Repug's book of the month club

[Fruitacious B]

Originally Posted by Repugnant Abomination

I read it in college and had I not a professor who put the story in a broader historical context I would've absolutely hated it. I'd urge you to skip over it if it wasn't considered such a classic. If you're looking to read a good monster novel though I would definitely recommend Frankenstein. It's infinitely superior.

I entirely agree with that.




and laughed entirely at this...

Originally Posted by George W. Bush

I've seen his grave. It's very gay.

[Fruitacious B]

Question: Any Philip K. Dick fans have any good first time recommendations?
I've been planning on reading some of his work and have yet to make up my mind.






Ray Bradbury is possibly my favorite author. And this is one of my favorite books of all time (mostly sentimental as it was the first I'd ever read of him). Nonetheless, Ray has the ability to pack what feels like a novel's worth of entertainment into just a few pages.

I should note that before reading his work I was NOT a science fiction fan, and really still am not, with the exception of Bradbury (and Douglas Adams), but he just does it so damn well that I'd be a fool not to like it...as would YOU.


Short stories from R is for Rocket that I recommend if someone's trying to get an idea as to whether they'd like to read more of his work:

"The Sound of Summer Running"
"Frost and Fire"
"The Golden Apples of the Sun"
"A Sound of Thunder" (disregard the bullshit straight-to-dvd movie they tried and failed to make worthwhile)


In fact, there's some pretty good compilation-type books of his short stories that have like a hundred or more of them together, so that might be a bit easier.
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[Mr. Blonde]

Only book of Dick's (heh) i've ever read is A Scanner Darkly. Wanted to read it before the movie came out back in 06, but never saw the movie. Probably because the book made me feel like I was going crazy. Not bad though, but I wouldn't say it's highly recommended unless you're into books that make you feel like you're going crazy.

[Fruitacious B]

I've seen the movie A Scanner Darkly and loved it. But I've always had a hard time reading a book after having seen the movie, despite the fact that the book is generally considered to be better almost every time such a debate gets sparked. That's the reason I didn't read 'Do Androids Dream Electric Sheep?' despite really wanting to...I didn't want to spend a week with mental images of Harrison Ford plaguing my mind.

[Mr. Blonde]

i've never read Do Androids, but does anyone else think that Blade Runner is not at all good? I know it's touted as one of the best scifi movies, but I had never seen it before a couple months ago and while I like the philosophical ideals between "love" and what is considered "human" (which i'm sure the book goes into much more), the movie just seemed to be a dark, stuttering action movie. It's not like Harrison Ford fitted the "badass robot killer" that well. He was just a good looking male actor with a gun. I really didn't like that movie.

[Fruitacious B]

Me neither! I hadn't seen it until this year either, and maybe it's because most 80's sci-fi movies were just too damn tacky and poorly written to get me past the Star Trek tackiness vibe, but that movie was pretty shitty.

Suprsingly though, I did like Rutger Hauer's part.

[Mr. Blonde]

agreed. that was about the only part of the movie i actually liked.

YouTube - Blade Runner - TEARS IN RAIN [Hi-Res Video]

YouTube - Blade Runner - TEARS IN RAIN [Hi-Res Video]

[DDTempest]

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

i've never read Do Androids, but does anyone else think that Blade Runner is not at all good? I know it's touted as one of the best scifi movies, but I had never seen it before a couple months ago and while I like the philosophical ideals between "love" and what is considered "human" (which i'm sure the book goes into much more), the movie just seemed to be a dark, stuttering action movie. It's not like Harrison Ford fitted the "badass robot killer" that well. He was just a good looking male actor with a gun. I really didn't like that movie.

I think its generally touted as being revolutionary and groundbreaking more than a cerebral masterpiece. I never saw it until the last couple years or so either and after watching it I shrugged my shoulders and said "meh". It gets so much credit because its one of the first movies to show a dystopian future instead of everything being balls to the walls perfect. It shows an aged future where things are old and dirty instead of polished and pristine. Apparently this layed the ground work for countless dystopian future films to follow.

[THEINCREDIBLEdork]

hayseed

[Mr. Blonde]

Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5

I had never heard of this writer before a friend recommended the book, and had no idea what it was about, but it was incredibly easy to get into (and finish, being just over 200 pages).

It's about a sporadic time traveler (he can't control where or when he goes, but he can only visit the moments of HIS life, past or future) who is also a veteran of WWII. The book covers moments of his entire life from birth to death, with most of his "time traveling" going to his time in the war as a POW during the Dresden Bombing. A lot of the "present" parts of the book deal with him as a middle aged man.

It's kind of a book about Vonnegut's personal experiences, as he actually was in Dresden during the bombing, and bits of it are from his personal perspectives, but the main character, Billy Pilgrim, is not him; Vonnegut is in the same group of prisoners though. Apparently he had been wanting to write about his experience in Dresden for a few decades and this was the only way he could write about it.

It's pretty interesting on several facets in that you don't know if his "time traveling" is fact or fiction, as he doesn't mention it ever until he gets a severe head injury from a plane crash, and afterwards claims he was able to time travel the whole time. Also, his "time travel" experiences (except the future, of course, which could be hallucinations) are akin to very vivid memories.

Anyways, it's a pretty badass book. I really like Vonnegut as a writer and will definitely be checking out more of his stuff.

[Repugnant Abomination]

I read it about a year ago and didn't like it. I'm not sure why, since it's such a highly regarded book. Maybe I'll give it another chance.

[Fruitacious B]

Vonnegut is one of the greatest authors of all time.

I recommend 'A Man Without A Country'. It's just a personal journal of sorts with his random thoughts and analogies and witticisms...and it's fucking amazing.

Fun Fact: He's from Indiana.

[Repugnant Abomination]

I just finished To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf.


Someone recommended it to me as a source for inspiration for my own writing, as well as something to help me cope with the death of my mom.

A landmark novel of high modernism, the text, centering on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920, skillfully manipulates temporality and psychological exploration.
To the Lighthouse follows and extends the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, where the plot is secondary to philosophical introspection, and the prose can be winding and hard to follow. The novel includes little dialogue and almost no action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations. The novel recalls the power of childhood emotions and highlights the impermanence of adult relationships. Among the book's many tropes and themes are those of loss, subjectivity, and the problem of perception.
Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. The Modern library named it one of the best English-language novels of the twentieth century.

For as amazing as I think this book is, I can't really recommend it. As the above excerpt says, there's almost no action, and the prose can be difficult to follow. The book is layered, elusive, yet poignant. I've never read another book that deals with death so precisely before. Apparently it's semi biographical - Woolf wrote it trying to deal with the death of her mother, who she always felt haunted by (not literally, but in memory).

This was my first Woolf novel, and I probably won't pick up another one for a long time - mainly because I doubt any of her other stuff speaks to me as much - but she definitely has a new fan.

Fun fact: Woolf committed Suicide in 1941.

[DJ FC]

So what you're really saying is Nubblites are idiots.

[Repugnant Abomination]

No, I just don't think this book or this style is for everyone.

[Dent]

Primo Levi - If This Is A Man + The Truce

Pretty famous books that i'd never read before, probably not the best written books but his story more than makes up for it.
Surviving Auschwitz by luckily nearly dying from scarlet fever, badass.

[Repugnant Abomination]

Island is the final book by English writer Aldous Huxley, published in 1962. It is the account of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist who is shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala. Island is Huxley's utopian counterpart to his most famous work, the 1932 novel Brave New World, itself often paired with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Island explores many of the themes and ideas that interested Huxley in the post-World War II decades, and were the subject of many of his nonfiction books of essays, including Brave New World Revisited, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, The Doors of Perception, and The Perennial Philosophy. Some of these themes and ideas include overpopulation, ecology, modernity, democracy, mysticism, entheogens, and somatotypes.

The ideas he presents are interesting and definitely controversial. Anyone in the mood for an intellectual teaser might enjoy this book. If I have one criticism it's that the book reads as a hybrid of an essay and a novel. There's not much action. It's mainly the protagonist asking questions about Pala (the island nation) and various people telling him their laws and customs.

[Repugnant Abomination]

Tender Is the Night is a novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was first published in Scribner's Magazine between January-April, 1934 in four issues. It is ranked #28 on the Modern Library's list of the 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century.
In 1932, Fitzgerald's wife Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was hospitalized for schizophrenia in Baltimore, Maryland. The author rented the "la Paix" estate in the suburb of Towson to work on this book, the story of the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychoanalyst and his wife, Nicole, who is also one of his patients. It would be Fitzgerald's first novel in nine years, and the last that he would complete. While working on the book he several times ran out of cash and had to borrow from his editor and agent, and write short stories for commercial magazines. The early 1930s, when Fitzgerald was conceiving and working on the book, were certainly the darkest years of his life, and accordingly, the novel has its bleak elements.

It took me almost two years to finish this book, mainly because I didn't like it. The writing is beautiful, lyrical even, but the first 200 pages or so felt trivial. The drama picks up in the last third of the book though, and I came to genuinely feel for the protagonist. It helps to know a little about Fitzgerald so as a reader you can see the parallels between the story and his life. I probably wouldn't recommend this book to anyone unless you're really into early 20th century American writers, or the jazz age.

As far as Fitzgerald goes I think he's one of the most polished writers I've ever read, in terms of style. I've read 3 of his 4 novels now (the 5th was completed and published after his death, so it doesn't really count) and while Tender is the Night is good, I still think The Great Gatsby is the gold standard.

[THEINCREDIBLEdork]

who is Scott Fitsgerald?

[Repugnant Abomination]

Outer Dark is U.S. novelist Cormac McCarthy's second novel, published in 1968. The time and setting are nebulous, but can be assumed to be somewhere in the Southern United States, sometime around the turn of the twentieth century. The novel tells of a woman (Rinthy) who bears her brother's baby. The brother, Culla, leaves the nameless infant in the woods to die, but he tells his sister that the newborn died of natural causes and had to be buried. Rinthy discovers this lie, and decides to set out and find the baby for herself.
Meanwhile, the baby has been discovered in the woods and taken by a nameless Tinker.
Culla strikes out aimlessly across the country attempting to escape the circumstances that have enshrouded him and forget his sins. Rinthy, despite her post-labor state, tries in vain to track down the Tinker. The siblings' personalities and modes of behavior are very similar but their experiences differ greatly.

My sixth McCarthy book, and one of my favorites. This book is dark, biblical, and haunting - one of the greatest parables I've read. Ideas and certain character traits find themselves in his later work, specifically Blood Meridian. It has that kind of eerie apocalyptic feel to it, told in the stark and descriptive McCarthy style. This book makes me realize just how much I enjoy Southern Gothic. I highly recommend it.

[Repugnant Abomination]

To Kill a Mockingbird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was instantly successful and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.
The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with serious issues of rape and racial inequality. The narrator's father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of integrity for lawyers. One critic explained the novel's impact by writing, "In the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its protagonist, Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism."
As a Southern Gothic novel and a Bildungsroman, the primary themes of To Kill a Mockingbird involve racial injustice and the destruction of innocence. Scholars have noted that Lee also addresses issues of class, courage and compassion, and gender roles in the American Deep South. The book is widely taught in schools in English-speaking countries with lessons that emphasize tolerance and decry prejudice. Despite its themes, To Kill a Mockingbird has been subject to campaigns for removal from public classrooms. Often the book is challenged for its use of racial epithets, and writers have noticed that regardless of its popularity since its publication, some readers are displeased by the novel's treatment of black characters.

Nothing much else to say. I really liked it. It's one of those books everyone seemed to read in high school except me. You should definitely read it if you haven't.

[Mr. Blonde]

I was supposed to read it in highschool but cheated through that one. Found it pretty boring, but also...highschool. I'll pick it up sooner or later.

[DDTempest]

Originally Posted by Repugnant Abomination

To Kill a Mockingbird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was instantly successful and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.
The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with serious issues of rape and racial inequality. The narrator's father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of integrity for lawyers. One critic explained the novel's impact by writing, "In the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its protagonist, Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism."
As a Southern Gothic novel and a Bildungsroman, the primary themes of To Kill a Mockingbird involve racial injustice and the destruction of innocence. Scholars have noted that Lee also addresses issues of class, courage and compassion, and gender roles in the American Deep South. The book is widely taught in schools in English-speaking countries with lessons that emphasize tolerance and decry prejudice. Despite its themes, To Kill a Mockingbird has been subject to campaigns for removal from public classrooms. Often the book is challenged for its use of racial epithets, and writers have noticed that regardless of its popularity since its publication, some readers are displeased by the novel's treatment of black characters.

Nothing much else to say. I really liked it. It's one of those books everyone seemed to read in high school except me. You should definitely read it if you haven't.

Wait ... Didn't you already give us a book report on to kill a mockingbird? I don't honestly care enough to check nor have I read anything posted in the thread thus far but still feel that you've already discussed this book. Moderators?

[Fruitacious B]

Even if it has been mentioned before, it's a good enough book to be mentioned twice.

[f3lix]

DDT, use the search button before you waste my time again.