Bookclub Suggestions: Volume 2

ella luciana · #1 10-24-2006, 12:01 PM

Well, I for one loved Rebecca - I think the new and improved bookclub is a resounding success. Handclaps for everyone!

Rebecca is still up for discussion , the thread is still there, but Pacific has suggested we start thinking about our new book, and I think that's a fine idea.

Some of the ones suggested last time were:

Filth by Irvine Welsh
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson
Perfume by Patick Suskind (the movie is coming out soon-ish, so if you're interested in reading it before you see the film so you can be all elitist and stuff, now might be the time...)
Colors Insulting to Nature by Cintra Wilson
The Dancing Girls of Lahore by Lousie Brown
How the Light Gets In by MJ Hyland
Museum by Rita Dove
Misconceptions by Naomi Wolf
Candy by Mian Mian
Sometimes A Great Notion - Ken Kesey
Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
The Solitaire Mystery - Jostein Gaarder
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Keysey
The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy

Add any more you can think of and your friendly neighbourhood choosey people will get back to you.

Smooch.

no_ones_song · #2 10-25-2006, 03:45 PM

i'd be interested in reading something that's a different genre from Rebecca--not because it was uninteresting, just to have something different to discuss =)

Pacific · #3 10-26-2006, 07:15 AM

As I suggested Rebecca last time I will hold back a bit on this one but Perfume could be a good one to do or any of the ones below that just because I haven't read them and they all sound good.

perfidia · #4 10-28-2006, 03:45 AM

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Afanasevich Bulgakov
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton

Of the ones already listed, I'd be most interested in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or The Black Dahlia.

(edited to replace one of the links)

kesh · #5 10-28-2006, 05:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pacific

but Perfume could be a good one to do

my hand's up for perfume,

Zindy · #6 10-28-2006, 06:22 AM

I agree with Ella, the new bookclub is great! It was so much fun reading and discussing.

I liked Rebecca too... in fact I like it more and more.. I still think about that book..
I felt that I pretty much have said what I wanted to say regarding Rebecca and that it is time to start thinking about a new book.

Lots of good suggestions..

I would like to read Dracula, Norweigan wood (just because I live in Norway..

) Hell`s angels sounds interesting just by the title..or maybe Perfume..

perfidia · #7 10-28-2006, 11:40 AM

Veronica
Two Girls Fat and Thin

I haven't read Veronica yet but I want to, and I've read Two Girls but it's been a few years... I think the latter would be of interest to Kittyradio readers. I sit and re-read it in sections whenever I'm at my local used bookstore. It's actually where I first learned about Ayn Rand, in a roundabout snarky way-- though I still haven't read any of her books yet (which is why I suggested The Fountainhead).

My initial response is to say "No" to both Perfume and Norwegian Wood just because I am very familiar with both, but if either is picked I'll probably be proved wrong for feeling that way!

Zindy · #8 10-29-2006, 08:45 AM

I am too lazy to find out myself what perfume and norweigan wood is about, so can you tell me Perfidia?

I can definetly read a funny book! It has been a while since I did that. (I think the Dirt was the last one )

It is good to laugh.

no_ones_song · #9 10-30-2006, 08:13 AM

i'm up to reading pretty much anything on the list except dracula and madame bovary. big drag.

ella luciana · #10 10-31-2006, 07:59 AM

One of my favourite books is a little bit obvious, I think, but A Clockwork Orange.

Of the ones we've come up with so far, I think Perfume is a great option, a really interesting book and so well-executed. The descriptions are really incredible.

I'll try and think of some more... oh, The Brief and Frightening Reign Of Phil might be good - my flatmate just lent it to me, and it's pretty short, but a really cool little book, kind of a weird alien political satire written in a bizarre, post-modern comedy style. I can't do it justice, but: http://www.reignofphil.com/

rosieholic · #11 10-31-2006, 08:06 AM

I'm reading dracula at the moment so thatd be cool. Another suggestion is maybe 'Emma' by Jane Austen?? I got gicven a Jane Austen box set and need to get to it, it'd be nice to have a place to discuss.
I'm up for anything though. I've already read a clockwork orange.

ella luciana · #12 10-31-2006, 08:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rosieholic

I've already read a clockwork orange.

Isn't it fab, though?
I should mention, I've read Dracula a couple of times, once for fun (ha!) and once for my course and it is the singularly most boring literary experience I've ever had. No offence to anyone who loves it, but ohhh, I couldn't do it again...

rosieholic · #13 10-31-2006, 08:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ella luciana

Isn't it fab, though?
I should mention, I've read Dracula a couple of times, once for fun (ha!) and once for my course and it is the singularly most boring literary experience I've ever had. No offence to anyone who loves it, but ohhh, I couldn't do it again...

It's taking me ages but I don't hate it. I like a lot of the little stories embedded into it, like the old man saying about how the people lie on their gravestones. I've vowed to finish it and thought this might provide insentive but yeah I understand people won't want to read it haha.
DEoes anyone know the name of some book and its heavily themed round drugs written in like the 60's, I cannot for the life of me remember more about it than that. Dad suggested it. Apparently it is a modern classic and I remember thinking of the desert when he explained it.

ella luciana · #14 10-31-2006, 08:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rosieholic

It's taking me ages but I don't hate it. I like a lot of the little stories embedded into it, like the old man saying about how the people lie on their gravestones. I've vowed to finish it and thought this might provide insentive but yeah I understand people won't want to read it haha.
DEoes anyone know the name of some book and its heavily themed round drugs written in like the 60's, I cannot for the life of me remember more about it than that. Dad suggested it. Apparently it is a modern classic and I remember thinking of the desert when he explained it.

I really like the bit on the Demeter where the guys are jumping overboard, but that's about it.

A lot of 60s kind of books are about drugs in some way, and because of the growth in awareness then of hallucinogens and psychedelic substances,k the desert is probably mentioned in a few of them - the plants that many come from grow in the desert. I would have thought it was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or maybe The Doors of Perception, but when you say "modern classic" you have me thinking of On The Road by Kerouac... is it any of those?

I should also throw into the mix Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov (as a suggestion to read, not as an answer to your query).

perfidia · #15 10-31-2006, 10:46 AM

...because I'm bad at summarizing, I wouldn't want to give anything away:

Quote:

www.bookreporter.com

Toru and Naoko's college romance might have been perfectly simple and predictable. They might have been confronted with the ordinary issues of becoming young adults in a large foreign city. They might have helped each other deal with the rites of passage into adulthood despite the unusual circumstances of being a student in 1968. They even might have faced up to these pressures and weathered through together.

This might have been the case, were it not for the suicide of Kizuki, Toru's best friend and Naoko's lover, a few years before. The reality is much more bleak than what might have been. The repercussions of Kizuki's death continue to spiral out and multiply, affecting both of them deeply, marking their university days with difficult questions about mortality, youth, and love.

Once close high school friends in a small town, Toru and Naoko stumble into each other on a crowded Tokyo train and quickly revive their friendship. They share a certain intimacy that neither has managed to recreate with any one of their new classmates or dorm mates who know nothing about the tragedy of their past. The renewal of their friendship, however, does not help them to move forward. While together trying to overcome the sadness of their adolescence, Toru and Naoko find their grasp on the present-day spinning out of control. Toru, the narrator, recounts how, on Naoko's birthday he felt "There was something strange about Naoko's becoming twenty. I felt as if the only thing that made sense, whether for Naoko or for me, was to keep going back and forth between eighteen and nineteen. After eighteen would come nineteen, and after nineteen, eighteen. Of course. But she turned twenty. And in the fall, I would do the same. Only the dead stay seventeen forever."

Despite his belief that they should remain rooted in the past, Toru falls in love with his dead best friend's beautiful and unpredictable girlfriend, waiting patiently for her to accept him as a lover in his own right. Naoko, in turn, is unable to love him; she has only a tenuous grasp on the present and values Toru most as a connection to the past. Only years later does Toru realize what Naoko had understood so much earlier, that they had no future together. He recounts how, "The more the memories of Naoko inside me fade, the more deeply I am able to understand her. I know, too, why she asked me not to forget her. Naoko herself knew, of course. She knew that my memories of her would fade. Which is precisely why she begged me never to forget her, to remember that she had existed."

NORWEGIAN WOOD is a simple story, simply told, with an emotion and quiet retrospection characteristic of Murakami's trademark style, especially in works like SOUTH OF THE BORDER, WEST OF THE SUN. First published in Japan in 1987, it is this novel that propelled him into the forefront of the literary scene and made him Japan's biggest-selling novelist. His characters are unpredictable and quirky as they share poignant insights into growing up in the late '60s, losing loved ones and accepting undeserved tragedies of youth.

--- Reviewed by Alison Kim

perfidia · #16 10-31-2006, 10:55 AM

What this doesn't say is that he's kind of a monster from the very beginning, you just don't know what kind.

Quote:

www.powells.com
In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift-an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and frest-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"-the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brillance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.

Anyway it's probably obvious that neither of these are fun or funny! Another book that might be fun b/c there's a movie coming out, only it just came out in hardcover so it would be a bit of a splurge:

Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette, Sena Jeter Naslund

(edited to correct the title of the MA book)

perfidia · #17 10-31-2006, 11:04 AM

Kate Christensen is funny and smart, my favorite of hers is Jeremy Thrane... I also like Jennifer Belle & Cathleen Schine. This is all light reading! Jeremy Thrane is fun because he's a writer and drops a lot of literary allusions, but it's not demanding.