Literary Time Period Nominations • May 2015

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

I'll nominate Rabbit Run by John Updike (first published 1960). From Goodreads:

Great nomination and I was planning on seconding it. Unfortunately as I was adding it to the first post list, I realised that it was published in 1960 while the time period is 1961-1980, so it's ineligible. But we still have 1941-1960 coming up at some point in the future, so there's always then!

[sun surfer]

Saville and Invisible Cities are already on my to-read list, so I'll give them a second and third respectively. Ragtime is good but I've already read it. I'm interested in both The Black Prince and Frost but since I'm about to nominate a book, I can only support one more so by a hair Frost gets a second from me.

And, I nominate Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec from 1978.

4.26 rating on Goodreads.

From GR:

Life is an unclassified masterpiece, a sprawling compendium as encyclopedic as Dante's Commedia and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and, in its break with tradition, as inspiring as Joyce's Ulysses. Perec's spellbinding puzzle begins in an apartment block in the XVIIth arrondissement of Paris where, chapter by chapter, room by room, like an onion being peeled, and extraordinary rich cast of characters is revealed in a series of tales that are bizarre, unlikely, moving, funny, or (sometimes) quite ordinary. From the confessions of a racing cyclist to the plans of an avenging murderer, from a young ethnographer obsessed with a Sumatran tribe to the death of a trapeze artist, from the fears of an ex-croupier to the dreams of a sex-change pop star to an eccentric English millionaire who has devised the ultimate pastime, Life is a manual of human irony, portraying the mixed marriages of fortunes, passions and despairs, betrayals and bereavements, of hundreds of lives in Paris and around the world.

But the novel in more than an extraordinary range of fictions; it is a closely observed account of life and experience. The apartment block's one hundred rooms are arranged in a magic square, and the book as a whole is peppered with a staggering range of literary puzzles and allusions, acrostics, problems of chess and logic, crosswords, and mathematical formulae. All are there for the reader to solve in the best tradition of the detective novel.

Originally Posted by sun surfer

Great nomination and I was planning on seconding it. Unfortunately as I was adding it to the first post list, I realised that it was published in 1960 while the time period is 1961-1980, so it's ineligible. But we still have 1941-1960 coming up at some point in the future, so there's always then!

Sorry about that.

[Bookpossum]

I'll second Life: A User's Manual. (My Library actually has this one!) And that's my fourth vote.

[caleb72]

I'm going to push Ragtime over the edge with a fourth.

[ccowie]

I'll fourth Invisible Cities

I'd like to nominate Falconer by John Cheever

From GR:
Stunning and brutally powerful, Falconer tells the story of a man named Farragut, his crime and punishment, and his struggle to remain a man in a universe bent on beating him back into childhood. Only John Cheever could deliver these grand themes with the irony, unforced eloquence, and exhilarating humor that make Falconer such a triumphant work of the moral imagination.

[HomeInMyShoes]

I've read Invisible Cities.

I'd back Rabbit Run when the 1950s comes around. It's a great book. I've been meaning to read another Updike, but I won't nominate it here.

I'd like to nominate One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, but it appears that many have read it so I'll save that for my own reading.

I'm going to nominate The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

[ccowie]

I'll enthusiastically second The Bell Jar

Read it many years ago and have wanted to reread it for a long time.

[HomeInMyShoes]

I think I'll second Frost by Thomas Bernhard. I read Bernhard's The Loser for my 1983 entry in my age challenge and I'd like to give the author a second chance.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

I think I'll second Frost by Thomas Bernhard. I read Bernhard's The Loser for my 1983 entry in my age challenge and I'd like to give the author a second chance.

You're actually thirding it.

[Synamon]

Third The Bell Jar.

[sun surfer]

A little over a day left for nominations.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

You're actually thirding it.

I will fourth Frost.

[Billi]

I give my votes to:
- Saville by David Storey
- Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
- Falconer by John Cheever

[desertblues]

I will be taking a break from the Bookclub, as I don't have the time at the moment. But I'll be back.....