book recommendations RCF book club

[xmasbuck]

I've enjoyed reading through this thread. Thanks for the recommendations. I try to read a whole mess of books per year, and here's my 2022 list so far:

• Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe
• Look at the Birdie by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• Flags in the Dust by William Faulkner
• Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
• Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
• Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
• Light in August by William Faulkner
• Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
• The Stranger by Albert Camus

I'm an English teacher, so I move more toward the classics and ones I haven't read during my own education. I will say that the Toni Morrison novel has been my favorite so far. The characters are fully fleshed out, the exposition is superb, and invites rereading with the allusions, imagery, and themes. Support Lorain Ohio's own!

Next novel is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. It's been hailed as a creepy postmodern read and one that can be challenging.

got a lot of my favorite authors in there - vonnegut, hemingway, faulkner, o'brien

avid reader and maybe as an english teacher you could help me access some of these authors - i just cant figure out how to read pynchon, burroughs, wallace - i have painfully plowed thru some of their books but never took off with them - currently 70 pages into naked lunch but again just cant get going with it - any suggestions? or maybe, what am I missing? thanks

 

[JJ Smooth]

got a lot of my favorite authors in there - vonnegut, hemingway, faulkner, o'brien

avid reader and maybe as an english teacher you could help me access some of these authors - i just cant figure out how to read pynchon, burroughs, wallace - i have painfully plowed thru some of their books but never took off with them - currently 70 pages into naked lunch but again just cant get going with it - any suggestions? or maybe, what am I missing? thanks

All three of those authors are ones you have to ease into and understand some of their common tropes going in.

For Pynchon, I started with The Crying of Lot 49 and moved up to Inherent Vice. Both are considered more accessible reads, but maintain a good idea to his style. With Pynchon you will have a wild cast of characters, a mystery (or several), and the consistent use of red herrings of trails or side quests that may ultimately lead nowhere at all. The fun of it is to see the author's imagination and the weird groups / individuals he creates. I know when I read him I would be an active reader by writing down characters and then using arrows to connect them or just cross them out entirely when their story is resolved.

Burroughs is always an outlaw with his writing. If you understand unreliable narration and that a drug addict is using satire the shock and awe makes a lot of sense. The thing I tell my students with higher level texts (like this one of the Beat generation) that these characters are not people, but representations. So, in Naked Lunch the various junky behaviors describe the addict's life and willingness to get their next score. The rulers of Interzone are pure satire (and Burroughs critiquing war and championing sexual freedom). Also, keep in mind he employs a "cut up" style of writing where some sentences are rants of what might be cut sentences and glued back together. This method and his nonlinear storytelling (like "Lunch") makes things difficult. I would focus more on the messaging and intent rather than an enjoyable overall arch or story.

Wallace is the one I've read the least and there's a copy of Infinite Jest I'll make a project when I don't have school obligations (maybe next summer?). However, I would recommend reading his commencement speech to Kenyon College "This is Water". It's filled with mini metaphors and parables about higher education and our level of consciousness. It was that reading that inspired me to get a copy of his "Jest".

Happy reading!

 

[Jack Brickman]

I've been listening to the audiobook for The Hobbit the past few days. I remember reading it back in high school and thinking it was good but nothing exceptional, perhaps because I'd read it after reading Lord of the Rings and found it somewhat lacking in comparison.

Audiobook is definitely the way to go with this one, as the book is essentially framed as someone telling you, the reader, a story. As such, it works much better with someone actually narrating it, doing varying voices for different characters, and singing the handful of songs that pop up periodically.

 

[jjvors]

I've been listening to the audiobook for The Hobbit the past few days. I remember reading it back in high school and thinking it was good but nothing exceptional, perhaps because I'd read it after reading Lord of the Rings and found it somewhat lacking in comparison.

Audiobook is definitely the way to go with this one, as the book is essentially framed as someone telling you, the reader, a story. As such, it works much better with someone actually narrating it, doing varying voices for different characters, and singing the handful of songs that pop up periodically.

Yes, that is right. I read the Hobbit at 15 and that is how I read the book, as a narrative story. I recognized Bilbo as the unlikely hero with hidden strengths early on, but Gandalph surprised me with his endless depths.

There's a lot of slapstick humor with Bilbo and the dwarves, but he ends up gaining their respect by the end.

Tip with Tolkien: if you come upon songs or poetry, read them aloud. Poetry is meant to be heard.

 

[foucault87]

Tolkien is excellent writing for a guy who just wanted a world for his conlangs to live in

 

[browniebob]

I read "When Breath Becomes Air" by Paul Kalanithi last week. It's a memoir written by a 36 year old neurosurgeon who's been diagnosed with lung cancer and coming to grips with his own mortality. It sounds depressing, and while it is definitely sad, I wouldn't say that it was depressing. It's a book that will stick with me for a long time.

I heard about while listening to an Andrew Luck podcast oddly enough.

 

[jjvors]

Tolkien is excellent writing for a guy who just wanted a world for his conlangs to live in

I had to look up conlang. "Constructed language"--refering to elvish, dwarvish, the black language, and other constructs. He was a philologist, so that was his expertise. However, it's debatable how much is constructed de novo. Elvish is based upon ancient Finnish. You'd have to analyze each construct versus the ancient languages he knew.

 

[Jack Brickman]

If anyone is looking for a good fantasy series to start, I'm currently re-reading Daniel Abraham's The Long Price Quartet, which is excellent. The first book is almost entirely political machinations, but there are several compelling characters who are interesting to follow and the world itself is uniquely intriguing for the genre.

There's virtually no magic in the series, but what little is there is very powerful. Essentially, there's a culture in the world capable of enslaving basic concepts via poetry. For example, capturing Water-Falling-Down enables the poet to effectively control the flow of rivers and the fall of rain. They can ensure their lands are always watered but they can cause drought or flood on enemy lands. The concepts are enslaved in the form of men/women and called andats.

The first book focuses on the andat Removing-That-Which-Continues, or Seedless. Seedless is primarily used to remove the seeds from cotton, an immensely profitable ability in a society that exists before the cotton press. Seedless, though, can also be used to perform entirely safe abortions, and that ability is central to the conspiracy in place in the first book, A Shadow in Summer. You might also guess where the danger lies in crossing a society that controls a creature with such power.

Abraham was also one of the co-writers of The Expanse, which I'm sure many of you have heard of, read, or watched via the Amazon adaptation.

I am really enjoying the re-read, and am already about 40% through the first book. Highly recommended.

 

[foucault87]

If anyone is looking for a good fantasy series to start, I'm currently re-reading Daniel Abraham's The Long Price Quartet, which is excellent. The first book is almost entirely political machinations, but there are several compelling characters who are interesting to follow and the world itself is uniquely intriguing for the genre.

There's virtually no magic in the series, but what little is there is very powerful. Essentially, there's a culture in the world capable of enslaving basic concepts via poetry. For example, capturing Water-Falling-Down enables the poet to effectively control the flow of rivers and the fall of rain. They can ensure their lands are always watered but they can cause drought or flood on enemy lands. The concepts are enslaved in the form of men/women and called andats.

The first book focuses on the andat Removing-That-Which-Continues, or Seedless. Seedless is primarily used to remove the seeds from cotton, an immensely profitable ability in a society that exists before the cotton press. Seedless, though, can also be used to perform entirely safe abortions, and that ability is central to the conspiracy in place in the first book, A Shadow in Summer. You might also guess where the danger lies in crossing a society that controls a creature with such power.

Abraham was also one of the co-writers of The Expanse, which I'm sure many of you have heard of, read, or watched via the Amazon adaptation.

I am really enjoying the re-read, and am already about 40% through the first book. Highly recommended.

I need you to stop recommending so many interesting things for a bit or im going to have to go find a new bookshelf

 

[Jack Brickman]

I need you to stop recommending so many interesting things for a bit or im going to have to go find a new bookshelf

I recently created an Amazon list and I just throw any book on there that I think sounds interesting. I check the list once or twice a week to see if anything has gone on sale, and buy things when they drop to two to five bucks.

This is Kindle books. No idea how often they do sales of physical books, as I have been almost purely digital for like a decade or more now.

 

[foucault87]

I recently created an Amazon list and I just throw any book on there that I think sounds interesting. I check the list once or twice a week to see if anything has gone on sale, and buy things when they drop to two to five bucks.

This is Kindle books. No idea how often they do sales of physical books, as I have been almost purely digital for like a decade or more now.

I still get physical copies of everything although I probably should've gone digital forever ago

 

[Jack Brickman]

I still get physical copies of everything although I probably should've gone digital forever ago

It's a convenience thing for me. I like that Kindle stuff will sync from your Kindle to your phone app to your browser. I like that I have my entire library with me at all times as well. If I finish a book on the go, I can just immediately start the next one in my backlog.

 

[bronko]

I read too much and am too cheap to buy everything I want to read. I use the Libby app to borrow ebooks from the library so I always have something handy to read. I prefer actual books, but the ebooks are just more convenient. I'll buy physical books for more obscure specialized material that's unavailable at the library.

 

[letgocavs]

After not reading a book for ten years I've read about 11 this past year. Haven't really found any benefits like helping with my anxiety or anything, but the stories have been good. Just finished water for elephants

 

[Jack Brickman]

Recently finished The Troop by Nick Cutter and thought it was a great horror novel. If you're looking for something gross with plenty of body horror, I recommend it. Cutter's prose isn't anything special, but there's a nice blend of Lord of the Flies and the movie Cabin Fever at play in this one that's a lot of fun.

The book cuts back and forth between the events that the characters are experiencing and newspaper articles, interviews, and depositions from afterward that serve to foreshadow upcoming events and also explain what's happening to the kids on the island. This is a clever way to deliver actual information to the reader that the main characters would obviously have no organic way to access, as they are trapped on an island with no way to communicate with the outside world after events that take place near the beginning of the story.

All in all, worth a read if you're in the market for a horror book as we head into October.