Visited your book club list, is that and either or or do you have to read the whole lot? I would never be able to do all that and my current reading, although re-reading Adams would be interesting, as is Gibsons Neuromancer, which I tried once. I did also read an Adams books that involved dogs, can't remember the name. He always struck me as a bit out there as an author.
Ooh! I read that one. Once when I was fifteen (couldn’t really understand it then) then again in my late 20’s. I kept having to refer to the family tree along the way since plenty of generations are captured over the course of 100 years. The only other book I read that captures the evolution of the years so beautifully in this way is Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres. So it’s a fantastic book and can get abstract in places with exceptional incidents you may not have thought about. I think I really adored that great great great grandma from the 1st generation. haha.
No, you don't have to read anything you don't want to. But the 'poll' shows which book has been chosen for this month's selection: Watership Down. I believe @EFMingo intends for the discussion to start on 20 July. There is only one book chosen per month. If you want to get in on that month's discussion, then read that book. If it doesn't appeal to you or you don't have time, just wait till another month comes along. There are no requirements other than reading the book that will be discussed that month.
@jannert stated it pretty perfectly. My goal is to do just one book a month for the book club, and the poll is to decide which out of the given month's selections for the poll we shall read. You are more than welcome to join. My true goal of this book club isn't to review how people feel about the book however. Opinions are welcome, but my intended purpose is to look at the books as a writer, focusing on their strengths and weaknesses in their employment of the elements of style. I try to vary genre selections so one doesn't over-power the rest. I try to place five to six prompting discussion questions for each month's novel/collection discussion which split between literary discussions and ones focused on the craft of the work. We'd be glad to have more response! I felt that way about Adams the first time I read Watership as well, but last I remember it worked fairly well. I'm excited to read it with a more developed goal in mind to see just what made it a widely excepted work.
The plague dogs.. its not as good as watership, not even close... likewise with Shardlake which was about a bear
I have to admit when I read Watership years ago (I think it was right after it was published) it didn't engage me at all. In fact, I don't think I finished it. However, THIS time it's grabbed me totally. I'm still only about halfway through. I don't know if I'll have been able to absorb and analyse it sufficiently by the time the discussion rolls around, but I hope so. I'm not keeping the prompting questions in mind as I read the first time, because that would spoil the story for me. But I'm a fast reader. I'll go through it a second time with the questions in mind. Only 12 more days to go!
I also tried Neuromancer once. Got annoyed by the "beat poetry" prose halfway through and gave up. Snow Crash is a much better cyberpunk book. Can't deny his influence on the genre though.
Well, sounds reasonable, I'll try and keep an eye on it in the future. Well, being an all inclusive society member, I might give him a try. Thanks, keep it in mind. That's it, although I don't recall much about the book. Did he write anything that wasn't animal-centric? Never got that far. Snow Crash was Stephensen wasn't it, I have that book too somewhere.
If I've learned anything over the years—one thing for sure. If you disliked a supposedly worthy book in your youth or early adulthood, and you're now at the other end of the age timeline, try reading it again. It's amazing how views change.
You don't even have to be at the other end. Give a book a decade on the shelf that you thought was bad that is supposedly great. I've finished a lot recently that I never could make it through previously, even liked some of them. Experience in life changes a lot in a person's perspective and thinking.
The kinds of books I've been reading since the start of this year are quite bizarre, for me anyway. But you know what? After a couple of decades of finding reading novels less emotionally rewarding than I used to, suddenly my intense pleasure at reading fiction has returned. For the most part, because I'm trying books I've never even heard of before, but they are all coming from 'yesteryear.' I've read lots of new and very worthy books over the past couple of decades, going to book festivals, listening to literary authors reading their work. It's been great fun, but I've always felt distanced from the work, to some extent. Something's been missing, and I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe I feel these books lack soul? Too clinically polished? Written with an eye to how they will be received, rather than out of the author's simple joy of creating something new and different, and to hell with the consequences? All I know is suddenly I'm re-engaged. And loving it.
Recently read the First Law trilogy, very good well worth a read. Now reading The Stand, a great book though very long. I haven't read it in ten years, so it's like starting from scratch as I've forgotten most of it.
I've never been a huge Stephen King fan, but I like the way he tied together so many of his books via the Dark Tower. Completely unrelated to the above: I recently remembered that I've had the entire Laura Ingalls Wilder 'Little House' series since I was a kid, and never read a single one. So I started reading Little House in the Big Woods to see what I've been missing all this time. It's just about the most boring thing I've ever read. Apparently there are millions of fans who disagree with me, but it was tough to get through.
If Beale Street Could Talk. It's my first James Baldwin, and so far so good. I haven't gotten into the crux of the story yet, but the style is beautiful.
I finished Beale Street. Wow. What a great time to read that book. It's one thing to acknowledge my white privilege. It's another to see through the eyes of someone without it. I've been hassled, I've been arrested, I've had my rights violated, but I don't know what it's like to be systematically oppressed. This book gave me a better window into that world than I've had before. I will definitely be reading more James Baldwin.
About to start on Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon. Not quite the road trip novel I was looking for (it's non-fiction for a start) but it'll have to do until I can find something closer to what I want.
