Author Topic: March Book Club Options  (Read 7529 times)

FifthCityMuse

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Re: March Book Club Options
« Reply #10 on: February 24, 2009, 07:08:40 PM »
In order of preference, for me it looks like:

A House For Mr Biswas
The Good Soldier
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
The Man Within

It doesn't look like I have access to the other two at this stage, I'm sad to say. That said, if that's what people want, go for it, and I'll miss this round out.

saltine

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Re: March Book Club Options
« Reply #11 on: February 24, 2009, 07:14:00 PM »
Limited access, as Muse, but I did check on audiobooks.  The Moviegoer is the most widely available, even through lending (as well as purchase).  I didn't spend a lot of time checking the others, but some titles are available through audiobook online sources.

Could you, w@w, please list the story titles in the Cheever collection so I can check on that availability as an audiobook?
Texan Down Under

worm@work

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Re: March Book Club Options
« Reply #12 on: February 24, 2009, 07:16:24 PM »
Limited access, as Muse, but I did check on audiobooks.  The Moviegoer is the most widely available, even through lending (as well as purchase).  I didn't spend a lot of time checking the others, but some titles are available through audiobook online sources.

Could you, w@w, please list the story titles in the Cheever collection so I can check on that availability as an audiobook?

Sure although there are a ton of titles.. it's a really big collection.

Stories included in the collection

    * "Goodbye, My Brother"
    * "The Common Day"
    * "The Enormous Radio"
    * "O City of Broken Dreams"
    * "The Hartleys"
    * "The Sutton Place Story"
    * "The Summer Farmer"
    * "Torch Song"
    * "The Pot of Gold"
    * "Clancy in the Tower of Babel"
    * "Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor"
    * "The Season of Divorce"
    * "The Chaste Clarissa"
    * "The Cure"
    * "The Superintendent"
    * "The Children"
    * "The Sorrows of Gin"
    * "O Youth and Beauty!"
    * "The Day the Pig Fell into the Well"
    * "The Five-Forty-Eight"
    * "Just One More Time"
    * "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill"
    * "The Bus to St. James's"
    * "The Worm in the Apple"
    * "The Trouble of Marcie Flint"
    * "The Bella Lingua"
    * "The Wrysons"
    * "The Country Husband"
    * "The Duchess"
    * "The Scarlet Moving Van"
    * "Just Tell Me Who It Was"
    * "Brimmer"
    * "The Golden Age"
    * "The Lowboy"
    * "The Music Teacher"
    * "A Woman Without a Country"
    * "The Death of Justina"
    * "Clementina"
    * "Boy in Rome"
    * "A Miscellany of Characters That Will Not Appear"
    * "The Chimera"
    * "The Seaside Houses"
    * "The Angel of the Bridge"
    * "The Brigadier and the Golf Widow"
    * "A Vision of the World"
    * "Reunion"
    * "An Educated American Woman"
    * "Metamorphoses"
    * "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin"
    * "Montraldo"
    * "The Ocean"
    * "Marito in Cittą"
    * "The Geometry of Love"
    * "The Swimmer"
    * "The World of Apples"
    * "Another Story
    * "Percy"
    * "The Forth Alarm"
    * "Artemis, the Honest Well Digger"
    * "Three Stories"
    * "The Jewels of the Cabots"

p.s. Thank you wikipedia :).

saltine

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Re: March Book Club Options
« Reply #13 on: February 24, 2009, 07:20:15 PM »
Thank you...that's what I suspected.  The audiobooks available for Cheever short stories feature 8-10 stories of titles from that long list.  I haven't yet found the complete list in any one audiobook format.  It's probably out there, but I haven't found it.  The one at iTunes looks reasonable.  It possibly features his most widely regarded short stories.  (btw, not a Cheever fan, but probably because of limited reading of his work.)
Texan Down Under

worm@work

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Re: March Book Club Options
« Reply #14 on: February 24, 2009, 07:22:00 PM »
Thank you...that's what I suspected.  The audiobooks available for Cheever short stories feature 8-10 stories of titles from that long list.  I haven't yet found the complete list in any one audiobook format.  It's probably out there, but I haven't found it.  The one at iTunes looks reasonable.  It possibly features his most widely regarded short stories.  (btw, not a Cheever fan, but probably because of limited reading of his work.)

No problem :). I have no idea if I am a Cheever fan or not! I've only heard the one story on NPR but he seems well-regarded and amazon seems to think that if I like Raymond Carver (which I do), I should like him... Then again, amazon has failed me in the past!

FifthCityMuse

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Re: March Book Club Options
« Reply #15 on: February 24, 2009, 07:27:39 PM »
I actually do have access to twelve of the Cheever stories on audiobook if that is chosen.

pixote

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Re: March Book Club Options
« Reply #16 on: February 25, 2009, 01:41:00 AM »
The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
Short stories don't much interest me.  As a rule.  Of the few by Cheever that I've chanced across, none really made an impression.  I haven't read the "The Swimmer", but the film adaptation was awful/awkward enough that I'm not sure I want to.  Neither the opening line nor the excerpt here did much for me, but, to be fair, I didn't really read them with an open mind.  I'm going to be honest and put the chances of my even trying to read this one at 1%.  Maybe if TC Boyle hadn't mentioned suburban angst... *shudder*

The Man Within by Graham Greene
You had me at "this is too melodramatic and is definitely his weakest book."  But the 224-page length offsets that a little.  Then again, I've only read one book by Greene (The Quiet American), so I feel like there are a bunch of other titles I shuld be reading before this one — for example, The Comedian, which already sits on my shelf, unread.  I'll put my chances of trying to read this one at 5%.  The excerpts missed an opportunity to bump up that percentage.  Maybe if Amazon had let me Look Inside...

A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
Pro: I've been meaning to read this forever.  Con: I don't already own it.  Pro: I really liked A Bend in the River.  Con: 576 pages.  Pro: Naipaul's quote about the book is wonderful.  Con: Don't love the opening lines.  Pro: The semi-random excerpt is better.  Con: It's a comedy of manners, apparently.  Hmm, tricky.  I really do want to read this one, but I'm worried it's going to be another Light in August (damn you, Modern Library Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century list!).  I'll put my chances of trying to read this one at 50%.  Even money bet!

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Another title from that Modern Library list, though this one I've already read — and already been disappointed by.  Given the title, I wasn't really looking for existentialism, or at least not this brand of existentialism.  Maybe it's supposed to be distancing.  Well, okay then, I was successfully distanced, mission accomplished.  But since I do already own this one and since I am curious to revisit it after a very unlikely person called it their favorite book ever, I'll put my chances of trying to read this one at 20%.  If I'm to be trusted, this is the book at its best:  "Stanley and I part even more cordially than we met.  It is a stratospheric cordiality such as can only make further meetings uneasy."

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
Another title from that Modern Library list!  I started reading this once, got distracted just a chapter or two in, and haven't made it back since.  It was a promising beginning, even though it was way more Merchant-Ivory than I was hoping.  I think I wanted more solidering or something.  Stupid titles.  Instead it's about, as Graham Greene says on the back cover, the facade of the "English 'gentleman'", a subject which interests me only slightly more than suburban angst.  Check that.  Maybe less.  But I need to overcome these fears of mine ('cept for the clowns one; that's not fear; that's applied logic), and I already own this book, and it's pretty short, so I'll put the chances of my trying to read this one at 90%.

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle
You had me at The 400 Blows.  And I've actually read some of Doyle's short stories and, despite being short stories, they're not bad.  Plus his books make solid moviefilms.  This title had by far my favorite semi-random excerpt of any of the books.  If I had the novel sitting here, I'd probably start reading it right now.  As is, I read a few longer excerpts at Amazon, and they damped my enthusiasm a little, but they also told me that this looks to be a super fast read.  Which is a plus.  I'll say there's a 70% chance of my trying to read this one.

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oneaprilday

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Re: March Book Club Options
« Reply #17 on: February 25, 2009, 11:55:13 AM »
The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
Short stories don't much interest me.  As a rule.  Of the few by Cheever that I've chanced across, none really made an impression.  I haven't read the "The Swimmer", but the film adaptation was awful/awkward enough that I'm not sure I want to. 

Don't let the film version sway you! It's a pretty great story. It's suburban angst only sort of - there's so much in it besides that.

pixote

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Re: March Book Club Options
« Reply #18 on: February 25, 2009, 12:27:58 PM »
2%:)

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alexarch

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Re: March Book Club Options
« Reply #19 on: February 25, 2009, 12:38:06 PM »
Skim?