.

also i think in some ways the genre-hopping that seems to be his thing at the moment isn't quite as good a field for him to be working in as doorstop fantasy was. - he complains about people writing genre fiction for a lark and not taking it seriously but i feel like sometimes he's guilty of that himself.

"We were enclosed by dirt-coloured blocks, from windows out of which leaned vested men and women with morning hair and mugs of drink, eating breakfast and watching us."

Voted Nabokov but was secretly rooting for Vila-Matas.

I liked Mieville whenever I've seen him speak (never read him). The LRB review of Embassytown was some bullshit though - reviewing him on whether it fell into a literary academic box or not.

A tie! Can I switch my vote to Ada, if we're now needing to choose between the 2 winners? (I think I voted Didion before)

― not bulimic, just a cat (James Morrison), Friday, 5 August 2011 Bookmark

Not comfortable doing this - don't mind reading Nabokov myself and *I know* its another poll but it may have to be. Only way would be to have both books. I don't know if books groups ever do two books at the same time or not. throwing that out there.

I'll post the poll tomorrow unless enough people don't want another poll.

New poll is the right thing to do imo.

fuck democracy, pick one o great leader. alphabetically. by second letter of surname.

New poll is good idea. Voted Ada

DUDE I JUST BOUGHT A COPY OF ADA