Ceci n'est pas un blog.

Pick some books

2008-02-09T21:11:00.000-07:00

Several of the people I know I'd like to join us are already reading the same book that I am, so here's the first book, snuck through the edifying loophole: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I know, it's not out in trade paperback yet, but it's worth it.

So, first discussion will start March 1. I suggest that discussion happen in a comment thread, and that we try to keep the majority of it happening within a week of opening the thread.

Your jobs are to:

Comment on the thread/one week business
Suggest books that you'd like to read

Foundation

2008-02-09T20:45:00.000-07:00

I decided to start this blog for the sake of forcing myself to read more classics. There are just too many I was never forced to read in school and never picked up on my own. Of course, there will be a great deal about this community, assuming it works, that will change as it grows, but I have some goals that I'd like to set out for discussion between the readers who join us. I'd like to see:

book selection being loosely limited to classics or other edifying choices* and chosen by the group
readers who count themselves as progressive and feminist**
opportunity to learn through bringing outside sources to light
safe space created that encourages diverse opinion and leaves room for respectful disagreement

If you decide to join us,

please leave your response to this foundation in comments; we'll all get ourselves on similar pages before our first discussion
do the book meme, if you feel so compelled
suggest some books

*The edifying choices bit really is a loophole that lets me sneak our first book in.
**I'm very much interested in furthering my progressive thought in this forum rather than furthering my knowledge of conservative/Malkin/MRA/freeper thought.

A book meme is a good place to start, eh?

2007-11-30T00:04:00.000-07:00

A book meme, full o' classics and other stuff,

The rules: bold what you have read, italicize what you started but couldn’t finish, and strike through what you couldn’t stand.

1984
The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
American Gods
Anansi Boys
Angela’s Ashes : A Memoir
Angels & Demons
Anna Karenina
~~Atlas Shrugged~~
Beloved
The Blind Assassin
Brave New World
The Brothers Karamazov
The Canterbury Tales
Catch-22
The Catcher in the Rye
A Clockwork Orange
Cloud Atlas
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Confusion
The Corrections
The Count of Monte Cristo
Crime and Punishment
Cryptonomicon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dubliners
Dune
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Emma
Foucault’s Pendulum
~~The Fountainhead~~
Frankenstein
Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
The God of Small Things
The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity’s Rainbow
Great Expectations
Gulliver’s Travels
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The Historian : A Novel
The Hobbit
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Iliad
In Cold Blood : A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences
The Inferno
Jane Eyre
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
The Kite Runner
Les Misérables
Life of Pi : A Novel
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Madame Bovary
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Middlesex
The Mists of Avalon
Moby Dick
Mrs. Dalloway
The Name of the Rose
Neverwhere
Northanger Abbey
The Odyssey
Oliver Twist
On the Road
The Once and Future King
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Oryx and Crake : A Novel
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Persuasion
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Poisonwood Bible : A Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pride and Prejudice
The Prince
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran : A Memoir in Books
The Satanic Verses
The Scarlet Letter
Sense and Sensibility
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse-five
The Sound and the Fury
The Tale of Two Cities
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The Three Musketeers
The Time Traveler’s Wife
To the Lighthouse
Treasure Island
Ulysses
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Vanity Fair
War and Peace
Watership Down
White Teeth
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Wuthering Heights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : An Inquiry Into Values

Which really just reminds me that I haven't read nearly enough and there are lots of things lost in the haze between 20 and 31, never to be remembered until I reread each damn word. And you know what else? The Handmaid's Tale really ought to be on this list, along with a bunch of other feminist stuff.