Vote for the next book club book

[Alex]

No, I don't know anything about any other versions. I suppose there might be some introductory material or something but there'd be no reason to update the essay itself.

I can't stress enough that the contents were originally delivered as a lecture series and the text has only been modified lightly for the page. If you're willing to look a bit foolish, I recommend reading aloud various passages to really drive home the style.

I hope you enjoy it, I find it ver though provoking and return to it occasionally, particularly the first chapter, for its exploration of how thinking itself changes.

[wendybeth]

I've read a variety of reviews and synopsis's and I know this is right up my ally. Just the title alone is intriguing. I'll have to post a pic of my 'library' sometime- way back in the pre-kid day we used to collect antique books, which I actually read. I have a hard time with the modern vernacular when reading because I tend toward books from the Neo and Post-Neo-Classical time period. From what I gather, this is a critical look at the Age of Enlightenment, right? If I were a PLR person, I'd have to say this would be an area of interest, as I've always had a strange fascination with this epoch. I'll have to relay my Peter the Great story sometime.

[CoasterMatt]

I vote for Hop On Pop!

[3894]

It's sexually eccentric. It's well-written. It's the fictional autobiography of the greatest female tiger trainer in history. You will love.

[mistyisjafo]

So what's the next book? I'm actually in need of a new read.

[Alex]

I'm about halfway through Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland and am loving it.

It is narrative history, and suffers the deficiencies of that genre (notably, it has to gloss over gaps in the record and tends to jump to conclusions on mood and such) but Holland is very up front about it.

If nothing else, the first chapter which goes into great descriptive detail about what life was actually like in Rome is wonderful. Classical history was my least favorite era back in college. As Holland says, imagine writing a history of World War II based on a few of Hitler wartime broadcasts and 40 random pages from a Winston Chruchill biography.

It may dry up in the second half, so far it is a good read.

[Not Afraid]

I just finished The Professor and the Madman as well as the latest collection of short stories by Augenten Burroughs. I'm also looking for something - although I only have to walk to the bedroom, look at the "to read" shelf and make a decision.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Just started Voltaire Almighty. I don't know much about him so this should be illuminating.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I'm trying to get my way through Blindness.

The premise is fascinating, but the writing is getting to me. I'm sure part of it is bad translation, but it's more than that, there are stylistic choices that are just grating on me. Such as the fact that there are no quotation marks, line breaks, or anything to distinguish dialog. Just big paragraph after big paragraph with no distinction between who is talking. The whole book is feeling a bit pretentious. Is that common for Nobel winning authors?

[€uroMeinke]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

The whole book is feeling a bit pretentious. Is that common for Nobel winning authors?

That hasn't been my experience. Mostly Nobel winners novels tend to pacifist political stands - so horrors of war, oppression, torture seem to abound so I guess there might be a tendency to that sort of heavy handedness. Still, the Nobel is usually awarded for a body of works and not a single book - so you may have just picked up one of the authors' sucky books - or maybe just a poor translation.

(I'm partial to Booker prize winners myself)