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The Bridge, by Iain Banks

6 (20.7%)

Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy

5 (17.2%)

Maus, by Art Spiegelman

14 (48.3%)

At the Mountains of Madness, by H.P. Lovecraft

2 (6.9%)

And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on their Craft, by Mike Sacks

2 (6.9%)

Total Members Voted: 29

Voting closed: 27 May 2010, 19:13

[Lines]

New book, new thread! All I ask is that if you vote, participate in the discussion!

My first vote goes to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. I plan on reading this anyways and it's buy the same author as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which if you have not read was quite fantastic.

And just to refresh your memories on how to do this, I bring you the words of Harry:

So here's what I propose: people should use this thread to nominate a book they'd like to read and discuss with other people on the forum. It can be fiction or non-fiction, any topic, provided only that (A) it's reasonably easy to get a hold of (people need to be able to find it to read it), and (B) it's not too long (people have busy lives).

If you like someone's book suggestion, post your agreement ("Seconded", "Agreed", "Hell yeah!", whatever as long as it's clear). The first SIX books that receive THREE endorsements (including the original nomination) will be the Finalists, and I will then proceed to creat a poll (in this thread or another) so that we can vote on what book we want to read and discuss for our inaugural QC Forum Book Club Discussion-o-rama.!

Suggest away! I'll update the choices when we pick the books, so DON'T VOTE YET.

[the_pied_piper]

Blood Meridian came second last time and I'm over half-way through it now so I nominate that.

[RallyMonkey]

I nominate Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris.

I stumbled upon this book at the store the other day, and on a whim I picked it up. And two chapters into it, it's turning out to be the best book I have read in a really long time. The book does a wonderful job of being simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking, and the many comparisons to Joseph Heller are well-deserved, I feel. I am really excited to read the rest of the book, and so far, I strongly suggest you pick it up.

[Johnny C]

Okay I'm actually able to read books at this point, so I'm gonna jump in. I'd suggest Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findley.

[Johnny C]

ORRR we can also do what I think Liz suggested in the other noms thread which is just work through the books in order of votes. That's probably a better way to work this for the time being, because everyone can just get the books that we're going to read and plow through at their leisure, in something resembling order!

[Joseph]

That could be ok.

I'd really rather not do something like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, just because I think it wouldn't lend itself to discussion, as was the case with the last book (though, if we did choose it, I likely wouldn't take part, as was the case this past month). If we are going to do other nominations, I'd been planning to reread Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (just about finished rereading her first novel, Housekeeping), and would love to hear other people's comments on the book.

Would people possibly be open to doing a book of essays?

[LTK]

I think I'll get in on this for the second go. Gives me something to do beside play games all day. Don't know how well I'd lend myself to discussion, but we'll see.

[Lines]

I don't know about essays (depends on what they're about), but I wouldn't mind a book of short stories. If we want to read a collection of short stories, I suggest Forty Stories by David Barthelme. His writing style as well as some of the topics he chooses are really creative, imo. I've been meaning to get my hands on this book after I read "Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby" in a lit class that dealt with ethics and I loved it. His sense of humor has been compared to Monty Python and the like, so I expect other stories to be just as poignant.

And if you want to read the books from the other poll, don't hesitate to renominate them. Someone already nominated Blood Meridian.

[Inlander]

I nominate Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris.

Interesting you should suggest that, I recently picked up the Unnamed by the same author, and I've been looking forward to reading it.

Another book I plan on reading soon is the Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder.

So there, two nominations for your consideration.

[Barmymoo]

I'm seconding Jens' nomination of the Iain Banks, because I want to read it.

[Liz]

Seconding Blood Meridian.

[BlahBlah]

The Bridge, Banks.
It's an excellent novel and I'd quite like to read it again and discuss it.

[Lines]

Hey mods, how do you edit the poll???

The Bridge has 3 votes, it's officially on the list.
Blood Meridian has 2, need one more and it's on the list.
Everything else has all been suggestions.

[a pack of wolves]

Would people possibly be open to doing a book of essays?

Yes, more so than reading fiction really.

That said, I would like to read At The Mountains of Madness so I'll second that nomination.

[Joseph]

If we want to read a collection of short stories, I suggest Forty Stories by David Barthelme.

Donald.

He's really excellent. I guess his two most commonly read books are Forty Stories and Sixty Stories, but both are actually anthologies of stories from earlier collections. I have Sadness, Come Back, Dr. Caligari, and Amateurs in my room right now, and have been reading bits and pieces from each. A load of his stories are readily available on The New Yorker's website. He also published a number of excellent novels, my favourite being Snow White, which is an idiosyncratic, humorous, and confounding little book, done in his characteristic 'collage style'; it imagines Snow White as a housekeeper type figure in a 60's style commune. It's worth reading the first page.

If we end up doing Blood Meridian, I'll at least start, as I've been meaning to give Cormac McCarthy another try, but my initial impressions have been similar to Jens'.

I've realized that the essay collections I was going to suggest are all by Canadian poets and are published by small Maritime presses, which means they would likely be impossible for more people on this forum to get, unless they order directly from the press. I'll try and think of some other non-fiction which might be workable.

[Be My Head]

How about Anathem by Neal Stephenson? If it isn't too long. I just got it and haven't started reading it yet, but it seems like the type of book you guys would like.

[Lines]

If we want to read a collection of short stories, I suggest Forty Stories by David Barthelme.

Donald.

Oops!

[Johnny C]

Oh yeah, and... if we end up reading blood meridian I'll probably sit this round out. Nothing to do with the club, it's just that I cannot stand Cormac McCarthy.

what's not to like? the heavy pallor of his prose? the biblical austerity of his imagery? the moral vacuums of his narratives that suggest nothing so banal as grey areas between right and wrong but instead that the notion of grey areas is reliant on a black and white good/evil boundary which is beyond the very nature of the human soul?

you gotta read the book, whether you think you can stand him or not. if you got through a clumsily translated mystery thriller you can make it through one of the most incredible books by a currently living american author.

[Johnny C]

They rode on and the sun in the east flushed pale streaks of light and then a deeper run of color like blood seeping up in sudden reaches flaring planewise and where the earth drained up into the sky at the edge of creation the top of the sun rose out of nothing like the head of a great red phallus until it cleared the unseen rim and sat squat and pulsing and malevolent behind them. The shadows of the smallest stones lay like pencil lines across the sand and the shapes of the men and their mounts advanced elongate before them like strands of the night from which they'd ridden, like tentacles to bind them to the darkness yet to come. They rode with their heads down, faceless under their hats, like an army asleep on the march. By midmorning another man had died and they lifted him from the wagon where he'd stained the sacks he'd lain among and buried him also and moved on.

[KharBevNor]

Dude needs to learn what a fucking comma is.

[JD]

Hey mods, how do you edit the poll???

Try sacrificing a goat

[Blue Kitty]

Can we nominate graphic novels?

[Johnny C]

I don't know if "austere" is what I'd use to describe that imagery, but yeah, that looks pretty okay!

lush language but severe & forbidding images. also there's three commas in that paragraph.

[RallyMonkey]

McCarthy should have read more Hemingway as a child.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

I nominate The Bible

[KharBevNor]

Any sane person would have rendered the paragraph thusly:

They rode on, and the sun in the east flushed pale streaks of light and then a deeper run of color, like blood seeping up in sudden reaches flaring planewise; and where the earth drained up into the sky at the edge of creation the top of the sun rose out of nothing, like the head of a great red phallus until it cleared the unseen rim and sat squat and pulsing and malevolent behind them. The shadows of the smallest stones lay like pencil lines across the sand and the shapes of the men and their mounts advanced elongate before them, like strands of the night from which they'd ridden, like tentacles to bind them to the darkness yet to come. They rode with their heads down, faceless under their hats, like an army asleep on the march. By midmorning another man had died and they lifted him from the wagon where he'd stained the sacks he'd lain among and buried him also and moved on.

I vote for the Bridge.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

yeah, that's waay easier to read.

I mean, I like McCarthy and all, but jeez the run-on sentences can be rough sometimes.

[Inlander]

I've edited the poll to keep it up-to-date with current voting. I think someone suggested Blood Meridian in the other thread, plus all of Johnny's boosting may as well be a vote, so that's good enough for a "thirding" in my book. I'll unlock the poll when all the spots have been filled.

[a pack of wolves]

Any sane person would have rendered the paragraph thusly:

I haven't read Blood Meridian, but I know McCarthy uses prose style in interesting ways in Suttree. After the first couple of pages the prose in that book is absolutely turgid, it feels like someone being needlessly overwrought in order to manufacture an illusion of profundity. Then you realise after the style shifts when a different character is focussed upon the text is warping according to who it's looking at, and that initial reaction to the prose serves as a critique of the character. So the fact that the prose there would be easier to read with the insertion of more punctuation doesn't mean much out of context, since that cumbersome quality might well be key to what the text is trying to say.

[JD]

Can we nominate graphic novels?

I nominate Maus then

[Blue Kitty]

Third for Maus

[Inlander]

Two slots left!

[Lines]

Thanks for fixing the poll!

I am glad Maus is up there. I'm actually borrowing it from a friend, so that'd be great for me!

[Johnny C]

Any sane person would have rendered the paragraph thusly:

nah that's how like a victorian realist would have done it

[KvP]

Is it too late to put in a nomination for Angie Bowie's memoir? Or an interview compilation with 21 big-time humorists?

Or, you know, you could just read Maus. Whateva.

[KharBevNor]

nah that's how like a victorian realist would have done it

Dogg I only used one semi-colon. Just because grammar scares you, jeez.

[Johnny C]

actually you used a semicolon with a conjunction which is a totally improper usage of it, but my point was that the rhythm of the paragraph is all stilted now instead of having the languid eloquence that it had previously

[Lines]

Is it too late to put in a nomination for Angie Bowie's memoir? Or an interview compilation with 21 big-time humorists?

Or, you know, you could just read Maus. Whateva.

The Angie Bowie book (and review of it) is trying to ruin my opinion of David Bowie. But the other book sounds like it could be cool, so I'll second the 21 humorists one.

[Damnable Fiend]

I'm not sure if Maus is such a good choice, just because I think you'd have to also read Maus II to really make it a complete story.

I would be alright with Anathem as well, I think.

[JD]

They have it as one big book now.

[Damnable Fiend]

oh, well nevermind that then.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

oh oh oh you guys just reminded me that I actually have an awesome book to recommend!

I forgot all about it! It's called To Ruhleben -- And Back and it's by Geoffrey Pyke, who was an absolutely fascinating man. He "invented" a stronger type of ice by mixing in wood pulp and he, along with the help of some government or another, tried to engineer a giant, unsinkable aircraft carrier out of the stuff, dubbed "Pykrete."

Obviously, the project was a failure.

This particular book (which can be found for cheap on Amazon, btw) tells a story from his younger days (before WWII and "pykrete") when he snuck into a warzone, was captured and put in an internment camp, and subsequently escaped somehow.

It's a freaking great book about an awesome historical figure who usually goes overlooked. Highly recommended.

[KharBevNor]

actually you used a semicolon with a conjunction which is a totally improper usage of it, but my point was that the rhythm of the paragraph is all stilted now instead of having the languid eloquence that it had previously

It didn't have a languid eloquence, it sounded like the dude was droning it out without breathing like some gregorian chant or maybe like some kid at school who doesn't want to read out loud, you know? Long, running unpunctuated sentences work for like, streams of consciousness and shit, but punctuation is where you breath, so without punctuation a sentence cannot but help sound breathless.

Also it is perfectly ok gramatically to put a semi-colon before a conjunction, you faggot.

[Johnny C]

why yes that paragraph is exhausting and breathtaking

also holy shit the pykrete guy

[Inlander]

Another author that gets a lot of praise round these parts, but that nobody seems to discuss a lot, is Bill Bryson!

I think we should learn from our experience with Stieg Larsson: as little as we found to discuss in his work, I think there's probably even less to discuss in a Bryson book. I mean sure it's going to be a fun read, but then what? "Hey those English, they sure are amusing folks." Bryson is primarily a light entertainment writer; we may as well try doing a deep anaylsis of a Michael Parkinson interview.

[JD]

I'm gonna put The Professor and The Madman up for nomination again.

[KharBevNor]

why yes that paragraph is exhausting and breathtaking

Maybe it's better in context.

I nominate The Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon to fill shit up but I'm vote still going to vote for The Bridge.

[Lines]

We still have two spots open...I think the time has come to stop suggesting books and agree upon what's been suggested.

[JD]

alright I'll second Star Maker

[Inlander]

Okay guys, there obviously weren't going to be any more nominations in this thread and we only had three of our five slots filled, so I did a count-back and awarded the final two slots to the first two books to receive two nominations. Voting is now open and will remain open for 7 days (because I've got some stuff I want to read before we get started on this!).

Ladies and gentlemen, start your voting!