THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => ENJOY => Topic started by: Inlander on 24 Mar 2010, 20:05
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A little while Ali-fatty approached me asking if I'd like to start up a book group, which apparently several members of the QC forum wanted.
I said that sounded like a great idea and that I'd happily do it.
Then I procrastinated for . . . Oh, about a month.
Then I made this thread!
So anyway I've been puzzling over how to work this. I tried a similar thing over on Aurostion where I unilaterally suggested five or so books in a poll and people voted for them, but I think this forum is a little too large to get away with that. 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.
I hope that's not too complicated.
And go!
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This sounds like a great idea! I need a new book to read, so I'm in. I don't have any suggestions though because I'm hoping for books I haven't read yet.
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nominating cat's cradle which i haven't actually finished yet, but hey.
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Nominating Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy because it will finally give me a reason to get around to reading it.
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I nominate The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
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I picked the worst time to start reading Dune again.
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I second both Vonnegut books, as I have read neither.
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seconding that toni morrison suggestion, don't really have anything to say about the others.
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Thirding Toni Morrison, since she's great and I haven't read that one so I'd like to anyway.
Since I think we've had all fiction so far I'll suggest Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes. I think it's pretty easy to get hold of and it looks interesting, it's about photography as well as his reflections on his mother as she'd died just before he wrote it.
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Do they hoarsely cry "death of the author!" by any chance? We had that one beaten into us in first year. Good read (and helpfully short), that essay's in Image/Music/Text if I remember right and pretty essential business for literature study. It's the only Barthes I've read myself so my reasoning is much like yours. This one's a bit more lyrical and playful, seemed a very pleasant read and not dry at all when I had a look at the first few pages.
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"Mythologies" is fairly interesting. I would be up for reading it again.
If we are going down that path, I would also nominate Alain Robbe-Grillet's The Erasers. Robbe-Grillet is thought of as the creator of the French "Nouveau Roman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_Roman)", and frequently pops up in Barthe's essays. The books of his I have read have been excellent, though difficult - there is a preoccupation with descriptions of scenery and objects, and essentially no time is given to 'psychology'. The Erasers was his first novel, and supposedly his most conventional, though I have not read it to confirm this.
Or, for something more easy to approach, Nicholson Baker's new novel, The Anthologist. I started a thread about Baker (http://forums.questionablecontent.net/index.php/topic,18073.0.html) once before (I would change a bunch if I were writing it now, I obviously did not edit it very well at all), and he is easily one of my favourite living writers (Hilary Mantel, Marilynne Robinson and Alice Munro would be the other contenders). The issue here is that the book is still in hardcover, and would be expensive.
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Okay!
Sula, by Toni Morrison
Is our first finalist.
For the record, I'm going to second The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo because I'm curious to see what all the fuss is about, but not so curious that I don't need a lame excuse like "it's for book club" to go out and actually get a copy of the thing.
I'm also going to nominate an interesting novel I read recently, Netherland by Joseph O'Neill.
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I just looked up Netherland, and think I might go try to pick that up from the library tomorrow. So, I guess I am seconding it.
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thirding the girl with the dragon tattoo, just for the hell of putting more books on my to-read list.
thirding mythologies.
seconding the erasers, i guess.
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Actually that's only a second vote for Mythologies, the first Barthes suggestion was Camera Lucida.
Still, two slots down!
Sula, by Toni Morrison
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Four to go.
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Actually that's only a second vote for Mythologies, the first Barthes suggestion was Camera Lucida.
Oh, hey, for whatever reason I swore I had read Mythologies in the original post. I'll second Camera Lucida, and remove my Mythologies vote, as I'd rather read some Barthes I haven't looked at before.
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One more nomination: The Professor and The Madman.
It's been out for 12 years yet I can't fin anyone who has read it. :[
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I'll throw my vote behind any Vonnegut on account of the fact that there is basically no excuse for me having read nothing of his ever.
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I second both Vonnegut books, as I have read neither.
Was going to just quote this until I saw this:
I'll throw my vote behind any Vonnegut on account of the fact that there is basically no excuse for me having read nothing of his ever.
So, yeah, Vonnegut. Whoo!
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I'm going to take those as being nominations for the two Vonnegut books suggested so far, Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse 5; however I'm going to use my executive powers to rule out Slaughterhouse 5 because (A) that's the book we did when we tried this over on Aurostion, and (B) I've already read it twice and even though it's an amazing book I wouldn't mind reading something new. So, with all that in mind the three brackets filled so far are:
Sula, by Toni Morrison
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
Three to go, then it's voting time!
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We've got three for Camera Lucida as well, I think.
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Right you are.
Sula, by Toni Morrison
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
Camera Lucida, by Roland Barthes
Two slots left!
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Second Blood Meridian
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Third Blood Meridian, it's on my Audible Wishlist so I was gonna get it anyway, ditto Cat's Cradle.
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don't wanna read blood meridian bawww. do want to read camera lucida.
whooo.
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Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
One to go guys!
And don't worry if you don't like the book that ends up being voted for, if this goes well we'll make it an ongoing thing. Maybe every month or every six weeks or something.
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Well, I'm off to bed. Guess I'll see if that final slot's been decided when I get up in seven or eight hours time.
Must admit, I never thought the first five would go this quickly. Good job, everyone!
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I just looked up Netherland, and think I might go try to pick that up from the library tomorrow. So, I guess I am seconding it.
Thirded.
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I could do with re-reading Kurt Vonnegut's books. Definitely need some books to read. Yay!
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Dang, that's an eclectic selection. Should be fun to see what's picked. Thanks for picking this up again Harry, it's been a while since the last attempted book club.
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House of Leaves
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Whoa. I don't know if I'm impressed or just baffled that Camera Lucida made it onto this list. Roland Barthes is so obtuse and academic. Not a bad thing necessarily, but I've only ever read Barthes in the context of a college course, so I'm just a little surprised.
Netherland sounds like it could be really good, though.
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I want to nominate Gravity's Rainbow just because I've always wanted to challenge and infuriate myself by trying to read it, but can never actually bring myself to buy it or check it out from the library.
:evil:
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Okay then! As I suspected the final slot went down pretty quickly after I went to bed. That means that NOMINATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED.
As you'll see, I've added a poll up the top so you can vote on which of the finalists you want to read. The poll closes in two days, which ought to be enough time for everyone who's interested to vote (given how quickly the nomination process went) and then go out and get a copy of the "winning" book befor the 1st of April. (I figure we may as well try doing this monthly, I think that gives everyone enough time to read a book and then discuss it for a while - let me know if you disagree.)
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Whoa. I don't know if I'm impressed or just baffled that Camera Lucida made it onto this list. Roland Barthes is so obtuse and academic. Not a bad thing necessarily, but I've only ever read Barthes in the context of a college course, so I'm just a little surprised.
Well it is philosophy so it's not necessarily the easiest of things, but this is Barthes mourning his mother at the end of his life and getting animated about photography from an amateur's perspective so it feels quite friendly from what I've read so far. According to the blurb on the back it's his most accessible in terms of language and subject matter, and that seems like it might be right from my limited knowledge.
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Hopefully my library has the winner.
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That's cool, apw. All I've read is "Death of the Author" and some parts of Mythologies, but I'm sure with a focus like his mother's death and an amateur's love of photography his prose won't float off into pure abstraction so much. He's definitely a compelling writer, in his own way.
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Hope it's Blood Meridian. The only one I have read is Cat's Cradle, and that book is pretty darn good.
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I'm voting for Barthes. To be honest, I don't really enjoy Vonnegut, and have little interest in reading Morrison, O'Neill, or Larsson. I haven't enjoyed the little bits of McCarthy I've read, but I have been meaning to try Blood Meridian, so I wouldn't be too choked up if that was the selection.
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throwing votes in the direction of lit crit, because i haven't done that in over 4 years officially.
but yeah, i haven't read barthes at all, it wasn't part of my course requirements ever. and alice munro is lovely.
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I want to nominate Gravity's Rainbow just because I've always wanted to challenge and infuriate myself by trying to read it, but can never actually bring myself to buy it or check it out from the library.
:evil:
I'm down with this next time voting comes around. I actually came to this thread to recommend some Pynchon.
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Please don't give me a reason to try Pynchon again. Against the Day made my brain hurt.
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i have no idea who this joseph fella is but i may wanna borrow a book or two from him.
people who quote cat's cradle at each other are just way too cute sometimes. ha.
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also i am too cute for my own good and shorten people's names so they end in y more often than not.
hi joey, didn't we talk when i was still in high school. maybe? you were you and being all adorably geeky. i was being a typical overachiever type lady with a thing for older and smarter boys.
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Okay then! As I suspected the final slot went down pretty quickly after I went to bed. That means that NOMINATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED.
As you'll see, I've added a poll up the top so you can vote on which of the finalists you want to read. The poll closes in two days, which ought to be enough time for everyone who's interested to vote (given how quickly the nomination process went) and then go out and get a copy of the "winning" book befor the 1st of April. (I figure we may as well try doing this monthly, I think that gives everyone enough time to read a book and then discuss it for a while - let me know if you disagree.)
A month is a LONG time. Especially in the age of the internet when a lot of books are available for download. For free, even, if you want to go that route. It's also long enough for people to lose interest. Acquiring books is easy for anybody who's interested, everybody involved is guaranteed to already have the internet, otherwise they wouldn't be here. It shouldn't really take anybody more than a week to actually read a book, surely?
Am I wrong? Am I unrealistic? Two hours a day, everyday for a week, that's more than enough time to surely finish any book?
Of course, I know that IS an unrealistic expectation, given that a lot of people would struggle to find a few hours every single day. People who'd much rather hang out with friends or go for a drink and have jobs and relationships and real lives. Losers.
With a month, you have a situation where a lot of people who've already read the book are waiting for everybody else to finish. They're itching to read the next book and discuss that, but it's still three weeks away. Because those other people have lives, or are slow readers or something. Not an ideal situation.
My suggestion, is every two weeks. Even though I think that's still too generous.
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But Darryl lots of people are too busy to be able to read that quickly (I guess it depends on the length of the book, too) - and what's stopping people discussing it before absolutely everyone has finished? Those still going should just avoid the thread for fear of spoilers. Given that we have to read a book, have a decent amount of time for discussion and then pick a new text, it seems like even 2 weeks would be cutting it fine as a turnaround. A month sounds like a good length of time to avoid putting unnecessary pressure on already busy people who might want to take part.
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You're right.
I say, screw those people! They're not dedicated enough! Want to sleep? DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT, READ A BOOK!
Want to eat? FORGET IT! READ A BOOK!
Would you like to spend time with your significant other, or spend time raising your children? FUCK YOU, READ A BOOK!
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^^ pretty much this.
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oh hey, an accidental page break.
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Poll ends in 3 minutes and it's a tie.
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I'm going to give the book the benefit of the doubt and blame this on a piss poor translation, but the prose of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was so shitty I couldn't even make it through the first chapter.
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oh it's not that bad
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fucking finals are next month and you pricks want me to read a new book unrelated to my coursework in two weeks? are you people out of your fucking minds
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i can't stand barthes btw
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fine, you pick the last one.
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i will talk about barthes with someone else.
it's cool.
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I'll talk about Barthes with you Anna. I was planning on picking through Camera Lucida sometime soon anyhow. He has a lot of interesting things to say in Mythologies, but it wasn't something found especially compelling. I've been wanting to check out his later work though for some time, as apparently his thought went through quite a number of changes.
Also, if you want to borrow books, you're welcome to come to Montreal. Don't you live in Ontario? It's not that far!
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oh we can chat about him and i like chatting about his ideas, and he's an important figure in mid-20th-century literary studies (and an absolutely vital one in authorial studies if you'll pardon the pun), i just don't like his writing style and fundamentally disagree with his perception of the author
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Okay guys, voting's closed and it was tight but Stieg Larsson just beat out Cormac McCarthy, ten votes to nine. I'm going to pop out and buy my copy now and get reading (it suits me well, I'm in the mood for a quick thrill having just finished reading Middlemarch a couple of days ago). I hope nobody's too disappointed by the result, but I'm sure there'll be a lot to discuss about the book and about the peripheral issues that have come up around it.
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Alright, I'll pick it up from the library tomorrow and get reading. Too bad it's closed for the day already, I've got free time tonight...
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I'll talk about Barthes with you Anna. I was planning on picking through Camera Lucida sometime soon anyhow. He has a lot of interesting things to say in Mythologies, but it wasn't something found especially compelling. I've been wanting to check out his later work though for some time, as apparently his thought went through quite a number of changes.
Also, if you want to borrow books, you're welcome to come to Montreal. Don't you live in Ontario? It's not that far!
have no money for useless trips, so you get over here and bring me books sometime soon. i have a report to write blurgh must finish.
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Aw man I just realised I ordered this book to come to my college, and I'm leaving tomorrow and not back til April 11th. Hm.
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I will go pick up this book sometime this week and get reading!
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I was planning on picking through Camera Lucida sometime soon anyhow.
Same here, and since I've come down with something so I can't get to the library to try and find a copy of the Larsson anyway I started on it last night. It's been very enjoyable so far, I'll probably polish it off tonight.
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I downloaded it for free! But I'll probably just watch the movie and say that I read it.
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I bought this a couple of days ago, but haven't got round to reading it yet.
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I'll buy it when I'm back from vacation.
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when you reach the end of chapter 11 it might make sense
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Finished it last night. crazy book
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I am still waiting on a copy from the library. Apparently it's popular in this city right now.
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My question is, how does sexually abusing someone indicate you hate them?
OK so I'm not very good at these kind of things in general so this is probably going to come across as pretty simplistic buuuuuut:
It's more or less accepted fact that raping a person is bar-none the most traumatic thing one human being can do to another human being, right? So I imagine that you'd have to feel a pretty serious antipathy to another person (or as it may be, to their gender or some other component part of that person's identity) to inflict that sort of trauma on them.
Incidentally, as I was typing this and thinking the position through I have come to the conclusion that I'm not entirely sure I agree with what I have said, but it's certainly one way of looking at it?
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This looks interesting...I'll see if I can finish off Snow Crash and read this quickly.
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Well, I forget where I first encountered the idea that hate is not the polar opposite of love (which is actually one of a number of things, depending on whom you ask), but it might prove insightful here. Jens, the way you've phrased the question is a bit difficult for me to follow, but it seems like you're trying to assert the difference in meaning between "sexism" and "gender-hate" (misandry/-ogyny). What hate and love have in common, perhaps, is a quality you might call "relational passion," in which strong feelings are created out of the interaction between two or more people - generated, figuratively speaking, by the third quantity "we." Whereas, with proper bigotry (sexism, racism, etc.), the generator comes from within the self and the emotions center around identity formation - in this case, through opposition. Usually, I think, there is some connection to a power relationship, i.e. the bigot sees him/herself as the rightful (if not acting) superior to the other party, by means of some convenient rationale. In love/hate, the other is known; in bigotry the other is unknown. This makes the existence of "gender-hate" rather impossible to imagine and surely the mark of a delusional character; one could not possibly know and have a relationship with every single person of a particular sex. In common, everyday usage, I'd say that "misandry/-ogyny" was more or less synonymous with "sexism," but I think there is an interesting distinction to be made.
This may be unnecessarily literary, but the written tradition labeled the "querelles des femmes" (I can't believe there isn't a wikipedia article devoted to it!) thrived for much of the Renaissance. Sometimes an argument between male and female writers on the merits and pitfalls of the female species (but mostly between male and male writers arguing over which aspects they disliked most), it provides, I think, an excellent example of a variety of opinions that are mostly sexist and which range into the misogynistic (and perhaps even the misandric - I'm not that well acquainted).
(Sorry - I get a bit pedantic afterduring a few drinks)
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Ok, I had to buy a copy because the wait list at the library is really long for this book! So I will start it today.
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I went on to the second one since I finished the first so quick. wooo
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I anticipate finishing the book in the next couple of days.
How's everyone going? Feeling ready to start discussin' soon? (In a separate, spoileriffic thread, of course.)
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I think my copy has arrived! Actually it arrived about a week and a half ago but I haven't picked it up yet. Will do that later today.
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I am about to start part 3 and...wow. I know I'm going to be finishing this in the next couple days, so I'm ready for the discussion thread when you guys are.
As for the sexism vs hate, I'm not sure if the sadist actually hates women, but certain men in the family definitely do.
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The climax is so crazy.
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Holy shit, I thought chapters 11-14 were bad, but this is insane. 100 pages to go and I'm done.
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Hey guys, isn't it time we voted on a new book?
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I might join in on this one!
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Let's just do the #2 vote getter, it's one that I've been meaning to read for a while!
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I call for new nominations. If you want to read Blood Meridian, nominate it.
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I think that's what they were doing?