New Leaf Welcome to the New Leaf Book Club

[issybird]

Originally Posted by John F

You do realize I am trying to get around the "only vote if you are going to discuss rule?

Sigh. I chose to interpret it as relating to nominations only, especially since discussion of that particular topic is done. Anyone with comments along those lines can PM me.

But since it's been started, I'll comment that a book club is participatory and not a performance, which seems self-evident to me. Anyone who wants to read along obviously can and welcome, but it's going to be those who'll discuss the book who get to choose it. Carry voting without discussing to its logical extreme and you've got a popularity poll and no discussion at all. Moreover, anyone who doesn't want to commit to the discussion is free to nominate books and influence the outcome at that stage.

Time to put the wiggly worms back in the can. No more comments, please. People are welcome to PM me if they have something to say.

[tourneur]

Hello all, I'm Alex from the Netherlands and new here at MR. I hope to take part in a future book club reading and looking forward to the selections!

[issybird]

Welcome, Alex! Glad to have you.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by tourneur

Hello all, I'm Alex from the Netherlands and new here at MR. I hope to take part in a future book club reading and looking forward to the selections!

Welcome, Alex! Always good to have new recruits.

Please let us know which sources of books you use -- we currently try to watch for availability issues in Australia, the US, Canada and the UK. But we can extend that if we need to.

[tourneur]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Welcome, Alex! Always good to have new recruits.

Please let us know which sources of books you use -- we currently try to watch for availability issues in Australia, the US, Canada and the UK. But we can extend that if we need to.

Thank you! I'm a member at the Amsterdam library. They've got a big selection, but you can also request books from other libraries and they'll have it shipped over. You can also borrow e-books which I've been doing since getting an ereader. There are also quite a few second-hand book stores to find rarer books.

[Bookpossum]

Welcome Alex, and we do hope you enjoy being in our Club!

[Victoria]

Books like onions. I’m finding this month a bit tricky to get ahold of. Not many constraints to work within. Is anyone just bursting with too many ideas?

[issybird]

Books that make you cry?

I'm thinking along the lines of densely plotted books or ones with more than one story line or perhaps shifts in the POV.... "Meanwhile, back at the ranch."

Many Victorian novels would work. Heehee. I can hear the groans from here.

You can always think of a book you really want to nominate first and figure out some way to force a fit!

[Victoria]

Originally Posted by issybird

Books that make you cry?

I'm thinking along the lines of densely plotted books or ones with more than one story line or perhaps shifts in the POV.... "Meanwhile, back at the ranch."

Many Victorian novels would work. Heehee. I can hear the groans from here.

You can always think of a book you really want to nominate first and figure out some way to force a fit!

Brilliant, I love it! That’s so darn clever! All I could think of was Pentimento, which I’ve already nominated. I was thinking too literally, so thanks for the hints. You’ve given me an

[CRussel]

Or books with too many red herrings -- each one compelling, until it's discarded for another. But really, I like issybird's methodology -- find the book first, then use the appropriate shoehorn to make it fit.

[Victoria]

Red herrings - another clever idea!

I could be mistaken, but hasn’t the shoehorn strategy been tried around here once before....or twice?

[gmw]

I really don't mind how anyone decides to interpret "Books like onions". But given that it was inspired by Shrek saying that ogres are like onions, because they have layers, the idea was to put forward novels that (appear to) have layers: things going on at multiple levels.

One fairly obvious example (don't worry Catlady, I'm not considering nominating these) are many of the books by John Irving. He made something of a habit of telling stories within stories within stories. Or there are many allegorical books, some intentionally so (a recent book talked about Leaves of Grass and the poem Song of Myself by Walt Whitman), while some have had allegory thrust upon them (thinking Lord of the Rings here).

And if anyone is worried that their preferred option doesn't fit, consider that I think Twilight by Stephenie Meyer could be said to be unintentionally multi-layered. There is the what the author intended (presumably) and what YA audience see (again presumably), and then there is an extensive subtext such as revealed by this impressive deconstruction by Ana Mardoll.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by gmw

And if anyone is worried that their preferred option doesn't fit, consider that I think Twilight by Stephenie Meyer could be said to be unintentionally multi-layered. There is the what the author intended (presumably) and what YA audience see (again presumably), and then there is an extensive subtext such as revealed by this impressive deconstruction by Ana Mardoll.

Oh, thanks for that link! I read Twilight back in the day when some of my nieces and nephews were of an age for it; it was bad enough that one was plenty. Bella is no Buffy, *sniff*. But Ana's deconstruction is fascinating and I will continue to read it in bits.

I admit I was being a little facetious, but only a little. Part of the fun for me in our nebulous themes is the way they encourage me to think about books I'd like to read and see how they can be twisted or interpreted to fit various motifs. In fact, the process in itself encourages me to think of books on different levels, or layers at that, and not just for the upcoming theme.

[Catlady]

I still have no idea about this category, not being more than vaguely familiar with the books that have been mentioned as examples. I don't even know how to twist a book to fit, since I don't know what "fit" means here.

Thanks, gmw, for not planning to suggest a John Irving title.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by issybird

Oh, thanks for that link! I read Twilight back in the day when some of my nieces and nephews were of an age for it; it was bad enough that one was plenty. Bella is no Buffy, *sniff*. But Ana's deconstruction is fascinating and I will continue to read it in bits. [...]

There is certainly far too much of Ana's deconstruction to be able to go through it all at once. I don't necessarily agree with the entire deconstruction, but I do love the way it challenges the interpretation of what otherwise might seem quite simple text.

Originally Posted by Catlady

I still have no idea about this category, not being more than vaguely familiar with the books that have been mentioned as examples. I don't even know how to twist a book to fit, since I don't know what "fit" means here. [...]

One book I know you know that would fit is The Alice Network by Kate Quinn. There are at least three stories being revealed here: Charlie's, Eve's and Rose's. In addition to the fictional story layers there are the real historical events and figures that Quinn has used as the framework - more than just framework, they are integral to the fiction. And there are multiple moral and ethical dimensions to this story as well.

The book I had in mind at the time this theme came up was The Great Wheel by Ian R. MacLeod. It's sci-fi, so isn't likely to gain your interest, Catlady, but when I got to the end of the book I could tell there had been things going on that I had missed, and I'd have loved to be able to talk it over with others who had read it. Curiously, I'm not even sure how much I liked the book, it just seemed like one I wanted to talk about. So I'm not going to complain if people decide to nominate a book on just such nebulous grounds as: this is one I want to talk about.