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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 2016, refer to archives] 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 September: The Magus by John Fowles October: I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara November: Arcadia by Tom Stoppard December: Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens 2019: January: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky February: BEAR by Marian Engel March: V. by Thomas Pynchon April: The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout May: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman June: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann July: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach August: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay September:Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay October: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado November: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett December: Moby Dick by Herman Melville 2020: January: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair February: WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin March: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini Current: The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio  The book is available in the following locations: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1279 Project Gutenberg has three translations available: John Payne’s from 1886 (the white one), J. M Rigg’s from 1903 (the blue one), and John Florio’s from 1620 (the brown one.) Judging by Wikipedia, Payne’s is the only complete one. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140449302/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1 G. H. McWilliam’s translation from 1972. There are a number of translations available, so if you have a recommendation please chime in. Related, here’s some entertaining cattiness on the Wikipedia page: quote:In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Rebhorn stated that he started translating the work in 2006 after deciding that the translations he was using in his classroom needed improvement. Rebhorn cited errors in the 1977 translation as one of the reasons for the new translation. Peter Bondanella, one of the translators of the 1977 edition, stated that new translations build on previous ones and that the error cited would be corrected in future editions of his translation. About the book Ten young Florentines run off to a villa to escape the Black Death, and decided to while away their time telling stories – some of them touching, others like day 3 story 10, about a monk teaching a virgin how to put “the Devil” back in “Hell”  J_RBG posted:I'm about seven days through the decameron and I've got to say boccaccio would most definitely be into cuckold porn. Simply absurd number of cuckold stories. Basically it's good About the Author quote:He was a son of a wealthy Florentine banker who wanted his son to be trained as a lawyer. Boccaccio hated it. In one of the rare autobiographical comments in his books, Boccaccio says he was a “bad businessman, a bad lawyer and not a very good poet.” But then he says “from his mother’s womb he was destined to be a literary man.” And he was. Themes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPpeC_GW0cg We can also talk about Classical mythology, similar story cycles like the Arabian Nights, and writers who were influenced by Boccaccio, such as Chaucer. Pacing Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law. Please post after you read! Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion. References and Further Materials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decameron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summary_of_Decameron_tales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Boccaccio You should be reading The Decameron; it’s fun! Reading The Decameron in a pandemic Decameron Web - A ton of information on the book and its author, via Brown University Suggestions for Future Months These threads aren't just for discussing the current BOTM; If you have a suggestion for next month's book, please feel free to post it in the thread below also. Generally what we're looking for in a BotM are works that have 1) accessibility -- either easy to read or easy to download a free copy of, ideally both 2) novelty -- something a significant fraction of the forum hasn't already read 3) discussability -- intellectual merit, controversiality, insight -- a book people will be able to talk about. Final Note: Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book! Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Apr 7, 2020 |
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Apr 3, 2020 04:57
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I'm probably going to put up Decameron for next month because we haven't read it, we already did The Plague, and it has sexy nuns in it and will give us all an excuse to watch The Little Hours. Any other suggestions? Safety Biscuits posted:Yes, let's watch Pasolini's Decameron film too. We've also been discussing watching a couple of film adaptions. Sound fun? If so, what days and times would suit people? I'm assuming Friday/Saturday evening, USA time?
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Apr 3, 2020 05:03
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I just borrowed a copy from the library and the story summaries in the title pages are great. Also the introduction says Boccaccio was a bastard and had five kids, all of whom were bastards, so the guy in the OP who said he'd be into cuckold porn was super on the money.Bilirubin posted:The introduction is depressing as gently caress given our current situation. Appreciate the apologies author! This is apparently because it's a comedy; it has to move from the "foul and horrible" to the "felicitous, desirable, and pleasing", which makes sense if you define a comedy as a story with a happy ending.
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Apr 7, 2020 16:40
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