BwB Book Club

[Nichole]

Just noticed this. I'm in, but I think I'll also pick up All the Pretty Horses while I'm at the library. I've been meaning to read 100 Years of Solitude for a long time.

Woot! My favorite library branch has both.

[TheEvilKing]

Isn't it first person to finish wins?

[Guest Raidne]

My personal preference would be something like having the discussion start on a particular date, and we can aim to finish the book by that time. Otherwise, if it's kind of a rolling discussion that starts whenever and people chime in whenever, it's no different than any other thread that we have here on whatever book.

[Inigima]

My original plan was to be more freeform, but if people prefer more structure, that's fine. Amazon pegs one edition at about 448 pages -- shall we shoot for discussion to start on the 10th? Will that give people enough time?

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

No idea when my copy will arrive in the mail, so...maybe?

[Guest Raidne]

Okay, I'm nominating a book for August - Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes, the author of Black Hawk Down, which is being reviewed as the best Vietnam war book ever written. I'm about 10 pages in right now, and it grabs you. It's fiction - not a memoir.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

Karl Marlantes, the author of Black Hawk Down

No, that's Bowden.

Though I have also heard good things about this one.

[The Evil Hat]

I've heard great things about Matterhorn, as well.

[Guest Raidne]

No, that's Bowden.

Though I have also heard good things about this one.

Ooh, you're right. My bad. It's because when I picked up my copy to see what else he'd written my eye fell on the blurb by Bowden, listed as author of Black Hawk Down (who, incidentally, said "There has never been a more realistic portrait or eloquent tribute to the nobility of men under fire.")

It is, however, about 600 pages of awfully dense text, such that this is probably the only book club I'd consider recommending it to.

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

I don't know if this is okay, since it had its chance for July, but I'll re-nominate All the Names, by Saramago.

[Inigima]

Just a reminder that nominations are coming due. Voting soon.

[RedEyedGhost]

For August my nomination is Dostoyevski's The Idiot.

[Inigima]

Just a note to remind everyone that you have slightly under 24 hours to submit nominations for August.

[Alexia]

deleted

[Inigima]

Nominations for August are now closed. Thanks for your submissions. Here are the nominees and relevant data:

Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War - Karl Marlantes, 2009 - Matterhorn is...a living, breathing book with Lieutenant Waino Mellas and the men of Bravo Company at its raw and battered heart. Karl Marlantes doesn't introduce you to Vietnam in his brilliant war epic--he unceremoniously drops you into the jungle, disoriented and dripping with leeches, with only the newbie lieutenant as your guide. Mellas is a bundle of anxiety and ambition, a college kid who never imagined being part of a "war that none of his friends thought was worth fighting," who realized too late that "because of his desire to look good coming home from a war, he might never come home at all." ...Matterhorn is as much about the development of Mellas from boy to man, from the kind of man you fight beside to the man you fight for, as it is about the war itself. Through his untrained eyes, readers gain a new perspective on the ravages of war, the politics and bureaucracy of the military, and the peculiar beauty of brotherhood. - courtesy of Raidne

First line: "Mellas stood beneath the gray monsoon clouds on the narrow strip of cleared ground between the edge of the jungle and the relative safety of the perimeter wire."

This Is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper, 2009 - The death of Judd Foxman's father marks the first time that the entire Foxman family-including Judd's mother, brothers, and sister-have been together in years. Conspicuously absent: Judd's wife, Jen, whose fourteen-month affair with Judd's radio-shock-jock boss has recently become painfully public. Simultaneously mourning the death of his father and the demise of his marriage, Judd joins the rest of the Foxmans as they reluctantly submit to their patriarch's dying request: to spend the seven days following the funeral together. In the same house. Like a family. - Goodreads

First line: "'Dad's dead,' Wendy says offhandedly, like it's happened before, like it happens every time."

All The Names - José Saramago, 1998 - Senhor Jose is a low-grade clerk in the city's Central Registry, where the living and the dead share the same shelf space. A middle-aged bachelor, he has no interest in anything beyond the certificates of birth, marriage, divorce, and death that are his daily preoccupations. In the evenings and on weekends, he works on bringing up to date his clipping file of the famous, the rising stars, the notorious. But when he comes across the birth certificate of an anonymous young woman, he decides that this cannot have been mere chance, that he has to discover more about her." "Under the increasingly mystified eye of the Registrar, a godlike figure whose name is spoken only in whispers, the now obsessed Senhor Jose sets off to follow the thread that leads him to the unknown woman - but as he gets closer to a meeting with her, he discovers more about her, and about himself, than he would have wished. - Goodreads

First line: "Above the door frame is a long, narrow plaque of enamelled metal."

The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1869 - Prince Myshkin is an epileptic. The self-important, self-serving members of society easily cast him aside. But by portraying these fatuous and shallow dignitaries of the upper classes in all their odium, Dostoevsky, himself a sufferer of epilepsy, gives Myshkin a high relief. Myshkin's honesty and piety stand him apart from his fellow human beings; indeed, he is a modern Christ among them. - Powell's Books

First line: "About nine o'clock on a late November morning during a thaw, the train from Warsaw was nearing Petersburg at full speed."

City of Thieves - David Benioff, 2008 - During the Nazis' brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter's wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible. - Goodreads

First line: "You have never been so hungry; you have never been so cold."

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy, 1869 - Epic historical novel by Leo Tolstoy, originally published as Voyna i mir in 1865-69. This panoramic study of early 19th-century Russian society, noted for its mastery of realistic detail and variety of psychological analysis, is generally regarded as one of the world's greatest novels. War and Peace is primarily concerned with the histories of five aristocratic families--particularly the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, and the Rostovs--the members of which are portrayed against a vivid background of Russian social life during the war against Napoleon (1805-14). The theme of war, however, is subordinate to the story of family existence, which involves Tolstoy's optimistic belief in the life-asserting pattern of human existence. The heroine, Natasha Rostova, for example, reaches her greatest fulfillment through her marriage to Pierre Bezukhov and her motherhood. The novel also sets forth a theory of history, concluding that there is a minimum of free choice; all is ruled by an inexorable historical determinism. - The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, courtesy of Amazon.com

First line: "WELL, PRINCE, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private estates of the Bonaparte family."

Voting will continue through the 31st. Winner and August book will be determined and announced at or around 9:00pm on the 31st. Thanks everyone!

[delete this account pls]

Matterhorn. The only other one I'd be interested in is City of Thieves, and I read it earlier this year (and it was great)

[Alexia]

I'm voting for my own nomination...War and Peace.

Adding a second vote for All the Names, by José Saramago.

[Guest Raidne]

I'm voting for Matterhorn. I've got to mention that the description provided is pretty much full of glaring mischaracterizations, though. I vehemently object to everything after "...young and ambitious Marine lietenant..." (I know you didn't write it yourself or anything, Ini, just thought I'd mention it).

ETA: I'd like to add that all the nominations actually sound good to me, minus the Dostoyevsky and the Tolstoy. Come on, people? Classic Russian literature for a book club? :) Your idea of a weekend full of silly fun is probably 6 hours at the soup kitchen, practice with the local Shakesperean troop, followed by an amateur poetry reading and a peace rally. That you organized.

[beniowa]

I'm voting for City of Thieves. I did the lame thing and went ahead read All the Names earlier this month. It was interesting, but a bit underwhelming.

War and Peace huh? Good thing I read pretty fast. :P

[Inigima]

Raidne, I'm afraid that's the best I could find. If you want to forward me a better description I'll be happy to replace it.

I am not going to nullify any votes for this month, but in future months I am going to disallow votes for your own nominations. I want you to vote for what you want to read, not for what you want other people to read. So far four people have voted for their own picks and I think that's lame.

I also want to speak up on behalf of my own nomination as I don't feel the Goodreads blurb does it justice. This Is Where I Leave You is modern lit, obviously; it was literally laugh-out-loud funny for me at several points, and crushingly depressing at others. I am basically a philistine in terms of literature but I loved it stylistically. I picked it upon a whim from Amazon's (excellent) best-of editor's picks and I can't recommend it highly enough.

As usual, I will not be voting myself unless there is a tie. Either it would do no good anyway, or it would create a deadlock and leave no one to break it.

Speaking for myself and not as the organizer, I am not much interested in the English class picks. I want to read fresh stuff. And I hate to single anyone in particular out, but I don't know who has time to read War And Peace, the most famously long novel in history, in the space of a month while working and so forth, and then discuss it.