Literary The MR Literary Club • Welcome, Information & General Discussion

[sun surfer]

Wow, I'm a little shocked about the other club, and it sounds unfortunate. It's so odd with the timing because I'd been planning on speaking with the members of the lit club and contacting CRussel about the clubs possibly working together somehow in 2021. I am happy to see you here again though, astrangerhere, and welcome back!

[sun surfer]

It's time for choosing November's topic!

All ideas are appreciated; just post! We're very flexible with our monthly topic; it can be a topic, theme, category or whatever else. This can also be collaborative so any little kernel of an idea or direction is great.

So what ideas do you have?

astrangerhere has recommended Winter Wonderland for December or January and We Were Here First. Since Winter Wonderland would be for a later month that would make We Were Here First the first suggestion for November. It definitely sound like an interesting topic to me.

[Luffy]

astrangerhere always had good ideas. I think her suggestions for all months are great.

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

It's time for choosing November's topic!

All ideas are appreciated; just post! We're very flexible with our monthly topic; it can be a topic, theme, category or whatever else. This can also be collaborative so any little kernel of an idea or direction is great.

So what ideas do you have?

astrangerhere has recommended Winter Wonderland for December or January and We Were Here First. Since Winter Wonderland would be for a later month that would make We Were Here First the first suggestion for November. It definitely sound like an interesting topic to me.

Given that November is American Thanksgiving and just a bit late for Canadian Thanksgiving in October, it might be a good month to read something by an indigenous author.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

...it might be a good month to read something by an indigenous author.

But that includes every writer in the world - everyone in the world is of indigenous descent from somewhere.

My suggestion would be that for the sake of good order we stick to not getting our color wheels out, nor classify by how long an author's forebears have lived in a country (we all come from Africa originally so for myself I tend to like to leave it at that), nor what sex/gender/whathaveyou an author is, nor what their political or other views or ideologies are. I prefer to stick to literary competence and the rest to me doesn't matter.

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

But that includes every writer in the world - everyone in the world is of indigenous descent from somewhere.

My suggestion would be that for the sake of good order we stick to not getting our color wheels out, nor classify by how long an author's forebears have lived in a country (we all come from Africa originally so for myself I tend to like to leave it at that), nor what sex/gender/whathaveyou an author is, nor what their political or other views or ideologies are. I prefer to stick to literary competence and the rest to me doesn't matter.

I should have been more clear. I was suggesting people that identify as indigenous, first nation, or the like. In the US it would be Native American, in Canada, First Nations, in Australia and New Zealand it would be Aboriginal. I was not trying to be controversial. I would think there would be good literary titles that also fit the theme of reading around the various Thanksgiving holidays.

("Color wheel", really?)

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

I should have been more clear. I was suggesting people that identify as indigenous, first nation, or the like. In the US it would be Native American, in Canada, First Nations, in Australia and New Zealand it would be Aboriginal...

...and in Europe it would be a Caucasian/European, so etc, etc. for whatever country/land mass you care to take. So, for example, James Joyce was indigenous and I would be very surprised if it turned out that he did not identify as a European in Ireland.

A small point (elaborated on in many following words ), New Zealand Maori do not identify as Aboriginal (nor does anyone else here identify them as such). They identify as Maori, who are Polynesian; the Polynesian migratory path (as their homo sapien forebears migrated from being indigenous to Africa, to indigenous to the Middle East, to indigenous to Asia to indigenous to Polynesia) is different in penultimate settlement path to that of the Australian Aboriginal, and also especially so in time as those who became known as Australian Aboriginal arrived Australia circa 45,000BC, those who became known as Polynesians arrived Polynesia relatively recently circa 1,500BC, and those Polynesians that became known as Maori arrived NZ ex Eastern Polynesia very recently circa 14th Century.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

It's time for choosing November's topic!

All ideas are appreciated; just post! We're very flexible with our monthly topic; it can be a topic, theme, category or whatever else. This can also be collaborative so any little kernel of an idea or direction is great.

So what ideas do you have?

astrangerhere has recommended Winter Wonderland for December or January and We Were Here First. Since Winter Wonderland would be for a later month that would make We Were Here First the first suggestion for November. It definitely sound like an interesting topic to me.

I am happy with "Winter Wonderland" for December (for obvious reasons, being in the summery south ).

For November would people be happy with the topic being massaged to something like "Drawing on a Nation's Culture"? By that I mean books which draw on a nation as a whole's culture, rather than on or from some subculture, or group or individual within it.

Examples set in countries that have a non-fragmented culture and come to mind are the likes of Albert Wendt's novel Sons for the Return Home which is strongly set in Samoan culture and critical of some aspects of it, and Vaddey Ratner's novels set in Cambodia during the Pol Pot era's assassination of historic culture.

For countries that have diverse cultures due to multiple immigrations to them over centuries (as is the case for NZ) or millenniums (as is the case for the likes of the USA, Canada, Australia, etc.), Owls Do Cry from a few months back comes to mind. While its setting is a European family that setting and its depictions of culture and place are representative of the nation as a whole rather than on those of one particular narrow subculture/ethnicity/etc.

[AnotherCat]

Just a catch up of a couple of things related to Literary Club books read or nominated that I said I would be doing.

Dr Zhivago Movie: This sat beside the player for months before my wife and I put together the uninterrupted 3 hours to watch it. We both enjoyed it, even though my wife hasn't read the book. I haven't made up my mind whether the movie or the book should come first - with the movie I felt the time scale over which the events took place was not very clear.

Lonesome Dove TV Series: We started watching the first 1-1/2 hour episode of this last night and abandoned it around 80% of the way through and won't watch the remaining episodes. That despite it apparently being very popular when it was released (1989, if I remember correctly).

I thought its production pretty mediocre and loose (I have worked a little with TV producers and directors doing drama, documentaries, quiz shows, reality, etc.). The screenplay I couldn't comment on because the actors were trying to talk like ventriloquists so often hard to follow especially with background noises quite pumped up in the recording; I think trying to mimic a drawl.

Don't think it was just an accent thing as I have never had any problem at all while working in the USA, although I recall a couple of shop assistants having trouble with mine. For example, I discovered that in parts of the USA "ball" point pens are manufactured from "boll" weevils, apparently . I did hear snoring coming from the direction of my wife during the playing, not sure I'm allowed to mention that though (but I will ).

[Bookworm_Girl]

I still have it on my list for this year to watch Dr Zhivago. I remember Lonesome Dove being really popular and watching it on TV but don’t remember anything specific about it!

[astrangerhere]

My only memory of Lonesome Dove (one of my mother's all-time favorite Westerns), is of having a crush on Diane Lane.

[sun surfer]

Ah, a lot of posts to go through, that's always good to see. I've been pretty busy this past week and probably will be until next month so sorry if I'm a little cursory but things should slow down for me more in November. From a quick read through it looks like we're circling around doing something along the line of drawing on nations' cultures for November? It sounds good.

Just a heads up, I won't be here around the 1st so the nominations thread won't be posted until either later in the day on the 1st or sometime on the 2nd. Shouldn't be a big deal as that's happened before but I wanted to let you know.

And speaking of lit club-related reading, since I'm not listening to an audiobook for the club this month (I'm reading the ebook), I started the quite lengthy Lonesome Dove. So far I'm about halfway through (about 20 hours in) and thoroughly enjoying it so thanks for the original nomination, AnotherCat. It's a little like Middlemarch in that it goes back and forth through a large range of characters in a small town, and a little like The Stand in that it follows a large group of people all moseying along towards (what I'm guessing will be) an eventual coalescing of them all together at a destination.

Because I'll be pretty busy the next week I don't think I'll finish it until into November. One thing I bet was left out of the decades old miniseries is the constant talk about penises, lol. The word penis is never said, nor is any curse word for it, but the euphemisms are abundant - carrots, sticks, poles, etc. It's almost strange how open this book is in talking about sex and genitalia, but how prim it is in its language (the only strong sexual language used so far, I think anyway, is 'whore' and 'whoring', which actually is used a lot). I don't even think the word 'sex' has beed used (I think it's always something like 'lie down with' or 'a poke').

[sun surfer]

I'm back! It seems like 'Drawing on a Nation's Culture' will be it for November. I'll have the nominations thread up soon.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Our June 2018 selection, Half of a Yellow Sun, was just voted the Women’s Prize Winner of Winners.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

Our June 2018 selection, Half of a Yellow Sun, was just voted the Women’s Prize Winner of Winners.

It sounds like a worthy winner; I enjoyed that book. It's interesting that book, being one of our only other African authored selections (maybe only other?), has something noteworthy occurring at the same time we've just selected another African author (and as it happens both authors are women).