Hey !bookworms
I figured if I can spend 5-6 hours a week watching reruns of old sitcoms, i might as well spend an hour on a bookclub in rdrama.
I have a few conditions though
Barred:
B.1. No classics (no Steinbeck, Harper, Borges, Hemingway, Conan Doyle etc). Doing a bookclub posts on their works is, frankly, well just circlejerking.
B.2. No modern hipster "I-went-to-Private-College" author (Franzen, DeLillo, Yanigihara, DFW, etc).
B.3. Goes without saying - "I'm too smart ie a neckbeard" type obnoxious people who recommend textbooks
Not Barred:
N.B.1. Really good fiction. Examples:
N.B.1.1 Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver - A recasting of "David Copperfield," narrated by an Appalachian boy whose wise, unwavering voice relates his encounters with poverty, addiction, institutional failures and moral collapse–and his efforts to conquer them.
N.B.1.2 Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance
N.B.2. Really good biographies of interesting people written by really smart authors - Presidents (the lesser known ones especially), Industrialists (Vanderbilt, Joseph Kennedy Sr.), Generals (Omar Bradley, Nimitz, King etc), Scientists (Vannevar Bush).
N.B.3. Science Fiction (must be smartly written, the concept maybe dumb and unscientific). Think more "Story of your life" by Chiang and Jurassic Park by Crichton than whatever the heck Dune (too much on the nose) or Three Body Problem (trying to cover up lazy writing style with science) is.
N.B.4. I really don't want to but... History and General Nonfiction. Keep in mind Rule B.1 and B.3 still applies. No lame books like Sapiens or Guns, Germs and Steel. Neither are books like "Introduction to XYZ. An objective approach". Leave your autism out of this.
cc: @nuclearshill and @binturong (to pin this for 24 hours on /h/lit )
Edit: BARRED ON PUBLIC DEMAND: ANY NOVEL WITH 250+ PAGE.
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I suggest we read Sun Tzu the art of war, and then discuss how it can be applied to trolling people on the internet. Us !ghosts have already read this, but we will read it again.
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Actually unironically a good idea. I've needed to read that for too long. Alternatively, Dale Carnegie so people here learn how to interact with people a bit better irl.
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Am not kidding I would actually be down. Bought this book 7 years ago and still haven't read it.
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We need short stories or novellas. We don't have the attention span for anything longer.
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Agreed, something with fewer than 200 pages. Chekhov has great novellas and short stories for instance and they follow simple plots.
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I am in for this I need something new to read that isn't too long
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Honestly you guys should just read one short story a week to ensure this even happens. Like start with Carver's Cathedral or something then go from there.
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Mention some of your favorites.
However, you should keep in mind that there are several novels of 300+ pages which are so small in dimension (6X8 inches) that if you downloaded a kindle version and read it in a macbook the page count would get cut in half or even more.
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Also
He's among the best 20th century authors and his stories are great, especially the ones in Ficciones, I also loved his poems from El Hacedor
However I can't attest for the quality of translations, I read them in Spanish.
I think you should veto long novels, works like Moby Peepee are great but dramatards wont read it.
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I nominate Kafka's Metamorphosis
@Aevann can you please pin @ObamaBinLaden thread?
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hillbilly is our word you fricking racist bigot you can't say it
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Thank u for taking the torch, looking forward to seeing what gets chosen also loving the weekly basis bit
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It's a classic so it's against your rules. But "Notes from the underground" is short and relevant enough that it could actually lead to a successful bookclub.
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I have got the Wool trilogy to read. The books the one actually good Apple TV show Silo is based at on.
I nominate that.
Or if something short everyone should read The Last Question by Isaac Asimov and then we can talk about it.
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I hadn't heard about the wool trilogy till now. Nice. Will read up about it over the next week. Sounds interesting.
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Is Joan of Arc by Twain considered a classic?
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A serious red flag indeed
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