You've made your suggestions, now it's time to place your votes. Not The Bees! is leading this effort, so he gets to determine when the voting period is over and will spin up a new thread with that book in it. I'll leave this thread up as a running "suggest a book" and, with Bees!' help, new choices will be added and selection will be removed.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] Women - Charles Bukowski An alcoholic writer looks back on his dating life and recalls specific women he dated and why he didn't like them. Probably Bukowskis best and most humorous and self-pitying work. It's dark, it's funny, and it's the kind of story some bar bum would slump his arm over your shoulder and tell you after a few too many Jim Beam and sodas.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] V by Thomas Pynchon Pynchon's debut is a disturbing dream-within a dream-within a dream that created his trademark platform of not making sense while being utterly magnetic in his writing, story style, and humour. It's about 500 pages, but if you get into Pynchon he is tough to put down as like most of his writing its wonderous with imagination and detail.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] I have not read this book, but I'm going to throw Starship Troopers into the contender ring. Heinlein has a very distinct writing style and I've been looking forward to each book of his I can get my hands on. Out of all of the books I've read, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and Time Enough for Love for example, they share a common theme of science fiction as well as they tend to explore wider sociopolitical issues in amusing ways. Have a dictionary close by.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn (soon to be released in cinemas) A man becomes the prime suspect in his wife's disappearance, after she goes missing from their family home. Told from the perspective of the husband (present time) and wife (days leading up to her disappearance). Keeps you guessing throughout
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] I'll second Starship Troopers. It's a short book you can get through in one evening. While it's set in a sci-fi world where the human race is fighting an alien species, it's primarily a framework for an alternate political system that would solve a lot of our current problems and create a whole host of new ones.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] I'll nominate Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee. The Booker Prize winning novel about an aging Professor who has an affair with one of his students that results in terrible and shocking consequences.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller. Semi-autobiographical. A weirdo moves to France to start a writing career, has lots of sex, evolves own philosophy. Some of the best writing ever put to paper. One of those few classics that are really as good as the hype. Tons of stuff to discuss and argue; real meat and bones. Bonus: this was banned for obscenity and the focal point of a landmark free speech court case.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] Don't Tell Mum I Work On The Rigs: She Thinks I'm A Piano Player In A Whorehouse - Paul Carter An English-born Australian working in the oil industry across several continents shares stories of what the work is like. It's a fairly short read (one evening), and is fairly simple in writing style. It's also story based (however, unlike Tucker's books he uses proper sentences and paragraphs rather than specific times to recount events). I found it quite funny, and read it cover to cover in one sitting.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt. Won the Pulitzer for Fiction. It's the story of a boy and a painting. Great read, and there's a lot going on in it to discuss, especially the end. Gone Girl is also a really fun read, so I'll second that, and the movie comes out shortly.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] Love the idea of a Book Club. I'll throw a couple of suggestions in the ring I've read Gone Girl and just finished The Goldfinch and I think either would offer good discussion points, although I didn't like The Goldfinch as much as others seem to (and it is LLLLOOOOONNNNNGGGGG). Based on the synopsis, Women also sounds interesting. I am currently reading What Alice Forgot and, while I am not finished, I know the concept and would love to discuss it. "Alice Love is twenty-nine, crazy about her husband, and pregnant with her first child. So imagine Alice’s surprise when she comes to on the floor of a gym and is whisked off to the hospital where she discovers the honeymoon is truly over — she’s getting divorced, she has three kids and she’s actually 39 years old. Alice must reconstruct the events of a lost decade, and find out whether it’s possible to reconstruct her life at the same time. She has to figure out why her sister hardly talks to her, and how is it that she’s become one of those super skinny moms with really expensive clothes. Ultimately, Alice must discover whether forgetting is a blessing or a curse, and whether it’s possible to start over."
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] The Martian, by Andy Weir. Astronaut left behind on Mars has to survive. Sort of a modern day Robinson Crusoe. The writing is captivating and the astronaut's journals are hilarious.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] The Drunken Papers: A Memoir - by iczorro. A mans story about the trials and tribulations of visiting an internet message board after drinking a few too many Appletinis and feeling just a whisker too emotional.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] Redeployment by Phil Klay This is a collection of 12 short stories set in Iraq or in the aftermath. There has been a lot of acclaimed literature written about the wars in Afghanistan and and Iraq the past few years (Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain, The Good Soldiers and Thank You for Your Service by David Finkel [one of my all-time favorite books], The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, Fives and Twenty-Fives by Michael Pitre [just out for about a month now]), but Redeployment has been on my shelf for a while. I have seen/heard excerpts, and it hooks pretty good. Here is one. This seems timely with the gears of war turning again, and I know we have service members here on the board, so first hand knowledge would add another level to this. And I know we are only supposed to give one nomination, but I will also throw out Deliverance by James Dickey. I have always seen it thrown around as being awesome, and I have been reading some of his poetry lately and it is top notch stuff. "Falling" by James Dickey.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] Get your suggestions in quick, as I'll be adding a poll to this thread shortly for you guys/gals to decide which book you want to do. I'll probably let everyone select 2 choices (thinking that everyone will want to vote for their own suggestions by default) but hopefully the second vote will be the deciding one for the group. We'll see how it goes.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] I'll second this. It appears at first blush to be a moving sports' memoir, but I see it potentially being a satire about modern American life, referencing race, academia, and persecution. Though it isn't the longest tome, I think there's a lot in there to digest.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] A no on Starship Troopers unless it is utterly different than the shitfest movie of the same name. Crap dialogue, high school drama class acting and blatant plot points fail to inspire. On a more positive note, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John LeCarre. It's a spy novel lifted to literature without showy writing or pedantic nonsense. A study of trust and betrayal and the meaning of friendship on multiple levels.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] The movie intentionally pisses on the book. It's absolutely NOTHING like it, I hate that movie so much I would bury it with Hitler, the book is a classic. Forget not: Heinlein also wrote The Puppet Masters, which is the origin for Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. He knows how to write intelilligent sci-fi.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] You've made your suggestions, now it's time to select one of them. Go back to the first post and cast your vote. Not The Bees! is leading this effort, so he gets to determine when the voting period is over and will spin up a new thread with that book in it. I'll leave this thread up as a running "suggest a book" and, with Bees!' help, new choices will be added and selection will be removed.
Re: 2014-October Book Club Thread - [book tbd] They have virtually nothing in common. Most of the dialogue in the book takes the form of debates on politics and military ethics. There's hardly any action, and the war in the novel is placed in the background. There's no fancy explosions or dramatic battle scenes (except for the first chapter). The book is about an alternate semi-utopian political system, and how it addresses civil problems in the period it was written (1950s).