Suggest a Book for the dissensus book club!

I read some Atwood (Handmaid's Tale) as a school book, enjoyed it, thought it had some neat ideas.
Not read millions of women actually, but I got a lot out of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife earlier this year.

I'm looking forward the unveiling of The List.

Slothrop said:

Y'see, I quite liked the idea of doing something a bit Classic, if only because it's a bit of a cliche for Dissensians to have a slightly macho drive towards things that are Weird! and Modern! and Experimental! and full of Big Ideas! and I suspect it'd do us good to have to appreciate boring old fashioned stuff like plot and characterization.

That said, if it's not already down, I nominate Gravity's Rainbow.

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psssh! how is having multiple personalities from separate time-space dimensions, each represented by a different food/sex combinations not characterization?!? Normalist!

jenks said:

Agree with everything you have to say here about Austen - most of these comments seem to have some kind of Merchant Ivory notion of her as a kind of 'heritage' writer rather than as an astute critic.

yeah i read plenty of female writers, too many to mention here but I must mention Fred Vargas as someone who is doing excellent work in the much maligned detective genre.

Anything you would recommend, Ripley?

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yeah I get the feeling people are responding to the movies, which have very little to do with the books.

three of the books I listed except for Camara Laye are ladies
Pat Barker is totally fucking incredible, especially her trilogy about world war I (Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road). Her other stuff is harsh and beautiful and spare but really really depressing.

Free Enterprise by MIchelle Cliff is a great story of the JOhn Brown /harper's ferry slave uprising..

Angela Carter is sort of magical realist except much earthier and funnier - Nights at the Circus is my favorite. One of her earliest works I think was a feminist reading of De Sade, so you know she's got a sense of humor and a perverse take on things

I think Alias Grace is the best thing I've read of Margaret Atwood, awesome use of unreliable narrators, set in the early ish years of canada as a british colony (something I know little about), quite funny in a dark and vicous sort of way.

I enjoyed Zadie Smith's White Teeth although it's a bit cartoony - made me miss London a Lot. For middlebrow (I guess) Meera Syal is a hoot.

Ahab's Wife by Sena Naslund is amazing and gives an account of the intellectual scene at the times leading up to the era that MOby DIck takes place. Despite the title (or in response to it) she begins with "Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last" which sets it up nicely.

oh hell I'm on Librarything just look for djripley.

Short List Confirmed

OK, no more suggestions so I'm going to go with what I've got now. Anyone who wants to do this book club thing pm me with your choice from this list and whichever has the most votes we will read together. Remember, you can't vote for your own choice but that doesn't matter because I'm going to give each book a vote already for each person who suggested it (as some of them were suggested by more than one person, quite strange out of all the books in the world and considering only eight people made suggestions but there you go). I suppose if you are dead-set on your book and don't want to give something else a vote you don't have to vote at all. Anyway, see how many votes we get by the end of Friday and then we'll pick one.
Here is the list:

Pat Barker - Regeneration
Don DeLillo - Mao II
Fyodor Dostoevsky - Brothers Karamasov
Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment
Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow
W G Sebald - Austerlitz
David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest

I don't think that I missed anything but if I did let me know soonest.

"Crime and Punishment for me"

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Fair enough but what book are you going to vote for?
Er, I mean I'll stick you down for that.

Yeah, that's right, sorry, I was just making a lame joke.
Just to be clear I have registered both your nomination and your vote.

Don't worry it was completely rubbish anyway.
I was thinking of saying that I will keep the voting going until, I dunno, I finish work on Friday just in case there is anyone who is unable to get to dissensus for a couple of days (think John Doe said he would be away for example). Then I'll announce it before I leave work and that gives everyone the weekend to get on it.
I just hope that there isn't a tie because I haven't thought about what we're going to do if there is (maybe read 'em both simultaneously).

IdleRich said:

Don't worry it was completely rubbish anyway.
I was thinking of saying that I will keep the voting going until, I dunno, I finish work on Friday just in case there is anyone who is unable to get to dissensus for a couple of days (think John Doe said he would be away for example). Then I'll announce it before I leave work and that gives everyone the weekend to get on it.
I just hope that there isn't a tie because I haven't thought about what we're going to do if there is (maybe read 'em both simultaneously).

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The weekend is good for me, gives me time to finish what i'm currently reading (a re-read of Swann's Way) and i don't like putting books down half way through - it's been bothering me for days!!!!

Octopus? said:

IAlso be into reading some Knut Hamsun as mentioned above.

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I know "Hunger" is the book most people have read/wants to read by him, but especially "Pan" is well worth checking out if you can find it

Thanks for waiting for me IR, I am away from a computer a lot more these days...

Anyway, a good list there, although (if I can use this post to indulge in a bit of electioneeering) I'm not sure choosing really long novels is the best idea for this, our inaugral Dissensus reading circle, as it can be a bit too easy to drift away from a long narrative and there may be just too much to discuss if we tackle a really lenghty work. On that basis I won't be voting for Doesteyovsky, nor Pynchon nor Infinite Jest (although I haven't read this yet and do v much want to). I'd urge, also, Pynchon fans to go for the DeLillo (which I can't vote for as I nominated it) as its central character, Bill Gray, is a writer very much based on the elusive Pynchon.

So, to get to the point, my vote goes for: Austerlitz by WG Seabald.

A genuninely original and poetic work.

Cheers JD, your vote has been noted.
I'm going to leave it until I leave it until five-thirty tomorrow in case anyone else wants to join in and then I will announce the winner. Then you've got the weekend to track down a copy of whatever it is and to start reading. I guess we'll probably open a thread and people can begin to discuss as they go...I hope it works....

I'll go for Austerlitz as well, as it seems extremely interesting.

Sorry for the lack of PM, but due to crazy personal things this is the first time I've been on a computer all week.

Thanks Octopus, noted.
I'm going to put the results up at five-thirty pm today (gmt).
I hope someone else votes because at the moment we've got a tie.

Neck and neck going into the final furlong? How exciting.

Perhaps if it remains that way you should get a final casting vote IR (seeing as you got this thang rolling the first place)?

Naturally if you vote for something I don't like I'll hate you forever, but I suppose you must accept IR that with great power comes great responsibility...

"Perhaps if it remains that way you should get a final casting vote IR"

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"Indeed idlerich-san you do have great power of strength of responsibility of mind, like all great leaders you must be true and honest to yourself"

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I could just lie about the results I guess.
I'm hoping some more voters come in though, a few people who expressed an interest haven't said anything yet so there is still a chance.

45 minutes to go!!!!

i agree that you should have the decisive vote in the case of a tie.