Thar she blows!

I just lent my copy of Moby Dick on to Justin - how are the rest of you doing?

Sorry, that that was a wind-up. I found I had two copies here. In fact, I'm on page 43, so I'm already falling behind. I reckon we've got to be reading about 17 pages a day to get it read by 20 November.

Are we being absurdly macho in this quest? Should we be seeking out and consuming a book in this way - or could the beast prove too much for us?

Will the meaning slip past us, and the experience just be a bit like reading Master and Commander in slow motion?

Be that as it may, I see there's been comic book versions by the great Will Eisner and Bill Scienkiwicz,

If you're reading this by email, there's pictures on the blog.


And in the 1960s, there was a cartoon series, originally created by Alex Toth for Hanna-Barbera. He had a seal side-kick called Scooby, and helped two kids fight people like Manta Menace.

Heart Songs, 16 October

Next time, it's Heart Songs by Annie Proulx. We're meeting at my place, on 16 October.

Powerful, tough, gritty and astonishing, say the Amazon readers.

Sounds like a good one to go for after the disappointment most of us seemed to feel about Never Let Me Go.

Not me though, I thought Never Let Me Go was a powerful allegory of the way we concede everything to the demands placed on us and eventually die, comforted only by the spurious belief that our love for others will somehow allow us to live on.

Or something.

Next time round, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, on September 11 at Justin's house.

Critically acclaimed, it's nevertheless had its share of criticism -- one Amazon reviewer says "It's like one of these cheap paperbacks you buy at the airport and throw away after reading". alleging that it's so poor ("lazy, heavy-handed and relentlessly dull") that Ishiguro must have paid someone else to write it.

"It's like the Harry Potter conspiracy all over again," says "confused KZ fan".

Elsewhere, it got high praise. They did it in Guardian Book Club (heavy spoiler warning!!) and reviewed it (again heavy plot spoilers).

Shouldn't that be the Anti-Social History of the Machine Gun, you ask?
Well, I suppose that's the point.

Anyway, The Social History of the Machine Gun by John Ellis is
available from Amazon (though with a slow delivery date so let's buy it elsewhere), so we're reading it, and meeting at Omar's to
discuss it. Ok?

On 19 June. Or you get filled full of lead. Or something.

Life of Pi

Karen Armstrong's History of Islam was somewhat lacking in personality, we found. So we're fleeing gratefully to the comforting shelter of fiction.

From the title, I would have thought Life of Pi would be a popular maths book, but it;s actually a Booker winner, and a "great read" according to Amazon visitors.

One of them warns that "the religious preaching was a little off putting", though, so maybe we haven't quite escaped....

Meeting on 22 May, at James'.

Islam - A Short History

We all enjoyed "Snow", and it seems a good idea to get some gen on Islam. So the next book will be Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong.

And in the absence of James this time, we're meeting at Mark's, on 17 April.

I don't know if this is relevant to this book, but I like her take on fundamentalism. Most people believe that Islamic fundamentalists, and US Bible Belters alike are throwbacks to a mediaeval viewpoint. She thinks it's the opposite: fundamentalists are actually very "modern", in that they have a "practical" understanding of the truth of scripture, instead of the "mythical" understanding people once had (And that might be all we need to calmly tell Dawkins to settle down and relax).

As Wikipedia puts it:

Central to her reading of history is the notion that premodern cultures possessed two complementary and indispensable ways of thinking, speaking and knowing: mythos and logos. Mythos was concerned with meaning; it "provided people with a context that made sense of their day-to-day lives; it directed their attention to the eternal and the universal." Logos, on the other hand, dealt with practical matters. It forged ahead, elaborating on old insights, mastering the environment, and creating fresh and new things. Armstrong argues that modern Western society has lost the sense of mythos and enshrined logos as its foundation. Mythical narratives and the rituals and meanings attached to them have ceded authority to that which is rational, pragmatic and scientific - but which does not assuage human pain or sorrow, and cannot answer questions about the ultimate value of human life. However, far from embarking on a wholesale rejection of the modern emphasis in favour of the old balance, the author contends, religious fundamentalists unwittingly turn the mythos of their faith into logos. Fundamentalism is a child of modernity, and fundamentalists are fundamentally modern.

Kars exists

Reading Snow, I've been wondering how much of the background is real, and how much is fictionalised.

I'm surprised to find that Kars exists, and is quite an interesting place - near the border with the former Soviet republic of Armenia, and with lots of history. The emerging Turkish state signed a Treaty with Russia there in 1921.

I've been looking at Turkey and there's more surprises. Here's some things I didn't know:

• It's the 17th largest country in population, with 72 million people.
  
• In 1923, Mustapha Kemal kicked the Allies out (they were occupying it after the fall of the Ottoman Empire) established a republic and named himself Ataturk ("father of the Turks")
• There were military coups in 1960, 1971 and 1980.
  
• The term "Bey" means "chief" and is roughly equivalent to our "mister".
  

Next time -- Snow by Orhan Pamuk.

"Dense, intense. A mountain of a book."

Meeting at my place. On 13 March.

See you there!

Catcher in the Rye

Next time, The Catcher in the Rye by noted recluse J D Salinger.

We're meeting on 6 February, at Angus' house.













Little known fact: J D Salinger's son, actor Matt Salinger. played the part of Captain America, in a recent movie released straight to DVD.

The God of Small Things

After our disappointment with Notes on a Scandal ("a page turner but shallow"), we've gone for a solid performer.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize and we've all been meaning to get round to it (like about a zillion other books).

9 January, at Craig's.

Notes on a Scandal

Next time -- Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller.

14 November, at Justin's.

This one's a bit sexy, lads...

I think the cover picture tells us what we're in for. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, is "immense, life changing, sexually provocative," according to Amazon readers, and "a ranting, randy book, carried along by a deep sensual enjoyment of living", according to the front cover.

Saddo cheapskates can read the full text online. There's also a movie with Miller played by Rip Torn.

But, all that to one side, we all know we're only reading it because James thought it was about a different Tropic of Cancer.

We're meeting on 17 October, at Omar's.

More Vonnegut anyone?

I've finished Slaughter House Five and can lend my copy on, if anyone wants it.

If anyone wants more Vonnegut, I've got about ten others of his around. In many of them characters from Slaughter House Five get to play a bigger role.

Particularly interesting, because it's set in the war and relates very closely to Slaughter House Five, is Mother Night. the full story of Howard W Campbell, who did evil too openly, and good too secretly.

If you want to see him do pure science fiction, try Cat's Cradle or Sirens ofTitan.

Peter

Slaughter House Five

"Poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement."

It's the anti-war novel that says everything Catch-22 does, and more. in fewer pages.

If you find this too short for a summer read, feel free to pick up on his other boosk - Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, and so on.

Or read the books we passed over: Don Quixote, James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner, or John Sladek's Roderick.

We're meeting at James', on 5 September.

Bloody Foreigners

This month's choice is Bloody Foreigners by Robert Winder. A book on immigration to Britain which got plaudits from all the newspapers including the Daily Mail. "Erudite yet readable", according to an Amazon reviewer.

So, for those who weren't there, let this be a lesson. Miss a Book Group and you could end up reading a 500 page non-fiction tome.

We passed over

• Affinity by Sarah Waters


• Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut


• The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru


• A History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Levycka

We are meeting on 27 June at my house. Unless Togo is playing an exciting match th

Peter

Ficciones

Persevere Chaps- the first two stories are the most difficult!

The library of Babylon and Funes his memory are particularly good.

Angus

Fictions

Was it because Michel Houellebecq sounded a bit crap, because Aldous Huxley's the Island sounded like Californian pretension, and the Sky Burial sounded too much like the Kite Runner?

No, much simpler. Jorge Luis Borges' Fictions was the oldest and the shortest book on offer. It therefore gathered the "give us classics" vote and the "lazy" vote, and won by a landslide.

So we have a month to read it... and find our inward lives utterly changed. Amazon

Some reviewers don't rate the Hurley translation we see here, and some of the stories are available in other translations, notably by Irby.

This Havana book ...

...seems to be a sardonically witty book about a middle-aged man out of his depth in life, with a teenage daughter.

Is there any particular reason why it seemed suitable for our group??

Just wondering....

Our Man in Havana

Omar will be our man in Havana, as he takes a break there. Meantime, the rest of us will read the book - Graham Greene's second appearance at the group.

Meanwhile, there's a movie, from 1959, by some woman called Carol Reed. I haven't seen it, but it's got Alec Guiness and Noel Coward in it.

Meeting, 25 April, at Angus'

Cloud Atlas Thoughts

There's more interesting stuff about this on the web (well, the Guardian) than there was for Kite Runne. A S Byatt's Guardian review has some good thoughts - but don't read it till you've read the book. David Mitchell talks about how he wrote it.

And there's a book-group style analysis in four parts, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4., but it doesn't really say much more than the last comment: "Is there really a greater whole?" (and does it matter?)

And then there's the references and related books - Huckleberry Finn, Riddley Walker, Hawksmoor, Raymond Chandler, any more?