Modified Book Club

[Jeremy]

As discussed in the current 50 book challenge topic.

Basically if you want to join, post in this topic to say so before Christmas day. Then in the last weeks of December I'll divide up the year based on the number of people entering, and those who have entered must nominate a book (there are no rules on what you nominate), which everybody else will try to read within the designated period. For example if there are 4 members, each will be given a three month period for everybody to read the book of their choice. I'll give myself the first period so that there's more time for everybody else to choose their books.

There's no obligation to read the nominated books, but hopefully people will at least have a go. I guess ideally try not to choose books that other people have read recently (check the current and previous book challenge lists), but it's probably not a big deal. I have a large collection of ebooks, so I'll endeavour to find a e-version of the books chosen and distribute it if I can.

Edit; You don't have to be a participant in this years or next years 50 book challenge to be part of the book club either. It's open to everybody

Edit2; I'll update this page with lists of people in the challenge, designated periods, and nominated books as we progress. We can also use this topic to discuss each book as we're reading it (being careful when necessary for spoilers!).


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Current Members;

Jeremy
Danny
Zach
David

Book list:

Jan: Jeremy; The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Feb: Danny; The Castle by Franz Kafka
March: Zach; Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov
April: BDF; Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
May: Jeremy; Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
June: Danny; TBA by The Bluth Family
July: Zach; Don Quixote by Cervantes
Aug: BDF; Time Out of Joint by Philip K Dick
Sept: Jeremy - Cloud Street by Tim Winton
Oct: Danny; TBA by Tobias Fünke
Nov: Zach; Baudolino by Umberto Eco
Dec: BDF; Sidereus Nuncius or The Sidereal Messenger by Galileo Galilei

[dp]

I'm in.

[Zac Miley]

Yep!

[Jeremy]

Excellent. Hopefully Dave gets on board too, which he said he would, but maybe hasn't seen this topic yet? I'll PM. On the assumption there are the four of us (or any factor of 12 ), I might change the rules to make it one book a month so that there's a little more reading and choosing involved. Also if people join late we can give them the later months. Of course you don't need to be a member to read the books and comment

[Jeremy]

Ok I thought I'd announce January now so that people have time to get it. I'll see if I can find an ebook too, if anybody wants that.

My choice is

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. Pretty short (about 150 pages).

You can get a free ebook version by going to www.globalgrey.co.uk and searching for the title (it won't let me link).

[bigdirtyfoot]

I'm definitely in! Reading along with others can be very fun. Hoping we get a good variety of books.

[Jeremy]

Excellent. I'll post the list of times now then , and edit them into the first post at some point too. You can submit your choices whenever you like. Of course anybody else who wants to join are completely welcome to, and you're also welcome to read the books, or some of them, or just comment on them when we get to them if you've read them before, without having to choose a book if you like.


Jan: Jeremy; The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Feb: Danny
March: Zach
April: BDF
May: Jeremy; Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
June: Danny
July: Zach
Aug: BDF
Sept: Jeremy - Cloud Street by Tim Winton
Oct: Danny
Nov: Zach
Dec: BDF

Edit; I'll also create a drop box or something and try to collect ebooks for each book to disseminate for those who don't want to buy/borrow

[Zac Miley]

Invitation to a Beheading, Vladimir Nabokov
Don Quixote, Cervantes
Baudolino, Umberto Eco

would be my choices. I was gonna go for Pynchon as well but I think it'd be silly to have two books by the same author.

[dp]

The Castle by Franz Kafka

Will come up with others later.

[bigdirtyfoot]

I think I've made my choices.

April - Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
August - Time Out of Joint, Philip K Dick
December - Sidereus Nuncius or The Sidereal Messenger, Galileo Galilei

I'm looking forward to the books so far. However, I'm not sure I'll be able to read your selection, Zac, with only a month allotted for each book. Don Quixote is about 1000 pages long and the other two are around 500 each. Might be a stretch for me with work and life and all. But at the same time I'd like to read those. Not sure what to think - Jeremy and Danny, would you care to weigh in?

[Jeremy]

I was really happy with Zac's choices, especially Don Quixote. I'm happy to have a go. If it takes more than a month to read, or you give up, that's ok. I think it would also be fine to start a little early, especially for the bigger books. Everything I plan to read next year outside of this is also massive, so I may not get to twenty.

[dp]

I was actually considering Don Quixote as one of my books before Zac posted his list, but decided against it because I thought it might be too long, but I'm actually pretty pleased to see someone else chose it. Maybe make Don Quixote a little later in the year and have it following a month with a real short book so it can be started on early or some such thing?

[Zac Miley]

I chose Don Quixote second so that it would fall in the summer months, which is when I seem to have the most initiative to read. I suppose that doesn't really make sense for someone in Australia (or anyone else who doesn't really share my pattern), so I'm cool with wherever it falls. I'm glad you guys are as excited to read it as I am!

If it would make it more reasonable, I'd be happy to switch out one of the other two for something shorter. Or we could even drop one of my other two and give Quixote two months, since people seem into it.

All of the other books have me excited. I've been trying to read 3/5 you guys listed for quite a while. Pynchon and Galileo are the two I hadn't thought about, but they're both intriguing.

[bigdirtyfoot]

I say we go for it.

[Jeremy]

Cool.

So I've updated the first post as a reference. I thought it would be good if at the start of each month the person whose book it is made a short post explaining why they chose the book. Then we can all post with progress and thoughts etc.

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
I chose this for two reasons. Firstly I've heard Pynchon come up a little lately, I guess especially because of his new book (Bleeding Edge) and wanted to read some of his work to see what the fuss was about . Secondly I have been led to understand (perhaps from wikipedia ) that my second book choice - Pattern Recognition - was strongly influenced by Crying of Lot 49, so I thought this would be a nice quick read that would help lead in to that book. I haven't started reading it yet. I have a few other books to finish off. Also I wanted to get a hard copy and ended up having to buy one online after every bookshop I went to in Melbourne didn't have a copy (the first bookshop I checked when I got back home did have a copy, but by that stage I'd already bought one). I do have ebook copies in a multitude of formats (epub, mobi, pdf) too, and would be happy to send them to anybody who wanted to read participate in the group .

[bigdirtyfoot]

Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49"

I wasn't sure what to think of this book until I was about two-thirds of the way through, because I had a difficult time following the plot and remembering the list of characters. Pynchon's writing style in "The Crying of Lot 49" seems to me to be similar to James Joyce, Tom Robbins, and Robert Anton Wilson. The novel is intelligently complex like Joyce, funny and wacky like Robbins, and intentionally confusing like Wilson. I would estimate that the latter two authors may have been influenced by Pynchon. By the end of the book, I decided that I enjoyed it, but I would have to read this again (along with Pynchon's other works) to understand it any better.

After finishing the book, I took a look at the Wikipedia page for the novel and learned a good deal about the allusions in the book and inspirations for its conception, as well as references to it in pop culture that were pretty interesting. I would definitely suggest doing some follow-up research after reading the book if you are as confused as I was. Overall, a good book, but I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone - this is not an easy read for most people and requires some work to get through. I may choose to read all of Pynchon's works in the future, and would enjoy revisiting this novel.

I'm excited to see what the rest of y'all have to say about it!

[dp]

I read The Crying of Lot 49 4 or so years ago and at the time I remember thinking it was the strangest books I'd ever read. I also found I couldn't keep track of anything that was going on, and on a sentence by sentence level I was pretty confused let alone following the broader story. This time around it was much much easier and I was able to enjoy the book more. The first time around I didn't realize how funny it is. I don't have it in front of me right now but that song about all those Humbert Humbert cats and how the member of The Paranoids was going to date an 8 year old stands out in my memory.

I suppose I agree with Jeremy, (I think he wrote this in the other thread) that it gets weaker and less funny by the end. Overall I can't find myself caring about it too much or loving it too much. The things that made it revolutionary at the time seem so fully accepted as a legitimate way to tell a story, and have been so fully incorporated, that its difficult for me to to appreciate how important (it was pretty important, yea?) this book was.

[Jeremy]

Thanks Danny. Yeah we should try to write all our comments about the book club books here I guess. Here's my review from the other topic.

Crying Of Lot 49
I'm a bit mixed about this. I really enjoyed the start. Pynchon's prose is excellent, and it was also funny and intriguing, however I really felt like it became bogged down in technical discussions of the conspiracy, which wasn't even an interesting conspiracy and the last chapter in particular was a real struggle to get through for a lack of either prose or excitement. The humour was missing towards the end.

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I wanted to add that the book reminded me a lot of VALIS by Philip K Dick, which is a great book about conspiracy theories and mental illness. Pynchon is a much better writer than PKD, but VALIS is structured better and more interesting.

[bigdirtyfoot]

The Castle, Franz Kafka, 528 pg.

I'm glad I read this book; when I first read through the introduction and the first few chapters, I wasn't quite sure that I would like it. The story is basically about a man who is called to perform land surveying duties for a castle in a town. He experiences great difficulty getting to the castle, and is misdirected by the town's citizenry at every turn. There is a heavy air of bureaucracy that keeps him from beginning his tasks as land surveyor, which frustrates him greatly. Yet he remains respectful and well-spoken throughout the book, only losing his temper in the rarest of situations.

It's a long book, but well written. I enjoyed how serious the townspeople are about everything. This certainly wasn't an easy read - I had to make myself pick it up time and time again. But after I would read a few pages it was easy to keep going. I'm not sure who I would recommend this to, but it is a good work of fiction. I'll have to check out more Kafka at some point, because I like his writing style, and the only other work I was familiar with was The Metamorphosis.

@Danny: I'm glad you picked this one; I don't think I would've read it otherwise!

[Jeremy]

Good work Dave. I've been too busy and am only a small amount of way in so far, but I'm going to persist and finish, and then hopefully get onto the book for this month and finish that before the end too!