Some time ago, FearfulJesuit had the excellent idea of starting a monthly book club. Something a bit more slow-paced and low-pressure than the 52-book challenge, perfect for people who just don't have the time to read a book a week but still want to participate in a reading challenge. Sadly, the thread sort of died, but there has been interest in giving it another try, so I have volunteered to organize it this time around.
And I do mean organize. There will be order! There will be lists! There will be spreadsheets!
And there will also be a
HabitRPG challenge related to this thread, so if you haven't joined us over there, feel free to sign up. It's very useful and we have a guild (the Twelfth Bay) which you can find on the public guilds page.
And now, to the organization! The books will be suggested by members in a rotation. I will suggest the first books, as the founder of the new club, and I will ask for volunteers to suggest the next ones. Why am I using plural words, you ask? Because not everyone will be interested in the same types of books. Therefore, each volunteer will be asked to submit TWO different suggestions, and the books must be from different genres. There must always be at least one option which is friendly towards people who do not like to read about violence and gore.
-=Schedule and Rules=--Suggestions for the following month must be submitted by the 20th, to give people some time to find a copy before the month begins.
-If the month's volunteer fails to submit their suggestions by the 20th, we'll skip them and move on to the next one. In emergency situations where for some reason no one makes a suggestion by the 25th, Sappho will step in with something to keep things going.
-Suggestions must come with author name and a little information about the book: genre(s) and a few key words to give people an idea what they'll be getting it to.
-Reading begins on the 1st. Try to resist the temptation to start sooner - it's more fun if we all do it together.
-Discussion about the current book can begin anytime, but it must be in spoilers until the month ends.
-After the month ends, open discussion begins.
-All discussion must be friendly and civil. Sappho reserves the right to declare any argument/disagreement/discussion FINISHED which is no longer productive, at which point users may take the discussion elsewhere if they wish. Anyone not respecting said declarations may be banned from the club. Hopefully this will not be necessary!
-Members are welcome (and encouraged) to read both books per month if they have the time and the desire.
-=List Of Suggesters=-•Sappho (August)
•Yoink (September)
•Draxis (October)
•Pufferfish (November)
•Vector (December)
•Loud Whispers (January)
•Dutchling (February)
•Objective (March)
-=The Books=-August (Sappho):
1. The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm (Nancy Farmer): Adventure, Sci-Fi (future technology but not space), Africa, Detectives, Magic (Spiritual). Award-winning Young Adult literature. Very unique story and setting. One of my favorite books, I've read it many times.
2. John Dies at the End (David Wong): Comedy, Horror, Paranormal. Contains a lot of descriptions of violence and gore, but all with a laugh-out-loud funny tone. Think Shaun of the Dead. Extremely compelling, I finished this one in two days despite it being fairly lengthy.
The Wizards and The Warriors by Hugh Cook.
A great fantasy novel, and the beginning of a great fantasy series. Great all-round, really.
Takes a very different approach to the genre... I only wish the series was commercially successful enough to run for its intended length. That said, the ten books that were written and published are well worth reading, and there's no feeling of things being left unfinished.
Each book in the series can be read as a standalone story, each of them intersecting over a particularly turbulent patch of history, but I figured I'd choose the first book just for the sake of neatness. Also it's most likely tied for my favourite (with book 4) and contains slightly less... raunchiness. I think. Been a while since I read them both.
and
Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde.
Not sure quite what to classify this as. Fiction? Adventure? *shrug* Last I checked there was meant to be a sequel coming out, but I'm not sure if it's happened yet.
I'd read and enjoyed a couple of Jasper Fforde's books before, but in this case I'd never heard of it and was just searching an airport bookstore for something to read on the plane. Pretty sure I read most of this during the flight with no real idea what to expect, and I then read it again. And again. Whilst on holiday in a foreign country, I was still engrossed in this book.
Don't want to give anything away but it is very good, and a novel take on a genre most of us probably love.
The Things they Carried, by Tim O'Brien. It's a very well-done, somewhat inaccurate autobiography O'Brien's experience in the Vietnam War, but with frequent digressions into more meta but related topics which I won't really describe because of spoilers. He manages to do this in a non-affected and meaningful way, and it would be worth reading as a good war story even without them, for people who are into that. Unsurprisingly, this one is pretty violent, even somewhat disturbing in a sort of surreal way. It's also a very short book, less than a finger thick, and I would recommend reading it twice - some of the things talked about in the later parts put the earlier ones in a new light.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A book which follows one family, and the Colombian town they helped to found, across an unspecified hundred-year period. It's the canonical example of magical realism - having mystical and unexplained elements, but not treating them as anything special beyond the amazement of some characters who interact with them - and metaphorically describes the progression of postcolonial imperialism in Latin America. This one's pretty long and dense, and while there are some squicky bits of various types nothing's really explicit. Hopefully everyone hasn't already read it, as it's pretty popular book; if so, I guess I can find another unless it's too late.
November: (Pufferfish)
Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
The Tommyknockers (Stephen King)
Author
Topic: Bay12 Book of the Month Club (Take 2) (Read 6110 times)