- Hieronymous Alloy
- Jan 30, 2009
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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!?!
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Morbid Hound
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Welcome earthlings to the Awful Book of the Month!
In this thread, we choose one work of literature absolute crap and read/discuss it over a month. If you have any suggestions of books, choose something that will be appreciated by many people, and has many avenues of discussion. We'd also appreciate if it were a work of literature complete drivel that is easily located from a local library or book shop, as opposed to ordering something second hand off the internet and missing out on a week's worth of reading. Better yet, books available on e-readers.
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:
Ta-Nehisi Coates -- Between the World and Me
quote:
An Amazon Best Book of July 2015: Readers of his work in The Atlantic and elsewhere know Ta-Nehisi Coates for his thoughtful and influential writing on race in America. Written as a series of letters to his teenaged son, his new memoir, Between the World and Me, walks us through the course of his life, from the tough neighborhoods of Baltimore in his youth, to Howard University—which Coates dubs “The Mecca” for its revelatory community of black students and teachers—to the broader Meccas of New York and Paris. Coates describes his observations and the evolution of his thinking on race, from Malcolm X to his conclusion that race itself is a fabrication, elemental to the concept of American (white) exceptionalism. Ferguson, Trayvon Martin, and South Carolina are not bumps on the road of progress and harmony, but the results of a systemized, ubiquitous threat to “black bodies” in the form of slavery, police brutality, and mass incarceration. Coates is direct and, as usual, uncommonly insightful and original. There are no wasted words. This is a powerful and exceptional book.--Jon Foro
Murica.
I'm about a third of the way through the Coates book. IMO, most people could read it in an afternoon. I'm a very slow reader and it took about an hour and a half to get a third of the way though it.
shrug.
Between the World and Me you group of absolute children
The National Review's Rich Lowry posted:Moses gave us the Ten Commandments. Paul gave us the epistles. And Ta-Nehisi gave us, Between the World and Me.
The new book by Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, in the form of a letter to his son, has been greeted with a rapturous reception that brooks no dissent.
What everyone says about the literary power of Between the World and Me is correct. It is, in part, the story of the creation of a writer, and one with undeniably formidable gifts. But if you refuse to simply stare at the book in wonder as one who admires Michelangelo’s David and subject it to even minimal critical scrutiny, you will realize that it is profoundly silly at times, and morally blinkered throughout. It is a masterly little memoir wrapped in a toxic little Philippic.
[url]http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/the-toxic-world-view-of-ta-nehisi-coates-120512.html#.Vb731vlVhBd
About the Author
quote:
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues. He is the author of The Beautiful Struggle and the forthcoming Between the World and Me.
quote:
Coates grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. His father, William Paul Coates, was a Vietnam War veteran and former Black Panther. His mother, Cheryl, was the breadwinner in the family and his father was a stay-at-home dad who ran Black Classic Press, a small publishing house specializing in African-American studies[4] during Ta-Nehisi's childhood.[5] Ta-Nehisi's father had seven children.[6] Coates says that Ta-Nehisi is an Egyptian name for ancient Nubia.[7]
Coates had an interest in books at an early age and his mother punished bad behavior by making him write essays.[8] Coates attended a number of Baltimore-area schools, including Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, before graduating from Woodlawn High School.[9] After high school, he enrolled in Howard University but dropped out to become a journalist.[10][11] He currently resides in Harlem with his wife and son.[12] He is an atheist and a feminist.[13][14][15]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta-Nehisi_Coates
Discussion, Questions & Themes:
Pacing
No pacing or spoiler rules this month. Just read!
References and Further Reading
Open for suggestions.
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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