readers advisory for all discussion

so this group has a million members, which is great - i am glad there is so much interest in it. but there are a lot of people who are lurking, quietly. which is fine - maybe you aren't looking for a book, maybe you aren't able to help anyone find a book yet. but so no one gets bored, here is an opportunity to contribute to the group on your own terms.

tell me about your favorite book.

just for fun. tell us what you like so much about a book you adore. sell it to us - why do you like it? is it the characters? the plot? the action? the language? let us know why we should love it, too. no pressure, no judgment. come out and play.

There's one book that not TOO many people know about that I really loved: The Secret Fruit of Peter Paddington: A Novel (or just Fruit in Canada where it was first published) by Brian Francis.

It's a book about a an adolescent boy who's distressed about his body changing - so much so that he imagines his nipples are speaking to him.

The voice of the protagonist, in my opinion, is absolutely hilarious and totally fresh - I haven't found a "voice" quite like his in the YA-world, where every boy is so witty, slightly nerdy in that cool way, you know? Peter Paddington (only 13) is NOT snarky, or particularly witty, or emo. He's earnest, and sweet, and also just plain weird!

There is an overarching homosexual theme that is not directly addressed or stated, but which is talked around, and alluded to, in the most hilarious of ways. Since he is so young, Peter isn't quite ready to realize his own tendencies quite logically.

I mean - it's such a great book! There's this character, Daniela - this crazy-swearing-all-the-time Italian girl from next door who is just as bizarre - and yet the author makes them feel so real and unique.

Sometimes, you feel as though if you knew either of these weirdo kids in middle school, you definitely would have HATED them based on nothing but that old teenage cruelty that unearths itself in the middle-school-times. Then, you realize that because of Francis' characterization you totally love them instead.

The US paperback edition also has an interview with sex columnist and "It-Gets-Better" Frontman, Dan Savage.

It's not YA per-se, like I don't think it's filed in the YA-section (but what do I know?), but it is a really great teen/coming of age story.

Karen, when I think about my all-time favorite books, the ones I would re-read over and over, I must put "Harriet the Spy" at the top of my list.

Harriet was my hero, she understood the kids who were different and she was kind to kids who had suffered. Her wit and observations of everyday life made me want to be a writer. I studied newspaper Journalism in college and use my interviewing skills today in my work with Hospice clients and their families.

I am a lurker! I am looking for the most thought provoking, belief shaking, intelligent book anybody has ever read!

for me, not surprisingly, that is still probably Infinite Jest. that one really raised the bar for me, and excited me as far as the shape in which a narrative can take, and the scope of a story, and the cheeky pointing out of a novel's underpinnings. it is so massive, but so engaging, it was a novel that seemed to be written for me at the time. there is nothing i don't like about that book, except those forever edited-out pages that i want to read so badly.

and let me once again pimp Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which is a fantastic companion text.

Thomas wrote: "I am a lurker! I am looking for the most thought provoking, belief shaking, intelligent book anybody has ever read!"

This is why I still read. No, not because you lurk, but hello there, and welcome...but because I think that book is still being written, that it is always being written, and that if I read long enough, I'll get to it.


And then I'll die (happy).

Now that I think about it...

maybe that book is in print and someone is hiding it from me until I change the beneficiary on my life insurance. Hey, if you're lurking back there and you have the book, give me your name. I'm prepared to die happy today. Maybe.

No surprises; mine is The Secret History (if I have to choose ONE, which is hard enough in itself). I feel like it's boring to choose a book most people have read or at least heard of, but it simply is my favourite book of all time. I'm in awe of everything about it: the plot, the characterisation, the style, the atmosphere it creates and how readable it all is. It set a benchmark for me in that it's completely accessible but also truly intelligent. I've read it multiple times and never cease to be amazed by it, and it's my ultimate inspiration, writing-wise.

You can't make me pick just one!

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski is my judge-other-people by book.

The book that changed my life was Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

I think about both books every day. Hmm, might be time for another round of re-reads.

The people on Goodreads have me really excited about The Secret History. I think it's about time I get on that...

Hey Paul - what's a "judge-other-people-by" book? Just curious...

Heh. Me being snotty. If someone has read House of Leaves and hates it, then I'm done with talking to that person. ;)

Blair wrote: "No surprises; mine is The Secret History (if I have to choose ONE, which is hard enough in itself). I feel like it's boring to choose a book most people have read or at least heard of,..."

I love The Secret History. So much moodiness!

i wonder if it would be worthwhile to make a list of readalikes for secret history. or not. the lists section of this group has been woefully unpopular.

My favorite book today is The Road. I loved every second of that gritty, dark journey. It got under my skin so much that at one point I looked up and saw blue sky and was surprised.

Rhiannon wrote: "There's one book that not TOO many people know about that I really loved: The Secret Fruit of Peter Paddington: A Novel (or just Fruit in Canada where it was first published) by [auth..."

I ordered this from amazon yesterday. no joke

on the chance of sounding like a pretentious hipster my favorite book ever, forever since I read it and forever and ever is The Stranger. I don't feel like I have to sell this book cause everyone on the planet was forced to read it when they were 16 and they hated it.

I reread it again recently and was worried that somehow my head had overhyped the book, but it hadn't. Growing up I liked the book because it was really the first book to ever come out and say to me "you don't have to care" you can make a choice, and I was a lot like meursault I mean my mom "almost died" when I was in high school and I got a lot of crap from my family about not being emotional enough and not being sympathetic and falling apart, and this book sort of said "it's okay not to care".

And I always liked how optimistic the idea of believing in nothing was, but everyone in my class got mad because they didn't believe the book was optimistic, it's really the first book I ever really went to bat for and probably my main segue from sci-fi to literary.

i'm a lurker. i'll admit it. i feel like most groups have a core of friends at the center already and when i join i'm like that pathetic little wallflower who tags along but has no insight into preexisting in-jokes. it's like high school all over again. but in my attempt to get better usage out of my goodreads account, i'm making an effort to crack the inner circle. so to speak.

jasmine, i love The Stranger. i'm an english teacher (who doesn't capitalize) and i do this one with my 11H class. and you're right, they all hate it, but i appreciate it a bit more every time i read it. (ditto for The Great Gatsby which i hated at 16, too).

my favorite books, however, are: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Lord of the Flies, and A Wrinkle in Time.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: i love this book one million dollars. I just felt like I knew Oskar. and i start to well up thinking about the "flip-book" at the end. i sort of think it's tragic that it's been made into a movie (and yet i'll definitely go see it).

Lord of the Flies : one of my greatest regrets is ruining this book for my older sister when i was a punky pre-teen. teaching this novel has shown me how layered and textured a text can actually be. the plot is meh, but the use of allusion, symbols, and imagery is so compelling; everything has a purpose. the cleverly crafted dichotomies, the picture of mankind, the juxtapositions...golding was a brilliant bastard. plus, the latent sex and gender stuff is AMAZING.

A Wrinkle in Time : this is one of the first books i read as a young child that made me feel smart. i think most adolescent girls can relate to plain old belligerent meg who feels unspecial in comparison to her male siblings. i definitely did. i also credit this book for making me a reader. and, of course, my crush on calvin o'keefe is sort of legendary.

welcome to the mythical inner circle!

thank you!

ha lauren it's funny now cause there are so many people like me that love the book but I didn't go to school with any of them.

On the front of selling books to people I would like to sell my favorite play (and poetry book) Lucifer (Songs of Innocence And of Experience) both are books about the fall of lucifer and the importance of respect, specialness and choice. (there is also a theory that milton plagurized from lucifer). But they are really about turning your back on the creator to fully enjoy the creation. Lucifer is strongly about the moral ideas, if you cannot have what is promised you should not take what scraps are offered.


**the play Danton's death Danton's Death, Leonce and Lena, Woyzeck Is also really fantastic.

lauren if you're in with karen and I you are in the inner inner circle.

so...you are the internet equivalent of virgil to my dante?

i love it!

cool

i can't narrow it down, that's an unfair demand! nor am i lurker. but hey, i'm awake at 3:18 am so that's reason enough:

Absolute Beginners
The Raj Quartet
Little, Big
Thin Red Line
Catcher in the Rye (sorry, haters)

at least two of those are out of print in this country, so tell me why i should be jealous/ go on, what's so great about thoooose books?

OUT OF PRINT, WTF?! that is very upsetting. which two?

i ramble on and on and on about Absolute Beginners, Little Big, Thin Red Line, and Catcher in my reviews for those novels... so i'm feeling rather shy all of a sudden about rambling on and on and on again about them.

but The Raj Quartet! no review... so now i can really ramble on, yeah! but first let me pour myself a glass of 3:42am wine. perhaps it will get me back to sleep (unlikely).

okay wine sounded terrible all of a sudden, so some microwave hot chocolate instead (very classy). here goes...

oops, now the microwave is beeping

WHY YOU SHOULD READ THE RAJ QUARTET
by mark monday

1. do you like to read extensively detailed, dense, dramatic historical fiction that does not stint on characterization or slow-burning narrative action? do you like to read about colonial india, specifically colonial india during the slow, troubled handover from the british raj back to indian control, and then of course the horrible partitioning? i do. but why exactly?

2. do you like to read about class systems and their impact on an intimate, personal level and on a systemic level as well? i sure do. class is the basis of so many, er, classic english novels, but there is just something so drastic and of course so racially-based as the class system of colonial india. the class system becomes so palpable, so real, so almost on the verge of breaking down because of its inherent, disgusting unfairness when race is brought into the mix. class in literature that depicts colonial india is also powerful to me on a personal level. i'm not sure i can explain this in words that are inoffensive. i'm a person who loves classic english (and early american) literature. i eat it all up. and yet there is always a side of me - and i acknowledge that this may be due to my mixed-race status - that shouts at the back of my mind when reading those novels ohyouthinkitssohardyouspoiledupperclasstwit/youneedlesslyresentfullowerclassknob,you'restillwhitewhitewhiteandsohavesomanymoreautomaticadvantages,morethanyou'lleverrealize,justshutthefuckupwithyourwhiningalready!
i don't get that voice when i'm reading about colonial india. class analysis within this subject is stark: you are brown or you are white, that determines your class, and in the end it doesn't matter what your level of education is, how much money you have, whatever... there will always be an automatic divide based on where you were born and what color your skin happens to be. that starkness somehow makes it so much more relevant to me.

3. do you like to read about heartbreaking, tragic romance? this one has one of the best examples of its kind. the lovers are so warmly, honestly depicted. what happens to them is so disturbing...and it reverberates to inform the rest of this epic and nearly all the major characters within it.

4. do you like your historical novels to relate history on a personal scale? do you like to see how great events impact folks who are not movers & shakers but simply caught up in a grand design not of their making?

5. do you like old-fashioned villains but yet long for completely realistic, three-dimensional characters who have understandable motivations as they continue to do the horrible things they do? can the two be combined? Raj Quartet has a couple outstanding examples of how they can be combined.

6. do you want to read the perspective of older folks, flitting in and out of potential senility, considered useless by the younger generation, dreamy & strange & not-quite-getting-it? this novel has my favorite example of the kind. she is not idealized. she is not a fountain of wisdom. she is heartbreaking.

7. do you like poetry in prose form? for such an elephantine undertaking, one full of extensive historical detail and given wide-screen scope, The Raj Quartet is written by an author who knows how to turn a phrase. Paul Scott is an amazing writer. he knows how to construct sentences that make you pause and wonder at how language can convey the most ambiguous of feelings, the beauty in a tiny detail, the strangeness of a foreign setting, the way a place can actually look and feel and smell and taste.

8. do you like strong women? good, so do i. this book is full of them. sometimes they are heroes, in one case a villain (such a black & white word, but it fits), but mainly they are just people who are trying to do the best they can. they are not "strong" in a wish-fulfillment sense of the word. they are strong in a way that is real, that is brave because of their personal and historical context, that is worthy of respect because of their need to define themselves according to their own personal context.

9. do you like intricate narratives? say no more, this is royalty as far as intricacy is concerned. as a reader, you better pay attention. characters come and go, but they are not dropped. actions impact actions and those actions, that impact, unspools in all directions, ever-widening but sometimes submerged, sometimes leading to a dead end, but always connected in a way that is so complex and so subtle, so small and so large.

10. do you want an excellent BBC adaptation of your favorite english novel, preferably in miniseries format? hey, you got that too. watch this AFTER you read the series though, well at least that's the way i did it and it was awesome. so awesome that i put off breaking up with a pretentious asshole simply because we hadn't finished the miniseries yet and he owned the, um, vhs tapes. he was trying to "educate" me. i waited to break up with him until after the last episode. well, i guess i was the asshole in that case.

gosh, i wrote so much. this feels like a review. time to cut and paste!

Jasmine wrote: "ha lauren it's funny now cause there are so many people like me that love the book but I didn't go to school with any of them.

On the front of selling books to people I would like to sell my favo..."

I've added Lucifer to my to-read pile now. There's no review for poor Luci though...maybe you could add your summary on Satan's behalf?

i am such a fan of mark right now.

Jen wrote: "Jasmine wrote: "ha lauren it's funny now cause there are so many people like me that love the book but I didn't go to school with any of them.

On the front of selling books to people I would like..."

Maybe i'll reread it so I can make sure i'm doing Satan justice.

Lauren wrote: "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: i love this book one million dollars.

Lauren: I love this expression one million dollars.

I hope you won't feel like a wallflower here. It would be nice to hear more of what you have to say!

Micha wrote: "Lauren wrote: "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: i love this book one million dollars.

Lauren: I love this expression one million dollars.

I hope you won't feel like a wallflower here. I..."

micha I am going to respond to your message, I just have the plague and can't think right now.

The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm: While some parts of this book are dated, this is the best book I have ever read about love. Not only the love in intimate relationships, but love of all sorts. More than anything, I value this book because it made me think and weigh my own views of love.