Suggest a Book for the dissensus book club!

[Octopus?]

Henry James is someone I've been meaning to give a good read (particularly after Greene's gushing praise). Just picked up a copy of "The Ambassadors" the other day that I'm itching to crack open...

 

[crackerjack]

Oh god, before this Henry James love-in goes too far can I cast a negative vote? The last two books I've read concerned themselves with the middle/upper classes round the turn of 19/20th century and I think I've had all the Victorian moral agonising I can take.

(On the subject of James, did anyone else find The Line Of Beauty completely uninvolving? And that was about a time, if not a place, i can relate to.)

 

[Octopus?]

Well, Henry James is out then

 

[zhao]

hey why don't we all read the secret just kidding

 

[nomadologist]

Oh god, before this Henry James love-in goes too far can I cast a negative vote? The last two books I've read concerned themselves with the middle/upper classes round the turn of 19/20th century and I think I've had all the Victorian moral agonising I can take.

(On the subject of James, did anyone else find The Line Of Beauty completely uninvolving? And that was about a time, if not a place, i can relate to.)

but i know all kinds of people who do the Queer Politics reading of JAmes...oh wait that's what you mean

 

[nomadologist]

hey why don't we all read the secret just kidding

that made me actually LOL

 

[crackerjack]

Well, Henry James is out then

Oh, don't mind me, DBC (I've always wanted to join something with that acronym) can't please everyone all the time and I'll play by the rules. Anyway, if Graham greene likes him he can't be all bad.

 

[ripley]

this is a cool idea! what about

Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood
Regeneration - Pat Barker
The Ventriloquists' Tale - Pauline Melville
The Radiance of the King -Camara Laye (with added controversy over authorship, worth discussing)

and not to be a jerk, but I love Moby Dick and would love to discuss it with people, I read it on my own (more than once!) and I think it's fricking amazing. So I'll put forward Moby Dick too.

 

[you]

SO, Bros Karamzov seems to have a smidgin of support, im superup for this one personally, but we must all get the same copy with any non-english language book. For Dostoevsky the Volokhonsky and Peavar translation on everymans library is good good good..

Steinbecks 'grapes of wrath' would be good too, but I get the feeling many have already read it, my girlfriend is allways telling me about it and im very curious.

An intriguing japanese author would be ryu murakami 'in the miso soup' looks like fun however at 192 pages and not exactly a classic I dont think this is the best suggestion! Someone asked for a japanese author though... Miike's "Audition" was based on one of his books, I think his stuff is kinda grotesque...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryu_Murakami

Conrad is a good suggestion, I never seem to read anyone English.

Id still be very happy to try Pynchon or House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski

I think ill say im in, everything suggested so far id be happy to at least try....

Please give more suggestions though! Im sure everyone must have an amazon wishlist!!!!

 

[D84]

I might be interested in this if I can find the time etc.

I've had The Bros Karamzov sitting next to my bed for about 6 months now.

I'm also a Moby Dick, Pynchon and Henry James virgin so I'd be up for that too.

Maybe a short novel of some kind would be best to start off, get us warmed up etc: eg. I've been meaning to read more Vonnegut for ages, such as Slaughterhouse 5 or The Sirens of Titan..

Come to think of it I'd like to read more Greene too...

But I'm cool to go with something completely different.

 

[IdleRich]

OK, so looks as though we've got definites of: You, Me, Tea, Jenks, Crackerjack, Octopus, Ripley, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub. D84 is a possible. Plus Nomad, Zhao and PeterGunn have contributed to the thread without saying whether or not they are in.
That's definitely enough to do it anyway. Can we get a "sticky" and leave it up for a few days for people to sign up? How do we do that? Then after a few days we'll know who is in and we can all vote on the book.

 

[petergunn]

for the record, i am in

 

[h-crimm]

Has everyone here read Heinrich Boell? I always loved Group Portrait with Lady

I've been enjoying this guy's stuff recently... starting from the obvious counter-terrorism send up, "...K. Blum...".
Obvious fun reading RoteArmieFaktion era BundesRepublicDuetschland material through '7/7/9/11' era UnitedKingdom.

I'm gonna try and read along. But don't wish to influence the choosing, since i'm more of a silent listener on here anyway. But if i was going to push it would be towards something more modern than Messrs F. Dost. and H. James.
Something from the first half of the twentieth C. rather than the last half of the 19th? I was supprised by how much i enjoyed St.-Exupery's "flight to Arras" last week for its modernistic version of a boys-own tale (only skip the penultimate chapter). Perhaps people might be amused by Mayakovsky's american travelogue? or if someone could point me to the novelist equivalent of Lorca?

My worry is that i might get tied into reading something a bit too hetero and muscular/solid, something too (rock) classic. So i'm maintaining a get out clause.

How about something from the nouveau roman? Marguerite Duras? or Alain Robbe-Grillet?

 

[IdleRich]

Thing is right, if it goes well we can do it again (and again ad gloriam) so I reckon it doesn't matter too much if the first one we pick isn't exactly your first choice. By the nature of what we're doing it's going to be a compromise but if we do it and it goes ok we can fine-tune it for the next one and so on. I reckon it's not that much of a disaster if you agree to read something and you don't enjoy it - at least that means there will be people with varied opinions on it.

 

[jenks]

I'm gonna try and read along. But don't wish to influence the choosing, since i'm more of a silent listener on here anyway. But if i was going to push it would be towards something more modern than Messrs F. Dost. and H. James.
Something from the first half of the twentieth C. rather than the last half of the 19th?

My worry is that i might get tied into reading something a bit too hetero and muscular/solid, something too (rock) classic. So i'm maintaining a get out clause.

How about something from the nouveau roman? Marguerite Duras? or Alain Robbe-Grillet?

Proust? Thomas Mann? Musil? Berlin Alexanderplatz? Hermann Broch?

In the end any decision will have to be a compromise and if this thing is to have legs then we'll need a longlist which we can turn to otherwise each choice will take weeks of agonising.

Sebald, Richard Yates, Pamuk, Oe would all be good contemporaries to look at.

I don't think we'll find something we'll all agree on but i think we can maybe cohere around a list which we can work our way through over the coming months - what we don't need is people bragging over what they have read/know but a commitment to reading and discussing something with others in a clear timeframe.

 

[STN]

I don't really have enough time to commit to reading a whole book (gasp!) at the moment, but if you choose one I happen to have read, am I allowed to stick my oar in when you're discussing it?

I'd definitely be up for future ones too...

 

[mixed_biscuits]

count me in too, please

 

[h-crimm]

I do actually agree it's a strength of the book club idea to sometimes get forced into reading something that you wouldn't naturally have gone for. My reservations probably really stem from an inferiority complex w.r.t. to people who have an academic/professional background in reading and writing.

Perhaps to avoid the endless discussion one person could choose the book. It could even be something they've already read, so they know it's in some way good. Then at the end of the month the people who feel theyve made a reasonable contribution to the discussion vote in the new chair from amongst themselves and she chooses a new book. Might also avoid getting stuck with a monotone dissensus consensus.

I was just trying to express my recent enjoyment of mid twentieth century stuff. And my interest in reading more and talking about it with people, something that i don't have much opportunity to do. Rather than show off...

 

[Mr. Tea]

I'm quite keen to read some Rushdie. Seems kind of topical at the moment, too.

 

[crackerjack]

Perhaps to avoid the endless discussion one person could choose the book. It could even be something they've already read, so they know it's in some way good. Then at the end of the month the people who feel theyve made a reasonable contribution to the discussion vote in the new chair from amongst themselves and she chooses a new book. Might also avoid getting stuck with a monotone dissensus consensus.

Sounds like a good idea. I'd suggest either 'You' for starting the thread or Rich for seeming willing to take the reins.