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Welcome goonlings 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 [for BOTM before 2015, refer to archives] 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) May: John Steinbeck -- Cannery Row June: Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood (Hiatus) August: Ta-Nehisi Coates -- Between the World and Me September: Wilkie Collins -- The Moonstone October:Seth Dickinson -- The Traitor Baru Cormorant November:Svetlana Alexievich -- Voices from Chernobyl December: Michael Chabon -- Gentlemen of the Road 2016: January: Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome February:The March Up Country (The Anabasis) of Xenophon March: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco April: Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling May: Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima June:The Vegetarian by Han Kang July:Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees August: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov September:Siddhartha by Herman Hesse October:Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse November:Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain December: It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis 2017: January: Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut February: The Plague by Albert Camus March: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin April: The Conference of the Birds (مقامات الطیور) by Farid ud-Din Attar May: I, Claudius by Robert Graves June: Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky July: Ficcionies by Jorge Luis Borges August: My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber September: The Peregrine by J.A. Baker October: Blackwater Vol. I: The Flood by Michael McDowell November: Aquarium by David Vann December: Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight [Author Unknown] 2018 January: Njal's Saga [Author Unknown] February: The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle March: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders Current: Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio de Maria Book available here: https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Days-Turin-Novel-ebook/dp/B01HDSU0QU About the book: quote:Named one of NPR's Best Books of 2017 http://books.wwnorton.com/books/The-Twenty-Days-of-Turin/ chernobyl kinsman posted:do the twenty days of turin. it's big-dick lit enough to appease most of the child loving thread and it has enough trans-dimensional monsters to satisfy the genre fiction contingent About the Author quote:È stato critico teatrale per L'Unità dal 1958 al 1965.[1] Nel 1958 fondò con Italo Calvino, Sergio Liberovici, Emilio Jona e Michele Straniero il gruppo musicale di avanguardia dei Cantacronache, un palese riferimento alla collaborazione fra il mondo della cultura e quello della canzone (negli stessi anni in Francia si univano personaggi e stili come Jean-Paul Sartre e Jacques Prévert nella generazione degli chansonniers). Il gruppo restò in attività quattro anni, dedicandosi al recupero della canzone politica e della Resistenza, producendo brani della tradizione anarchica, di quella socialista e persino di quella giacobina italiana.[2]. Il suo amore per il sarcasmo fu una delle anime del gruppo.[3] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_De_Maria Themes Pacing Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law. Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion. References and Further Reading Final Note: Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book!
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Apr 9, 2018 04:16
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I've finished the first five chapters and there's nothing too horrifying yet but it's all vaguely unsettling. It reminds me a lot of Junji Ito's stories. It also seems to anticipate modern social networks really well, with the idea of anonymous contributors being stalked by anonymous followers, the outpouring of private emotion to a public audience and (what currently seems to be) the pillorying of extremely deviant members. I don't recommend reading this late at night.
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Apr 9, 2018 05:15
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Went to place a hold on this and someone did literal seconds before me, so I assume that can't be a coincidence and there's another Chicago library using goon in here. In any case I already have a bunch of holds I need to pick up this week so I am not sure - even if this miraculously gets to my library before the end of the month - that I'll actually be able to participate in discussion. But it looks really interesting anyway so I'm going to read it when it's available, and bookmark the thread to come back to it and see if there's any interesting discussion.
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Apr 9, 2018 16:03
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Cloks posted:I've finished the first five chapters and there's nothing too horrifying yet but it's all vaguely unsettling. It reminds me a lot of Junji Ito's stories. I was already leaning towards participating this month but this is like the most glowing recommendation for me. I'm in for sure.
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Apr 10, 2018 05:47
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I bought this on indiebound because it seems cool but it's not even shipped yet. I'm sad.
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Apr 10, 2018 15:32
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Even though I normally only lurk TBB, and very rarely at that, this piqued my interest. I picked it up last night and read maybe 1/3rd or so in complete darkness, by myself. Initially I thought the only truly unsettling thing would be the seemingly forced ragged right margin on the Kindle version, but even getting a short way through, the story itself is definitely stirring something in me. I had probably the worst nightmare I can ever recall once I fell asleep. I don't know much about literature, or what does or does not make something like this literature, since I'm into trashy genre fiction, but I'm enjoying this a lot. Can't wait to finish it tonight.
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Apr 11, 2018 09:47
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Asclepius posted:Even though I normally only lurk TBB, and very rarely at that, this piqued my interest. I picked it up last night and read maybe 1/3rd or so in complete darkness, by myself. Initially I thought the only truly unsettling thing would be the seemingly forced ragged right margin on the Kindle version, but even getting a short way through, the story itself is definitely stirring something in me. I had probably the worst nightmare I can ever recall once I fell asleep. welcome, brother I finished it yesterday and still have a lingering sense of unease. i'll post more about it once i process it a bit, but man, scenes like the voices recorded on tape really conjure nebulous fear and an unsettling atmosphere for me also i would suggest not reading the introduction until after you read the book, but then definitely reading the introduction. it makes explicit a lot of the allegory. i haven't read the short stories at the end yet
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Apr 11, 2018 17:31
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chernobyl kinsman posted:also i would suggest not reading the introduction until after you read the book, but then definitely reading the introduction. it makes explicit a lot of the allegory. Thanks for pointing this out. I tend to wait to read introductions until finishing the book (dear lord, so many reprints/anniversary editions/etc just give away the whole loving plot of a book in the first paragraph) but on some translations especially I worry I won't have enough base context going in.
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Apr 11, 2018 19:54
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Yeah definitely don’t real the translators’ bit until after.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:03
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I will order this book despite my intended boycott due to lack of babyfucker out of respect for my comrade in arms chernobyl
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Apr 12, 2018 00:09
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It finally arrived. I'll probably still go through it pretty slowly though because horror isn't really mt thing.
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Apr 13, 2018 16:52
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My copy arrived. I'll finish up my book on the Mexican-American war this weekend and then get started.
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Apr 14, 2018 01:22
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It's an extremely pedestrian complaint, but I always have an issue with novels where normal people do not at all talk like normal people For example, this line of dialog from the protagonist. "You mean, they seemed like premonitions of a battle that wouldn't have men as its protagonists, but other things?" I feel like that is not something you can lay on the translator because I cannot imagine it came out sounding more natural in its native language.
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Apr 15, 2018 19:44
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I don't know, I feel like it adds to the sense of distortion of the world, makes it feel even more alien.
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Apr 15, 2018 20:30
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Yeah most all of the dialogue is stilted and unnatural, I took as a feature instead of a bug
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Apr 15, 2018 21:42
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Oh I get that its deliberate, its just something of a stylistic turn-off for me. It makes the characters feel more like messages and less like people.
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Apr 15, 2018 23:41
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im only like 4 chapters in so far but man there really is a @dril tweet for everything https://twitter.com/dril/status/942511197215252480 Tim Burns Effect fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Apr 18, 2018 |
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Apr 16, 2018 16:38
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https://twitter.com/dril/status/980176932619866112
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Apr 18, 2018 02:12
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I finished this last night, and I'm going to let it stew in my head for a bit. This book did dredge up a lot of residual anxiety from my former job as an investigator for child protective services in rural Texas. Some of the (more mild) stuff that goes on isn't too far off of what I actually experienced.
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Apr 18, 2018 15:13
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Finally started reading this and I know like everyone was talking about how the Library is the Internet but I really wasn't prepared for just how accurate it is. I can only hope that sometime soon an invisible force will pick me up by the ankles and swing me into a tree, killing me instantly.
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Apr 19, 2018 12:52
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Same Also i just started reading this as well
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Apr 19, 2018 12:57
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The satire is pretty on the nose in this but you can tell it wasn't written by an american because it implies that the general populace is actually ashamed of its collective psychosis
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Apr 19, 2018 15:55
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poo poo, the month flew by. I'm going to try to start this weekend.
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Apr 20, 2018 14:49
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Finished it, great book. It's a remarkably prescient novel and not just from the whole 'Library = Twitter' thing. Definitely agree with the comparison to Ito. Related in a big way to the anonymous letter-writer living in the tenement that's just slowly filling with poo poo. Excellent recommendation from chernobyl.Tim Burns Effect posted:im only like 4 chapters in so far but man there really is a @dril tweet for everything lmao
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Apr 21, 2018 11:45
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Halfway through and it is real good. Chapter 7 gave me the heebie jeebies
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Apr 21, 2018 12:58
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Down With People posted:Finished it, great book. It's a remarkably prescient novel and not just from the whole 'Library = Twitter' thing. some of the descriptions of the Library would be ham-handed sendups of social media if the book hadn't been written in 1976
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Apr 21, 2018 21:41
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This was a quick read, and very enjoyable. I totally agree with the sense of foreboding that everyone talks about throughout the novel. There was just something off the entire time that made me feel on edge as I read it.
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Apr 23, 2018 03:21
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Let's be real: who here hasn't wanted to rub the ointment of their soul all over someone's trousers?
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Apr 23, 2018 18:05
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Need suggestions for next month. Right now I'm thinking maybe it's time to do nonfiction again, maybe King Leopold's Ghost. edit: i thought people would know this by now but please post like an actual sentence explaining why with any suggestions Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Apr 23, 2018 |
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Apr 23, 2018 19:01
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ready player one
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Apr 23, 2018 19:15
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Heckletooth 3 Berlin Alexanderplatz City of Glass I'll finish the current BOTM tonight and share my thoughts on it.
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Apr 23, 2018 19:48
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chernobyl kinsman posted:ready player one the original or the fixed version?
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Apr 23, 2018 21:05
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I wish we had seen more of the contents of the Library, but I guess that's why I came away from the book feeling that I would be one of those dried out people wandering the streets at night. The tape recording scene will stay with me, as will the Millenarists' flyers, which to me were the most recognizable reference to the fascistic terror that the book is recalling (in Italian they warn the reader to take heed and mend their ways, while the Spanish translation commands to leave the city, run for your life, now not later). As I'm not familiar with Italian history, the rest of it didn't become apparent until I finished the book and went back to read the introduction. The ending was the most Lovecraftian moment in the book, in that it was bad. Or maybe I just didn't get it. The book also inspired me to try Robert Musil's Posthumous Papers of a Living Author. The little vignette pieces at the beginning were nice to read on a lazy, sunny Sunday, and The Blackbird was a great story. The monument piece is much more playful than it is depicted in the book, but it does invite you to imagine the monuments being frustrated and confused at their frozen state. It was a nice relaxing follow up to Turin, and I'm glad I read it.
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Apr 24, 2018 07:14
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I agree that the ending seemed discordant with the rest of the story - I think it would've been better if the plane hadn't landed and the sense of foreboding doom had been maintained. I am glad that I finished the book today rather than last week, as I just took several plane rides traveling alone. That said, I really liked how much the last few chapters escalated the story. It really sped up when he started answering the letters and the quasi encounters with the monsters in his house were good. It's absolutely eerie how well the book captures social media - the idea of being an unwitting pawn in a greater fight and being the casualty, the perverse interest in the mundane, the alienation and hatred of those who don't want to take part. Is the play within the book a reference to The King in Yellow?
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Apr 25, 2018 05:15
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Cloks posted:Is the play within the book a reference to The King in Yellow?
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Apr 25, 2018 15:22
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i finished this but i don't really have anything to add that hasn't already been said other than i liked it and was glad it was recommended.
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Apr 25, 2018 20:49
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I, too, finished it and enjoyed it. I have no unique comments. I agree with the readers who said it was more an overall eerie and foreboding mood. For me, as well, the story didn't really pick up steam in terms of weird fiction until the final chapters. I'm sure I'll appreciate the overall allegory of the twenty days when I read the translator's intro. Overall, it wasn't what I was expecting, but I'm glad I participated in reading.
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Apr 25, 2018 22:39
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I'm going to read this book again; earlier in the month I did not appreciate the writing style at all. It felt affectless and academic throughout, a sustained "bleh" of a novel. With a reread I might solidify my thoughts or reevaluate.
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Apr 26, 2018 22:35
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drat sorry I missed this. I read this book last year on the recommendation of my buddy who is getting me into horror. The scene where the protagonist visits the old dude with the dog still sticks with me. Also the scene of the folks gathered at the airport to see the off. Nice stuff! Its pretty low key but ramps things into an unsettling level well in my opinion.
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May 10, 2018 03:38
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Bilirubin posted:I read this book last year on the recommendation of my buddy who is getting me into horror. The scene where the protagonist visits the old dude with the dog still sticks with me. Also the scene of the folks gathered at the airport to see the off. Nice stuff! Its pretty low key but ramps things into an unsettling level well in my opinion. yeah the recordings being played from the unexplained egg device is a brilliant scene
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May 12, 2018 16:16
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