Potential Books For Reading

[Stewart]

As the intention is to keep the book group an informal part of World Literature Forum, so we want to keep the method in which books are chosen an informal affair too. So, to that effect, books will be chosen on the basis of general concensus via this thread, whereby members are free to make suggestions, as well as second or politely dissuade said suggestions. When it becomes clear that there's a significant level of interest in a title then it will be assigned the next available slot in the book group schedule.

Discussion starts...now:

[promtbr]

Thanks again Stewart for taking the time to set this up!

I will join in most any book group read if the author's on my TBR, and since its so huge, the chances are pretty likely I will join them all...

I would like to see a September group read of a work by a potential candidate for the 2009 Nobel Prize which will be announced the month after. It would be pretty cool if the author chosen for WLF's September's Group Read would go on to be a Nobel Laureate the following month. Tho maybe this sets up a too heated debate on who to select...But then again, maybe that could be fun too.


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[Liam]

Originally Posted by Stewart

...or politely dissuade...

Stewart, you're just... too nice!


L.

[duchess.diana]

Originally Posted by Liam

Stewart, you're just... too nice! L.

Yes, Liam, Stewart does seem to be very nice. He's also incredibly efficient, and he seems to always be anxious to learn as much as he can about books and authors. In fact, I don't think we could ask for a more wonderful forum owner. Do you?

And count me in for the reading group. I may not be able to join up every time, but if Calvino's on the plate, I'm game.

--Diana

[liehtzu]

Due to my living in a remote locale - north Thailand - I am at the mercy of used bookshops (in the tourist city of Chiang Mai) and so my ability to find certain things is erratic. So, for instance, I can find a long out-of-print translation of Zbigniew Herbert's Mr Cogito and Georges Perec's W or the Memory of Childhood, but more common things, like If on a winter's night a traveler... (or Poe's The Narrative of the Life of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket or Nabokov's Speak, Memory or Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, to name a few) can be harder to come by or plain nonexistent. Of the suggestions for the coming months:

August: If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, Italo Calvino
September: The Sorrow Of War, Bao Ninh
October: The White Castle, Orhan Pamuk
November: Jealousy, Alain Robbe-Grillet

I have already read The Sorrow of War and while it's a fine book I have no desire to revisit it now, and own an unread copy of The White Castle so shall merrily join in the fray in October. The others you'll all have to do without me. Fair enough, I'm not spending much time on the internet these days anyway.



Here are a couple possibles I'd be keen on for Dec, Jan or further, in order of preference (at least the first few):

Riders in the Chariot, Patrick White
Beauty and Sadness, Kawabata Yasunari
High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes
The Tartar Steppe, Dino Buzzati
Naomi, Tanizaki Junichiro
The Garlic Ballads, Mo Yan
Republic of Dreams, Nelida Pinon
The Mulatta and Mister Fly, Miguel Angel Asturias
Ake: The Years of Childhood, Wole Soyinka
Three Trapped Tigers, G. Cabrera Infante
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, Peter Handke
Short Letter, Long Farewell, Peter Handke
The Case of Comrade Tulayev, Victor Serge
The Thief and the Dogs, Naguib Mahfouz
The Beggar, Naguib Mahfouz
Autumn Quail, Naguib Mahfouz
Beyond Illusions, Duong Thu Huong

There are others. A whole shelf full. But those come immediately to mind as I sit here at work.

[lionel]

Originally Posted by liehtzu

So, for instance, I can find [...] Georges Perec's W or the Memory of Childhood

W would make an excellent choice. I'm reading it at the moment, but although it's a brief read I'm getting sidetracked by other books. W is two dovetailed narratives - a fictonal story, and a fragmented autobiography. Unfortunately, the title itself is lost in translation: we say 'double u', whereas the French say 'double v', and although the pronunciation in French is slightly different (being similar to 'vay'), it's an obvious pun on 'double life'.

There's a lot to discuss in this - memory, appearance and reality, Nazism, etc, and it's very readable.

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by lionel

There's a lot to dicuss in this - memory, appearance and reality, Nazism, etc, and it's very readable.

I suppose another good thing that could come out of discussions here is that some members will be capable of reading the book in the original language too, so the credibility of the translation itself can be mulled over.

[lionel]

Originally Posted by Stewart

I suppose another good thing that could come out of discussions here is that some members will be capable of reading the book in the original language too, so the credibility of the translation itself can be mulled over.

That's a very valid point.

[Liam]

Originally Posted by liehtzu

Riders in the Chariot, Patrick White

Why not A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys???

Although I love Patrick White and have all of his books at home, there's no potion in the ocean that's going to help some of our fellow-members finish (or even get to the half-way point) of White's behemoth in a month! Especially not those of us who have, I dunno, day-jobs.


I second your choices of Pamuk and Robbe-Grillet, and would love to re-read Dino Buzzati again. Peter Handke's A Sorrow Beyond Dreams made me want to kill myself, but it's wonderfully written.


Cheers,
L

[lionel]

Yes, Robbe-Grillet's La Jalousie is also a great choice, although it too has a double meaning in the title that doesn't quite work in English: jealousy of course, and jalousie, or window blind, which are linked in the novella.

[promtbr]

I see that my idea for reading a potential October Nobel prize winner was popular...

[Colette Jones]

Originally Posted by promtbr

I see that my idea for reading a potential October Nobel prize winner was popular...

I would go along with that - good idea.

[Laconico]

I think If..traveller" alienates normal readers (ie non-academics) from Calvino's truest oeuvre. Like Castle..Destiny and to some extent Invisible Cities, the idea form and concept far outweigh the human resonance and (to me) literary value of these works. The sentience and majesty of "Difficult Loves" , "Marcovaldo" and even "Cosmicomics" are what makes Calvino great. For me, "..Traveller" is little more than 10 novels he failed to write.

Sorry if this doesn't appear constructive and I know my favourite Calvino's aren't novels so perhaps don't fit your monthly discussion idea.
May I suggest an Isaac Bashevis Singer novel (my flavour of the month) as he is 100% unpretentious yet heavy with meaning and humanity:

"Enemies (A Love Story)" or "Shosha" fit the bill perfectly.

Books are for everyone!

[matt.todd]

A vote for anything by Alaa al Aswany - though his first novel, The Yacoubian Building, is probably better.

[Aiculik]

Originally Posted by lionel

Yes, Robbe-Grillet's La Jalousie is also a great choice, although it too has a double meaning in the title that doesn't quite work in English: jealousy of course, and jalousie, or window blind, which are linked in the novella.

Have you read it? Was it violent? I'm asking because I recently read his novel Un Roman Sentimental (in Slovak translation), and it was so brutally violent I still feel sick when I remember it. And before I touch anything by this author, I'd like to be sure that not that kind of writing.

It's not that I don't read novels that describe violence. But I have never read any other book with THAT MUCH brutal violence and brutal sex (and with little girls, too). There is so much of it, that after few first pages it's not even shocking. Every male character that appears becomes saddistic rapist, and every female characters are tortured and raped in the most disgusting ways - with very detailed descriptions.

[promtbr]

Originally Posted by Colette Jones

I would go along with that - good idea.

My new best friend...*hugs own shoulders*

A list that was widely floating around the net last September on the then- odds given for the 2008 Nobel.

Keeping in mind the odds were based on the percieved geo-politico-race-gender etc...LIKELYHOOD of winning the prize, not their 'worthiness'..

I deleted the names of the poets and the deceased John Updike and Le Clezio (Last year's winner)..

Edit: I separated out those whose original language is not english and put them on top.

Amos Oz 6,00
Haruki Marakami 11,00
Arnost Lustig 15,00
Mario Vargas Llosa 21,00
Antoni Tabucchi 26,00
Assia Djebar 26,00
Cees Nooteboom 34,00
Carlos Fuentes 41,00
Milan Kundera 41,00
Chinua Achebe 51,00
Harry Mulisch 51,00
Ian McEwan 51,00
Ngugi Thiong’o 51,00
Mahasweta Devi 51,00
Umberto Ecco 51,00
F. Sionil Jose 67,00
Herta Müller 67,00
Michael Tournier 101,00
Patrick Modiano 101,00
Salman Rushdie 101,00
Vassilis Aleksakis 101,00





Those originally writen in english were:
Joyce Carol Oates 8,00
Philip Roth 8,00
Don DeLillo 11,00
Michael Ondaatje 21,00
Thomas Pynchon 21,00
Margaret Atwood 34,00
Alice Munro 41,00
Peter Carey 41,00
Cormac McCarhty 51,00
A. S. Byatt 67,00
David Malouf 67,00
Beryl Bainbridge 101,00
E.L Doctorow 101,00
John Banville 101,00
William H Gass 101,00

[Colette Jones]

promtbr, should we also remove the ones which start out in English? Narrows it down a bit, anyway.

[promtbr]

Originally Posted by Colette Jones

promtbr, should we also remove the ones which start out in English? Narrows it down a bit, anyway.

Good Idea, I edited it and separated the English ones in a list below the translations (in case anyone just for info sake wanted to see the whole fiction list)


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[KevinfromCanada]

Originally Posted by promtbr

Good Idea, I edited it and separated the English ones in a list below the translations (in case anyone just for info sake wanted to see the whole fiction list)


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I'd cast a vote for Nooteboom or Llosa. But that might be cheating since both are authors I want to investigate anyway.

[Ramblingsid]

I know that I am an irritable old git and no-one takes a blind bit of notice of what I say but.........

at the top of my screen it says "world literature forum" it doesn't say "world literature form (but excluding the english language and all poetry)"

so why are we using these arbitrary criteria to reduce the lists? Bah humbug!!

Can I suggest we remove all novelists that are both left-handed and over six feet tall?

So I should like to nominate Heaney's Selected Poems.

Or, in a spirit of compromise, how about Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf?