|
DISCORD LINK: https://discord.gg/hDKr5re Hello friends, and welcome to the CSPAM book club thread I noticed after a whole bunch of drunken derails that there may be some interest in this. Also I enjoy book clubs that aren't a bunch of bored old women and are instead a bunch of anime obsessed neckbeard socialists. So here we are. Books! Some books are good books! Everybody loves them.  Some books are bad books and only people who want to feel smart love them, but that's okay because they hate themselves and they need something to love!  What I am thinking the structure of it will be like Maoist Third World. I will be the chairman but I will crowdsource pretty much everything. Here is how it will happen: 1) Anybody who wants to make a suggestion must post it here and give a good explanation as to why we should all read it. You can also give a bad explanation but I do not recommend doing that! 2) Once we get a bunch I will post a strawpoll or something. Everybody gets one vote, nobody can vote for their own. Honor system, be honorable! 3) Once a book is decided we will pick a reasonable length of time to wait until we deliberate again on it. People are free to chat about the book in the thread of course, but be mindful of spoilers! Some people aren't basement dwelling troglodytes with unlimited free time and thus it takes them awhile to read a book! 4) Then we meet and discuss it and it will be ever so much fun! Some suggestions for picking a book: 1) Maybe 500 pages at most. Most people are going to be unsure about your selection and may balk at committing to a 30,000 page book about dragons molesting people 2) Like 90% of the suggestions are going to be sci-fi or young adult. Pick something different if you have something in mind! 3) Don't feel hedged in by a theme. Don't exclude books of short stories or graphic novels just because a bunch of stick in rear end nerds don't consider them "proper" or whatever. I'm drinking MTN DEW out of a 2 liter and eating pizza that's been in my car all day. I have no standards and ain't one of you motherfuckers is better than me. 4) Pick something you genuinely enjoy (if it's a book you've read), or something that genuinely interests you! It will make pitching it a lot easier and people believe they will enjoy what they can see other people enjoy! That's the gist of it, hope I didn't forget anything! For the next few days I will be collecting recommendations of books and suggestions for the structure and then I will make a Chairman's Statement Prefacing Authorial Matters and we will be off. Gimme some recommendation CSPAMMERS! p.s if anybody wants to make fun graphics I'll put them in the OP!   ***FIRST ROUND OF VOTING IS UP***UP FOR 24 HOURS, TOP FIVE RUNOFF IF NOTHING GETS 50% WHICH THEY PROBABLY WON'T LIST OF BOOKS WITH DESCRIPTIONS HERE: https://pastebin.com/WdG34pGi VOTE HERE: http://www.strawpoll.me/12770539 THE RULES: 1) Vote for up to 5 you'd like to read 2) You cannot vote for your own. Honor system, DON'T gently caress THIS UP OR I'LL JUST GO DICTATOR FINAL ROUND OF BOOK CLUB VOTING HAS BEGUNPOLL: http://www.strawpoll.me/12775981 JUST PICK ONE THIS TIME, whatever ends up on top wins, percentage be damned because I'm not going to bother with a dozen rounds of this to get to 50%  PHASE 3: THE READENING The book, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation is available in a variety of places, including under the pinned posts in the Discord. I suggest you buy it if you can afford, to support authors. It's a bit over 300 pages, and if there's no objections, I'm going to say we will meet on May 10th, at 9pm EST to discuss it formally, which gives us 2 weeks. If anybody feels you will need longer please let it be known, this date is flexible. I do want the thread itself to be a discussion place, and I want it to be throughout the 2 week reading period. In short, the formal rule here is DISCUSS FREELY IN THE FORUM, BUT USE SPOILER TAGS LIBERALLY I'd say keep it to the thread rather than the Discord because more people actually use and check this, so it will be a better place to share impressions and thoughts. Any objections? let them be known now Epic High Five has issued a correction as of 00:38 on Apr 27, 2017 |
#
?
Apr 15, 2017 22:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 15:43 |
|
|
I can sort of forgive Finnegan's Wake because Joyce took like two decades or something to write it, so it ended up being some sort of compilation of a guy writing down every single thing he did while under patronage David Foster Wallace, on the other hand, is total poo poo 
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2017 22:51
|
|
|
I imagine a lot of what I've suggested people have read, but I think there are even really popular things that I haven't read, and maybe other people haven't necessarily read all these either. My first suggestion is Antigone. Its not a particularly long affair, but its got a lot going for it. Its a Greek tragedy featuring the titular Antigone. Basically Antigone is the sister to two men who died fighting in opposite sides of a war. One brother is set to be honored for his service while the other is set to be shamed. This tragedy is about the sequence of events set into motion by the decision to honor one brother and shame the other. Next - Handmaid's Tale  This is set sorta like in the near future in the U.S. Basically the Y'all Qaeda took over the U.S. government and women's roles are relegated to the kitchen, to the bedroom, etc. Also - All Quiet on the Western Front  Basically this is a novel set in World War 1 from the perspective of some frontline German soldiers. Though I'm pretty sure 'ONE' by Metallica wasn't written based on this book, its got a lot of the same themes. Shits hosed yall. Of Mice and Men  Do you like Mice or Men? Well, there is one really good dude in this book. There isn't a lot of focus on the mice, but he really loves petting rabbits. Book sad af.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2017 22:55
|
|
|
I suggest Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War because I'm a morbid historian and it's awesome. Slightly more seriously, it's an engagingly written examination of how the Civil War changed forever America's relationship with death and dying, as well as attendant social and cultural issues like faith in a just afterlife and the importance of body recovery/burial, challenging the Victorian distinction of the "Good Death vs Bad Death." It's a bit shy of 300 pages but isn't a difficult read at all (though given the subject material it does get a bit heavy at times) and all you bastards should go read it. eonwe posted:Also - All Quiet on the Western Front "One" is in fact based on Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2017 22:59
|
|
|
Captain_Maclaine posted:I suggest Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War because I'm a morbid historian and it's awesome. that sounds p sweet. i may just...read that now??? i assume i can find it on amazon Also neat! I didn't look it up, but I just remembered thinking at the time 'ONE' was telling an awfully specific story and had to be based on something. I completely forgot about Johnny Got His Gun
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2017 23:01
|
|
|
eonwe posted:that sounds p sweet. i may just...read that now??? i assume i can find it on amazon It only came out in 2008 and should be pretty easy to find online and elsewhere.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2017 23:02
|
|
|
good thread good idea I don't have a suggestion but might read what gets decided on! maybe !
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2017 23:06
|
|
|
eonwe posted:Also neat! I didn't look it up, but I just remembered thinking at the time 'ONE' was telling an awfully specific story and had to be based on something. I completely forgot about Johnny Got His Gun It's good to know all these years as a metalhead have paid off in more than a constant, low-level background ringing!
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2017 23:06
|
|
|
I'm currently reading A Handmaid's Tale which is cool and good. There's also a Hulu TV adaptation on the verge of coming out which has a rave metacritic rating so far, so I guess I'm inadvertently astroturfing for it.  All Quiet on the Western Front is Trump's self-proclaimed favorite book not named The Bible or Art of the Deal. He probably read it in fifth grade and figured name dropping would make him sound smart 
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2017 23:16
|
|
|
Oh! Two more. Devil in the White City  This is a sort of combination novel. It basically has two stories set in the same time and are separate but connected. Its set during before and during the 1893 World's Fair. One story is the creation, challenges, and successes of the 1893 World's Fair. Its really kind of a spectacle I wouldn't have ever expected happened in 1893. The other is basically a murder / thriller type of story. Its all based on actual events. And - The Jungle  You know how we're kind of leaning away from protecting the environment, food standards, etc nowadays since they stifle business? Well, a lot of those modern regulations in America sort of find their roots in The Jungle. People read this book and were less pissed off about all the terrible things that happened to the poor and were instead really pissed off about what they may be eating. Featuring blue milk, men getting eaten alive by rats, companies treating people than dirt, lots of deeply unfair things.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2017 23:16
|
|
|
I've heard All Quiet is a fantastic and horribly depressing books and I love horribly depressing things. Deffo a good recc
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2017 23:46
|
|
|
Epic High Five posted:I've heard All Quiet is a fantastic and horribly depressing books and I love horribly depressing things. Deffo a good recc It is both of those things.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2017 23:47
|
|
|
That Dalton Trumbo book is very good and heavy af too
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:01
|
|
|
Showa: A History of Japan This multi-volume graphic novel is a combination history book and autobiography. I'm currently reading the second volume 1939-1944 (my library didn't have the 1st one  ) and it's a pretty good history of the war with minimum whitewashing of Japan's role, at least by Japanese standards. There's a really offensive bit where the narrator character brushes off the Baatan death march by just saying "Don't see how it's Japan's fault that it's so hot in the Philippines" and comfort women are only briefly mentioned. The author is a firm anti-militarist though and I personally appreciated all the memoir material about the home front and brutal Japanese Army culture. Overall, I'm looking forward to checking out the other three volumes.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:05
|
|
|
i recommend Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone its about a techno-lawyer-mage from a big corporation whos helping her mentor to lawyer-necromance the fire god of the city before all the steam heat shuts down and they all starve and freeze, and theres a lot more happening and its really good fiction.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:05
|
|
|
eonwe posted:Oh! Two more. Devil in the White city was depressing for the murder half. In TYOOL 2017 we don't need more depressing, we need cool scifi.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:06
|
|
|
everyone following politics now should read Timothy Crouse's Boys on the Bus since everyone has already read Nixon Agonistes amazing how, despite the changes in technology, a lot remains the same
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:29
|
|
|
Oh after a billion recommendations I recently finished Game Change. My favorite parts were Hillary calling Tim Kaine a poo poo-tier VP pick for Obama and planning her transition before even winning the Iowa caucuses. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:31
|
|
|
 The Romanovs by Simon Sebag Montefiore is a pretty interesting pop history of the dynasty. it gets a little weird at the end when he wants you to feel bad for nicholas ii but i still thought it was a really fun read e: also one of the alexanders had incredibly gross love letters but i can't remember if it was alex i or ii
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:32
|
|
|
baw posted:everyone following politics now should read Timothy Crouse's Boys on the Bus since everyone has already read Nixon Agonistes You're certainly welcome to pitch it formally so it can be voted on
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:32
|
|
|
Nothing book matters
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:38
|
|
|
Chokes McGee posted:Nothing book matters  Noted, tho I recommend you pitch it if you expect votes
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:39
|
|
|
but if we're doing fiction i will recommend Alaa Al Asany's The Yacoubian Building follows characters living in a once-wealthy apartment complex in modern Cairo and shows how intersecting economic, social and institutional oppressions profoundly affects their lives
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:40
|
|
|
baw posted:but if we're doing fiction i will recommend Alaa Al Asany's The Yacoubian Building follows characters living in a once-wealthy apartment complex in modern Cairo and shows how intersecting economic, social and institutional oppressions profoundly affects their lives added just to clarify it's open season - recommend whatever I explicitly do not want a politics-themed book club because everybody would stop participating after a week
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:41
|
|
|
Epic High Five posted:You're certainly welcome to pitch it formally so it can be voted on "This book holds a very special place in my heart...I guess you could say have a crush on it, a primitive sort of love that feels almost like parenthood and borders, perhaps, on lust" -HST
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:42
|
|
|
Actually hell, that's going to be my recommendation Nothing Matters, by Robin Nadler why? quote:Dr. Jack Stephens didn’t care. Nothing mattered to him. He didn’t care about feelings. He didn’t care about love. If it wasn’t on the operating table, he never cared about the heart. For a world-class cardiac surgeon, he was as closed off to love as they come, the living definition of irony. It wasn’t until he took a minute for himself on the hospital roof and saw a woman standing on the ledge that he realized once and for all that just maybe, something did matter.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:42
|
|
|
ok i will add just one more, Amin Malouf's Samarkand. best novel i read in 2016, follows the story of an illustrated manuscript of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. learn about court life in 11th century Persia, the foundation of the assassins by Hassan-i Sabbah, and the exploits of Omar Khayyam himself. and that's just the first half
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:49
|
|
|
Put 100 years of solitude on the list, doesn't need a pitch
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 00:56
|
|
|
Cool thread, don't know if I'll participate because I resolved to read more of my own book collection this year but if I see something I recognize I'll drop in. Mentioned it in the TRUMP thread but right now I'm Voltaire's Candide and it's pretty timely for the current state of our world. Namely, bad poo poo will happen to one character, another character will say "actually, this is good"/"this is fine", and the main character will put up a thinking face emoji. It's real short too.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 01:08
|
|
|
C-Euro posted:Cool thread, don't know if I'll participate because I resolved to read more of my own book collection this year but if I see something I recognize I'll drop in. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 01:14
|
|
|
Since Candide is obviously free, I'm going to start on it now
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 01:14
|
|
|
eonwe posted:Since Candide is obviously free, I'm going to start on it now Ya same
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 01:15
|
|
|
im not reading anything without spaceships robots wizards or ghosts
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 01:17
|
|
|
hasn't everyone already read Candide
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 01:18
|
|
|
baw posted:hasn't everyone already read Candide I feel like everyone has some gaps in their reading, I certainly do. And even still, things are good on multiple readings.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 01:19
|
|
|
baw posted:hasn't everyone already read Candide I'm not college educated so no Everybody I know who has read it has done so for a college course
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 01:20
|
|
|
Candide rules Pangloss would have won
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 01:25
|
|
|
i wanna reed Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave And The Commodification Of Ghosts
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 01:26
|
|
|
baw posted:hasn't everyone already read Candide I did in high school but thats irrelevent since I'd like to re-read and refresh my mind to Re-Accomodate my place in the universe~
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 01:29
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 15:43 |
|
|
maybe Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation for the tankies
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2017 01:30
|
|