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. ![]() ![]() Past Books of the Month [for BOTM before 2019, refer to archives] 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 November: A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) , by Matthew Hongoltz Hetling December: Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Drury Clark 2021: January: The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley February: How to Read Donald Duck by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart March: Carrier Wave by Robert Brockway April: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brian May: You Can't Win by Jack Black June:Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson July:Can Such Things Be by Ambrose Bierce August: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust September:A Dreamer's Tales by Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany October:We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson November:Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers December:Hogfather by Terry Pratchett Current: ![]() The Sun Also Rises by Earnest Hemingway Book available here: https://archive.org/details/sun_also_rises https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/ernest-hemingway/the-sun-also-rises About the book quote:The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, his first, that portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early and enduring modernist novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication. However, Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that it is now "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work",[2] and Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin calls it his most important novel.[3] The novel was published in the United States in October 1926 by Scribner's. A year later, Jonathan Cape published the novel in London under the title Fiesta. It remains in print. quote:In the 1920s Hemingway lived in Paris as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, and traveled to Smyrna to report on the Greco–Turkish War. He wanted to use his journalism experience to write fiction, believing that a story could be based on real events when a writer distilled his own experiences in such a way that, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, "what he made up was truer than what he remembered".[5] quote:The Sun Also Rises—which Scribner’s would publish in October of 1926 to rapturous reviews (The New York Times would call it “an event”)—magnificently showcased Hemingway’s “highbrow-lowbrow” formula. Its terse, innovative prose would titillate the literary crowd, and the simplicity of the style would make it accessible to mainstream readers. “It is a hell of a fine novel,” Hemingway wrote to an editor acquaintance before the book came out, adding that it would “let these bastards who say yes he can write very beautiful little paragraphs know where they get off at.” https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/...-sun-also-rises About the Author quote:Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and sportsman. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and his public image brought him admiration from later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. He published seven novels, six short-story collections, and two nonfiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections, and three nonfiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature. 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 1957 film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DufU6vvregY https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/...-sun-also-rises From Hemingways' A Moveable Feast: quote:"Finally when we were eating the cherry tart and had a last carafe of wine he said, 'You know I never slept with anyone except Zelda.' 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!
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# ? Sep 1, 2024 03:16 |
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I'd never read any Hemingway, but the theme is local to me (I'm from Spain, southerner tho) and I was mighty curious to see how places are depicted in there. I wasn't actually expecting to find a physical copy, but as those things go, a kinda battered 1993 English edition popped up unexpectedly on an "unclasified and new arrivals" shelf of the first secondhand bookshop I checked. They had no other Hemingway books in neither Spanish nor English in there, so it really was blind luck. So after that, I am in on this. Been reading through and I'm about halfway in. Had a bit of trouble telling the cast apart at first, they seem like they are becoming a bit more distinct as the story progresses. It has been reading like a very relaxed telling of things that (per disclaimer on first page) assuredly never happened to any real people at all.
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The only Hemingway I've read before was Hills Like White Elephants, for class, which I didn't enjoy. (Either the story or the discussion around it.) Not very far yet into The Sun Also Rises, as I'm mostly reading at work, when it's slow and I remember the BotM exists. But I got to this bit: Ernest Hemingway posted:“I laughed about it too, myself, once.” She wasn’t looking at me. “A friend of my brother’s came home that way from Mons. It seemed like a hell of a joke. Chaps never know anything, do they?” So far, it's sort of ... pleasantly written, I guess, and I don't yet care about any of the characters. The dialogue makes me wonder. Given the book is almost one century old, am I struggling to follow the meanings of what characters are saying because: * It's century-old slang. * The communication style, separate from the vocabulary, has shifted so much. * These characters are a bunch of weirdos who speak in circumlocutions. * I'm missing the raw lived experience context of The Great War. * It's just Hemingway, he always writes people talking like this. I'm trying to recall how I felt about The Great Gatsby's use of language, and its dialogue. I only first read (listened, to an audiobook) it last year. One thing my brother mentioned to me, when talking about the current pandemic, was how quickly the 1918 flu was memory-holed, and that it wasn't mentioned once in The Great Gatsby. I'm curious to see if Hemingway brings it up in any way.
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Vavrek posted:The dialogue makes me wonder. Given the book is almost one century old, am I struggling to follow the meanings of what characters are saying because: I think it's the last one. At least in my experience Hemingway really liked to write in a way that makes you go a layer deep to figure out what's going on. Eventually I grew to like it, but it's not for everyone. It kinda forces you to engage with what's going on.
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I read this book about six months ago on a whim, knowing absolutely nothing about it other than the author. I came away from it with this: ![]() Does the protagonist still have his dick? Possibly, yes, but it was funnier to me to imagine that his dick got shot clean off. Other than the inordinate amount of time I spent wondering about the protagonists dick and/or balls, I enjoyed the book well enough, but I'm not sure I'll ever really like a story where all the characters are thin pastiches of the writer's friends. Maybe his social cabal was thrilled to live on in his works, I don't know, but something about the whole roman à clef concept just rubs me the wrong way.
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the JJ posted:I think it's the last one. At least in my experience Hemingway really liked to write in a way that makes you go a layer deep to figure out what's going on. Eventually I grew to like it, but it's not for everyone. It kinda forces you to engage with what's going on. Nae posted:I read this book about six months ago on a whim, knowing absolutely nothing about it other than the author. I came away from it with this:
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Vavrek posted:
Fitzgerald and Hemingway are a pretty interesting comparison because they're writing about the same sets of people and the same general themes but in quite distinct styles. But yeah, generally speaking, Hemingway is trying to make his writing look sparse and purely factual on the surface, but imply all sorts of poo poo under the surface. He called it his "Iceberg Theory." quote:"“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.”" Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Jan 10, 2022 |
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A matter of measurements. Lmao.
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Just finished last night, and dang, I was not expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. I got a really vivid sense of time and place from the whole thing, and it's clear in hindsight that it was all taken from Hemingway's lived experiences. The bull-run, weirdly enough, wasn't as impactful as I thought it would be, but the aftermath and especially the final chapter hit me very hard. Dang. I guess the Hemingway fandom is right on the money.
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I read Old Man and the Sea in high school so remember little about it other than the futility of humanity vs nature, but in the past few years I have climbed the mountain to see the Snows of Kilimanjaro, and said A Farewell to Arms. I count myself a big fan of Hemingway. Just started this last night and the prose has its own velocity, it just sweeps you along effortlessly.
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A nice tour of a part of Paris I've spent time in, which helps create a clear setting for me so far. I've never been to Spain so we'll see if that will make a difference. Have had Pernod. Never with a hooker. Er, that I know of
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Picked up an actual copy for money. The epigraphs hit home even more than in college. I do like how the iceberg approach gives things power. Something untold, and barely even shown, gains power. It is the monster under the bed. When Jake interacts with others, every roil of his psyche contains a shark.
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A local small press that does pretty over the top high end print quality is currently doing pre-orders of their first printing of this book. It’s… pricey (e: for me, a person who does not buy letterpress printed books on the regular). https://www.centurypress.ca/products/the-sun-also-rises I’ve ordered a copy of The Great Gatsby from them to upgrade my own copy, and depending how much I like that one, I may end up taking the plunge. Sadly it won’t be ready for this month, but I’ve got a copy of it already to read. Jordan7hm fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Jan 16, 2022 |
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Book good Over halfway done, just finished fishing, time to bring on the bulls!
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About three quarters through and I'm just like, no Brett don't do...goddamnit ![]()
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Done. What I was really fearing would happen did not, but still. What utterly loving awful people. And wonderfully written, unvarnished, pulls-no-punches story telling. Fantastic.
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Every one of the main characters is so utterly hosed by their own traumas that all they can do is make each other miserable. And drink, abuse animals, and beat the snot out of people, and ruin the things they love in the world with their tourism.
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suggestions for next month?
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Bernadine Evaristo, Mr. Loverman. Elderly Afro-Caribbean man in London living a double life tries to navigate tensions between his marriage and his romantic ambitions. I've heard it's pretty drat good.
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Just finished the sun also rises today, it was good I was actually feeling really stressed about the bullfight, because if this was another author Brett and Cohn's shittiness definitely would have got the kid killed. Instead, Jake is forever unwelcome in Montoya's hotel for his friends' crimes against aficion. The casual anti-Semitism was a bit jarring, but is of its time I suppose. If anything the book reminds me of always sunny - i hate all the characters but they have charisma and the pacing is on point. Dude definitely has no dick tho
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CancerCakes posted:Just finished the sun also rises today, it was good Yeah that's the outcome that had me squirming and fortunately it didn't happen.
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:suggestions for next month? The remains of the day? Gertrude Perkins posted:Bernadine Evaristo, Mr. Loverman. Elderly Afro-Caribbean man in London living a double life tries to navigate tensions between his marriage and his romantic ambitions. I've heard it's pretty drat good. Girl woman other is amazing, everyone should read it
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we got some good suggestions but I fell down on the job a bit this month and didn't get a poll up in time, so right now my plan is Balzac's Droll Stories for February. I'll try to get a thread up tomorrow or the next day.
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:we got some good suggestions but I fell down on the job a bit this month and didn't get a poll up in time, so right now my plan is Balzac's Droll Stories for February. I'll try to get a thread up tomorrow or the next day. some balzac to balance the sun also rises
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ChubbyChecker posted:some balzac to balance the sun also rises haha cause he was shot in the balzac
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# ? Sep 1, 2024 03:16 |
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John Lee posted:haha cause he was shot in the balzac lmao
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