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Grassy Knowles
Apr 4, 2003

"The original Terminator was a gritty fucking AMAZING piece of sci-fi. Gritty fucking rock-hard MURDER!"

Crashbee posted:

How about some Chinua Achebe, such as Things Fall Apart or No Longer at Ease? Or The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan, since it just won the Booker Prize.


That was BotM October 2010.

e: Though there's precedent for repeating it - Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman has been BotM twice.

I've never participated in BotM, but I would for Things Fall Apart. Also, thought y'all might be interested in this. http://imgur.com/a/HVrZy

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Crashbee
May 15, 2007

Stupid people are great at winning arguments, because they're too stupid to realize they've lost.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Hahaha, what? Seriously? And nobody pointed that out? When? Sharp as tacks I am! :P

Normally I'm not going to want to repeat things but I guess if nobody even realizes we're repeating then it's not that big a deal.

Well according to this thread the first time was October 2006, so to be fair that's an almost eight-year gap. Worth reading twice anyway!

Walh Hara
May 11, 2012
Could you copy/paste the list of books that have been TBB BOTM? I don't have access to the archives.

Fellwenner
Oct 21, 2005
Don't make me kill you.

Walh Hara posted:

Could you copy/paste the list of books that have been TBB BOTM? I don't have access to the archives.

quote:

Past Books of the Month
2006:
May: "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift.
June: "Slaughterhouse 5" by Kurt Vonnegut.
July: "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote
August: "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
September: "The Stranger" by Albert Camus
October: "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman", By Richard Feynman
November: "Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger
December: "The Importance of Being Earnest" (Wilde) and "Memories of my Melancholy Whores" (Marquez)

2007:
January: "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
February: "The Plague" by Albert Camus
March: "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck
April: "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami
May: "Notes from Underground" By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
June: "Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco
July/August: "Infinte Jest" by David Foster Wallace
September: "Love in the time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
October: "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski
November: "The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushdie
December: "I Am Legend" by Richard Matheson

2008:
January: "Blindness" by Jose Saramago
Febuary: "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut
March: "Lolita", by Vladimir Nabokov
April: "Babbit" by Sinclair Lewis/"The Windup Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami
May: "Post Office", by Charles Bukowski
June/July: "Mein Kampf", by Adolf Hitler
July: "The Prince", by Niccolò Machiavelli
August: "A Confederacy of Dunces", by John Kennedy Toole
September: "VALIS", by Philip K. Dick
October/November: Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
December: The Hound of the Baskervilles

Crashbee
May 15, 2007

Stupid people are great at winning arguments, because they're too stupid to realize they've lost.
In addition:

2009:
January: "All Quiet on the Western Front", by Erich Maria Remarque
Febuary: "The Yiddish Policemen's Union", by Michael Chabon
March: "The Beautiful & Damned", by F. Scott Fitzgerald
April: "The Road to Gandolfo", by Robert Ludlum
May: "The Bell Jar", by Sylvia Plath
June: "Porno", by Irvine Welsh
July: "The Jungle", by Upton Sinclair
August: Candide by Voltare
September: Dracula, by Bram Stoker
October:Foundation, by Isaac Asimov
November:The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
December:Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad

2010:
January: Knut Hamsun, Hunger
Febuary/March: Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
April: Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red
May: J.G.Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition
June: Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl
June: Deb Olin Unferth, Vacation
July: Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk
August: Cherie Priest, Boneshaker
September: Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World
October: Jorge Luis Borges, Fictions
November: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
December: Thomas Hardy, Return of the Native

The rest are in the OP.

Walh Hara
May 11, 2012
Thanks!

Apparantly One Hundred Years of Solitude has been BotM twice as well.

xcheopis
Jul 23, 2003


Perhaps something by Robertson Davies?

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

xcheopis posted:

Perhaps something by Robertson Davies?

What specific title would you recommend?

dogcrash truther
Nov 2, 2013
The fifth business

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
The significant other has informed me that we have a copy of "Murther & Walking Spirits." Is that one good?

Carly Gay Dead Son
Aug 27, 2007

Bonus.
I just picked up a copy of As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann, so I selfishly nominate that sucker.

xcheopis
Jul 23, 2003


Hieronymous Alloy posted:

The significant other has informed me that we have a copy of "Murther & Walking Spirits." Is that one good?

Yes.

Crashbee
May 15, 2007

Stupid people are great at winning arguments, because they're too stupid to realize they've lost.

Beyond sane knolls posted:

I just picked up a copy of As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann, so I selfishly nominate that sucker.

Bit late unfortunately
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3676554

Some Pinko Commie
Jun 9, 2009

CNC! Easy as 1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣!
What about Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves?

It is probably the most pornographic thing Asimov ever wrote.

Some Pinko Commie fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Oct 28, 2014

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



Wade Wilson posted:

What about Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves?

Love that book, but I don't think H.A. wants another science fiction author in a row.

Some Pinko Commie
Jun 9, 2009

CNC! Easy as 1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣!
Okay then, London Falling or The Severed Streets by Paul Cornell.

I'd like to recommend the sequel because it has a very interesting depiction of Hell in it, as well as Neil Gaiman being portrayed in a completely different light than he is in every other book that references him.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

Wade Wilson posted:

What about Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves?

It is probably the most pornographic thing Asimov ever wrote.

That's a good suggestion but I've already got five on the list and the poll is up for next month, so remind me again in 25 days or so!

As to your other two selections they're both fun books and I've been recommending them to friends, but I'm generally hesitant to choose recently-published SF & F for the BotM, just because we have so many threads for that stuff already it seems unnecessary. I feel like (and maybe this is something worth debating and talking about!) part of the role of the BotM should be to highlight stuff the average goon would like, but hasn't read yet -- expanding goon horizons etc. So to my mind that rules out most genre fiction, especially if it's in a genre we have ongoing threads about (and Paul Cornell's stuff is frequently discussed in the Dresden Files thread, which is sortof the de facto urban fantasy thread on the forum). So much of the forum is weighted towards SF & F that I feel like I should set a higher bar for those genres than for other suggestions.

With that in mind, what I'm looking for in a SF&F nominee for BotM is that it be some combination of esoteric, unique, and forgotten or ignored, along with some kind of significant artistic merit.

The Gods Themselves, like this month's selection, might be a good choice as you say because even though it's by a major author it's "off the beaten path" and several decades old. On the other hand, something like, say, Katherine Kurtz's Deryni Chronicles might not be that good a choice though because even though it's something of a "lost gem" / "forgotten favorite" and has some interesting features at heart it's basically a generic medieval fantasy novel and not something I'm going to ask the whole forum to slog through. Similarly, Ringworld would be a bad choice because almost everyone's already read it. Canticle for Liebowitz might be a judgment call -- it's definitely got strong literary merit but I think most people have already been exposed to it (but I could be wrong, which is one reason I do the polling).

Does all that make sense? Do people think all that sounds reasonable, or is this a policy that I should consider changing?

Some Pinko Commie
Jun 9, 2009

CNC! Easy as 1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣!
Sounds good to me.

What would be too obscure? I've got Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare in my hardback collection, which is really out there for what people normally associate with Asimov.

Also First and Last Things by H. G. Wells, which is a really interesting, if dry, book about pretty much everything Wells believed.

Ms. Happiness
Aug 26, 2009

I think the policy sounds great. I love to read but don't keep up with what's good in literature.

Carly Gay Dead Son
Aug 27, 2007

Bonus.
As Meat Loves Salt is neither SF nor F!

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

Beyond sane knolls posted:

As Meat Loves Salt is neither SF nor F!

That'd be a great suggestion! Remind me of it in twenty days or so =)

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
Well, I hope everyone liked the book! For November, it's Grendel.

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Little_Yellow_Duck
Feb 16, 2002
Who wears short shorts
I enjoyed this. I'd not really read anything like it before. Was a bit confused at first with the ideas being introduced quite slowly (especially reading a chapter a day and the short chapters at the start). The collection of characters felt natural to the setting, and kept it feeling 'fun'.

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