Group Read, Jan and Feb 2024: Nominations

Another year beckons... Please nominate up to two books you would like to have as our Group Reads to kick off 2024, and second as many nominated books as you like.

I'll close the nominations in around a week.

I just got back from Rome and now I have COVID so I am going to nominate Death in Rome by Wolfgang Koeppen. And I'll also nominate Robert Coover, Pricksongs and Descants, which looks very weird.

I'll second Death in Rome.

And yes, Pricksongs and Descants is indeed very weird. I can't say that I understood all of the stories, but I liked the writing in parts. Maybe someday I'll do a re-read, along with the original story/fable. Not anytime soon though.

I'll nominate The Life of Insects and The Bitter Glass. I have them out from the library but don't think I'll get to them this month.

Second The Life of Insects

I will second Death In Rome as I can borrow it on archive.org. My physical library has none of these books!

There are two seconded books - Death in Rome by Wolfgang Koeppen and The Life of Insects by Victor Pelevin. These will be our group reads for January and February respectively.

Until then, Happy Holidays to all.

I just looked up Death In Rome to see where I could fit in alongside other January challenges and found that it is book three in the Trilogy of Failure. That sounds cheery! As it was written in the 1950s by a German author, I can imagine it will have an an air of despair, bitterness, melancholy, defeatism, sorrow, rage, possibly hope for the future - I cannot imagine how it would have been to live in post-war Germany.

>8 JayneCM: from memory the novel revolves around a German family each of whom represent different aspects of postwar Germany. I quite liked it and gave it 4/5.