Book Club: Suggestions for May

[abbey]

Before suggesting anything, please go over the format for suggestions (http://forums.explosm.net/showpost.php?p=373884&postcount=2).

You are free to suggest a book that was suggested last month, but if it didn't get in the poll last time, it probably won't this time.

Also, don't bother suggesting books that are longer than 350 pages. We want to make it easy for people to read these books in one month, so we have to have a limit on length.

[Matt]

Once again, Bus Driver and Anthem in 2nd and 3rd last month. I can feel it this time! Go go go Bus Driver!

Title: The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God & Other Stories
Author: Etgar Keret
Genre: Fiction/Short Stories
Pages: 200

Synopsis/Review:

Came in second place last month!

Via Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Bus-Driver-Wanted-Other-Stories/dp/1592641059): Etgar Keret's The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories stings and thrills with fierce fables of modern life. Set in landscapes ranging from "this armpit town outside Austin, Texas" to "this village in Uzbekistan that was built right smack at the mouth of Hell," these stories lay their plots' central tensions out plainly: "Dad wouldn't buy me a Bart Simpson doll," one begins. Then they take off like little roller coasters, careening through the pathos of Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, the clowning of David Sedaris's Barrel Fever, the in-your-face violence of Quentin Tarantino, and the bewildered alienation of Franz Kafka. But readers need not know any of Keret's sources to enjoy his stories fully. The Israeli writer's aphorisms leap off the page and lodge themselves in the mind: "There are two kinds of people, those who like to sleep next to the wall, and those who like to sleep next to the people who push them off the bed." Keret's vernacular prose is fun to read, and his vision of the world is weirdly comforting. Happiness never really flourishes, but small hopes and graces abound.

[tunacake]

Title: A Clockwork Orange
Author: Anthony Burgess
Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy?
Pages: 192
Synopsis/Review:
Via Amazon.com: "Anthony Burgess reads chapters of his novel A Clockwork Orange with hair-raising drive and energy. Although it is a fantasy set in an Orwellian future, this is anything but a bedtime story." -The New York Times

Told by the central character, Alex, this brilliant, hilarious, and disturbing novel creates an alarming futuristic vision of violence, high technology, and authoritarianism.Anthony Burgess' 1963 classic stands alongside Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World as a classic of twentieth century post-industrial alienation, often shocking us into a thoughtful exploration of the meaning of free will and the conflict between good and evil. In this recording, the author's voice lends an intoxicating lyrical dimension to the language he has so masterfully crafted.

PS. I realize that this one could fall into the classics category, and the movie is certainly a classic. But it's not like an Animal Farm/Catcher In the Rye classic that absolutlely everybody has read. Give it a shot, Vecks and Votchkas.

PPS. It's also a little short, but not necessarily a quick read in relation to its size because of the language used. You'll understand when you have to read the first paragraph 4 or 5 times.

[Barista]

Title: Trainspotting
Author: Irvine Welsh
Genre: Fiction/Cult Fiction
Pages: 352 (I'm sure we could survive 2 extra pages?)

Synopsis/Review:
"Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've produced. Choose life."

"An unremitting powerhouse of a novel that marks the arrival of a major new talent. "Trainspotting" is a loosely knotted string of jagged, dislocated tales that lay bare the hearts of darkness of the junkies, wide-boys and psychos who ride in the down escalator of opportunity in [Scotland's] capital. Loud with laughter in the dark, this novel is the real McCoy"- The Herald

Follows the stories of people living in Leith, in Edinburgh and their experiences with sex, drugs and life. Different from the movie in that you get all the characters experiences and their motives behind doing things. The experiences are unglamorous and real, and accounted by unique and interesting characters.

But, bare in mind, it's in a style of Scots dialect sometimes. Could be hard to understand, but it's easier to read once you get used to the style.

[abbey]

Suggestions were supposed to close today but we don't have anywhere near enough. :indiff:

[NVM]

I think that it had enough suggestions last time to justify posting again, not like people are suggesting anything else.

Title: Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Author: Jeff Lindsay
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 304

The first season of the new show, Dexter, was loosely based on this novel.

Synopsis: (From Amazon.com)

Quote:
Meet Dexter Morgan. He's a highly respected lab technician specializing in blood spatter for the Miami Dade Police Department. He's a handsome, though reluctant, ladies' man. He's polite, says all the right things, and rarely calls attention to himself. He's also a sociopathic serial killer whose "Dark Passenger" drives him to commit the occasional dismemberment.

Mind you, Dexter's the good guy in this story.

Adopted at the age of four after an unnamed tragedy left him orphaned, Dexter's learned, with help from his pragmatic policeman father, to channel his "gift," killing only those who deal in death themselves. But when a new serial killer starts working in Miami, staging elaborately grisly scenes that are, to Dexter, an obvious attempt at communication from one monster to another, the eponymous protagonist finds himself at a loss. Should he help his policewoman sister Deborah earn a promotion to the Homicide desk by finding the fiend? Or should he locate this new killer himself, so he can express his admiration for the other's "art?" Or is it possible that psycho Dexter himself, admittedly not the most balanced of fellows, is finally going completely insane and committing these messy crimes himself?

Despite his penchant for vivisection, it's hard not to like Dexter as his coldly logical personality struggles to emulate emotions he doesn't feel and to keep up his appearance as a caring, unremarkable human being. Breakout author Jeff Lindsay's plot is tense and absorbing, but it's the voice of Dexter and his reactions to the other characters that will keep readers glued to Darkly Dreaming Dexter, as well as making it one of the most original and highly recommended serial killer stories in a long time. --Benjamin Reese

[tunacake]

So i guess it's just last month's suggestions. It'd be nice if we had some Burgess though... hint hint.

[Matt]

It is so gonna be Bus Driver. I can FEEL it.

[timbot]

I forgot suggestions closed so early. Since you're so short, here's one from me.
Title: The Remains of the Day
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 272

Synopsis: (from Amazon)
Greeted with high praise in England, where it seems certain to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Ishiguro's third novel (after An Artist of the Floating World ) is a tour de force-- both a compelling psychological study and a portrait of a vanished social order. Stevens, an elderly butler who has spent 30 years in the service of Lord Darlington, ruminates on the past and inadvertently slackens his rigid grip on his emotions to confront the central issues of his life. Glacially reserved, snobbish and humorless, Stevens has devoted his life to his concept of duty and responsibility, hoping to reach the pinnacle of his profession through totally selfless dedication and a ruthless suppression of sentiment. Having made a virtue of stoic dignity, he is proud of his impassive response to his father's death and his "correct" behavior with the spunky former housekeeper, Miss Kenton. Ishiguro builds Stevens's character with precisely controlled details, creating irony as the butler unwittingly reveals his pathetic self-deception. In the poignant denouement, Stevens belatedly realizes that he has wasted his life in blind service to a foolish man and that he has never discovered "the key to human warmth." While it is not likely to provoke the same shocks of recognition as it did in Britain, this insightful, often humorous and moving novel should significantly enhance Ishiguro's reputation here.
This review is pretty old. I'm pretty sure the novel did win the Booker prize. It's also one of my favorite books.

[Homemaker]

Title: Sexing the Cherry
Author: Jeanette Winterson
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 192

Synopsis:

From Publishers Weekly
Evoking modern physics and antique metaphysics, Winterson's ambitiously eccentric narrative challenges her readers to rupture the boundaries of conventional perceptions and linear experience of time. Her narrative voices, alternating between a Rabelaisian giantess and her foundling son, collapse at times into one another and the characters plunge vertiginously through time and space. On the one hand reworking fairy tales, and on the other evoking the filth, squalor and exuberant bawdiness of 17th-century England in the throes of civil war, Winterson ( The Passion ) eventually locates her characters in present-day London. Graced with striking similes and poetic cadences, the author's prose is clean and strong, and the disjunctive elements of her narrative are integrated elegantly. But the novel's freakish characters and flights of surreal fancy are insufficient to redeem its overwrought artifice. The work is further limited by its stridently dogmatic feminism, which, contemptuously belittling all men as arrogantly stupid bullies who are vastly women's inferiors in maturity and moral fiber, vitiates its ostensible intent to transcend the narrowness of human perception.

[tunacake]

I'm kind of hoping for Bus Driver too. Definitely gets a vote. Hopefully I'll be able to track down a copy.
I'm waiting for my cousin to finish her Running With Scissors so I can borrow it. I'm not really looking forward to that one though.

[MaxAlcolo]

Title: Empire of the Ants.
Author: Bernard Werber.
Genre: Science Fiction.
Pages: 320.

Synopsis:
In the early 21st century, in a Paris rapidly turning tropical thanks to global warming, Jonathan Wells tries to get to the bottom (as it turns out, quite literally) of his Uncle Edmond's obsession with ants. Jonathan and his family have been left Edmond's basement apartment; their benefactor's sole request is, "ABOVE ALL, NEVER GO DOWN INTO THE CELLAR." Meanwhile, in the great city of Bel-o-kan, a reproductive ant, the 327th male, is fighting for survival, having had his olfactory Identikit stripped by traitors of his own tribe.

Review:
From 80 customer reviews it got an overall 4 stars out of 5. (Amazon)
When my aunt randomly bought me that book when I was in hospital, I didn't expect anything from it. Just the title Les Fourmis (That's the original french version) wasn't very "attractive". I decided not to judge it so fast and gave it a try.
It turned out to be an amazing book. From the beginning I started learning things about ants that made me go "Really !?". All this is done in an entertaining way, because everything's explained as it happens. I actually imagined myself being as small as an ant more than once. It's still an easy read though. The characters aren't all that developed and it doesn't play your mind as much as other books do. It's a book, so not everything is true, but most of the facts about ants are. I'll never see them as I used to, they're an amazing civilisation and much more closer to us than I thought. As much as it sounds stupid, it made me realise that us, humans, aren't all that big after all.
Are we the number one civilisation on earth ? This could easily be debated once you've read that.

It is the first book of a serie of three.

[Kashew]

did we already read "i hope they serve beer in hell"?

[Matt]

No. And we won't be.

[UncleDuck2]

Title: Lunar Park
Author: Brett Easton Ellis
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 320

This Is from Amazon:
Imagine becoming a bestselling novelist, and almost immediately famous and wealthy, while still in college, and before long seeing your insufferable father reduced to a bag of ashes in a safety-deposit box, while after American Psycho your celebrity drowns in a sea of vilification, booze, and drugs.

Then imagine having a second chance ten years later, as the Bret Easton Ellis of this remarkable novel is given, with a wife, children, and suburban sobriety--only to watch this new life shatter beyond recognition in a matter of days. At a fateful Halloween party he glimpses a disturbing (fictional) character driving a car identical to his late father's, his stepdaughter's doll violently "malfunctions," and their house undergoes bizarre transformations both within and without. Connecting these aberrations to graver events--a series of grotesque murders that no longer seem random and the epidemic disappearance of boys his son’s age--Ellis struggles to defend his family against this escalating menace even as his wife, their therapists, and the police insist that his apprehensions are rooted instead in substance abuse and egomania.

Lunar Park confounds one expectation after another, passing through comedy and mounting horror, both psychological and supernatural, toward an astonishing resolution--about love and loss, fathers and sons--in what is surely the most powerfully original and deeply moving novel of an extraordinary career.

[History]

I don't think this has been officially mentioned, just assumed, but would it be worthy to just automatically recycle the second and third place vote books every month? It isn't a huge deal, just time saving.

[Nexus]

Title: Jitterbug Perfume
Author: Tom Robbins
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 342

Synopsis/Review: The beginning is set in the 8th century with our protagonist King Alobr. He escapes ritual euthanasia and travels across the lands where he meets the goat god Pan, who is suffering a loss of godly powers due to the rise of Christianity and the destruction of Pagan beliefs. During his travels as a king of past times, he meets a young girl in India whom he saves from ritual sacrifice (or at least he is under the impression he's saved her). This young girl, Kudra, will later become his wife of many, many years. Centuries in fact. From here we are taken on a journey across Eurasia to 18th century Europe and onto present day. Encompassing themes of immortality, religion, drugs, sexual deviance, transcendental meditation and the wonderful world of perfumery. This book, like all Tom Robbins, will have you unable to put it down.

I have kept the synopsis rather brief so as to avoid ruining it. There is a much longer review on Wikipedia obviously.

[Jallen]

Title: Catch-22
Author: Joseph Heller
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 453

I realize it's a little over 100 pages over the limit, but I think it would be worth it. I'm going to be reading it anyway so I decided to bring it here.

(Review on back of book)

Catch-22 is like no other novel. It is one of the funniest books ever written, a keystone work in American literature, and even added a new term to the dictionary.

At the heart of Catch-22 resides the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save his own skin from the horrible chances of war. His efforts are perfectly understandable because as he furiously scrambles, thousands of people he hasn't even met are trying to kill him. His problem is Colonel Catheart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions that he is committed to flying, he is trapped by the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, the hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule from which the book takes its title: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes the necessary formal request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of making the request proves that he is sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

Catch-22 is a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to someone dangerously sane--a masterpiece of our time.

[Matt]

So how about that poll?

[abbey]

I'm on it.