October 2017 Discussion: Bucky F&%@ing Dent by David Duchovny (spoilers)
 

This is the place to discuss the fascinating October 2017 MobileRead Book Club selection, Bucky F&%@ing Dent by David Duchovny. What did you think? Discuss whenever you’re ready.

When does this actually become funny?

What do you mean?

The topic is humor and I'm reading Bucky F&%@ing Dent yet so far I'm not finding it funny.

Sorry folks, I'm going to have to pass this month. I can't get the book from my library, and I'm just not interested enough in this book to spend $10 on it. OTOH, I intend to read England, Their England at some point, since it's both free and sounded interesting.

From what I've read so far, you're not missing anything.

I thought I'd try the audiobook and I'm next up at BPL; I'd hoped it would become available a little sooner, especially as I polished off my last audiobook this morning.

I was interested in the book because the plot summary reminded me of Goodbye, Lenin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Bye,_Lenin!). When I read the first few pages (Mr. Planter) that got my buy in.

But is it funny?

It's funny to me so far (I'm not that far in yet), but that doesn't mean it would be funny to everyone. I doubt that there is anything universally funny.

How far in are you? The problem isn't that this book is lousy or not. The problem is that it's not funny when it was nominated for the category of humor. I'm like 1/3rd into it and I've not laughed or even cracked a smile once. So when does this become funny?

Can anyone tell me when it becomes funny or if it never becomes funny?

Fox Mulder reading Bucky Dent has hit my shelf at BPL, so I'll be starting it as soon as I polish off my current listen (four more hours; nothing a spot of insomnia can't handle).

It's not slapstick laugh out loud funny like Scalzi's 'Old Man's War, 'Hal Spacejock, or say a Stephanie Plum Book, but it's very humorous with a poignant story to boot. I don't know your age, but it probably helps to have lived through that time.

OTOH, I just finished Gentleman in Moscow, and will be doing my reread now of Bucky... BTW, Gentleman in Moscow was one of the best books I've read in a long, long time; it also has its humorous qualities.

I'm about an hour into it and I'm enjoying it. I like the wordplay and the nostalgia; it's bringing the 1978 Yankees back to me. The timing's good!

I will say that I don't think David Duchovny has done himself any favors by reading his own book, actor or not. I've listened to good narrations from some actors, but have yet to listen to an audiobook read by the author which I thought successful.

I read Towles's Rules of Civility earlier this year and thought it awful, which put me off Gentleman in Moscow, which I had wanted to read. Did you read the earlier novel and did you like it? Because I'm willing to chalk it up to not having hit his stride yet, but not if it turns out I just don't like him. :)

Harlan Ellison is excellent at reading his own work. He's does well with other authors too, if given the right book.

This audiobook anthology at Audible has a sample Ellison reading Jeffty is Five.
https://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/T...8449155&sr=1-2

The question that's yet to be answered is when does this get funny?

What did you think of the book other than it not being funny.

I've not finished it. I took a break waiting to find out where the funny bits are. Are there any funny bits or were we ripped off?

No, I have not read the earlier novel yet. It's now on the TBR list, but you're giving me second thoughts. OTOH, I do have about 9 bucks in new amazon settlement credit, so what the heck.

Glad you are enjoying Dent.. Go Yankees. One more over Houston, then on to the Dodgers...

:fingersx:

I noticed an error in the header to Chapter 12; that would be 6 games back and not 5.5.

The chapters don't have titles. They have numbers. So how can that be an error in the chapter header?

I'm listening to one right now - The Return by Hisham Matar. It probably helps immensely that it's non-fiction, so it's mostly narrating his thoughts rather than narrating a storyline with many characters' voices, but I'd go so far as to say his narration makes it even better because it makes the book feel that much more personal (and I can trust he's pronouncing all the foreign people, places and words correctly).

I also remember listening to The Country Girls narrated by the author Edna O'Brien. It was back when I was still newer to audiobooks so I didn't think about it as much, but from what I remember the narration was only okay. Her voice was a bit weak and wavery. I also just recently finished Year of Wonders read by the author Geraldine Brooks, and oddly have the exact same vocal criticism of her reading as O'Brien's, but Brooks' narration is excoriated in the Audible ratings so I was willing to be empathetic to it since I didn't think it that bad.

The half comes from not having played an equal number of games. GB is number of games back to get to a tie and is also the number of games the team behind needs to win and the team ahead needs to lose.. Given the data in chapter 12, the yanks would be ahead and not tied if they won 6 while the Sox lost 6 and the Sox would still be ahead if they lost 5 and the yanks won 5, hence, the 5 and a half.

example

Team a 63 25

Team B 62 25

Team B is 1/2 GB, Team B only needs to win one to tie while team A doesn't need to lose.

If it were

Team A 63 25
Team B 62 26

Team B is one GB, meaning team a loses one while team b wins one.

Call it a statistician quirk. I guess think of one game back as being one pair of games, one lost (the team in front) and one won (the team behind).

I'm seeing different numbers, Boston as having won 43 and lost 19 and the Yankees as having won 36 and lost 24. In my baseball universe, that amounts to 6 games back. The Sox have won 7 more and lost 5 fewer; (7 + 5)/2 = 6. :D

(I really do get about half games; it just doesn't apply to the numbers in my edition .)

Jon have you got to the parts about yoga and the Y? Because I think they qualify as LOL funny.

Not yet. I'm going to finish the Spencer book today and I'll get back to Bucky after that. Thanks for that.

Even given Marty's mystic connection to the Red Sox, I still find it a little odd that characters in early 50s Brooklyn would be so into the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry. What about the Dodgers/Giants? Marty and Ted must have felt pretty isolated. ;)

...a point that is addressed later in the book. :)

I finally finished this and I did enjoy it. But it was an inappropriate book because it wasn't funny. It didn't belong in humor.

I did like how the relationship between Ted and Marty grew once Ted decided to stay with Marty to take care of him while he was dying. Ted really grew as a person and an adult. He got a life and he did what he had to do. And it was the right things to do.

I enjoyed this and I thought it easily funny enough to qualify as humor. I especially enjoyed the wordplay and the baseball bits, as I thought the father/son story was pretty standard stuff but good enough to be the basis for the flights of fancy which were quite entertaining. I also thought he managed the time shifts quite capably and organically.

Some of the 70s "product placements" seemed a little forced when they weren't entirely, well, wrong. Just as one example, "Frusen Glädjé" wasn't even sold until the early 80s. Did Duchovny's memory fail him (and he fail to verify) or did he just like the sound of it and not care?

I really don't see how he could put San Gennaro on the LES when everyone knows it's in Little Italy!

Maureen Dowd's interviewed David Duchovny with the publication of his third novel, Miss Subways. I'm not a huge fan of Dowd's but the interview is wide-ranging, interesting and fun, and, the point of this post, I liked Bucky F&%@ing Dent sufficiently that I'll read Duchovny's new novel also. It wouldn't have been on my radar had Dent not been a book club selection.

Thanks for the heads up! I just preordered the book from amazon. It's being released tomorrow. It may take a while for me to get to it. I started Les Miserables a bit ago. It seems I've been reading forever and I'm 18% through. :eek: