Okay get suggesting people! It's been ages since we've had one.

I'll start with Siddhartha By Hermann Hesse. It's short, available for free online in ebook form (see Project Gutenberg.org) and I've heard very good recommendations.

Here is the Amazon Review:

In the shade of a banyan tree, a grizzled ferryman sits listening to the river. Some say he's a sage. He was once a wandering shramana and, briefly, like thousands of others, he followed Gautama the Buddha, enraptured by his sermons. But this man, Siddhartha, was not a follower of any but his own soul. Born the son of a Brahman, Siddhartha was blessed in appearance, intelligence, and charisma. In order to find meaning in life, he discarded his promising future for the life of a wandering ascetic. Still, true happiness evaded him. Then a life of pleasure and titillation merely eroded away his spiritual gains until he was just like all the other "child people," dragged around by his desires. Like Hesse's other creations of struggling young men, Siddhartha has a good dose of European angst and stubborn individualism. His final epiphany challenges both the Buddhist and the Hindu ideals of enlightenment. Neither a practitioner nor a devotee, neither meditating nor reciting, Siddhartha comes to blend in with the world, resonating with the rhythms of nature, bending the reader's ear down to hear answers from the river. --Brian Bruya

Wikipedia Article

Being available free online is a good start. Someone should provide a list of notable books available in that way, and we can choose from among them. I ought to read some Hesse, but Siddhartha is a bit daunting...

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Time is the distance that you can't return by miles.

I escaped somehow. Let's go

actualy [sic] I have quite a blessed life if I'm honest. I have many people to love, hate few and have few money problem's [sic].... What more does a person need? Oh yeah and I have some kind of humbleness unlike you of course ^_^ ~ CarefulCarpenter

Good call, Dig For Fire...

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well if anyone wants to read oryx and crake by margaret atwood with me in the next two weeks, i have to read it for a class. c'mon. it'll be really fun.

I do own a copy that I haven't read yet. I'll give it a crack.

__________________
Time is the distance that you can't return by miles.

I escaped somehow. Let's go

actualy [sic] I have quite a blessed life if I'm honest. I have many people to love, hate few and have few money problem's [sic].... What more does a person need? Oh yeah and I have some kind of humbleness unlike you of course ^_^ ~ CarefulCarpenter

I have it on my bookshelves. But I hate her.
I'll read it if people are reading it too, though.

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the last one was a bit piss poor, the discussion i mean, not the book. so any book that encourages participation

ooh really! why? i've never read her before. this is for a "gender and nature" lit class. but do tell. what have you read of hers and why do you hate?

Perhaps something a bit shorter and more accessible?
Maybe a novella?

Breakfast At Tiffany's - Truman Capote.

Well i personally love her. Cat's Eye is one of the best books ever written in my opinion, i think it changed my life. And I have Oryx and Crake but i'm too busy reading all these goddamned Victorian novels right now so i wouldn't be able to participate. unless someone wants to read Vanity Fair or Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre or Portrait of a Lady with me.

I find that discussion of the books just doesn't happen, or stops abruptly or just fades out quite early on, and I'm not sure if that's just the choice of books, or human nature.

What do you think about having someone - not officially, but as a guide or something - who will "lead" the discussion and keep it going? Do you think anyone would be willing to do it?

I read a couple of things although I can't remember what the other novel was.... The Handmaid's Tale and something else. I also read that short story Bluebeard's Egg. For some reason, I just can't stand her. I'm not trying to claim she's not a good writer or anything like that, but I find her voice coming through too smugly. I can't really explain or give details of what I hate without the book for reference, but if we read her, I'm sure I can give examples and explain what i don't lke.

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I JUST started reading the bluest eye, and so far i really love it. have we done this before?
there is a lot to talk about!
i always plan on pariticipating but not having time to read the book, so i drop it.

but yeah, i suggest any of the books i have to read in the next month or two, only because i won't have time to read anything else, and i'd love to participate.

the bluest eye by toni morrison
wuthering heights
kitchen by banana yoshimoto (very short by the look of it)
god of small things
heart if darkness by conrad
Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas
fight club

i know we discussed god of small things and wuthering heights before, but did you ever actually do them?

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Maybe you could send him like a coat hanger or soup mix in the mail with a post it-
"when you paint with your eyes closed, you never become picasso, you just become an ironic narcissist with uncomfortable shades".
Throwing people off is thrilling.

-ktlr

i didn't like the handimaids tail, because it felt like you could skip 100 pages and while everything in itself was interesting the stry really hadnt progressed. she was whining on about the same shit.
maybe i'm being unfair.
but no i didn't like it at all.

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Maybe you could send him like a coat hanger or soup mix in the mail with a post it-
"when you paint with your eyes closed, you never become picasso, you just become an ironic narcissist with uncomfortable shades".
Throwing people off is thrilling.

-ktlr

it's a good idea. whoever championed a book in the suggestions thread should probably be willing

i hope it's one of these because i have to read all of these over the next few weeks. i especially hope it's god of small things since i've already read it and love it and am studying it for this one paper. it's a beautiful book.

Wuthering Heights is the best love story I've ever read. I'd be happy to read it again.

i'd really really love it to be god of small things, i have read most of it already. but i'd particularly like to use it because i have to discuss it in a 15 minute presentation at uni. stress.
it would be so wonderful to have a discussion here, i could get ideas etc!

chesirecat, what are you studying? it's so strange we have similar book lists.

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Maybe you could send him like a coat hanger or soup mix in the mail with a post it-
"when you paint with your eyes closed, you never become picasso, you just become an ironic narcissist with uncomfortable shades".
Throwing people off is thrilling.

-ktlr

this semester i'm doing two 19th century literature papers (ugh), and one on "love and its literature". i'm only doing the latter paper because of god of small things, the lecturer's a twat.