Continuing the Tildes Book Club: Book nomination and discussion thread
Edit nominations are closed
I asked @Cffabro about doing another book discussion as with Roadside Picnic. He suggested that I pick it up instead. So hi. Are there readers here who would like to join me on a book discussion journey?
If yes, please name between one and five books you find intriguing and think others might enjoy. We will later have a voting thread so that each nomination gets an equal shot to win votes with no early nomination advantage.
Also, let's talk frequency. I think monthly, every six weeks or every two months all sound like reasonable intervals for busy people to read and discuss a book. What are your thoughts?
Lastly do you have things to mention that you thought worked well in the past or should be avoided?
I hope this gets some traction. I'm looking forward to it.
I'm going to suggest a few book options that intrigue me. Piranesi, The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King, The City we Became, Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norell, A Tale for the Time Being
This is not a thread for voting on proposed books, just collecting them in one list.
I'd love a reason to read Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norell! The length has been intimidating, but book club would give me the nudge I need to crack it open.
In contrast I've tried multiple times and just cannot get into it. But I'm not opposed to trying again.
If you're a listener to audiobooks, there is a very well-produced one available!
I am but I found it so dry I'm not just not sure I am up for it.
I'll see if I can snag it from the library but an audible credit is essentially risk free as well.
Have you read Piranesi, by the same author? I really enjoyed that one and I've been meaning to read Mr. Norell, but I had no idea it was a thick book, piranesi is quite short.
If you've read Piranesi, did you like it? Trying to decide if I should commit to Norell or not haha
I haven't though it's on my TBR, because I do know folks really like it.
I suggest getting Strange from the library if you're not sure! Lots of people love it, and I read many thick books just struggled with this one
I can definitely understand finding it dry. I did the first time I read it, although the story was still enough to keep me gripped. The wit and humour didn't jump out at me until a second reading, at which time I couldn't believe I'd missed it the first time around! It's a good read, but ultimately it's not for everyone. If you do give it another try, I'll be curious to know if you manage to make it stick this time :)
Yeah I probably will. I tend to enjoy drier humor and similar settings. I just keep bouncing off it
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell is one of my favourite books of all time, it is so good. I really enjoyed Piranesi as well, although it's a very different beast.
Two that I find myself going back to:
The City & The City - China Miéville
Inventing The People - Edmund S. Morgan
I very much enjoyed:
I love the way This is How you Lose the Time war doesn't hold your hand as a reader. I would definitely read it again
Me too, it was an absolutely beautiful read! The prose was delightful and twisty. I've given away my copy now, but I would happily read it again.
As someone who loved the visuals of the movie but just could not follow the plot (looking it up after had more than a few "that's what that was about.") is the book more... Coherent?
It's not jumbled up in the same way as the movie. The six different stories are told within each other. So you get halfway through the first, and then the second starts. Then you get halfway through that and the third starts. And so on. Here's a tiny graphic which might explain it better.
When structured that way it's easier to see that these are six stories each with their own plot, rather than one singular overarching plot. There are themes and hints that tie everything together, and the idea that one soul keeps being reincarnated is there but similarly loosely to the film. There is less romance and grandeur than in the film, the book is much more concerned with exploring its main theme of the struggle against embedded power structures. In many ways it diverges from the movie quite heavily. Each story is written differently. There are nods to this in the film, but it's explicit in the book. You have two epistolaries, a pulp detective story, a memoir, an interview, and an oral recitation of a life story (written in Hawaiian pidgin no less).
All that said I know it's not for everyone. I know many people that struggled with it, partly because it is presented as a singular narrative, when in fact it's more of a collection of related short stories that all explore similar themes and "rhyme." But I think it's beautiful, powerful, magical, and affecting. I have read and reread it multiple times, and it has long since earned a rare position on my "keep forever" shelf of books.
Thanks for the ping, @cfabbro!
I haven’t read any of these but they’re all on my to-read list and seem like they might go over well with people here:
qntm - Valuable Humans in Transit
Andy Weir - Project Hail Mary
Not sure if we’re doing fiction only, but if we’re open to nonfiction I’ll also add these:
Harry Nicholas - A Trans Man Walks Into a Gay Bar
Judith Grisel - Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction
Also, I’m thinking monthly might be a good interval, but I also like the idea of giving people a bit more time since books can sometimes take a while to get through. Maybe six weeks is better?
EDIT: A meta thought: if you try to post all of these as individual comments in a nomination topic so that people can vote on them, you might run into rate limit issues. Not sure if there’s a way around that?
@Deimos might be able to disable the comment rate limit temporarily for @boxer_dogs_dance
if we ask him nice, and let him know ahead of time when the book club nominations voting topic is going to be posted.
I was thinking about midday on Friday. @Deimos, can you enable a voting thread with this many comments around noon Pacific time Friday? We would be grateful.
edit a comment for each book nomination
Can you message me a list of all the books before posting the topic? (It's fine if you need to send follow-up messages to add more or adjust the list)
I'll keep an eye out for the topic and set something up to automatically post them all as separate comments so it doesn't need to be done manually. Or if you want to send me the topic's title/text in advance I can post it too along with all of the comments.
Thank you very much. I will send it all to you as a message
I sent you two messages, one with topic text and one with the list of books for voting.
Please adapt freely based on what you think works, and also message me if anything isn't clear.
Thanks very much for the help
I have always wanted to read Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake.
I really like short story collections so a few ideas I have are:
Bloodchild and other stories by Octavia Butler
How long til Black Future Month by NK Jemisin
(Sitting at the hospital so we'll see if more come to me)
Thanks for offering to take over the book club, @boxer_dogs_dance. I haven't been in the mood for reading books lately, or had enough energy to organize another event, but I will definitely try to participate in this, and help out however I can. :)
cc: @kfwyre, since you were wondering about the return of book club too, IIRC. Someone else was as well, but I unfortunately can't remember their username to ping them. :(
Commenting to bump this. There might be different people here during the week than on the weekend. Soon, I will collate the suggestions in a voting thread.
Very much enjoyed The Warded Man, an interesting fantasy book, very approachable and good for me as I'm still getting back into reading.
Edit: thought I'd edit in the other book I finished recently, Constantine at the Bridge, a biography of Constantine the Great and the beginnings of Christian Rome. As far as Roman histories go, this is probably the least exhausting you'll find, though as a history buff I do feel a bit more could have been said on some of the items in there. Still very engaging.
By Peter Brett?
That's the one.
That whole series is really good, and I really like the hints of it being distantly post-apocalyptic for a fantasy setting. The later books get a bit weird and complicated and maybe a bit too long, but it's a thoroughly good read throughout, and I particularly enjoy the relationship between Arlen and Jardir. The plot as a whole is exciting and compelling, and as a bonus bit of flavour, it's really evident that Brett is a TTRPG player, as each of the main characters has quite a well-defined "class." That's not always for everyone, but I quite liked it, and I could definitely see the series rising out of an epic campaign.
I'm waiting on the second and third books right now, on order through my local bookshop :) glad to hear that the plot stays interesting!
I think this is a great idea, I've bookmarked the thread to see what gets decided. As for frequency, I think every one to two months is a good window and I would be happy with anything within that range (and I would be fine lumping it if consensus is found elsewh...en?)
I agree that 1-2 months would be a good window. It will give those that check out books from the library a chance to get the book, even if it's currently checked out, and time to finish the book without rushing.
Ducks: Two Years In The Oil Sands, by Kate Beaton
Winner of CBC 2023 Canada Reads
One of President Obama's favorite books of 2002
It's also the first graphic novel to even be in serious running for Canada Reads.
We have a pretty environmentally conscious and mental health aware crowd here and I would love to hear all y'alls thoughts on the human cost and of the environmental destruction of the energy sector mostly sight unseen far far away. On a personal side, I am a fellow economic migrant, a new Atlantic coast Canadian, and I've previously visited a modern version of camp like the ones illustrated in the novel.
Trigger warning:
I think the topics are dealt with in such a considerate, delicate and most of all human way that I'd be happy to provide details for those who need more information to decide. But also please care for your mental health above all else.
I'd be interested in continuing the bookclub, too. A couple books that have left me thinking:
-Study for Obedience, Sarah Bernstein
-Embassytown / City and the City, China Mieville
-Parable of the Sower, Octavia E Butler
-The Dispossessed, Ursula K LeGuin
-LaRose, Louise Erdrich
Edit: My only suggestion might be to give more time between announcing books and the discussion, especially for popular titles. For the Roadside Picnic discussion, I had a very very long hold on it with my library. By the time I had read it, it felt like the discussion had died out. I know its ok to comment on older threads on tildes but i still felt out of sync and not really "part" of the zeitgeist.
One reason I am soliciting so many titles is that I hope to not need to vote very often.
We can set a schedule.
You might not get your library book in time for the first book but you might for the second and third. It's not a perfect solution but unless the book is free on project Gutenberg, I don't think perfect solutions exist.
I appreciate your comment. I usually buy used copies but library users are important
In terms of frequency, I say a monthly cadence would be really good. I'm by no means a slow reader, but my time can be quite limited what with life as it already exists, and I have a stack of books on my shelf (there's a word for that!) that I want to get through as well. Any less than monthly and I think it becomes an exercise in forgetting we ever signed up to such a club. Any more than monthly feels like too much of a commitment for busy adults.
Either way, I wonder if it would be good to have weekly or bi-weekly check-ins? Similar to the TiMaSoMo threads which serve as waypoints through the event.
Interesting idea re weekly check ins. Thanks
I'm super excited for Exordia, the Seth Dickinson novel that came out today!!!
Sin Eater by Campisi
Bumping this a final time. Book nominations close in about 18 hours.
We will be selecting at least six books from this list, so if you want to submit a book, now is the time.