April shower book POLL

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > April shower book POLL

in a way,the book chooses you
	Convenience Store Woman by Sakaya Murata
	My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
	Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
	Fourth Mansions by RA Lafferty
	The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

View Results

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Help us pick the next Book of the Month! Vote early, vote often, vote for as many books as you might want to read or talk about.

1) Convenience Store Woman by Sakaya Murata

quote:

Convenience Store Woman (Japanese: コンビニ人間, Hepburn: Konbini Ningen) is a 2016 novel by Japanese writer Sayaka Murata. It captures the atmosphere of the familiar convenience store that is so much part of life in Japan. The novel won the Akutagawa Prize in 2016.[4] Aside from working as a writer, Murata worked at a convenience store three times a week, basing her novel on her experiences. It was first published in the June 2016 issue of Bungakukai.[5] It was published as a book in July 2016 by Bungeishunjū.

quote:

Keiko Furukura is a 36-year old woman who has been working part-time at a convenience store, or konbini, for the last 18 years. She has known since childhood that she is "different" and that expressing her own views and actions is inexplicable and distressing to others, and causes problems.

The highly regulated world of the konbini, where each action is prescribed by the corporate manual, allows her to maintain an identity acceptable to those around her and a sense of purpose. She models her behaviour, dress style, and even speech patterns on those of her coworkers. Keiko maintains some friendships and a relationship with her sister, but finds it increasingly difficult to explain why, after 18 years, she is still single and working as a temp in a convenience store.

2) My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

quote:

The Neapolitan Novels begin in 2010 when the son of an old friend telephones the main character, a woman in her 60s named Elena (familiarly called "Len�"). Elena's childhood friend Lila (a nickname for "Raffaella") has disappeared, and her son is unable to find her. Elena recognizes this behavior as something Lila, in her later years, has always talked about doing, and believes her disappearance to be a conscious decision. In the spirit of their loving but ambivalent ways towards each other, Elena begins to put on paper everything she can remember about Lila, beginning in 1950s Naples.

Elena and Lila grow up in a poor neighborhood full of violence and strife, where Lila alone realizes that an innocent man has been framed for murder by local gangsters, the Solara family. No one expects the girls to be educated beyond elementary school. Elena is diligent and captures the attention of Maestra Oliviero, one of her primary school teachers, a spinster who encourages her to escape the life of the impoverished plebeian class.

. . .
The first two books in the series have been adapted into an HBO television series entitled My Brilliant Friend.

3) Travels with Charlie by John Steinbeck

quote:

Travels with Charley: In Search of America is a 1962 travelogue written by American author John Steinbeck. It depicts a 1960 road trip around the United States made by Steinbeck, in the company of his standard poodle Charley. Steinbeck wrote that he was moved by a desire to see his country on a personal level because he made his living writing about it. He wrote of having many questions going into his journey, the main one being "What are Americans like today?" However, he found that he had concerns about much of the "new America" he witnessed.

Steinbeck tells of traveling throughout the United States in a specially made camper he named Rocinante, after Don Quixote's horse. His travels start in Long Island, New York, and roughly follow the outer border of the United States, from Maine to the Pacific Northwest, down into his native Salinas Valley in California across to Texas, through the Deep South, and then back to New York. Such a trip encompassed nearly 10,000 miles.

According to Thom Steinbeck, the author's oldest son, the reason for the trip was that Steinbeck knew he was dying and wanted to see his country one last time. The younger Steinbeck has said he was surprised that his stepmother allowed his father to make the trip; his heart condition meant he could have died at any time.[1] A new introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of the book cautioned readers that "it would be a mistake to take this travelogue too literally, as Steinbeck was at heart a novelist."

4) Fourth Mansions by RA Lafferty

quote:

Fourth Mansions was inspired by Teresa of �vila's Interior Castle, and contains quotations from the book, which Lafferty uses as chapter headings. The Interior Castle is a metaphor for an individual's soul; its different rooms, different states of the soul. In the middle of the Castle the soul is in the purest state, which equals Heaven. Lafferty uses more complex symbols in telling a many-sided tale of an individual's reaching towards Heaven or Truth. The novel concerns a time of great change, when four forces � in the form of secret societies � contend to control the next phase of humanity's history. In the middle is Fred Foley, an innocent reporter. One of these forces intends to unleash a deadly virus on the US, the others attempt to stop them. A revolution by Mexican migrants, the craft of "mind weaving" and a strange group of "Patricks", all apparently tramps but with great resources, appear in the center of a narrative. Illuminatus! repeated several of the themes of this book, including the plague and secret society elements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Mansions

5) The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

quote:

The Third Policeman, originally published in 1944, is the singularly strange crowning work in the fiction of the great Irish humorist Flann O'Brien. It opens with a tale of robbery and murder committed by its nameless narrator, who intends to use the proceeds of the crime to publish his commentaries on the writings of a plainly cracked philosopher named de Selby -- who theorizes that the earth is actually shaped like a sausage and that the phenomenon of night is a form of industrial pollution.

From there on, the book only gets stranger. The narrator finds himself in an alternate dimension not unlike the area surrounding his rural Irish home, but running on an entirely different set of metaphysical laws. The area policemen closely monitor the movements of local citizens, convinced that they are gradually being turned into bicycles. Violent one-legged men roam the countryside. And eternity is an elevator ride away, just to the left of the local river. Yet the real astonishment is reserved for the conclusion, where the narrator discovers some discomfiting truths about his own metaphysical situation. NPR discussed O'Brien's antic, witty book with Charles Baxter, author of the novel Saul and Patsy.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5684946

# ¿ Mar 26, 2021 16:04

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 14:29

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

You can vote for more than one!

# ¿ Mar 30, 2021 12:46

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

edit: one more day of voting!

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 13:16

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Third Policeman by a hair. I'll get a thread up either tonight or this weekend.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2021 12:25

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

quantumfoam posted:

You can't discuss The Third Policeman without mentioning Flann O'Brien's The Dalkey Archives.
Lots of stuff inside Third Policeman got used in The Dalkey Archives. So I plan on doing so when the April 2021 BotM thread gets created.

Sorry! It'll go up tomorrow

# ¿ Apr 4, 2021 04:07

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > April shower book POLL