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Welcome earthlings 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 2011: January: John Keats, Endymion Febuary/March: Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote April: Laurell K. Hamilton, Obsidian Butterfly May: Richard A. Knaak - Diablo #1: Legacy of Blood June: Pamela Britton - On The Move July: Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep August: Louis L'Amour - Bendigo Shafter September: Ian Fleming - Moonraker October: Ray Bradbury - Something Wicked This Way Comes November: John Ringo - Ghost December: James Branch Cabell - Jurgen 2012: January: G.K. Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday Febuary: M. Somerset Maugham - Of Human Bondage March: Joseph Heller - Catch-22 April: Zack Parsons - Liminal States May: Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood June: James Joyce - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man July: William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch August: William Faulkner - The Sound & The Fury September/October: Leo Tolstoy - War & Peace November: David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas December: Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night 2013 January: Walter M. Miller - A Canticle for Liebowitz Febuary: Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination March: Kazuo Ishiguro - Remains Of The Day April: Don Delillo - White Noise May: Anton LeVey - The Satanic Bible June/July: Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell August: Michael Swanwick - Stations of the Tide September: John Wyndham - Day of the Triffids October: Shirley Jackson - The Haunting of Hill House November: Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory December: Roderick Thorp - Nothing Lasts Forever 2014: January: Ursula K. LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness February: Mikhail Bulgalov - Master & Margarita March: Richard P. Feynman -- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! April: James Joyce -- Dubliners May: Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- 100 Years of Solitude June: Howard Zinn -- A People's History of the United States July: Mary Renault -- The Last of the Wine August: Barbara Tuchtman -- The Guns of August September: Jane Austen -- Pride and Prejudice October: Roger Zelazny -- A Night in the Lonesome October November: John Gardner -- Grendel December: Christopher Moore -- The Stupidest Angel Current:Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino Kindle edition available at the link. http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Cities-Italo-Calvino-ebook/dp/B00ALJH62U/ref=dp_kinw_strp_exp_2_1 About the Author Italo Calvino (Italian: [ˈiːtalo kalˈviːno];[1] 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952–1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979). Lionised in Britain and the United States, he was the most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death, and a noted contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature.[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo_Calvino Discussion, Questions & Themes: quote:The book explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by an explorer, Marco Polo. The book is framed as a conversation between the aging and busy emperor Kublai Khan, who constantly has merchants coming to describe the state of his expanding and vast empire, and Polo. The majority of the book consists of brief prose poems describing 55 cities, apparently narrated by Polo. Short dialogues between the two characters are interspersed every five to ten cities and are used to discuss various ideas presented by the cities on a wide range of topics including linguistics and human nature. The book is structured around an interlocking pattern of numbered sections, while the length of each section's title graphically outlines a continuously oscillating sine wave, or perhaps a city skyline. The interludes between Khan and Polo are no less poetically constructed than the cities, and form a framing device that plays with the natural complexity of language and stories. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Cities Pacing No pacing or spoiler rules this month. Further Resources: I'm glad this got voted for because the actual travels of Marco Polo are a favorite read of mine. Free editions here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10636. Background on Marco Polo: One thing that might be useful to keep in perspective is that Marco Polo was a proverbial liar: that is, his name literally became a n epithet for "liar" because nobody believed a goddam word he said when he got back. Problem is, the more we know, the more he actually seems to have been telling the truth. There are some weird points in his narrative (he mentions dragons, for example, but might've meant crocodiles) but on the whole all the supposed "craziest" things in his narrative, like the huge population of China or paper money or black rocks that burned, we all now know to have been perfectly true. Background on Genghis (and, therefore, Kublai) Khan: http://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-Making-Modern-World/dp/1491513705 Final Note: If you have any suggestions to change, improve or assess the book club generally, please PM or email me -- i.e., keep it out of this thread -- at least until into the last five days of the month, just so we don't derail discussion of the current book with meta-discussion. I do want to hear new ideas though, seriously, so please do actually PM or email me or whatever, or if you can't do either of those things, just hold that thought till the last five days of the month before posting it in this thread. Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book!
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Jan 3, 2015 22:34
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The book is also available on Oyster for those that subscribe.
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Jan 4, 2015 03:54
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Just finished Guns of August. Great book, it really... Wait, I'm late, aren't I? Anyway been meaning to read this for a while so have bought. Get some discussion going. Very whimsical so far, delicious turns of phrase. The book on Khan looks good too.
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Jan 5, 2015 04:13
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Kublai Khan reminds me of a stodgy old guy. Really like the city that is built above a mirror image necropolis.
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Jan 5, 2015 05:55
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This is very convenient, I had also picked this for the little Facebook book club I do with some friends after the lit thread got me all excited about it. I'm about 20% through and I'm enjoying it. I was a bit worried I'd struggle without a real narrative, but the way it's organized into discrete little blocks makes it a nonissue. So far I've just made sure I read full cities at a time -- not that that's real hard when they're a page or two -- but should I be trying to read complete sections or anything to get the most out of it? This is one of the less traditionally structured books I've read.
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Jan 5, 2015 16:10
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I just finished the book last night. I powered through it pretty fast, so I'm sure I missed some things. The way it's structured is interesting, in that it reminds me of zen parables, koans, or something akin to that. Each city's description is encapsulated and has some sort of greater truth behind them. There's supposedly an illustrated copy of this book out there, which I would be interested in seeing.
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Jan 5, 2015 16:42
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I picked up Invisible Cities only a month or two ago and I'm nearing the end of my current book so I'll be getting stuck into this soon. Jack Weatherford's book is probably one of the most popular recent books on Ghengis Khan and the Mongols generally but it's super revisionist and gets panned for completely white-washing all the pillaging and mass-murder that went on. Since you linked to an audiobook, can I recommend instead, or in addition, Dan Carlin's podcast series on the subject? They're 4 free episodes, each about 90 mins long but really engaging; and he at least grapples with the importance of and changes brought by the Mongol invasions vs the extreme cost in human lives. http://www.dancarlin.com/product-tag/mongols/
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Jan 6, 2015 18:36
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Finished this in one sitting on a train ride. While I really enjoyed it, I can't help feeling a little bit overwhelmed by it, as the places/ideas Calvino presents go by really quickly. Does anyone have any good secondary resources on the book?
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Jan 6, 2015 18:41
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It felt much less like a novel than a piece of creative gymnastics. I can certainly respect and appreciate what the book did, and the fact that it succeeded in doing it. However, I am not quite sure if I can say that I liked it.
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Jan 8, 2015 02:51
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I'm about three-fourths the way through and I really like it. The intangible, dream-like, and poetic descriptions of the cities and associated ideas are quite fun to drift through. One thing I've been wondering about throughout is the intermittent emergence of modern technology, such as airports or refrigerators. This stands out to me especially since the use of these modern objects seems so unnecessary for the narrative; they could just as well be ships and dry food storage houses in my mind. Anyone have any guesses as to why the modern is brought in?
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Jan 19, 2015 04:32
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I'm also wondering that - is it an attempt to show that these are Calvino's travels, as well as Polo's? I particularly like the one about the same airport with a different name; that resonates with me.
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Jan 19, 2015 09:11
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Yeah, that's one good possibility. On another note "Continuous Cities 3" is hilarious. With all the people multiplying over the years with their chubby smiling faces eating corn.
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Jan 19, 2015 16:05
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I think the random mentions of motorbikes are just a confirmation that the conversation between Marco Polo + Kublai Khan isn't really happening in a place or time. It's just happening, always is, always will be. I personally have always thought of Invisible Cities as being a description of Venice (the idea of Venice, rather than the actual physical place) that is being dealt with by saying every city Venice is not, because that would be much ezasier than saying what Venice is. In that way the conversation isn't a "real" conversation between two people, it's just a frame for the description of the eternal concept we call "Venice".
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Jan 19, 2015 16:26
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I figured the choice was made to be deliberately jarring and to break the reader's absorption in the text as a fiction and instead force them to be an active part of the dialog.
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Jan 19, 2015 17:29
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Cithen posted:I'm about three-fourths the way through and I really like it. The intangible, dream-like, and poetic descriptions of the cities and associated ideas are quite fun to drift through. One thing I've been wondering about throughout is the intermittent emergence of modern technology, such as airports or refrigerators. This stands out to me especially since the use of these modern objects seems so unnecessary for the narrative; they could just as well be ships and dry food storage houses in my mind. Anyone have any guesses as to why the modern is brought in? Thanks for bringing this up, it was really jarring and I had the same question. CestMoi posted:I think the random mentions of motorbikes are just a confirmation that the conversation between Marco Polo + Kublai Khan isn't really happening in a place or time. It's just happening, always is, always will be. I personally have always thought of Invisible Cities as being a description of Venice (the idea of Venice, rather than the actual physical place) that is being dealt with by saying every city Venice is not, because that would be much ezasier than saying what Venice is. In that way the conversation isn't a "real" conversation between two people, it's just a frame for the description of the eternal concept we call "Venice". Mel Mudkiper posted:I figured the choice was made to be deliberately jarring and to break the reader's absorption in the text as a fiction and instead force them to be an active part of the dialog. These are . . . really really good thoughts. I'd actually put the book down when I got to the first mention of airports or whatever and I couldn't figure out why it bothered me so much or what or how to think about it. Now I have some possible frames for that issue I think I can get back into the book again. Thanks! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Jan 19, 2015 |
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Jan 19, 2015 17:54
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CestMoi posted:I think the random mentions of motorbikes are just a confirmation that the conversation between Marco Polo + Kublai Khan isn't really happening in a place or time. It's just happening, always is, always will be. I really like this theory, especially after finishing the book and being exposed to some more cities that really replicate the ideas of cyclical perpetuity and not knowing where to place one's self in space and time.
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Jan 19, 2015 23:06
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Oho! Need suggestions for next month!
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Jan 21, 2015 21:31
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How about from the whimsical to the practical? Discover your inner economist : use incentives to fall in love, survive your next meeting, and motivate your dentist Have enjoyed Invisible Cities, but need to be focusing in order to read it... Also, some cities are better than others.
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Jan 22, 2015 04:30
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Only just started this, but it seems a lot sadder and more wistful than I was expecting. And it wastes no time in pissing all over travellers' tales as a genre... Also lots of the cities have womens' or feminine names, so perhaps Calvino is making a point about objectification there.
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Jan 22, 2015 05:40
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oho! Need suggestions for next month! Dorothy Dunnett, The Game of Kings, or maybe Queens' Play. I'm really interested in people's opinions on Dunnett in general.
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Jan 22, 2015 15:13
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The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing roll tide
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Jan 22, 2015 17:04
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Suggestions: The Interrogation by J.M.G. Le Clézio quote:Le Procès-Verbal (English title: The Interrogation) is the first novel of French Nobel laureate writer J. M. G. Le Clézio, about a troubled man named Adam Pollo who "struggles to contextualize what he sees" and "to negotiate often disturbing ideas while simultaneously navigating through, for him, life’s absurdity and emptiness".[1] My Struggle: Book One by Karl Ove Knausgård His last name always makes me think of dog treats, plus look at this super intense portrait of him: 
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Jan 23, 2015 05:33
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I can get behind My Struggle.
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Jan 23, 2015 10:06
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Truth and Fiction Relating to My Life, by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe.
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Jan 23, 2015 11:53
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I was gonna wait till all the books were available in English and binge read them but I got volume 1 of My Struggle laying around here
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Jan 23, 2015 13:38
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Throwing in my vote for My Struggle as well.
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Jan 23, 2015 15:39
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Is there intention in that title? I was thinking how much fun it is going to be finding a copy online of a book that has the same translated title as Adolf Hitler's, but I'm guessing it's deliberate?
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Jan 23, 2015 17:13
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Yeah, I'm honestly kinda reluctant to pick anything literally titled Mein Kamp. I'm not saying it's out, it's just. . yikes.
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Jan 23, 2015 17:27
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Here's what Wikipedia says about the process behind the unfortunate title:quote:As he struggled to write a novel about his relationship with his father, Knausgård set upon a new project in early 2008: to write less stylistically and deliberately and instead, to "write plainly about his life".[1] He wrote mainly to break his block with the other novel and thought that there would not be an audience for the work. Knausgård would call his friend and editor Geir Gulliksendaily and read the work aloud. Gulliksen felt that Knausgård needed encouragement to continue, and Knausgård felt that Gulliksen was essential to the project. Gulliksen eventually listened to 5,000 pages of the novel and proposed the series title, which he felt was perfect. The novel's Norwegian title,Min Kamp, is very similar to Hitler's Mein Kampf. Guilliksen originally forbade Knausgård from using the title, but later changed his mind. Knausgård's British publisher was not interested in the book.[1]
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Jan 23, 2015 17:56
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Knausgård and his books are pretty controversial in Norway, but politics don't really play large part in it. That said, I don't know why he insists on the name, it sounds just as weird in Norwegian.
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Jan 23, 2015 22:50
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In Germany the book has been titled "Dying".
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Jan 24, 2015 00:46
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This book is extremely my poo poo. I find it best to read each city as a sort of puzzle, but not one that had a definite solution but rather one that works for you. Read a few pages then start at the wall and let it settle.
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Feb 2, 2015 03:29
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Oh, apologies for not getting February's thread up yet. It'll be Mein Kampf since that's what everyone wants. Thread should go up tomorrow.
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Feb 2, 2015 07:19
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sebmojo posted:This book is extremely my poo poo. I find it best to read each city as a sort of puzzle, but not one that had a definite solution but rather one that works for you. Read a few pages then start at the wall and let it settle. Argh, see yeah this is probably true and I should tackle it again in this way. But. I just didn't dig it. Whether I'm too dumb, too impatient or otherwise I can't say, but it didn't connect save for a few exceptions.
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Feb 2, 2015 09:32
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thehomemaster posted:Argh, see yeah this is probably true and I should tackle it again in this way. Actually, that's what I thought of it too. Which rather surprised me as I really loved the "Our Ancestors" stories. But in a lot of places I sensed Calvino was writing a puzzle based on something I didn't know enough about to decode, probably some literary theory. Unfortunately I'm totally ignorant of theory, but the "mirror cities" seemed to be gesturing in that direction. It is lovely and clever, but something about it seemed more forbidding than elusive (forbidding cities, haha.) Most of the "mysteries" I solved were pretty trifling. Maybe the issue was just that I was too thick to spot the connections. At least I felt it was worth re-reading; whatever it was up to, it was big, ambitious, and beautiful. And when I do I'll probably re-read in a different order, either by city group or number. It's probably a great toilet book.
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Feb 2, 2015 16:11
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http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/invisible-cities-illustrated-calvino.html
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Feb 9, 2015 04:10
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Started watching Marco Polo on Netflix last night. As in, the gf turned it on while I was engaged with my iPad. Perked up at the mention of Kublai Khan and then Marco giving a descriptive spiel.
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Apr 15, 2015 05:07
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