Half-inspired by the European salons (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_(gathering)) of the 18th century and half-inspired by Oprah's book club....
Someone had made a suggestion along these lines the other night about this on the chatbox, and I asked again tonight if anyone would be interested in something like a book-of-the-month club. Several people seemed interested, so I thought I'd bring it to the community. Is there enough interest to do something like this? And if so, what kinds of things would you want in a book club? Literary? Not literary? Best-sellers? Sci-fi/fantasy? Something else?
If there's enough interest, we can go from there. :)
can't say I'll be that commited to it, but I'll drop by and chat if it's a book ive read. Maybe even read the ones you guys pick.
I'd be interested in experiencing other people's views on books I've read and reading books others recommend.
I find it to be interesting and a good idea Jae. Maybe it would inpire others who form their arguments not to rely on Wikipedia too much. I also see it as a means to expand my reading library though I'm sure my mother would say otherwise :D
I say go for it.
I read a lot. I think I could handle an extra book a month, just as long as I'm not expected to read romance novels. XD
I am currently reading some Nietchzhe's works (Beyond Good and Evil, Twilight of the Idols, Genology of Morals), though with schoolwork, I don't think I'll handle reading a seperate book. But I'll tune into the disucssions. :)
Oh man, I love to read anything and everything in all languages, minus romance novels. I'd love something monthly, it would function as a "Reccommend book, discuss that book for the month, then make a new thread for the next one" right?
I'd gladly take a look at recommendations, but I don't know if I have the bandwidth to commit to a book club right now. Maybe in a few months when I've finished my masters thesis.
I'm up to my knees in books about the Russian Revolution right now, but I could fit in another. Seeing a lot of people's insights about one book can be very interesting.
Something academic would be nice - I like it when books offer philosophical/historical knowledge. Unless it's something as good as Dune or LotR, I'd rule out sci-fi or fantasy. Those books don't tend to be very educational.
You'd be surprised at some of the things that show up in sci-fi/fantasy novels. C J Cherryh has some very interesting stories that are anything but superficial.
You'd be surprised at some of the things that show up in sci-fi/fantasy novels.
I know. Dune's a shining example of that.
Most tend not to be very educational IMO. But the ones that are tend to be excellent reads.
I know. Dune's a shining example of that.
Most tend not to be very educational IMO. But the ones that are tend to be excellent reads.
Doesn't need to be educational to be entertaining and thought/discussion provoking. Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow and the sequels are prime examples of this (in the sci-fi genre) ;).
Doesn't need to be educational to be entertaining and thought/discussion provoking. Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow and the sequels are prime examples of this (in the sci-fi genre) ;).I agree. The problem is everyone's read those already! :D
An interesting book on self-determination is Orson Scott Card's A Planet Called Treason, aka Treason. I got it because I really like his other books, but this one's quite fun by itself and few people are likely to have read it here. I suggest we (well, you guys, I just reread it the other day) read that one! It's not very big, but it's kinda trippy at sections and that makes for great fun - and like I said, the main theme is the importance of self-determination, so it's full of philosophy too! :)
I would not really suggest it for younger readers though. It is teen+ I'm thinking.
Yeah, we probably ought to make the proviso that we need to keep it in the PG-13 framework, which will probably limit the options some, but there are plenty of great books that meet that criteria.
Of course, this completely rules out any of the bodice-ripper romance novels _I_ read, but, oh, well.
Doesn't need to be educational to be entertaining and thought/discussion provoking.
I would consider something that makes you think educational. ;)
And I would suggest Atlas Shrugged for this month's book. I need some time to finish my Russian ones. :D
Any books that make a good read. I tend towards comtemporary fiction, some fantasy and humourous sci-fi. What's Atlas Shrugged?=p
I would consider something that makes you think educational. ;)
And I would suggest Atlas Shrugged for this month's book. I need some time to finish my Russian ones. :D
If you can recommend that then I can recommend Hamlet :P. Which, though it isn't a book, is a great work.
I've been thinking of starting a book recommendation thread in Ahto, but I see you're way ahead of me Jae. I'm currently reading the Dark Elf trilogy by R.A. Salvatore and am quite enjoying it, but I'll leave the more detailed commenting for the actual book club thread. :)
Currently reading the four canonical gospels. I'm on Mark at the moment. Once I've finished the gospels (hopefully before Easter), I intend to move on to Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco.
...I intend to move on to Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco.Ouch. I bought that book because I thought it would be interesting, but it turned out to be just a way for the author to go "oooh look how obscure this tidbit of history is and how cleverly I fit it into my book's puzzles!" This resulted in that I didn't care about the characters at all at the end of the book. While the story was sometimes interesting, to me it certainly didn't justify the pain of wading through the rest of it. Eco is unlikely to get another chance from me. :p
Foucault's Pendulum is not nearly as interesting as The Name of the Rose. I was rather disappointed in it.
I like Luke's gospel best. He seemed to understand women better and mention them more, I imagine being a physician had something to do with it.
Well, how about book suggestions then? Shakespeare plays, poetry collections (e.g. Poe or Keats or the Brownings), books (including just plain enjoyable books, no seriousness totally necessary), the Great Books list, all are fair game.
Only stipulation is that it can't be rated M/adult, or porn, or anything out of lines with forum rules. It also has to be something someone can reasonably find in a library or bookstore. And it has to be something we can all read within a month with the assumption that we all have lives, so 1000 page tomes are not the best choice. :D
When are we getting onto the book of the month? :p
Foucault's Pendulum is not nearly as interesting as The Name of the Rose. I was rather disappointed in it.
I like Luke's gospel best. He seemed to understand women better and mention them more, I imagine being a physician had something to do with it.
Possibly. Personally, I prefer Mark. I think Jesus' humanity is much easier to see, and the frustration and difficulty of life for Him...
Well, how about book suggestions then? Shakespeare plays, poetry collections (e.g. Poe or Keats or the Brownings), books (including just plain enjoyable books, no seriousness totally necessary), the Great Books list, all are fair game.
Only stipulation is that it can't be rated M/adult, or porn, or anything out of lines with forum rules. It also has to be something someone can reasonably find in a library or bookstore. And it has to be something we can all read within a month with the assumption that we all have lives, so 1000 page tomes are not the best choice. :D
Ethel The Aadvark Goes Quantity Surveying?
:xp:
I'd recommend anything by Wodehouse. He's undoubtedly one of, if not the best writer of the 20th Century, IMO...
so 1000 page tomes are not the best choice. :D
Damn...
I'd recommend anything by Wodehouse. He's undoubtedly one of, if not the best writer of the 20th Century, IMO...
I disagree. While I think Wodehouse was a talented writer... I believe George Orwell has the one up on him.
I have had a chance to read a personal favorite of mine called To Kill A Mockingbird. I find it to be a sad little truth about the deep South. Set in the Depression era, the narrator of the story is little Jean Louis 'Scout' Finch who speaks of the strong racism and the circumstances of the people within the town Maycomb. A nice insight into the injustices of society revealing the good, the bad and the ugly. A good read if you like the symbolism.
Another good set that I like is historic fiction and this is one that will send me runnignto the nearest couch to read it. The North and South trilogy by John Jakes is one of the best I have seen in historic fiction. The trilogy carries on about two familes from different parts of the country, one from the idustries of Pennyslvania and the other from the rice plantations of South Carolina. Set in the decade before the Civil War, it passes through the tensions leading up to seccession, war and Reconstruction. Love, pain, hatred are put at its extremes as two familes struggle to keep a lasting friendship and eventually into one family. Again if you like histroic fiction, this is a good series.
I disagree. While I think Wodehouse was a talented writer... I believe George Orwell has the one up on him.
Orwell is undoubtedly a great storyteller, a great intelligence, and a talented writer, but his use of language is simply not in the same league as Wodehouse - the use of metaphor, simile, and other parabole is where Wodehouse reigns supreme, and reigns alone, IMO.
It also has to be something someone can reasonably find in a library or bookstore.
Keep in mind Jae that not all of us live in the US. You can't possibly expect of me to know what of the things I've read can be found in your local library. ;)
:D I know. I meant to suggest that people pick out books that are fairly well known, not obscure titles. --Jae
Anyway, I have just finished reading R.A. Salvatore's Dark Elf Trilogy and have started reading the first book of the Icewind Dale trilogy. For those that didn't already guess, the genre of the books is fantasy, now, the Dark Elf Trilogy consists of three (:D) books - Homeland, Exile and Sojourn. The main character is a non-typical Dark Elf called Drizzt Do'Urden, who's fighting against the ideals widely accepted by the rest of his people. The books tell of an inner conflict within Drizzt and also of his attempts to find a place where he would be accepted for who he really is, a place he could truly call home. I found these three books a very exciting, interesting and enjoyable read and would recommend that everyone else who decides to read them and likes them also continue with the Icewind Dale trilogy as I have, because the Dark Elf trilogy is not the end of Drizzt's story, it's only the beginning.
Here's one of the books I'm currently in the middle of reading:
Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak (
http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Oil-View-Hubberts-Peak/dp/0809029561)
It can be purchased online, so no worries about availability. It's definitely not at risk of violating any PG-13 restrictions. Also, it has an international audience :)
Devon, I've read Atlas Shrugged, and I have to say...Ayn Rand is undoubtedly the worst writer of the 20th century. Good idea for a story, absoloutely terrible execution and story-telling. I have all her other books but I'm pretty sure I'd rather remove my eyes with a sharp instrument than read another one of her books.
I'm ready to start with whatever you guys reccommend, I'm currently reading The Fall of Constantinope, very interesting but it's in Greek which I imagine the majority of forumites don't understand. I'm going to put it aside as soon as we get a (decent/non Ayn Rand) reccommendation for the book.
Hey guys! I had a couple of thoughts, since I started a summer book club, which is now in its fourth or fifth year. The way we choose books is we send out to everyone interested a list of books to choose from, and then the interested parties return to us their top 10 or so books that they'd like to read, and then I compile a list of the books with the most votes, that we'll read this summer. We usually end up with quite a variety of selections, from science fiction to biographies.
Perhaps something like this could work here, as well? Now, since it's over the summer, we do it weekly, or bi-weekly, but here we could vote for the top twelve books for the year, and assign one to each month.
Great idea, but I'm not sure I can get the books where I live.
My sugestions for books are: Animal farm, the corporation and 1984.
@JM12 To Kill A Mockingbird is a great book: definitely on my list of favourites. Read it a couple of years back. It really is thought-provoking, in an oblique sort of way=p
@igyman, I read that ages ago! It was pretty enjoyable... Not often do you see a drow behaving like his lighter brethren.
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy is a riveting read... It deals with many things. A pair of twins that were separated since they were children, the story of their parents, especially that of their mother... I can't do it justice. Just read it;)
@ mur'phon: Animal Farm is a great book that I read in ninth grade and I love Orwell's take on using the animals to reiterate the rise of Stalin, that kind of thing. My favorite of Orwell's is 1984. I often use it to refer to the Patriot Act enacted here in the state with the whole Big Brother is Watching You. My favorite line is when Winston writes 'Freedom is the ability to say that two plus two equals fives. If that is granted then all else follows.'
Another good classic that ties in with the themes exhibited by 1984 and Animal Farm is The Handmaiden's Tale by Margaret Atwood. This is a tale that actually uses the Christian evangelical form as a means of imprisonment. It is told through the eyes of one woman who lives in this Christian community that forbids reading and is ranked by their usefulness. No offense to the Christian peoples there but this is one strange tale but probably not improbable.
In no particular order.....I'm looking through
www.greatbooks.org) for inspiration, and am looking at the list and saying "oh, yeah, read that one and liked it...."
Dante's Inferno
The Prince
The Art of War
Jane Eyre
Anything by Poe
Any poetry by the Brownings, Keats, Shelley, other Romanticists
Much Ado About Nothing and Julius Ceasar (or other Shakespeare)
The Social Contract (Rousseau)
Letter from Birmingham Jail (King)
The American Constitution
Canterbury Tales
The City of God (St. Augustine)
Pilgrim's Progress
The Republic (Plato)
Dracula
The Color Purple
Cuckoo's Egg (Cherryh)
Sherlock Holmes
Murder on the Orient Express (or a Miss Marple story)
Just for fun
The Dragonriders of Pern series
Those Who Hunt the Night
The Stainless Steel Rat
The Cat Who...
There's a start of a list, anyway. :)
The Color Purple
Is it possible to like that book? It is good but (maybe because I'm a man...) I can't bring myself to like it. I'm not sure if I'm making sense here.
There are some things that I don't like but I read it because it is for the class and is used as an example of certain themes. I didn't particularly like Their Eyes Were Watching God but I found it interesting and Zora Neal Hurston is a talented writer.
Devon, I've read Atlas Shrugged, and I have to say...Ayn Rand is undoubtedly the worst writer of the 20th century. Good idea for a story, absoloutely terrible execution and story-telling.
Personal taste I guess. I found Ayn Rand's writing style and the philosophies she presented to be very interesting and very different from what I usually read. Not at all like Marx.
Nice ideas. Some of those Id really like to read but haven't yet gotten around to.
I say we stay away from Dracula and most of the poetry, tho. Doesn't quite fit with the topics usually discussed at Kavar's Corner.
I disagree--the Romantic poets and Dracula reflect a lot about the culture of the time. You can determine what they consider important enough to mention, how social conventions went, what they were trying to say to the reader, etc.
Dracula would make a great Halloween-time read. There's so much vampire lore in our culture that come directly from this book.
Kavar's Corner is forum for mainly current issues. Not quite the topics present in those. And in any case you'll get more of an education reading a book that directly talks about a culture rather than indirectly, IMO.
For those who like a good action SF, I recommend Prey by Michael Crichton. The book is written in a way that while you read it you can picture every scene in your head, like watching a great movie.
Another great sci-fi book worth reading is The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke, unless someone's already mentioned it...
Oh, and Foundation by Asimov.
Well, I've got (that is my father's got) a fairly big collection of SF novels, so I could go on and on with SF recommendations, but right now I'm just going to mention Wargames by David Bischoff. The lesson of this book would probably be something along the lines of ''don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong.''
Any poetry by the Brownings, Keats, Shelley, other RomanticistsI'd read Shelley!
Much Ado About Nothing and Julius Ceasar (or other Shakespeare)I'd do that.
Pilgrim's ProgressSorry, no can do. That book is so transparent it's uninteresting. :p
The Dragonriders of Pern seriesSeconded, though its educational value is somewhat nil. :D
Another novelette by Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End. Super depressing but rather philosophical.
Just for fun books - Piers Anthony's Xanth series. :D
However, another of his books, On a Pale Horse, is quite good on its own (and the only one of that series really worth reading IMO). It also deals with how people react to death, so I guess it's sorta philosophical too. :)
Oh, and Foundation by Asimov.
The whole series while you're at it (Foundation & Empire, Second Foundation). All three are excellent books. Foundation's Edge is worth reading if you really want another sequel, but the way it turned out disappointed me. Foundation and Earth was fairly well-written too but didn't have a very good ending. The last two books just got too far away from the feel of the original three IMO. (Though Foundation's Edge did introduce some interesting new details on the second Foundation)
While we're on the subject of science fiction, I'd recommend Frank Herbert's Dune and the five sequels to it. He's one of the few authors I know of who can write that many sequels to a novel and actually make each one better than the last. All six are nothing short of superb - definitely my favorite science fiction books. I also like the pacing the books have, too. The story takes places over the course of 15,000 or so years.
His son Brian Herbert wrote some pretty decent prequels I enjoyed, but they're not quite as good as his father's. And on a less positive note he wrote a sequel to the original Dune series, which was terrific up until the end where he shamelessly borrowed something from the prequels he'd written and thus butchered any possibility of the eight Dune book being more interesting than a piece of preteen fan fiction.
While we're on the subject of science fiction, I'd recommend Frank Herbert's Dune and the five sequels to it. He's one of the few authors I know of who can write that many sequels to a novel and actually make each one better than the last. All six are nothing short of superb - definitely my favorite science fiction books. I also like the pacing the books have, too. The story takes places over the course of 15,000 or so years.
Please, no! Maybe I have subhuman intelligence but I'm fairly sure that Dune is not written in normal English. Every time I sat down to read the blasted thing I had to adjust my understanding of the language.
While we're on the subject of science fiction, I'd recommend Frank Herbert's Dune and the five sequels to it. He's one of the few authors I know of who can write that many sequels to a novel and actually make each one better than the last. All six are nothing short of superb - definitely my favorite science fiction books. I also like the pacing the books have, too. The story takes places over the course of 15,000 or so years.
I second this recommendation, Frank Herbert's Dune is definitely the best SF novel ever written (and by saying Dune I mean the sequels too). It's a must for any fan of science fiction because it's a classic, a story that will never cease to be interesting and popular.
When it comes to prequels, I have read House Atreides, but House Harkonnen and House Corrino haven't been published here yet as far as I know. As for the new sequels, they, that is the one that was published, also still hasn't been published here, so I'll have to wait a while to read that.
Please, no! Maybe I have subhuman intelligence but I'm fairly sure that Dune is not written in normal English.
Weird, that happened when I got a friend of mine to read it too. :D Seems only half the people who pick up Dune can finish it.
When it comes to prequels, I have read House Atreides, but House Harkonnen and House Corrino haven't been published here yet as far as I know. As for the new sequels, they, that is the one that was published, also still hasn't been published here, so I'll have to wait a while to read that.
The Legends of Dune series (The Butlerian Jihad, the Machine Crusade and The Battle of Corrin) are more well-known as the prequels. They might be published in Serbia. They've been out for a while now.
Hunters of Dune was a fantastic book up until the ending. The authors butchered it right there.
Given the recent interest in vampires and stuff (thanks stoffe xD), I'd recommend Twilight and its sequel New Moon, written by Stephenie Meyer. They're both excellent reads about a family of vampires trying to survive in the modern day world. As they are, both books are love stories, though Twilight has the heavier emphasis on romance while New Moon is more action-oriented. They both have that quality that just seems to draw you into reading, or at least they did for me, as I finished each one within a day of starting it.