Vote for the next book club book

[Not Afraid]

I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

[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)

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by €uroMeinke

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.

It could very well be. It seemed like this was one of his more popular at least since I saw it prominently displayed even though it's over a decade old. Of course, popular doesn't always mean good.

I picked it up 'cause the plot sounded like a Steven King plot so I was curious how someone else would handle it. The premise is keeping my attention so far, but it seems to be using that horrors of war, oppression, torture heavy handedness for a Steven King plot.

Or it's a bad translation.