Book Club: Suggestions for June

[abbey]

Wow, June already? Here we go!

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.

[Nexus]

Well while I'm here I'm putting forward another Tom Robbins, I haven't read this one yet.

Title: Villa Incognito
Author: Tom Robbins
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 241

Synopsis: (From Wikipedia)

Villa Incognito begins with the story of Tanuki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanuki), a raccoon-like (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon_dog) Asian creature with a reputation as a shapeshifter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapeshifter) and trickster with a lust for sake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sake) and women. It should be noted that Tanuki is a tanuki; a member of the species named for him. The cast also includes a beautiful young woman who has unconfirmed Tanuki-blood in her veins (but definitely has a chrysanthemum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysanthemum) seed embedded in the roof of her mouth), and three American MIAs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_in_action) who have chosen to be "lost" in Laos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laos), long after U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War) ended. Typical Robbins-esque debacles ensue when one of the MIAs is arrested with heroin taped to his body, while dressed as a priest. Meanwhile, two sisters of one of the missing American soldiers are still searching for their lost relative, unfolding bizarre plot twists that paint a caricature of life in a Post-9/11 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11) America.


Review: (From PopMatters, by Nikki Tranter)

Villa Incognito is a complex book, that proves the world needs Tom Robbins to offer fresh and glorious insight -- with no reservations whatsoever -- about those little pieces of humanity and society that flummox us most.

[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.

[Homemaster]

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.

[INTUNEevolution]

My birthday is in June, so I'd like a little more consideration for my suggestion :p

Again, Samedi the Deafness by Jesse Ball.

I'll edit with the stuff from last month's post.

EDIT: From February (I keep forgetting I was banned for a month)

Quote Alex:
This is my favorite book of all time. It's written by a poet and is the most beautiful work of literature I've ever read. Consider this book, it has very powerful lines.
And hey, he's an obscure author, so you can pretend to like him for the ladies and look really cultured at the same time.

Title: Samedi, The Deafness
Author: Jesse Ball
Genre: Fiction

Synopsis: From Publishers Weekly
Unspecified cataclysm threatens in this unconventional debut spy fable from poet Ball. As mysterious suicides are staged daily on the White House lawn, James Sim, a loner and professional mnemonist (someone who can memorize large amounts of data), comes upon a man stabbed in a park. The man's dying words cast light on garbled notes left by the White House suicides that threaten something very big and very bad in seven days' time. Following the dead man's clues (over seven days in as many chapters), Sim cracks ciphers, explores hidden passages of a fictional, labyrinth-like verisylum and struggles to find a straight answer about Samedi, the figure seemingly at the center of the matter. The suicides continue, and the only good advice comes from female pickpocket Grieve, who goes by false names, spies on Sim and falls for him. There are flashbacks to conversations with Sim's childhood imaginary friend (an invisible red owl named Ansilon) and a detailed, history of the fictional 18th-century inventor of the verisylum. Ball writes scenes that read like prose poetry and cultivates a Beckett-like alienated digression rather than standard plot mechanics. The results are highly imaginative but hard going. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review: Best read the reviews and the excerpt online, here's the link.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/pro...283155&s=books

[Salmoness]

Seriously now, this book changed my life.

Title: The Life of Pi
Author: Yann Martel
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 315
Synopsis/Review:

After a tragic sinking of a cargo ship, one solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors of the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra, a female orang-utan... and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger.

Winner of the Man Booker Prize
"It's sheer audaciousness, complex originality, breathtaking daring, virtuous command of language and imagery make it a tour de force... It will stand the test of time".

[abbey]

I read Life of Pi recently and it is an amazing book. I'd be up for discussing it. It's pretty popular though so we'll have to see how many people have read it already.

[tunacake]

That one actually looks really interesting. It's got my second vote.

[fabz]

Title: What I'd say to the Martians
Author: Jack Handy
Pages 192
Genre: Humor
Synopsis: If the name Jack Handy doesn't strike you as familiar, he was the writer by the SNL sketch, "Deep Thoughts", "Deeper Thoughts", and other various New Yorker articles.

I'm a few pages into it and it's freaking hilarious.

I know I'm not in the book club but the book is an easy read and it's really funny.

[Matt]

Title: Snuff
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 208

Synopsis: (From Amazon)
Palahniuk's audacious ninth novel tells the story of Cassie Wright, an aging porn queen who intends to put an exclamation point on her career by having sex with 600 men in one day on film. The story begins with Mr. 600—the pornosaur who introduced Cassie to the business—as he describes the other 599 actors awaiting their moment on screen. The perspective then shifts to Mr. 72, an adopted Midwestern 20-something who is one of the many young men claiming to be Cassie's long-lost son. Mr. 137, a has-been television star hoping to revive his career, wants to ask Cassie's hand in marriage so that the two can star in a reality TV show. But for a novel centered around a gargantuan gangbang, there's surprisingly little action; the small amount of narrative movement takes place backstage, where the characters attempt to get a sense of one another while waiting for their number to be called. There are sharp moments when Palahniuk compassionately and candidly examines the flesh-on-film industry, but mostly this reads like a cross between the Spice Channel and Days of Our Lives.

[abbey]

Only 7 suggestions? I guess I'll extend this.

[tunacake]

Snuff? Is that a new one? I'm up for any Palahniuk. I loved the four that I've read of his so far.
Still waiting for Bus Driver from goddamn Amazon:ahe:

[Matt]

Yeah, Snuff's coming out in a few days. I'm planning on picking it up regardless.

I finally got Bus Driver in the mail today.

[tunacake]

Oh cool. I'll have to pick that one up. Good selection for June so far.

I just got Bus Driver today too. My Amazon order is coming in like 12 parts over the span of 8 years. In fact, I think I'll go read some more right now.

[Heloisa]

Hi!

This is my first message in this forum...

But i like to suggest the books of Dark Tower, by Stephen King! It's so much more than 350 pages, but you know... You' ll be mesmerized.


Kisses

[tunacake]

Hi!

This is my first message in this forum...

But i like to suggest the books of Dark Tower, by Stephen King! It's so much more than 350 pages, but you know... You' ll be mesmerized.


Kisses

http://forums.explosm.net/showthread.php?t=20518

There's already a 3-page discussion thread about the Dark Tower series. I think it's a relatively good thread; I haven't read the thread because I havent read the series.

[Heloisa]

http://forums.explosm.net/showthread.php?t=20518

There's already a 3-page discussion thread about the Dark Tower series. I think it's a relatively good thread; I haven't read the thread because I havent read the series.


Thank you very much for your tip!

[INTUNEevolution]

There is no way the Book Club would read a 4000 page series.

Abby got all in my face for not putting the page count for a book that was around 310 or so pages :p

[Keris]

Can we read V for Vendetta? It's a graphic novel so I don't know if it qualifies.

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