Author Topic: November Book Club Options  (Read 7768 times)

pixote

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November Book Club Options
« on: November 06, 2008, 05:49:23 PM »
I've got seven titles for you all to choose from, none of which I've yet read myself.  I'm going to keep this thread locked while I present the choices one at a time, then we can discuss/vote.  Cool?  Cool.



Option #1:

The Butcher Boy
Patrick McCabe, 1993
215 pages
Links: Amazon / Powell's / New York Times Review

pixote: I saw the Neil Jordan film adaptation at some point and liked it, and then later I found McCabe's novel on the For Sale rack at the library for fifty cents and bought it pretty much on a whim.  So that's the random reason I even own this.  If I had known it was Ronan's #5 book of all time, I might have read it long before now.  It sounds like the greatest strength of the book is the very original voice of the young narrator (yes, I'm a sucker for Holden Caulfield comparisons).  The Times ends its review by declaring that McCabe "has written a pitch-perfect tour de force," which sounds pretty good to me.

Kirkus Reviews: "The Irish McCabe's third novel--and American debut--is a journey into the heart of darkness: the mind of a desperately troubled kid one step away from madness and murder. Francie Brady is a schoolboy in a small town in Ireland. His father is a mean drunk and his mother a slovenly housekeeper, but Francie has a good buddy, Joe Purcell, and their Tom-and-Huck friendship is what sustains him. Then a seemingly trivial incident alters the landscape: Francie and Joe con the very proper Philip Nugent out of his prize collection of comic books, and Philip's mother calls the Bradys ``pigs.'' Henceforth, Francie will blame all his troubles on Mrs. Nugent; it doesn't help that the Nugent household is a cozy haven, maddeningly out of his reach. Matters get rapidly worse. His mother enters a mental hospital. Francie runs away to Dublin; he returns to find that his ma, whom he had promised never to let down, has drowned herself. He breaks into the Nugents' house, defecates on the carpet, is sent to reform school, and (the unkindest cut) loses Joe to Philip Nugent. Francie tells us all of this in a voice that is the novel's greatest triumph--a minimally punctuated but always intelligible flow of razor-sharp impressions, name-calling, self-loathing, pop-culture detritus culled from comic books and John Wayne movies (the time is 1962), all delivered with the assurance of a stand-up comic. Snaking through Francie's story is his longing for childhood innocence, now lost forever, and just an inkling of the gathering mental darkness that will make the gruesome climax inevitable. On a foundation laid by Salinger and Sillitoe, McCabe has created something all his own--an uncompromisingly bleak vision of a child who retains the pathos of a grubby urchin even as he evolves into a monster. His novel is a tour de force."

Opening Lines: "When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago, I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs. Nugent. I was hiding out by the river in a hole under a tangle of briars. It was a hide me and Joe made. Death to all dogs who enter here, we said. Except us of course."

Random Excerpt: "I met her on the street one day and she told me she hated Romans because they killed Thaddues the Christian boy whoever the f—k Thaddeus was. Mm mm mm she says the next sorrowful mystery of the holy rosary Jesus prays in the garden. Good man Jesus but you daren't say that or Mickey'd throw you out on the street on the  spot. Well Mickey I said will you ever forget the days of the old television? He stuck the pencil behind his ear what television would that be now he says. Oh the one that gotbroke, I says, the one da gave out yards about."

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Re: November Book Club Options
« Reply #1 on: November 06, 2008, 06:58:23 PM »
Option #2:

Lie Down in Darkness
William Styron, 1951
400 pages
Links: Amazon / Powell's / Washington Post Review

pixote: I've only read one Styron book so far, but The Confessions of Nat Turner was so great (my seventh favorite book of all time, apparently) that I've since wanted to read everything else Styron ever wrote.  I've been slow to do that, though, even though his death in 2006 gave me additional motivation.  Lie Down in Darkness was his first novel and launched his literary reputation as "an heir to Faulkner."  That comparison makes since to me, at least after one book.  Styron seems, like Faulkner (and also Marquez and Rushdie), one of those rare writers whose prose flows so effortlessly as to carry me through passages of any length without regard for story or characters.  I bet Lie Down in Darkness has some of the usual problems of a first novel but is nonetheless.  I hope to find out for sure soon.

Back Cover: "First published to overwhelming acclaim in 1951, Lie Down in Darkness is the novel that established William Styron as a writer of international stature. It is a brooding, rhapsodic, sometimes searing portrait of a Southern family in extremis: Milton Loftis, a man of great charm and infinite weakness; Helen Loftis, who has given all her frsutrated love to their crippled daughter, Maudie; and Peyton Loftis, adored by her father, loathed by her mother, and ultimately destroyed by that mixed inheritance."

Opening Lines: "Riding down to Port Warwick from Richmond, the train begins to pick up speed on the outskirts of the city, past the tobacco factories with their ever-present haze of acrid, sweetish dust and past the rows of uniformly brown clapboard houses which stretch down the hilly streets for miles, it seems, the hundreds of rooftops all reflecting the pale light of dawn; past the suburban roads still sluggish and sleepy with early morning traffic, and rattling swiftly now over the bridge which separates the last two hills where in the valley below you can see the James River winding beneath its acid-green crust of scum out beside the chemical plants and more rows of clapboard houses and into the woods beyond."

Random Excerpt: "Most people in the midst of disaster have yet one hope that lingers on some misty horizon—the possibility of love, money coming, the assurance that time cures all hurts, no matter how painful. But Loftis, gazing out at the meadow, had no such assurance; his deposit, it seemed, on all of life's happiness had been withdrawn in full and his heart had shriveled within him like a collapsed balloon. He was not philosophical, he had never been trained that way, nor had he ever wanted to be. Emergencies had been things to get shut of quickly and to forget, and because in the past he had always been able to create some gratuitous hope, he had never had to believe in God."

Damn, that's a fine excerpt for being random.

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« Last Edit: November 06, 2008, 07:07:32 PM by pixote »
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Re: November Book Club Options
« Reply #2 on: November 06, 2008, 07:29:52 PM »
Option #3:

Light in August
William Faulkner, 1932
507 pages
Links: Amazon / Powell's / Oprah's Book Club :)

pixote: Hey, so, speaking of Faulkner, here he is.  The Sound of the Fury made my top 20, but either As I Lay Dying or Absalom, Absalom! could easily have been in its place, especially if I had been smart enough to comprehend the latter on the first pass.  So Faulkner is three-for-three with me and I'm definitely ready for more.  Maybe most of you have already read Light in August, but I thought I might as well make sure, given how anxious I am to read this one. But, damn, I wish my copy had the cover above.

Publisher Comments: "One of Faulkner’s most admired and accessible novels, Light in August reveals the great American author at the height of his powers. Lena Grove’s resolute search for the father of her unborn child begets a rich, poignant, and ultimately hopeful story of perseverance in the face of mortality. It also acquaints us with several of Faulkner’s most unforgettable characters, including the Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen, and Joe Christmas, a ragged, itinerant soul obsessed with his mixed-race ancestry. Powerfully entwining these characters’ stories, Light in August vividly brings to life Faulkner’s imaginary South, one of literature’s great invented landscapes, in all of its impoverished, violent, unerringly fascinating glory."

Opening Lines: "Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill toward her, Lena thinks, 'I have come from Alabama: a fur piece. All the way from Alabama a-walking. A fur piece.' Thinking    although I have not been quite a month on the road I am already in Mississippi, further from home than I have ever been before. I am now further from Doane's Mill than I have been since I was twelve years old"

Random Excerpt: "Again on the exact second of the hour McEachern returned the watch to his pocket. "Do you know it now?" he said. The boy did not answer, rigid, erect, holding the open pamphlet before his face. McEachern took the book from between his hands. Otherwise, the boy did not move at all. 'Repeat your catechism,' McEachern said. The boy stared straight at the wall before him. His face was now quite white despite the smooth rich pallor of his skin. Carefully and deliberately McEachern laid the book upon the ledge and took up the strap. He struck ten times. When he finished, the boy stood for a moment longer motionless. He had had no breakfast yet; neither of them had eaten breakfast yet. Then the boy staggered and would have fallen if the man had not caught his arm, holding him up. 'Come,' McEachern said, trying to lead him to the feed box. 'Sit down here.'"

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Re: November Book Club Options
« Reply #3 on: November 06, 2008, 08:04:38 PM »
Option #4:

Lost Horizon
James Hilton, 1933
241 pages
Links: Amazon / Powell's / Blind Monkey Review

pixote: James Hilton seems to be an interesting guy.  I say that without knowing anything about him as a person.  But I've seen the 1939 film version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, which I adore so much that I read, in about an hour, the Hilton novel on which it's based, and I adored that on its own terms, too.  I've also seen Frank Capra's film of Lost Horizon (reportedly classic, though I didn't love it) and Mervyn LeRoy's film of Hilton's Random Harvest (also with Ronald Colman; I imagine the book is much better).  But Hilton also wrote screenplays of his own — namely, those for Camille (1936) and Mrs. Miniver (1944) — and contributed dialogue to Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent.  Despite all that, I never really gave too much thought to reading Lost Horizon until someone told me he thought it had the best first sentence of any book he'd ever read.  I checked out what he meant (see below) and bought the book soon thereafter.  Glancing through, the rest of the prose doesn't really look to be the novel's strong point, but I'm interested all the same.  Fun facts:  Lost Horizon was the first paperback book ever published and the origin of the name Shangri-La.

Blind Monkey Review Excerpt: "Published in 1933, Lost Horizon introduced the world to the Tibetan utopia known as Shangri-La. It is the story of three men and one woman who are kidnapped and taken to a remote and secluded lamasery in the Himalayas. There, these travellers undergo a physical, mental, and spiritual transformation. This story has an amazing timelessness, and could as easily have been written today as it was back in the early 1930’s. The simplest way to put it is that it rings of ‘truth’. The spiritual and intellectual journey of these characters is one that most dream of achieving. A means to shedding the pressures and torment of everyday life to discover a greater understanding of the individual and the world at large."

Opening Lines: "Cigars had burned low, and we were beginning to sample the disillusionment that usually afflicts old school friends who have met again as men and found themselves with less in common than they had believed they had."

Random Excerpt: "He gazed over the edge into the blue-black emptiness. The drop was phantasmal; perhaps as much as a mile. He wondered if he would be allowed to descend it and inspect the valley civilization that had been talked of. The notion of this strange culture-pocket, hidden amongst unknown ranges, and ruled over by some vague kind of theocracy, interested him as a student of history, apart from the curious though perhaps related secrets of the lamasery."

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Re: November Book Club Options
« Reply #4 on: November 07, 2008, 12:12:31 AM »
Option #5:

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
Yukio Mishima, 1963
181 pages
Links: Amazon / Powell's / Literary Acquisitionist Review

pixote: I'm wavering whether I really want to read this book right now.  I leave the choice up to you, though.  The main appeal for me is seeing whether I can make any connection between the novel and this awesome Clann Zu song that borrows the book's English title.  Well, okay, I'm also interested in it as a Mishima novel, having previously read The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (the source of Kon Ichikawa's 1958 film Enjo) and Forbidden Colors (the source of Benoît Jacquot's 1998 film School of Flesh).  Both books were very good, though often a little too emotionally claustrophobic for their own good.  The reviews I've skimmed through make Sailor sounds even more psychologically violent, which scares me a little, but I'm still game if you are.  This book, too, has a film adaptation, incidentally — from 1976, with Sarah Miles and Kris Kristofferson.

Back Cover: "The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea tells of a band of savage thirteen-year-old boys who reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'ojectivity'. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealize the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard their disappointment in him as an act of betrayal on his part and react violently."

Opening Lines: "'Sleep well, dear.' Noboru's mother closed his bedroom door and locked it. What would she do if there were a fire? Let him out first thing - she had promised herself that. But what if the wooden door warped in the heat or paint clogged the keyhole? The window? There was a gravel path below; besides, the second floor of this gangling house was hopelessly high. It was all his own fault. It would never have happened if he hadn't let the chief persuade him to sneak out of the house that night. There had been endless questions afterwards, but he hadn't revealed the chief's name."

Random Excerpt: "He saw them as marvelous gold embroderies leaping off a flat fabric: the naked sailor twisting in the moonlight to confront a horn—the kitten's death mask, grave and fang-bared—its ruby heart . . . gorgeous entities all and absolutely authentic: then Ryuji too was an authentic hero . . . all incidents in the sea, in the sea, under the sea—Noboru felt himself drowning in sleep. 'Happiness,' he thought. 'Happiness that defies description....' He fell asleep."

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Re: November Book Club Options
« Reply #5 on: November 07, 2008, 12:34:25 AM »
Option #6:

The Sweet Hereafter
Russell Banks, 1991
257 pages
Links: Amazon / Powell's / New York Times Review

pixote: Not much to say here.  Basically, I saw the movie and thought, huh, I bet the book is really good, too.  Plus I'm intrigued by imagining the story told through four different narrators.  And I could definitely use a reason to watch Egoyan's film again.

Amazon.com Review: "Atom Egoyan's Oscar-nominated The Sweet Hereafter is a good movie, remarkably faithful to the spirit of Russell Banks's novel of the same name, but Banks's book is twice as good. With the cool logic of accreting snowflakes, his prose builds a world--a small U.S. town near Canada--and peoples it with four vivid, sensitive souls linked by a school-bus tragedy: the bus driver; the widowed Vietnam vet who was driving behind the bus, waving at his kids, when it went off the road; the perpetually peeved negligence lawyer who tries to shape the victims' heartaches into a winning case; and the beauty-queen cheerleader crippled by the crash, whose testimony will determine everyone's fate. We experience the story from inside the heads of the four characters in turn--each knowing things the others don't, each misunderstanding the facts in his or her own way. The method resembles Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Gilbert Sorrentino's stunning Aberration of Starlight, but Banks's achievement is most comparable to John Updike's tales of ordinary small-towners preternaturally gifted with slangy eloquence, psychological insights, and alertness to life's tiniest details."

Opening Lines: "A dog—it was a dog I saw for certain. Or thought I saw. It was snowing pretty hard by then, and you can see things in the snow that aren't there, or aren't exactly there, but you also can't see some of the things that are there, so that by God when you do see something, you react anyhow, erring on the distaff side, if you get my drift. That's my training as a driver, but it's also my temperament as a mother of two grown sons and wife to an invalid, and that way when I'm wrong at least I'm wrong on the side of the angels."

Random Excerpt: "That wasn't what I expected, though. When I first drove up there, the day after the school bus went over, I was astonished by what I saw. Upstate New York, to me, had always been Albany, Love Canal, and Woodstock tossed in; but the was wilderness, practically. Like Alaska. Suddenly, I'm thinking Last of the Mohicans. 'Forest primeval,' I'm thinking. America before the arrival of the white man."

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Re: November Book Club Options
« Reply #6 on: November 07, 2008, 01:05:17 AM »
Option #7:

White Noise
Don DeLillo, 1985
326 pages
Links: Amazon / Powell's / New York Times Review

pixote: Like Light in August, White Noise might be too familiar to the readers here to be a viable book club choice, but I thought I'd check to make sure.  It's arcnyc's #12 book of all time, faceboy's #22, and Thor is also a fan.  Good enough for me.

Amazon.com Review: "J.A.K. Gladney, world-renowned as the living center, the absolute font, of Hitler Studies in North America in the mid-1980s, describes the malaise affecting his town in a superbly ironic and detached manner. But even he fails to mask his disquiet. There is menace in the air, and ultimately it is made manifest: a poisonous cloud--an "airborne toxic event"--unleashed by an industrial accident floats over the town, requiring evacuation. In the aftermath, as the residents adjust to new and blazingly brilliant sunsets, Gladney and his family must confront their own poses, night terrors, self-deceptions, and secrets. DeLillo is at his dark, hilarious best in this 1985 National Book Award winner, a novel that preceded but anticipated the explosion of the Internet, tabloid television, and the dialed-in, wired-up, endlessly accelerated tenor of the culture we live in. He doesn't just describe life in a hypermediated society, he re-creates it. His characters repeat phrases, information, and rumor gleaned from television, radio, and other media sources like people speaking in code. And DeLillo has seeded the book with short gemlike episodes that demand to be read aloud, and that haunt the imagination years after their first reading: a visit to the Most Photographed Barn in America. A plane that nearly falls out of the sky. An hour in a classroom, canonizing Elvis. These vignettes are vivid and unique, yet, like the phrases from television shows that interject themselves, out of context, into Gladney's consciousness, they are strangely unconnected to one another--reflections of the lives DeLillo is showing us we lead."

Opening Lines: "The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus. In single file they eased around the orange I-beam sculpture and moved toward the dormitories. The roofs of the station wagons were loaded down with carefully secured suitcases full of light and heavy clothing; with boxes of blankets, boots and shoes, stationery and books, sheets, pillows, quilts; with rolled-up rugs and sleeping bags; with bicycles, skis, rucksacks, English and Western saddles, inflated rafts. As cars slowed to a crawl and stopped, students sprang out and raced to the rear doors to begin removing the objects inside; the stereo sets, radios, personal computers, small refrigerators and table ranges; the cartons of phonograph records and cassettes; the hairdryers and styling irons; the tennis rackets, soccer balls, hockey and lacrosse sticks, bows and arrows; the controlled substances, the birth control pills and devices; the junk food still in shopping bags—onion-and-garlic chips, nacho things, peanut creme patties, Waffelos and Kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn; the Dum-Dum pops, the Mystic mints."

Random Excerpt: "I want to believe he was not afraid. He accepted death as an experience that flows naturally from life, a wild ride through the forest, as would befit someone known as the Scourge of God. This is how it ended for him, with his attendants cutting off their hair and disfiguring their own faces in barbarian tribute, as the camera pulls back out of the tent and pans across the night sky of the fifth century A.D., clear and uncontaminated, bright-banded with shimmering worlds."

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« Last Edit: November 07, 2008, 01:21:32 AM by pixote »
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Re: November Book Club Options
« Reply #7 on: November 07, 2008, 01:07:52 AM »
Okay, instead of a poll, I'd like you to rate your interest in each title on a scale from 0 to 10.  However, please also take into account the likelihood that you'll actually read any of these books along with the group.  For example, if there's only a 50% chance you're going to have time to read anything over the next few weeks, then the highest score you should give any given book is a 5.

Let me know if you have any questions.  You can post your ratings below or you can send them to me in a private message if you're shy and stuff.

Yay for books!

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FifthCityMuse

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Re: November Book Club Options
« Reply #8 on: November 07, 2008, 06:08:45 AM »
Wow pix...

You certainly don't do things by halves, do you?

I would vote:

Option #1: 7. Looks interesting. I'm a little put off by the excerpts. Still, the story looks fascinating.
Option #2:10. Most keen on this.
Option #3: 9. Probably second.
Option #4: 6. Bottom of the list.
Option #5: 8.
Option #6: 8.
Option #7: 9. Second with Faulkner.

I'll be involved if I can. I may need a little time to get my hands on a copy, but it shouldn't be too much hassle. Between my uni library and the public library I'll be set.

Let me know what the outcome is!

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: November Book Club Options
« Reply #9 on: November 07, 2008, 07:35:59 AM »
1. The Sweet Hereafter (Option #6)
2. The Butcher Boy (Option #1)
3. Lost Horizon (Option #4)
4. Light in August (Option #3)
5. Lie Down in Darkness (Option #2)
6. The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (Option #5)
7. White Noise (Option #7)

 

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