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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 Current: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders Book available here: https://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-Bardo-Novel-George-Saunders/dp/0812995341 About the book: quote:Lincoln in the Bardo is a 2017 experimental novel by American writer George Saunders.[1] It is Saunders's first full-length novel and was the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller for the week of March 5, 2017.[2] Saunders is better known for his short stories, reporting, and occasional essays.[3][4][5] blue squares posted:Its great. When you're reading it, you will feel some internal resistance due to some of its unconventionalities. Just relax and allow the book to be what it is. Eventually you will slip into its groove and you won't be fighting against it, you'll be with it. smug n stuff posted:There’s a scene in Lincoln in the Bardo where, while running after Abraham Lincoln, a ghost has to carry his feet-long penis in his hands to avoid tripping over it and that alone makes it worth reading imo Cloks posted:This is the one place I can brag about it - I got a job at OCLC, the nonprofit that does Worldcat a few months ago. cda posted:I would almost never recommend any form of book over a regular book, but the audiobook of Lincoln in the Bardo is top-tier derp posted:yowza. lincoln in the bardo was amazing. maybe i will listen to you nerds a second time A CRUNK BIRD posted:I had a gift cardo so I’m going to read Lincoln in the bardo. About the Author quote:George Saunders (born December 2, 1958) is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas, children's books, and novels. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's, and GQ. He also contributed a weekly column, American Psyche, to the weekend magazine of The Guardian between 2006 and 2008.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Saunders Interview with George Saunders here: quote:"acclaimed author George Saunders explains how swimming in a river of monkey poop led to an illustrious writing career and opens up about his newfound admiration for Abraham Lincoln (the protagonist of this newest work, "Lincoln in the Bardo" Existing thread on Saunders here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3847806 Themes quote:Many years ago, during a visit to Washington DC, my wife's cousin pointed out to us a crypt on a hill and mentioned that, in 1862, while Abraham Lincoln was president, his beloved son, Willie, died, and was temporarily interred in that crypt, and that the grief-stricken Lincoln had, according to the newspapers of the day, entered the crypt "on several occasions" to hold the boy's body. An image spontaneously leapt into my mind – a melding of the Lincoln Memorial and the Pietà. I carried that image around for the next 20-odd years, too scared to try something that seemed so profound, and then finally, in 2012, noticing that I wasn't getting any younger, not wanting to be the guy whose own gravestone would read "Afraid to Embark on Scary Artistic Project He Desperately Longed to Attempt", decided to take a run at it, in exploratory fashion, no commitments. My novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, is the result of that attempt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_in_the_Bardo Pacing Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law. Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion. References and Further Reading http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/education/williedeath.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...m=.07c2a97e7079 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/books/review-george-saunders-lincoln-in-the-bardo.html Final Note: Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Mar 7, 2018 |
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Mar 7, 2018 17:48
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 11:03 |
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http://www.vulture.com/2018/03/george-saunderss-10-favorite-books.html
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Mar 8, 2018 20:52
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Oh poo poo need suggestions for next month how about Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff
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Mar 29, 2018 13:40
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I will come and loving find you and children will tell each ghost stories about the horrible things that happened if you put that fucki ng book on the list I need some ideas then
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Mar 30, 2018 03:44
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CestMoi posted:How about - and please hear me out here - BABYFUCKER by URS ALLEMANN The absolute last thing I need is the shitstorm that could cause in places like QQCS. Maybe if the author wins a Nobel Prize or it gets made into a mainstream, major studio film (like happened with Lolita) I'm leaning towards something accessible for next month. Down With People posted:I'm reading Delany's Dhalgren right now so it would be really convenient for me if everyone else also had to read Dhalgren You've basically just unlocked the ur-code of how I pick these
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Mar 30, 2018 13:48
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Mel Mudkiper posted:What would qqcs care? They might not, but there's a contingent of folks who are always trolling around the forums looking to start fights with or about moderators, and anything that even resembles "pedo friendly mod" is a giant red flag for them. Plus I don't really want to read the book, it sounds more like a gimmick than quality writing. If it were something like Lolita the fight might be worth it but even then we already did Pale Fire recently edit: I'm really thinking more of the offsites than of QQCS. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:02 on Mar 30, 2018 |
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Mar 30, 2018 13:54
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Mel Mudkiper posted:alright but if you end up claiming a 250 year old public domain proto-fantasy book is the accessible alternative I am gonna tell everyone in QQCS you like anime porn OK, The Coming Race it is, that's only like 150 years old (don't worry I'm just kidding, even I can't manage to enjoy Bulwer-Lytton and I've tried, repeatedly)
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Mar 30, 2018 14:51
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Isnt that the dude whose main claim to fame is that he was a legendarily poo poo writer Yes! Though actually he was very well-regarded and popular at the time. He seems to have had a bizarre talent for coining the cliches of the future. quote:He coined the phrases "the great unwashed", "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword", "dweller on the threshold", and the well-known and much-parodied opening line "It was a dark and stormy night".[1] So he wasn't someone like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_McKittrick_Ros who was just always bad, he somehow managed to convince everyone at the time that he was brilliant edit oh my we could do this one quote:The Oxford literary group the Inklings, which included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, held competitions to see who could read Ros' work aloud for the longest length of time without laughing. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34181/34181-h/34181-h.htm Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Mar 30, 2018 |
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Mar 30, 2018 15:53
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 11:03 |
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new poll up: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3853305
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Apr 2, 2018 15:26
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