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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 the moderation team. Past Books of the Month [for BOTM before 2018, refer to archives] 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 April: The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio May: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Dame Rebecca West June: The African Queen by C. S. Forester July: The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale August: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire, by Howard Pyle September: Strange Hotel, by Eimear McBride October:Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (怪談)("Ghost Stories"), by Lafcadio Hearn  Current: A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) Book available here: https://www.amazon.com/Libertarian-Walks-Into-Bear-Liberate-ebook/dp/B083J1FXY8 About the book https://twitter.com/newrepublic/status/1316144221401812995?s=20 https://twitter.com/nekoewen/status/1320144087823966209?s=20 About the Author https://twitter.com/hh_matt/status/1002281217260163073?s=20 http://www.matt-hongoltzhetling.com/aboutmatthongoltzhetling 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 The magazine article that got him the book deal: https://twitter.com/atavist/status/1205554330562109440 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 we hope everyone enjoys the book! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Nov 4, 2020 |
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Nov 4, 2020 00:39
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I bought this book and read the intro. Seems interesting! I can't promise I will finish this month, though, because I am already reading 3 other books
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Nov 4, 2020 15:37
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I read this and finished like 2 days ago. It was good. The quotes opening each chapter are all bear themed, and I enjoyed that also.
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Nov 4, 2020 18:39
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Ben Nevis posted:I read this and finished like 2 days ago. It was good. The quotes opening each chapter are all bear themed, and I enjoyed that also. how strong is the schadenfreude? bitcoin levels?
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Nov 4, 2020 19:43
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This one doesn't show up on my library's free audiobook app, so I'll probably do Murder on the Orient Express, finish Strange Hotel (which I'm not really enjoying very much), and heck, there's lots more Lafcadio Hearn on Gutenberg.
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Nov 4, 2020 20:32
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doctorfrog posted:This one doesn't show up on my library's free audiobook app, so I'll probably do Murder on the Orient Express, finish Strange Hotel (which I'm not really enjoying very much), and heck, there's lots more Lafcadio Hearn on Gutenberg. The book is based on the long form article linked above, so people should be able to participate in discussion even without reading the whole book.
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Nov 4, 2020 21:05
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derp posted:how strong is the schadenfreude? bitcoin levels? Not bitcoin levels. Honestly would have preferred some more. It's generally fairly comedic throughout though, so you may be laughing at libertarians generally, rather than specifically their misfortunes. Though, of course, there are misfortunes.
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Nov 4, 2020 21:08
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Im about half way through this book and didn't know it was BOTM. Nice! My wife grew up 15 miles from Grafton, NH. During the economic recession, she and I moved in with her parents for a year, give or take. Anyway, a coworker had an accidental litter of puppies. With her depressed and jobless, we took a puppy home. A couple weeks later, another person backed out from taking another pup. Against better judgment, we owned a pair of paperless 10 week old German Shepherd pups in October, 2009 with only one source of income. That's about when the bears wrap-up their summer gorge and get ready to bed down for a bit. My inlaws house is across the street from a large water source and their house abuts essentially an unbroken stretch of woods. We knew of the myriad bear problems just down the street, so when I had to take the puppies out with a shotgun in hand in case the bears got froggy with me. My dogs learned it was time to go the bathroom at night with an interesting pavlovian response: the racking of a 12 ga. shotgun. Thanks, freetowners lol. Im looking forward to finishing the book. We still have the dogs. Thankfully, a shotgun isn't needed anymore since we moved out towards the seacoast
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Nov 7, 2020 00:39
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The book is based on the long form article linked above, so people should be able to participate in discussion even without reading the whole book. Oh nice. Sorry if I missed that while grazing.
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Nov 7, 2020 01:45
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So far I'm enjoying the twin narratives of the bears around grafton becoming increasingly aggressive and the libertarians continuing to embed themselves into a town for the purpose of intentionally sabotaging its social services; you can see the two threads meeting later on and its building up well.Eat This Glob posted:My dogs learned it was time to go the bathroom at night with an interesting pavlovian response: the racking of a 12 ga. shotgun. Thanks, freetowners lol. B e a r t o w n
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Nov 9, 2020 18:43
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Just got to Sol's story  . Poor gal
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Nov 10, 2020 04:24
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I'm cash strapped and the library has a long waiting list: I'm mainly curious how 'Libertarians take over a town and discover the deep flaws of everyone being like them' triggers 'a mass increase of bear numbers and bear aggression'. The way it's described it's like the Libertarian mass somehow caused a brainwave pulse that drove bears insane.
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Nov 10, 2020 05:54
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I'm a third of the way through, so I'm speculating from what I've read so far. The author describes an endemic bear problem since colonial times. This was eventually mitigated by offering bounties for slaughtered bears, a growing human population and efforts to convert the land from forest to agriculture, thus robbing the remaining bears of their habitats. The land seems to have heavily reforested as economic prospects dimmed, allowing for a rebound of the bear population. And then the human population suddenly ballooned with the influx of libertarians, making bear encounters much more likely. In addition to that, a lot of the libertarians (mostly single middle-aged men) set up semi-permanent shantytowns, replete with the delicious detritus that you might imagine, basically drawing more and more bears in. I'm guessing that the hardcore deconstruction of infrastructure (roads & emergency services), will also play a role here. I'm looking forward to finding out how much more off the rails this story goes! I didn't read the original article the author built the book out of, so I'm going in relatively blind, and resisting the temptation to check the wiki article on the town.
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Nov 10, 2020 06:20
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Cornwind Evil posted:I'm cash strapped and the library has a long waiting list: I'm mainly curious how 'Libertarians take over a town and discover the deep flaws of everyone being like them' triggers 'a mass increase of bear numbers and bear aggression'. The way it's described it's like the Libertarian mass somehow caused a brainwave pulse that drove bears insane. It's not so much that the libertarians drive the bears crazy. It's more of a confluence of events. Increased human expansion into bear habitat + climate change = more frequent interactions with bears that have learned that humans are good food sources and also squishy and not to be feared. Add to that libertarian rugged individualism, and you have a town (and state) that cannot create or even fathom community-based solutions to the problem. I'd actually just read this when it got chosen for BOTM, and found it to really be more like two stories being told in parallel - the story of Grafton, its history, and the various civic personalities that drive its descent into libertarian paradise/hellscape, and the story of the bears, which could happen really anyway, but the problem is amplified by Grafton (and New Hampshire)'s reflexive inability to spend public money on a public issue.
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Nov 10, 2020 18:12
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The book is among the Kindle daily deals today here in the US, marked down to $4, for anyone who’s interested.
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Nov 15, 2020 17:52
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When the book detailed that the entire town nearly burned down and they still wouldn't spend money on a goddamn fire department was excellent schadenfreude.
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Nov 17, 2020 00:51
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Popping in to say Hurricane the llama is a total badass. Book's really fun.
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Nov 17, 2020 13:00
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I finished this before it became BOTM, but it is an awesome read.
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Nov 17, 2020 23:21
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I was enjoying the excellent schadenfreude and stupidity all the way up until the author veered into this chapter theorizing that everyone in the town including the bears have toxoplasmosis. Totally unsubstantiated. Kinda disappointed in that.
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Nov 18, 2020 06:17
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Yeah I just got to that bit as well and had a similar reaction. I didn't know the etymology of the parasite, which was interesting. The doctor sounds like a pre-Mengele colonialist turd though.
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Nov 18, 2020 06:57
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I'm about a quarter of the way through. I've worked in Grafton County for the last 4 years (never actually been to the town of Grafton though) and man does he do a great job of painting a picture of what a lot of people are actually like around here. So far, Doughnut Lady is my favorite. I'm gonna go out on a limb that most of the bear problems are a direct result of her feeding them doughnuts. I haven't gotten much further than her story yet though.
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Nov 18, 2020 20:09
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I finished it today. My belief that libertarians are contentious was reinforced. My understanding that tax-funded community services are good is confirmed. And my knowledge that it's best not to feed bears in your backyard remains unchallenged.
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Nov 19, 2020 00:36
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Giggling like a doofus at these jokes about the colonialism researcher named Butt. "Butt heads down a different path..." "the oppressors (according to Butt) wipe out the indigenous culture..." "Butt cracks down on the notion..." "All three characteristics, taken together, make this very serious theory of colonialism, proposed by Professor Butt, whole."
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Nov 21, 2020 05:45
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Suggestions for next month?
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Nov 21, 2020 05:53
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The toxoplasmosis chapter was.... a weird theory, but I did find the whole history behind it interesting. So far (about 2/3 through) I'm very much enjoying it - several laugh-out-loud moments. Though Goat Man turned out to be a terrible goat man, the fact that he was quoted in Goat World magazine made me just about fall over laughing. Goat World magazine.
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Nov 21, 2020 21:24
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Just finished it. I liked it ok but was honestly hoping for some more schad. It was honestly a lot more sad what with all of the bear attacks and people ending up dead. I thought I knew rural but the number of times the author was given Friendly Advice was shocking.
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Nov 22, 2020 02:31
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Chamberk posted:The toxoplasmosis chapter was.... a weird theory, but I did find the whole history behind it interesting. Yeah, the whole toxo thing kinda sticks out like a sore thumb. It didn't tie in neatly.
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Nov 22, 2020 06:39
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Its tenuous scientifically and I was initially thrown off by the chapter, but ultimately I found it to be an effective metaphor for libertarianism as a mind parasite that makes the individual behave in extremely deleterious self-destructive ways.
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Nov 22, 2020 07:30
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Im so, so glad Vermin Supreme gets a shoutout. And I forgot The Crying Nazi was a free-stater
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Nov 22, 2020 21:47
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https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1335246535874007047?s=20
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Dec 5, 2020 16:36
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