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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 2015: January: Italo Calvino -- Invisible Cities February: Karl Ove Knausgaard -- My Struggle: Book 1. March: Knut Hamsun -- Hunger April: Liu Cixin -- 三体 ( The Three-Body Problem) Current: John Steinbeck -- Cannery Row This one is a personal favorite of mine. quote:
quote:Cannery Row is a novel by American author John Steinbeck, published in 1945. It is set during the Great Depression in Monterey, California, on a street lined with sardine canneries that is known as Cannery Row. The story revolves around the people living there: Lee Chong, the local grocer; Doc, a marine biologist based on Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts; and Mack, the leader of a group of bums. quote:
About the Author quote:John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Red Pony (1937). The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939), widely attributed to be part of the American literary canon,[2] is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece. In the first 75 years since it was published, it sold 14 million copies.[3] Discussion, Questions & Themes: A few more sample quotes: quote:
quote:
Pacing No pacing or spoiler rules this month. Just read! References and Further Reading This book has an almost equally beautiful sequel, Sweet Thursday. Feel free to spill over into discussion of that book also if you want. Steinbeck seemed to view at as an attempt to fix the "problems" (thematic? stylistic?) in Cannery Row. The verses quoted near the end of the novel are an extract from Black Marigolds, an extremely free translation of the Caurapańcāśikā by E. Powys Mathers (that's the same Mathers as in the Mardrus and Mathers translation of the 1001 Nights). 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! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:36 on May 3, 2015 |
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May 1, 2015 05:25
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Oh wow on a re-read this book definitely has Man Opinions about Women, how had I missed that before
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May 3, 2015 16:29
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Yup... You work night and day to provide a boiler for your woman to live in and she will still be nagging you about curtains for the non-existent windows! That aside though, I love the imagery and the characters are all lovable!
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May 6, 2015 22:58
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corker2k posted:Yup... You work night and day to provide a boiler for your woman to live in and she will still be nagging you about curtains for the non-existent windows! Yeah, that's really the charm of this book. Steinbeck's writing is beautiful and all the characters are adorable. There is no malice here.
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May 9, 2015 16:19
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I got a very Catch-22 vibe when I read this for the first time a few years ago, except as you said there wasn't the sort of malice/cynicism that was present in Catch-22. I own Sweet Thursday but I've never gotten around to reading it.
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May 9, 2015 17:57
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computer parts posted:I got a very Catch-22 vibe when I read this for the first time a few years ago, except as you said there wasn't the sort of malice/cynicism that was present in Catch-22. Interesting comparison, how so? Sweet Thursday is worth the read if you liked this one. On an overt level it lacks the bittersweet tang this one has, but if read in context with the fact that Ricketts had passed away by the time Steinbeck wrote Thursday, it's in some ways even more poignant.
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May 11, 2015 04:48
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Nominations for next month?
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May 21, 2015 03:22
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It's been a while since we did a Pynchon. How about Mason & Dixon?
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May 26, 2015 05:21
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Toph Bei Fong posted:It's been a while since we did a Pynchon. How about Mason & Dixon? It's possible but frankly I'm worried that Pynchon would be asking too much of the forum.
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May 27, 2015 12:35
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Maybe do it as a two-month thing, seeing as it's summer and the participation might drop off a bit anyway?
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May 28, 2015 09:22
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Doing it as a two monther might be best, if we did decide to, as it's pretty long. It only took me about a page and a half to get used to his faux 18th century style and get into the jokes, but I can see that holding a lot of folks back. It's a fun one, not quite as far out as Gravity's Rainbow or V. in terms of sheer craziness, but with plenty of Pynchonian meat to enjoy. It manages to be both a philosophical treatise about the division between the old and modern world, but also a cracking bedtime story told to two rambunctious kids and their family to pass the time on a winter's night. There are also plenty of resources online to help illustrate his various allusions and references. http://hbpub.vo.llnwd.net/o16/readersguides/9780312423209RG.pdf - a reading guide prepared by Picador shortly after the publication of the book http://www.masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page - the M&D wiki, with full spoiler free chapter annotations, a complete concordance of the book, and plenty of pictures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_episodes_in_Mason_%26_Dixon - a shockingly complete (if dry) set of chapter summaries
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May 28, 2015 16:39
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The problem is that if it's just too high a hurdle -- and without a lot of people posting interest, I'm worried it would be -- then we've locked the book club into a dead zone for two months. What about something a little more accessible? Maybe Graham Greene? I've wanted to read The Quiet American for a long time. Maybe In Cold Blood? Don Quixote?
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May 29, 2015 03:15
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A very sensible and understandable position. I wouldn't want to wreck anyone else's fun. Those are all excellent choices. Don Quixote would be a hoot for a two monther, and I love me some Graham Greene.
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May 29, 2015 05:07
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Hrm. Maybe Hunter S. Thompson? Either of the Fear and Loathing books? Maybe King Leopold's Ghost? I'm just sorta going down my own personal to-read list right now.
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May 29, 2015 12:39
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I failed my last attempt to read Don Quixote but the other suggestions sound good. Maybe a quick poll if you find it difficult to decide? (I'd probably vote for In Cold Blood)
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May 30, 2015 20:07
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Yeah, I think i'm gonna go with In Cold Blood for next month. I'll get a thread up in a day or two.
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Jun 1, 2015 02:56
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I was going to nominate The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, just finished it and I think it'd provoke some interesting discussion.
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Jun 1, 2015 06:24
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