June 9, 2009
Clusterbook #2, anyone?
So is anyone up for another Clusterflock bookclub meeting? I’m thinking a low-fi kind of thing, reading or re-reading a book we might have on our shelves already. Perhaps a classic book that people would like to read for the first time, and others might be keen to revisit? I have never read Lolita, for instance, and I know that Sheila loves it. I would love to hear your suggestions.
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I’m up for it! I’ve never read Lolita either…and I have a copy around here somewhere.
Keep me on the roster!
Cool, so we have the delegates from Californ-eye-ay on board. Delighted.
Please feel free to suggest other titles also. I’d just like to open the floor for possibilities at this stage. It might be fun to have lots of people for this one, if it struck a note.
I’m in. I haven’t read Lolita either. Can’t think of any other to suggest instead.
For the record, I bought a copy of Lolita about six months ago with the intention of finally reading it. I haven’t …yet.
I’d love to participate, and if we want to do another flocker book, I’d recommend Renner’s Mosefolket. although poetry would be distinctly different.
Yes, I would love to host a Clusterbook for Mosefolket. I suppose I feel like going with a book-lying-around theme for this one because of the general I.T.E. flavour that’s going around, and also there were one or two problems with book delivery and scheduling the last time, so perhaps it would be easier for people to get their hands on a book like Lolita, or Catcher in the Rye, or Ulysses, or whathaveyou. But again, I’m happy to be taking suggestions, so have at it.
My vote Mosefolket!
Ok, if this is going to turn into a Renner V Nabokov slug ‘em out Bitch Fight, it’s gonna get filthy around here.
I’m just sayin.
I’m down with it. maybe we can do a few books lying around, a few clusterbooks., rinse, repeat.
Yeah that’s possible. Will take a little longer to read them all of course, but you know. That could be good.
This is great. I would love to read Lolita or Mosefolket again and hear what everybody has to say about either or both of them. One fine thing about Lolita for the book-lying-around choice is the range of non-literary views of the book we could also comment on after looking at it and talking about it in our own ways. Another book I think of as a possibility is the Gabriel Garcia Marquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude. Many here will have read that already, but I have found that it has slipped back behind the generational rift and needs to be brought back up to the present. It’s an amazing book, and the Rabassa translation is very good. When I was reading it the first time I had strange dreams for the whole week–it’s that kind of book, on that gets in under the way you see the world. But Nabokov is always wonderful to read (and if you are in the mood for a fine autobiography, his Speak, Memory is splendid).
I am totally fucking up for that.
I believe I just recovered Lolita from my storage space. I have read it, but long enough ago to warrant another go around. Especially after having seen both the Jeremy Irons and the Peter Sellers movie versions. Perhaps this could be a book/movie hybrid? I know we talked at Clusterflockstock about doing a movie club as well. When is it trying to do too many things? I also may have to find a new pair of heart sunglasses to get into the swing of things…
I, for one, haven’t read Marquez, either. Y’all? Throw down the gauntlet. “Here, fucker, pick this up. Read it. And be prepared to talk about it.”
I’m up for this too, and either Renner, Marquez, or Nabokov works for me.
Maybe it would be good to alternate between books-lying-around and flocker books–and pick two at the same time so people can have a bit more time for ordering copies (and perhaps get the free shipping for $25+ orders at Amazon).
If it’s Nabokov, maybe Pale Fire?
PS: Thanks for even thinking of Mosefolket. I am honored. (If I move to Malta, I’ll be honoured.)
I’m in, for anything the group selects I have read woefully little over the past several years, having spent many years prior reading constantly. This will be great. Thank you, Lucy!
Hey, I was up for it last time and even made it to the preliminary testing-testing stage before abruptly exiting stage left. I won’t miss it next time. Hell, someone would have to shoot me before I’d duck out again.
Like Daryl, I lean toward alternating between books-lying-in-state and flocker-books. I’d say ‘yes’ to any of the former that others go for, after which — Renner!
I just started Lolita earlier this week. Good timing.
You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
“The notion of murder often brings to mind the notion of sea and sailors. Sea and sailors do not, at first, appear as a definite image–it’s rather that “murder” starts up a feeling of waves.” JG
Mosfolket has been staring at me, but I have never read Lolita, so I am game for anything.
Ok ok! Sheesh, a girl goes out into New York city to check out a Francis Bacon retrospective and a Slavic Soul Partay and boogies the night away and look what happens in her absence. Cool.
I like the idea of two or three books, though that will take us longer, especially if it is more than two. Mosefolket I think would best be done in either a poetry bookclub or a thing of its own altogether, and I think that would be good to be the next Clusterflock BookClub.
I think it’s got to be Lolita and Marquez for this one. Two will be a longish reading engagement but I’m going with Daryl’s hunch that they’ll go well together and that we will have plenty to discuss in those two.
So, Lolita and A Hundred Days of Solitude. How does that sound to you people?
I’m up for it. Both books have kick-ass opening lines.
Sheila, it would take a Silver Bullet to stop you this time!
I should leave this to Daryl, but I think what he meant (but was not clear about) is that we line up two or three books at once, so that people can plan ahead and perhaps save some money on reduced shipping costs–not that we read two at the same time. I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but one at a time is the most I can handle.
Sorry to throw a curve.
Well if it makes this thing more feasible, then let’s just do one. I thought two easy to get books would be a great idea, and I meant that we would read them one at a time, one after each other, and then conduct a book club discussing both these books, even making artificial contextualisations, each for the other.
If it’s going to be one book this time, let’s do Lolita. I don’t want to leave anyone out who would rather do one book. But if there are people who would be up for it, it might be fun to try the two and the conversation can waver around those who have read one or the other or both, and chime in as they wish. Last time, Elizabeth hadn’t read Prairie Shapes, and it didn’t throw the balance of the conversation at all. Far from it.
Hello, and yes, Lolita will be splendid. And I suppose I wasn’t too clear in my earlier suggestion. I was thinking of a kind of tentative schedule of readings stretching out into the months ahead in a Book….Flocker Book….Book….Flocker Book… series, such as this possibility: Lolita; Coop’s book; One Hundred Years of Solitude; Brandon Hobson’s book…and so on, with a few weeks between books. But I damn sure don’t want to “push” for any particular path or selection. It just all seems like great fun. About the connection between Lolita an 100 Years–they actually strike me as very different books, with the basic high quality of the prose being the main common feature. I love the melifluous language in Lolita, and also the way America is presented from a perspective that makes it a new and different place. And I love the GGM book for many reasons, including its magical realism and the rhythms of its structure. But what the hell, I’m always up for talking about all books all at the same time–which is perhaps an indication of a character flaw.
I’m with Daryl. What he said. Except for that business about a character flaw.
Thanks for clarifying, Lucy. I’m up for anything. You’re running this book club–tell us what to do and we’ll do it!
Ok it is said:
The books up for discussion at the next Clusterflock Book Club, aka Clusterbook #2 are:
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
You can read either or both books for the conversation, but please let me know now that you’re going to come on board, along with some general sense of whether you will read one or both books, and I’ll send out an email and set up a Doodle schedule for us to decide a time for the talk-in to happen.
All are welcome, not just the Clusterflock hardcore.
I reread One Hundred Years less than two years ago so, time depending, I may not reread it for clusterbook — but you can count on me to participate with Lolita.
yep, I’m in. I’ve read 100 years, and will second Daryl’s estimation of it. I haven’t yet read Lolita, but will in preparation for the conversation. (and maybe will reread 100 years, if time allows.)
I’m in and will reread both with great pleasure.
Shit. I really want to re-read 100 years, but I know what that book does to me–it pulls me in and I have to spend long periods of time staring into space and re-reading passages and staring back into space. It will take me forever to re-read that book. Okay, I’ll re-read One Hundred Years of Solitude. What a treat. And, if time permits, Lolita.
Lucy, I’d love to take part but have to admit to being rather scared. The last 10 years of reading consist of me reading (looking) at magazines always form the back to the front. I’m not sure what happened to my attention span along the way, but, it seems shot to fuck to be honest.
Can I say I try to read either of these and then jump in at the last minute – of course reading is the easy part. I’m still shit scared.
Phil, if you can read Lolita from the back to the front, that would be immensely helpful. Thanks.
Wow, I just noticed Rick had a filthy mouth back there. Nice.
Well, at least there is a copy in the house. There is also a copy of the film which I am also unable to watch for reasons that are tedious – I shall try my hardest to do it the conventional way.
I did enjoy listening to the last one.
Mary, that’s an idea about looking at the movies, but really this is going to be all about the text. I said text.
Does anyone else . . . oh, I guess I’m going off-topic, aren’t I? Fixing to ask about reading magazines back to front. A few years ago I noticed that I’d begun doing that, too.
I don’t read books backwards.
Why don’t you try an audio book, Phil?
When we do Ulysses, someone is going to have to take on the job of reading it backwards. We can haz scienczburger.
Lucy, I have no idea. Hell, I could cry – papers and magazines from the back. Books have become off limits because I just cannot concentrate long enough and I cannot watch a film for love nor money and yet I am able to while away hours and hours doing nothing! Go figure.
Sorry, yeah, audio books might be good on the ipod walking to work perhaps.
Look, I’ll try, not sure I have the words even if I read it but will cross that bridge if I read it.
Lucy, my son’s favourite book – don’t start me off.
Ulysses. Yes.
I still think Ulysses is unreadable. I would, however, be happy to unread it with the rest of the flock.
Ok but we’re getting off topic. I am making a list here. So far, I have:
Kelsey, Deron, Daryl, Sheila, CIndy, Phil, Lucy.
I know there are others but I just want ye to punch in which books ye might be likely to get to, so I have some sense of what we’re dealing with.
Ulysses is definitely readable; it requires learning how to read it. it’s taken me twenty years and I think I’m ready.
As I don’t read, perhaps an unreadable book is just what I need.
I’m planning to be at the bookstore tomorrow while the water is shut off in the park. I am buying Lolita, yes? I took a graduate seminar in Ulysses in the early ’90s and read most of it then. I enjoyed some of it and didn’t enjoy some of it. I’ll probably pass when that is the book club book.
Ulysses is a grand book–and I agree with Deron that it’s one you have to learn how to read. It really requires a reader to get out of his or her own way–to look at what Joyce is doing instead of seeing only what you want him to do. But another good choice for starters on Joyce is Dubliners. I would love to hear reactions to that, particularly with respect to the last story in it–”The Dead,” and how it seems at first to be different from the many shorter ones before it–until you let it sit in your mind for a while and it becomes one with the effect produced by the others.
Also–anybody want to reread Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being?
Also, I have a Salinger itch I need to scratch, but I have no problem doing that on my own.
[...] Speaking of One Hundred Years of Solitude, it took Gerald Martin 19 years to finish his biography of “Gabo” Márquez: When asked to muse about Márquez the man himself, Martin looked toward us and answered, “This is a very intuitive man. This is a man with a very large ego. This is a man, who no matter what was going on in his life, would sit himself down, and write his books. He always had a strong sense of what he was going to do. As for why it took me so long to finish, why would I ever want to stop writing it?” [...]
I want to read too! Sorry I’m so late. I’ll read whatever is selected.
Hey me too! Lolita, right?
I only swear for humor and effect.
Me, too.
I’m in!
One Hundred Years of Lolita in Solitude. And who is the author again?
Amy! I thought you couldn’t read or write!
Oh, Shelia, since I’ve been unemployed I’ve had time to learn.
“When life hands you lemons . . . “
Y’all. You wanna do it, check your email and Doodle like Lucy tells you.
Count me in. For 100 Years and then Lolita if time permits.