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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 March: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders April: Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio de Maria May: Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov June: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe July: Warlock by Oakley Hall August: All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriott Current:   The Magus by John Fowles Book available here: https://www.amazon.com/Magus-Novel-John-Fowles/dp/0440351626 About the book: quote:The Magus (1965) is a postmodern novel by British author John Fowles, telling the story of Nicholas Urfe, a young British graduate who is teaching English on a small Greek island. Urfe becomes embroiled in the psychological illusions of a master trickster, which become increasingly dark and serious. Considered an example of metafiction, it was the first novel written by Fowles, but the third he published. In 1977 he published a revised edition.[1] In 1999 The Magus was ranked on both lists of Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 93 on the editors' list, and 71 on the readers' list.[2] In 2003, the novel was listed at number 67 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.[3] About the Author quote:John Robert Fowles (/faʊlz/; 31 March 1926 – 5 November 2005) was an English novelist of international stature, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work reflects the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, among others. quote:In 1951, Fowles became an English master at the Anargyrios and Korgialenios School of Spetses on the Peloponnesian island of Spetses (also known as Spetsai). This opened a critical period in his life, as the island was where he met his future wife Elizabeth Christy, née Whitton, wife of fellow teacher Roy Christy. Inspired by his experiences and feelings there, he used it as the setting of his novel, The Magus (1966). Fowles was happy in Greece, especially outside the school. He wrote poems that he later published, and became close to his fellow expatriates. But during 1953, Fowles and the other masters at the school were all dismissed for trying to institute reforms, and Fowles returned to England.[6] quote:In the same year, he adapted The Magus for cinema, and the film was released in 1968.[9] The film version of The Magus (1968) was generally considered awful; when Woody Allen was later asked whether he would make changes in his life if he had the opportunity to do it all over again, he jokingly replied he would do "everything exactly the same, with the exception of watching The Magus."[11] Themes I haven't read this one yet so I'm entering it blind, which I am told is the proper way to read it. Pacing Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law. quote:In Jasper Fforde's comic detective novel The Well of Lost Plots (part of the Thursday Next series), The Magus wins the "Most Incomprehensible Plot" Award at the annual "Bookie" Awards, the awards programme that characters in literature give one another. Apparently there are big plot twists so please use spoiler tags, and consider posting discussion of spoiler material later in the month when folks have had a chance to catch up. Please post after you read! Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion. References and Further Reading quote:John Fowles wrote an article about his experiences in the island of Spetses and their influence on the book.[7] He acknowledged some literary works as influences in his foreword to the 1977 revised edition of The Magus. These include Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes, for showing a secret hidden world to be explored, and Richard Jefferies' Bevis (1882), for projecting a very different world. In the revised edition, Fowles also referred to a Miss Havisham, a likely reference to a character in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations (1861). Final Note: Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book!
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Aug 31, 2018 05:21
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Yeah, the American public school system often doesn't cover things like unreliable narrators or the difference between narrator and author viewpoint. I remember in college a lot of kids we're *really* thrown by John Gardner's Grendel because they didn't or couldn't realize that just because Grendel was the protagonist that didn't mean the work endorsed his viewpoint. And that was at a supposed "elite" top ten college. I'm about halfway through this one. So far my favorite part is the initial section in England. It's just a great study of a flawed youthful relationship. The stuff on the island so far seems a bit grandiloquent.
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Sep 7, 2018 14:11
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Speaking of, I need suggestions for next month!
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Sep 21, 2018 12:40
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October's book will be I'll be Gone in the Dark for some actual real world terror I'll get thread up soonish
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Oct 1, 2018 18:58
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