All right, Snarketeers, the gauntlet is thrown: Help me come up with a theme and some nominations for readings for my book club.
Every month, one of my fellow book-clubbers is assigned to nominate three or four books. When we meet to discuss the past month’s reading, we choose one of the nominees for the next month. Being something of an oddball, I like to organize my nominations around themes. The last time, for example, my theme was “Masters of Humankind.” The books I proposed were No god but God (God), The Year of Magical Thinking (Death), The Time-Traveler’s Wife (Time), and Moneyball (Money). (The club picked The Time-Traveler’s Wife. The actual selection doesn’t make much of a difference to me, because I plan to read all the books I propose, and I did.)
The theme can be oblique, clever, or straightforward. (In the straightforward camp, for example, I’ve been considering the four elements — Cloud Atlas (Air), Snow (Water), American Prometheus or Dante (Fire), Coal: A Human History or Salt: A World History (Earth).) They can be either a prominent theme of the book or just a play on its title. We prefer books that have been out in paperback, and a nomination almost always goes unpicked if one of us has already read it. I aim for variety in the selection — memoir, biography, journalistic non-fiction, literary fiction, magical realism, social history.
So, whaddya say? Help me out?
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You already probably know my suggestions, but I’ll give ’em anyway:
Pinker’s “The Stuff of Thought”
Taleb’s “The Black Swan”
Gibson’s “Spook Country”
All pretty new…
Perhaps because I spent yesterday at the Treasure Island Music Festival, perhaps because I just watched Klaus Kinski pull a steamboat over a mountain, I’ll suggest a nautical theme (pick and choose as you like):
Excellent, excellent, keep ’em coming.
How about this one? The theme being “Trinity”:
Hmm. . . you’d think that this would be a natural for me, but the request to mix-up the genres is throwing me for a bit of a loop, since fiction is just about all I read. Still, I’ll give it a try.
1. “The White City”—work informed by the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair:
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Spring Comes to Chicago by Campbell McGrath
Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware
2. “Americans out of place”—Hemingway-informed contemporary expatriate lit:
A Movable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
God Lives in St. Petersburg by Tom Bissell
You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers (How We Are Hungry, particularly the story “Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly” would be a good choice as well)
3. “Around On the Road” (good for the 50th anniversary this year):
On the Road by Jack Kerouac (Visions of Cody or the newly-released On the Road: the Original Scroll would be good complements.)
Off the Road by Carolyn Cassady
Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac (Kerouac’s own version of the events surrounding the publication of On the Road)
Minor Characters by Joyce Johnson—Johnson’s memoir, which includes her version of that time period
Offsetting, the nautical, here is a “sand” theme:
Don’t worry about any of my stipulations above, they’re guidelines, not rules! So Gavin, if you’ve got a single-genre thematic list to propose, go for it! I’m already edified. Keep the ideas coming.
I always liked a good dreams/surrealism pack:
1) Andre Breton, Nadja and Manifestoes of Surrealism
2) Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
3) Luis Bunuel, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
4) Charles Simic, The World Doesn’t End
5) Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio
anyone know a good contemp nonfic book on dreams?
More bookclubbing, again pick and choose.
I love the ‘vegetable’ list. Were I involved in a theme-y book club I would choose it.
Gavin’s World’s Fair list is awesome too. I love the idea of seeing a whole literary kaleidoscope around some event like that.
I do not have a list to offer now. My brain is too tired.
Ooops, I meant to include Do Androids Dream… in the “Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral” section. But I guess it does all right in a class of its own.
I’ve only been able to come up with simple category lists. I like Matt’s more whimsical “trinity” idea. Also the world fair list and dreams lists are awesome. A single year list could be really awesome, but very hard to put together.
What about a style based list? 2nd person narrative: If on a winter’s night a traveler… and… what else (choose your own adventure doesn’t count)? Constrained writing: A Void, Alphabetical Africa…? These are somewhat painful to read though; I never made it too far!