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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 the moderation team. Past Books of the Month [for BOTM before 2019, refer to archives] 2019: January: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky February: BEAR by Marian Engel March: V. by Thomas Pynchon April: The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout May: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman June: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann July: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach August: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay September: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay October: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado November: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett December: Moby Dick by Herman Melville 2020: January: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair February: WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin March: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini April: The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio May: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Dame Rebecca West June: The African Queen by C. S. Forester July: The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale August: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire, by Howard Pyle September: Strange Hotel, by Eimear McBride October:Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (怪談)("Ghost Stories"), by Lafcadio Hearn November: A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) , by Matthew Hongoltz Hetling December: Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Drury Clark 2021: January: The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley February: How to Read Donald Duck by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart March: Carrier Wave by Robert Brockway April: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brian May: You Can't Win by Jack Black June:Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Current:  Can Such Things Be by Ambrose Bierce Book available here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4366 Audiobook: https://archive.org/details/can_such_things_be_1205_librivox https://archive.org/details/cansuchthings00bierrich http://www.ambrosebierce.org/cansuchthingsbe.htm About the book Oddly, there's very little out there on the internet about this book; it's readily available but it isn't much discussed, apart from general references and the frequent notation that it was an inspiration for Lovecraft and Robert W. Chambers. Let's dive in and see if it's any good. About the Author quote:Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842[2] – circa 1914[3]) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran. His book The Devil's Dictionary was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration.[4] His story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" has been described as "one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature";[5] and his book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (also published as In the Midst of Life) was named by the Grolier Club as one of the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900.[6] Pacing  Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law. Please post after you read! Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion. References and Further Materials Lovecraft, Chambers, Bierce. Suggestions for Future Months These threads aren't just for discussing the current BOTM; If you have a suggestion for next month's book, please feel free to post it in the thread below also. Generally what we're looking for in a BotM are works that have 1) accessibility -- either easy to read or easy to download a free copy of, ideally both 2) novelty -- something a significant fraction of the forum hasn't already read 3) discussability -- intellectual merit, controversiality, insight -- a book people will be able to talk about. Final Note: Thanks, and we hope everyone enjoys the book!
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Jul 3, 2021 19:59
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 19:23 |
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I'm all in on short stories and this poo poo is great. Just got done reading Halpin Frayser. What's the policies on spoilers? Id assume they're fine but I'll spoiler for now to be safe. What do we think killed Mr. Fraser? Do we take him at his 'words and accept its the lich of his mother? Do we assume the other named killer is the one who did it and Frayser just imagined it? Two more out there interpretations I read on Wikipedia was that it was he who killed his own mother? Thus, he was the killer that we being hunted. Perhaps the wildest take I saw was that Jaralson is the killer and the father? I guess this can be supported by him knowing the poet and also having supposedly already encountered the killer previously? I'm always a fan of taking monsters literally when possible, but a lot of people don't dig that. Have we ever done a Bradbury short story collection? We might want to hold it up to a further future month, but they're always good fun. Though I don't know if his stuff can be gotten for free, really. Bierce gets in at a nice ground level for horror. In truth, a number of his spooky stories don't really hold a candle to the horror stories to come. Even a lot of his predecessors outdo him on actual tension, scariness. Something like "The Damned Thing" feels so quaint now, but I could imagine it was a bit more exciting of the time. Zurtilik fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Jul 6, 2021 |
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Jul 6, 2021 13:02
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I'd agree with "quaint" being a pretty good description. Anyhow, it's intersting to see that this seems to be the origin for Carcosa and Hastur, two things that eventually show up in Lovecraft and his many, many literary descendants.
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Jul 15, 2021 17:10
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I'll be honest, I'm having a hard time getting into this one.
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Jul 15, 2021 17:11
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Ok, getting further in, the first story was ehhhh but the next few are better crafted.
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Jul 16, 2021 13:11
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anilEhilated posted:I'd agree with "quaint" being a pretty good description. The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft by S. T. Joshi is really good for this. Sometimes half the page is a breakdown of previous works and what ideas he took from them, and quotes from Lovecraft's letters discussing why he took them. Later writers depict his themes/writing as being as inexplicable and alien as his creatures, but, like them, he has a mundane provenance that only seems bizarre through unfamiliarity.
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Jul 18, 2021 04:12
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Ok, getting further in, the first story was ehhhh but the next few are better crafted. Yeah the first one started slowly and I was a little confused, even at the end, at how everything tied back together. The subsequent stories have much better pace to them. Started late, as is my want, and am 20% of the way in so far. The three different perspectives on a murder was well done
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Aug 2, 2021 03:59
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Night Doings at "Dead Man's" was real good
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Aug 13, 2021 03:25
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Three quarters through this now and I am really liking it. There is something about old time horror that hits me in the right spot. Arthur Machen gives me a similar vibe, although it's also very British
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Aug 15, 2021 23:24
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So many fantastic stories in this collection. "A Tough Tussle," "Moxon's Master," etc. If I remember correctly "The Moonlit Road" might have inspired the Japanese novel that Akira Kurosawa later adapted into Rashomon because you have multiple perspectives on a murder, including the perspective of the murder victim by way of a medium. Bierce is one of my favorite American authors and I'd encourage anyone who likes this collection to check out his Civil War writing, autobiographical or fictional.
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Aug 16, 2021 00:11
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I read Owl Creek Bridge in high school so I was pretty excited for this BotM. He's good.
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Aug 16, 2021 04:03
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 19:23 |
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Just finished it. Good choice all
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Aug 16, 2021 06:15
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