Suggest a Book for the dissensus book club!

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
And a final word (?) on Austerlitz: a friend wrote me a couple of days ago and said..

I was just thinking that one of the charms for me of Austerlitz is the fact that the whole book is framed as a endless bar story. "I was sitting in a pub 12 years later and who should walk in but Austerlitz and he sat down next to me and picked up the conversation where he had left it off. .

Made me laugh, at least.

Hehehe...you know the first draft contained a scene where they get chucked out at closing time and end up in a fight outside a kebab van? :)
 
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Dial

Well-known member
Hehehe...you know the first draft contained a scene where they get chucked out at closing time and end up in a fight outsight a kebab van? :)

Mysteries of Austerlitz solved. Thank you Mr Tea. It was all a bad dream after a dust up and a bad kebab. What of the missing final scene: narrator wakes up, feels very grim. Vows never again to drink so much/eat crap kebabs/hang out with Austerlitz - 'who never stops going on, and only ever bums him out'. Skips breakfast, manages a small lunch, suffers a bit more until mid-afternoon. Feels better. The End. (plenty of room for a sequel there if Sebald hadn't come to an untimely end):)
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah...or, halfway through the book, narrator says "Sorry, can I just stop you there? You're really harshing my buzz" and goes home to watch Peep Show. The End.
 

jenks

thread death
or finds out (like all of us do) he wasn't adopted - they were his real parents after all
 

Dial

Well-known member
"Sorry, can I just stop you there? You're really harshing my buzz"

Thats fucking hilarious. (Not to mention a turn of phrase I don't employ nearly enough in my daily round)

Back to the book club: I will have a go at the chosen title, though, must confess, Mao ll would have been my stand out choice. Thank god it wasn't the Brothers Karamzov.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah...and he fantasisied the whole Jewish-Czech-parents-killed-in-the-Holocaust thing as a way of coping with the fact that he had a couple of boring uptight Welsh twats for a mum and dad.
 

jenks

thread death
What do you think? Should we try and get this going again? The discussion on Austerlitz was great but it all fell apart with Regeneration.

Anybody up for it?:slanted:
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I'd be up for it, I think. Are we going to choose something else from old list or are we going to compile a new shortlist? I can't remember if Regeneration was in the first list, tbh.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
What about everyone else who was involved first time around? I'm thinking John Doe, Crackerjack, You, Slothrop, Ripley, Mixed_Biscuits and probably others I've forgotten.
 

you

Well-known member
Heya guys, Im still checking this thread and would be up for reading a book with you. I've recently started Brothers Karamazov though, but seeing as thats the only story im on at the mo I could do another too!

Any thoughts on a book? Im guessing Idlerich wont be thrilled at the 2nd Regeneration book...
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Oh sorry - I seem to be one of the guilty parties, only just noticed this thread has been revived. Currently have three on the go and I'm determined to read Ackroyd's London Biography sometime soon so I may be unavailable for book club for a couple of months.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
OK, so that's You, me, Jenks, Mr Tea and maybe Lichen. That's a start.

"Any thoughts on a book? Im guessing Idlerich wont be thrilled at the 2nd Regeneration book..."
You guessed right. If everyone is dead set on reading it then I would go ahead - but seeing as that would restrict it to people who have read the first one I don't think it's a good idea (what a shame).
Apart from that I'm pretty happy to read almost anything. I'm just about to start with Blow-Up and other stories by Julio Cortazar but the book club one I will read concurrently.

 

you

Well-known member
Mmmmm, a short storys collections could be ultra accessible, a guy ive been meaning to explore is Craig Davidson, I was pretty engrossed in his short storys in a small picador shorts book.... as well as the publication in the below link he also has a shorts collection called "Rust and Bone"


I also wouldnt mind reading Solzhenitsyn's "Cancer Ward" but I guess most have already read it?

Or, "Requiem for a Dream" by Hubert Selby Jr, or "willow tree" or "waiting period"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Selby_Jr.

Just throwing some ideas around
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I read somebody recommending Craig Davidson the other day.

"I also wouldnt mind reading Solzhenitsyn's "Cancer Ward" but I guess most have already read it?"
Er, not me, somehow I seem to have missed it.

Anyways, I've pm-d the others on that list and I reckon we may as well see if they're in before we make a decision.
 

jenks

thread death
Could go for some of the Lethem short stuff

or what about The Year of Magical Thinking by Didion?

just a thought
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
That Magical Year sounds a bit depressing.... I've got Giles Goat-Boy by John Barth sitting by my bed - it would make it easy for me if we did that one, anyone fancy it?

"Barth's next book, Giles Goat-Boy, of comparable size, was a speculative fiction based on the conceit of the university as universe. It could be described as a fictional gospel about a half-man half-goat who discovers his humanity and becomes a savior in a university that allegorically represents the universe, presented as a computer tape given to John Barth, who denies that it is his work. In the course of the book, Giles carries out all the tasks prescribed by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Barth kept a list of the tasks taped to his wall while he was writing the book."
 
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