Future suggestions

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Future suggestions

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1petermcelwee
jul 3, 2014, 9:14 am

Hi all,

Now that another month is coming to the end I'd like to propose some future suggestions. I have three books I can recommend, each of which is a little unusual but I assure you a great read and they aren't too long (unlike American Gods which is as thick as they come). The books are:

White Tiger by Aravind Adiga - Set in India this is the story of Balram who recounts how he became an entrepreneur. This book is nothing about business and all about his time as a driver for a very rich Indian family. I loved the book as the character of Balram is totally fascinating, it told me fascinating things about Indian society and the story totally grips you.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - Tells the story of Santiago, a shepherd in Spain who goes on a journey looking to find his destiny. Meets interesting people along the way and the book is full of great advice about discovering who you are and your path in life

The Jetstream of Success by Julian Pencilliah - Unusual book; half memoir / half self-help book in which the author uses moments from his own life to illustrate how to look at life differently. Full of great advice on how to make the most of who you are.

2aulsmith
jul 3, 2014, 10:44 am

I'd be for a non-fiction choice.

3Felurian
jul 6, 2014, 12:47 am

The Alchemist sounds interesting and I've heard a little chatter to that effect.

I'll pass on the third, the first . . . maybe, but it's a long shot. Probably not.

4timspalding
jul 6, 2014, 1:46 am

Pickety might be a good choice.

5RuthieD
jul 7, 2014, 4:03 pm

Nothing too worthy... I had to give up on the Penelopiad:-(

6kiparsky
jul 8, 2014, 2:33 am

>4 timspalding: It's pretty dense reading, and a lot of pages. Definitely not light reading, though to give him his due, the writing is admirably clear considering the difficulty of the material.

By way of nonfiction, I'd nominate two history books: We All Got History and A Midwife's Tale. Both are similar, in that each looks to uncover a lot of history from the writings of one member of a marginalized community. In the case of We All Got History, the source text is a 50-year weather journal kept by a free black man in the American North from the mid 1850s to the early 1900s. The latter draws from the diary of a midwife in the immediately post-revolutionary US. I've read the former and was quite impressed both by the writing and by the scholarship, and the latter comes highly recommended on both counts as well.

7RuthieD
jul 8, 2014, 5:07 am

I'd vote for We all got history. Over here in the UK I'm bombarded with midwives tales ....we're going through a ye olde worlde phase ,with midwifery tales especially.

8RuthieD
jul 8, 2014, 5:14 am

But then on checking , finding a copy over here would be nigh on impossible. There's not a spare copy on Bookmooch.

9barbara.kilpatri2558
jul 13, 2014, 6:22 pm

I, being brand new to your group, the above titles are sound like perfect reads, thank you, for the participating.

10dave94703
jul 17, 2014, 1:26 pm

Peter's list is too find-yourself mystical for me. If we were really heading in that direction, I'd rather do something by a great writer with a more critical mind. Who comes to mind is Mishima (actor, body builder, closet homosexual, hari-kari committer, nominated for 3 Nobels and would have clearly gotten one if it weren't for his intense right-wing politics), but his masterpiece, Sea of Fertility, is a massive 4 volumes. Anyone else have a more congenial introspector? Anyone know a less imposing Mishima work?

11MonarchVal
jul 17, 2014, 11:44 pm

It's Thomas Piketty and the book title is Capital in the Twenty-First Century and I could go with it.

12cpg
jul 18, 2014, 1:09 pm

I think we should do a double-header: Piketty and Peggotty--Capital and Copperfield.

14cpg
Bewerkt: jul 18, 2014, 6:13 pm

>13 _Zoe_:

A classic like David Copperfield has options for those who don't want to read 350,000 words:

Comics/Graphics Novels

  • Classics Illustrated, 48 pages
  • Barron's Graphic Classics, 48 pages
  • Graphics Dickens, 64 pages


Cheat Sheets

  • SparkNotes, 64 pages
  • Cliffs Notes, 80 pages
  • Monarch Notes, 92 pages


Or just rent a video! 😀

ETA: Larger emoticon!

15.Monkey.
jul 18, 2014, 4:17 pm

>14 cpg: Given that those sort of things are kept separate from the proper one, due to the "cocktail party rule," it seems to follow that people couldn't really have a proper discussion about it if they all read/watched different things, that left out much of the detail.

16dave94703
jul 20, 2014, 1:38 pm

Mishima's short stories are famously collected in Death in Midsummer (1960), widely available. Two stand out, I think: "The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love", about beauty, sublime love and passion, and "$3 Million Yen", about a conservative young couple who work in a department store but make ends meet by having sex before an aristocratic audience. Sold myself on it, book is in the mail.

17Felurian
jul 21, 2014, 7:38 pm

That sounds interesting, Dave.

18amanda4242
jul 24, 2014, 2:53 pm

Death in Midsummer is an excellent collection. I especially liked the title story and "Patriotism."

19RuthieD
jul 26, 2014, 8:00 pm

So has the August read been decided yet ?

20dave94703
aug 2, 2014, 5:29 pm

cpg: One a Seinfeld episode, George watches Breakfast at Tffany's to prepare for a book club discussion to avoid reading the book, and keeps asking what the other members are talking about when they explore gay men/straight women relationships.

21cpg
aug 3, 2014, 11:26 pm

Just to be clear, the smiley face on #14 was to suggest that I was joking.

My current pet peeve about unfaithfulness of video to text is the BBC's "Father Brown". What a pity.

22IreneF
aug 4, 2014, 3:55 am

I would like to do this again. I think I have a copy of The White Tiger. I would never read Paul Coelho. Don't really do the self-help thing. The only Mishima I've got is The Sound of Waves. Plus I'm beginning to dislike short stories.

I would definitely go for a public domain classic. I would like to read more 19th c. fiction, plus I can read it on line. Henry James? Edith Wharton?

23dave94703
aug 6, 2014, 2:26 pm

I get a general sense here that we'd lose a lot of participants if we went much further beyond short stories than novellas, at least as long as we remain so highbrow. (Graham Greene, or someone else in a classy but entertaining genre, might be a compromise.) Penelopeiad was a two-hour read.

24dave94703
aug 6, 2014, 2:27 pm

cpg: sometimes it works the other way. I often find film takes on Philip Dick novels to be better than the original.

25whitewavedarling
aug 11, 2014, 4:11 pm

I read The Alchemist, and wouldn't read that again, or anything else by Coelho, but I have been meaning to read The White Tiger. I'm always up for trying nonfiction in general, though the self-help avenue would probably be the least likely to draw my eye.

If we were to go the short story route, I'd recommend Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House, which I just read, and was blown away by...far more than I expected based on his longer fictions I'd read! For autobiography, I'd recommend I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings--I feel like a lot of folks talk about reading that one, but never get around to it, as I didn't for years and years. Novel-wise, I'd probably recommend something by Amanda Eyre Ward or Gloria Naylor...lots to talk about, but not long or difficult reads.

>24 dave94703:, I agree that the film takes on Dick works can be more fascinating than the texts, at least for re-readers/re-viewers!

26Felurian
aug 11, 2014, 11:55 pm

Anyone up for something by David Foster Wallace? Infinite Jest or Girl With Curious Hair?

Maybe Jack Cady's Inagehi? https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jack-cady/inagehi/

27LucindaLibri
sep 13, 2014, 12:28 pm

Not sure what the future of OLOB might be, but this set of predictions about what I might like based on what I liked in High School rang pretty true to me (and might explain some of the differing preferences) . . . Not sure if it will help the group pick a book, but might provide some enjoyment or discussion anyway.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariannarebolini/books-you-should-read-now-based-on-your-...

28whitewavedarling
sep 13, 2014, 2:36 pm

I'm fascinated by the fact that they paired Of Mice and Men with The Road, the first being one of my least favorite books (though I like Steinbeck), and the second being one of my favorites...

29.Monkey.
sep 13, 2014, 2:39 pm

>28 whitewavedarling: I think there's a lot of seriously ...iffy pairings there.

30LucindaLibri
sep 13, 2014, 9:07 pm

Most of them worked well for me . . . though some of the items in the "high school" column were written LONG after I was in high school . . . so maybe some generational differences :)