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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) May: John Steinbeck -- Cannery Row Current: Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood quote:In Cold Blood is a non-fiction book first published in 1966, written by American author Truman Capote; it details the 1959 murders of Herbert Clutter, a farmer from Holcomb, Kansas, his wife, and two of their four children. About the Author quote:Truman Streckfus Persons (September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984), known as Truman Capote (/ˈtruːmən kəˈpoʊtiː/[1]), was an American author, screenwriter, playwright, actor, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966), which he labeled a "nonfiction novel". At least 20 films and television dramas have been produced of Capote novels, stories, and plays. Discussion, Questions & Themes: quote:Tom Wolfe wrote in his essay "Pornoviolence": "The book is neither a who-done-it nor a will-they-be-caught, since the answers to both questions are known from the outset ... Instead, the book's suspense is based largely on a totally new idea in detective stories: the promise of gory details, and the withholding of them until the end."[16] quote:"I recognized it as a work of art, but I know fakery when I see it," Olsen says. "Capote completely fabricated quotes and whole scenes ... The book made something like $6 million in 1960s money, and nobody wanted to discuss anything wrong with a moneymaker like that in the publishing business." Nobody except Olsen and a few others. His criticisms were quoted in Esquire, to which Capote replied, "Jack Olsen is just jealous." Pacing References and Further Reading 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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Jun 3, 2015 02:25
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True controversy: how much of this book did Harper Lee write? quote:Throughout the publication and promotion of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, Capote admitted his childhood friend, Harper Lee, accompanied him to Kansas as his research assistant, but he never explained in detail what she did to assist him other than to say she accompanied him on interviews. However, once the book was published, her name never appeared in the acknowledgement page of the book. Capote allowed people to believe that Lee was only in Kansas with him two months and she never returned during the five years he was there to conduct research. It is true that Lee was in Kansas the first few months with Capote; however, she returned to assist him with research at Hickock's and Smith's arraignment, and she returned to Kansas many other times. However, Capote never revealed this information or Lee's major role in the research for In Cold Blood. It was not until the publication of Charles Shields' unauthorized biography of Lee, Mockingbird (2006), the world began to understand Lee's research conducted for In Cold Blood. Shields briefly showed several passages of Lee's notes in one chapter, "See N.L.'s Notes." However, what Shields revealed was only a small part of Lee contributions. By conducting archival research at the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress, and by conducting interviews with people who knew Capote and Lee, I have discovered Lee's exact contributions to Capote's research. https://dspace.iup.edu/handle/2069/757 I always hear people trying to claim that Capote wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, but the reverse has always seemed more likely to me. Maybe that'll change after I've read some more Capote. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 02:27
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Okay, I'll try to read this book this month, should be good!
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Jun 5, 2015 15:07
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I'm having a harder time getting into this than I had to expected just because of the constant sense of impending doom. I had thought it would follow more of a whodunit model.
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Jun 16, 2015 17:53
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I'm having a harder time getting into this than I had to expected just because of the constant sense of impending doom. I had thought it would follow more of a whodunit model. I ended up finishing this yesterday. Definitely not what I was expecting. I had heard beforehand that it was not a whodunit, but I was surprised by how few mysteries there were and how they were handled. There were some at the start, i.e. I wonder about why they did it, how the police would figure it out, why Mr Clutter was so anxious (started smoking) the weeks beforehand, what the deal is with the insurance he got the day he was murdered, etc. But either they were answered quickly (with rather lame answers) or ignored completely. I guess that's just the result of writing about something that really happened, as real life does not always give all answers nor interesting answers. What I liked about this book was how it gives the reader some big questions to contemplate, like "do horrible criminals who are clearly guilty still deserve a fair trial?" and "is the dead penalty a fair punishment in some cases?". I'm still thinking about these. The attention given to the psychology and childhood of the murders was great as well, but maybe a bit too much somehow?
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Jun 17, 2015 16:06
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Oh, hey Book of the Month. I haven't read ICB for a few years but I remember a bit. agree that the whodunit aspect is fairly low down on Capote's priorities. I guess because almost everyone who read it (especially at the time) already knew who did it and the fact that they were captured, tried and executed. I guess we have to factor in that readers knew the basic outline already. I read something interesting about how a lot of pleasure in reading isn't not knowing what will happen in a story but knowing roughly what will happen but not how or why it will happen. It is knowing the what already but discovering the how and why aspects that are key to enjoying stories. That is why we re-read and why we read different narratives of the same events, different biographies of the same person etc. I feel like pointing this out every time a goon complains on the Stephen King thread that he uses foreshadowing too much. Maybe he does but that kind of misses the point. I didn't find the procedural/evidence stuff that gripping. Is that because a) Capote does it badly, b) I am not experienced in reading/don't enjoy crime books (it isn't what I normally read) or c) because that stuff already leads to known perpetrators and known capture, hence it lacks suspense? Overall, I would recommend this title even if you are not a fan of Capote or crime novels. I enjoyed it. The film Capote is also a definite must-watch.
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Jun 22, 2015 17:45
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:Oh, hey Book of the Month. I haven't read ICB for a few years but I remember a bit. agree that the whodunit aspect is fairly low down on Capote's priorities. I guess because almost everyone who read it (especially at the time) already knew who did it and the fact that they were captured, tried and executed. I guess we have to factor in that readers knew the basic outline already. I read something interesting about how a lot of pleasure in reading isn't not knowing what will happen in a story but knowing roughly what will happen but not how or why it will happen. It is knowing the what already but discovering the how and why aspects that are key to enjoying stories. That is why we re-read and why we read different narratives of the same events, different biographies of the same person etc. I feel like pointing this out every time a goon complains on the Stephen King thread that he uses foreshadowing too much. Maybe he does but that kind of misses the point. Ah that explains something, I didn't realize Capote assumes knowledge about the case already (I had never heard about it before). You don't have to know the case at all to understand or like the book, but it seems he could have (would have?) written it differently if he hadn't expected the readers to know about the case before. I actually agree the procedural/evidence stuff isn't that gripping by itself (there certainly is no suspense), I just think he did a good job of making the readers think about the ethics of denying a fair trial to people and the right or wrong of dead punishment. I always considered myself to be against the death punishment, but while reading the book I was somehow happy when they got it which made me feel like a huge hypocrite. It's an interesting book in that sense.
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Jun 23, 2015 21:55
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suggestions for next month?
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Jun 24, 2015 12:08
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Picked this up last week and I'm enjoying it a lot so far. The description of the community's shock in the aftermath is really heartbreaking.  What kind of books do we nominate for BOTM? Literature, genre books, histories?
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Jun 24, 2015 15:19
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Walh Hara posted:Ah that explains something, I didn't realize Capote assumes knowledge about the case already (I had never heard about it before). You don't have to know the case at all to understand or like the book, but it seems he could have (would have?) written it differently if he hadn't expected the readers to know about the case before. It was all over the news of the time because it was such a sensational murder of an entire family for apparently what was a minor burglary. That was why Capote went out there. I think he was living in NYC at the time and wasn't a regular stringer. He was deliberately searching out a dramatic story for an innovatory "factual novel" and the newspaper reports caught his eye. Every turn of the case was covered in the press, as were the trials and executions. It would be like someone writing about the SImpson-Goldman murders in 2000.
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Jun 24, 2015 16:27
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HIJK posted:Picked this up last week and I'm enjoying it a lot so far. The description of the community's shock in the aftermath is really heartbreaking. Anything you think we might be able get more than ten people to read is the standard I'm using lately. Fiction, nonfiction, literature, whatever, but participation is always the challenge. On the other hand, I don't want pure pulp either, just because the forum is already full of it. So, not Warhammer novels. But not Finnegan's Wake either. Something in between. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Jun 24, 2015 |
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Jun 24, 2015 17:02
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I just read Disgrace by Coetzee based on recommendations in the loving child thread, it was pretty good, might be worth a consideration.
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Jun 26, 2015 19:37
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How about Battle Cry of Freedom? http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-The-Civil/dp/0195038630
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Jun 27, 2015 14:55
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