Books Redcafe Book Club: January: To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

[carvajal]

One question, what do we do if someone has already read one of the suggested books and that book is chosen?
For example, I would like to choose science fiction or historical novel, but I might choose something super obvious.

 

[SilentWitness]

One question, what do we do if someone has already read one of the suggested books and that book is chosen?
For example, I would like to choose science fiction or historical novel, but I might choose something super obvious.

I thought this too but my wife is in a book club and has reread books as part of it. I think it can be nice to reread something and perhaps interpret it differently or see it differently when discussing with others. That’s my take anyway.

 

[Desert Eagle]

One question, what do we do if someone has already read one of the suggested books and that book is chosen?
For example, I would like to choose science fiction or historical novel, but I might choose something super obvious.

I think the two obvious options would be ask the person who picked to choose something else or if the person/people who've read it don't mind rereading it then we can proceed as normal.

 

[K Stand Knut]

This is an interesting twist!! My thought process for this club was definitely to have knowledge and ideas imparted on me in an attempt to diversify.

I’ll have to have a serious think about what I choose as my current reading list isn’t particularly exciting.

I’ll put my thinking hat on

 

[Jippy]

Out of interest, the books you guys choose could be fiction or non fiction? And another thing, is there a veto? What if someone chooses the bible or something?

They get ostracised quickly I imagine.

 

[moses]

My suggestion is a book I've wanted to read for a long time but never really got round to it.

SS-GB by Len Deighton

Featured in an alternative history where America never stepped into WW2, the allies lost the war and Nazis control Britain. It tells the story of a British policeman who has to work under German rule to solve a murder.
It eventually became a BBC series a few years back.

It's good fun but not what you'd call great literature.

 

[Stig]

Does this turn into intellectual snobbery with people picking the most complex and obscure books ?

 

[Stig]

Both articles from The Knowledge this week.

Books​ ​ We should all read more bonkbusters Browsing Hudson News before a flight at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, says Katie Fustich in LitHub, I spotted Julia Quinn’s The Duke and I, the inspiration for the Netflix series Bridgerton. “No,” I thought, “I can’t.” Surely I’m above reading that sort of tripe? But when my boarding call rang out, I panicked and took the plunge – blushing furiously as I practically threw my money at the shop assistant. By the end of the flight, I felt I had learnt a great “bookish secret”. Forget trying to be intellectual, desperately “ingesting, without question, what dead male academics deem important to the literary canon”. Instead, read romance. You’ll get pages and pages of “crystalline character studies, incisive dialogue, thought-provoking social commentary, and yes – lots of very good sex”. In one survey, the majority of romance readers admitted to hiding their books. It is, after all, the only literary genre considered anti-intellectual. But who cares what anyone else thinks when you’re having so much “damn fun”? Trust Aristotle... and read a novel My grandmother used to say novels shouldn’t be read before the evening because they’re “not serious things”, says Jemima Kelly in the FT. Many male readers appear to agree – only 20% of men read novels. But those who dismiss fiction as self-indulgent are dead wrong. As Aristotle said: “poetry is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history, for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular”. He was right. In history books, “a narrative is imposed on a messy jumble of events”, as if life “progress tidily and even rationally”. With fiction, “there is no such imposition: the thing itself is the narrative”. That’s why fictional characters feel “more real to us than historical figures” – each one “represents a kind of embodiment of the human condition that we can relate to”. There’s plenty of research to back this up. Studies have found that reading “literary fiction” – as opposed to non-fiction or lowbrow fiction – “increases empathy and emotional intelligence”. This, surely, is because it exposes the reader to a “much broader range of experiences and cultures” than they’d get from real life – different people, different beliefs, different desires, and so on. Other research has found that reading fiction gives you a “more complex worldview” and makes you more open-minded – you’re less likely to want to “remove ambiguity and arrive at definite conclusions”. So ignore the “life-hackers and productivity gurus”. Curl up on a comfy sofa or sink into a bath, and get “thoroughly lost” in a good novel. You won’t regret it.

 

[Desert Eagle]

Pick whatever book you like. No judgement here.

 

[carvajal]

My option is The Rosie project, it looks like a fun book. In case many of you have read it, I'm leaving two others as substitutes.

1. The rosie project - Graeme Simsion. "The novel centres on genetics professor Don Tillman, who struggles to have a serious relationship with women. With a friend's help, he devises a questionnaire to assess the suitability of female partners."
2.The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Annie Barrows y Mary Ann Shaffer
"the story of a small island community composed of very disparate people who came together during the German occupation of World War II to protect, comfort, and in some cases, save one another."
3.The braid- Laetitia Colombani
"three women from very different circumstances around the world find their lives intertwined by a single object and discover what connects us"

 

[Stig]

When are we deciding ?

 

[Salt Bailly]

Suggestion: Come Closer by Sara Gran

Had this suggested to me a while ago but never got around to reading it. Synopsis:

A recurrent, unidentifiable noise in her apartment. A memo to her boss that's replaced by obscene insults. Amanda—a successful architect in a happy marriage—finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she's doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.

The new voice in Amanda's head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. Is she possessed by a demon, or is she simply insane? Described as “a new kind of psychological thriller” by George Pelecanos and “this year's scariest novel” by Time Out New York, Come Closer has become a modern classic “with a kick that will stay with the reader for days afterward” (The Dallas Morning News).

I'm happy with any of the suggestions so far, haven't read any of them before.

 

[Rams]

Tried to read Spare, but it’s too innerlectureral for me.

 

[Desert Eagle]

When are we deciding ?

When everyone puts in their suggestion. We're still missing 4 by my count.

 

[Jippy]

Suggestion: Come Closer by Sara Gran

Had this suggested to me a while ago but never got around to reading it. Synopsis:


I'm happy with any of the suggestions so far, haven't read any of them before.

This sounds interesting and like it would make a decent film.

 

[17Larsson]

The Waves by Virginia Woolf

Set on the coast of England against the vivid background of the sea, The Waves introduces six characters—three men and three women—who are grappling with the death of a beloved friend, Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Virginia Woolf draws her characters from the inside, revealing them through their thoughts and interior soliloquies. As their understanding of nature’s trials grows, the chorus of narrative voices blends together in miraculous harmony, remarking not only on the inevitable death of individuals but on the eternal connection of everyone. The novel that most epitomizes Virginia Woolf’s theories of fiction in the working form, The Waves is an amazing book very much ahead of its time. It is a poetic dreamscape, visual, experimental, and thrilling.

 

[Desert Eagle]

@esmufc07 @K Stand Knut @b82REZ

Book suggestions please lads so we can finally pick. Will give people about a week plus to find a physical or online copy.

 

[esmufc07]

I’ll post one tonight after work!

 

[Igor Drefljak]

Spare by Prince William

 

[b82REZ]

IQ84 by Haruki Murakami. I've read a few Murakami books and had mixed feelings about them. But this one seems closest to my favourite book by him, Hardboiled Wonderland.

Her work is not the kind which can be discussed in public but she is in a hurry to carry out an assignment and, with the traffic at a stand-still, the driver proposes a solution. She agrees, but as a result of her actions starts to feel increasingly detached from the real world. She has been on a top-secret mission, and her next job will lead her to encounter the apparently superhuman founder of a religious cult.

Meanwhile, Tengo wishes to become a writer. He inadvertently becomes involved in a strange affair surrounding a literary prize to which a mysterious seventeen-year-old girl has submitted her remarkable first novel. It seems to be based on her own experiences and moves readers in unusual ways. Can her story really be true?

Both Aomame and Tengo notice that the world has grown strange; both realise that they are indispensable to each other. While their stories influence one another, at times by accident and at times intentionally, the two come closer and closer to intertwining.

 

[Vidyoyo]

Not having that. IQ84 is absolute shite and easily Murakami's worst book. It's too long, indulgent, has poor characterisation and pacing and reads almost like a bad parody of his previous full-blown magical realistic and much better work, namely The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. As you can tell, I'm completely bothered I trudged through that tumescent doorstep of a novel for months hoping some kind of change was a-coming. I do like the references to A Tiger in your Tank however.

It's also 1000 pages long.

 

[Forevergiggs1]

Reading a bit of Stephen King at the moment....brilliant.

One of my favourite authors although I sometimes find the endings of his books are a bit anti climatic. The stand is probably one of my favourites. A complex book but gets you hooked from the get go in this good v evil epic novel. Wouldn't be a bad place to start.

 

[WeePat]

Too late to join?

 

[Desert Eagle]

Too late to join?

Not too late. Welcome, post a book suggestion if you could mate.

 

[WeePat]

Suggestion - Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi.

In 1750, Kintu Kidda unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations. In this ambitious tale of a clan and of a nation, Makumbi weaves together the stories of Kintu’s descendants as they seek to break from the burden of their shared past and reconcile the inheritance of tradition and the modern world that is their future.

Story set in Buganda, a regional kingdom in Uganda.

 

[SilentWitness]

Suggestion - Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi.

In 1750, Kintu Kidda unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations. In this ambitious tale of a clan and of a nation, Makumbi weaves together the stories of Kintu’s descendants as they seek to break from the burden of their shared past and reconcile the inheritance of tradition and the modern world that is their future.

Story set in Buganda, a regional kingdom in Uganda.

This sounds cool.

 

[b82REZ]

Not having that. IQ84 is absolute shite and easily Murakami's worst book. It's too long, indulgent, has poor characterisation and pacing and reads almost like a bad parody of his previous full-blown magical realistic and much better work, namely The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. As you can tell, I'm completely bothered I trudged through that tumescent doorstep of a novel for months hoping some kind of change was a-coming. I do like the references to A Tiger in your Tank however.

It's also 1000 pages long.

I remember you saying you'd read it in the Book Thread. Your comments put me off reading it.

Is it that bad? I personally couldn't stand Norwegian Wood but that's his most acclaimed book. I prefer his abstract, Kafkaesque books, but I think there's only really Wonderland and Kafka on the Shore that would fall in that category.

If you're so against that I may even suggest a Kafka book. I still need to read Amerika.

 

[Vidyoyo]

I remember you saying you'd read it in the Book Thread. Your comments put me off reading it.

Is it that bad? I personally couldn't stand Norwegian Wood but that's his most acclaimed book. I prefer his abstract, Kafkaesque books, but I think there's only really Wonderland and Kafka on the Shore that would fall in that category.

If you're so against that I may even suggest a Kafka book. I still need to read Amerika.

Honestly yeah, I would say so. It's his longest work but also feels like a rethread of ideas he's used better elsewhere. The worst thing is that it doesn't need to be anywhere near as long as it is. It was serialised originally in Japan so I think there's more than a hint of truth to the idea that he was being paid for each word - just a bad novel outright, with a terrible ending too.

It's nowhere near as good as Wind-up or Kafka (which incidentally I'd recommend for this club).

 

[b82REZ]

Honestly yeah, I would say so. It's his longest work but also feels like a rethread of ideas he's used better elsewhere. The worst thing is that it doesn't need to be anywhere near as long as it is. It was serialised originally in Japan so I think there's more than a hint of truth to the idea that he was being paid for each word - just a bad novel outright, with a terrible ending too.

It's nowhere near as good as Wind-up or Kafka (which incidentally I'd recommend for this club).

I was going to recommend Kafka on the Shore, but only have it on audiobook and I've struggled to get into it in that format.

 

[K Stand Knut]

Ok. Apologies!

I’m going to go with The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett.

I don’t really know where this sits on anyone’s spectrum but this is the reason that I’ve got myself involved in this club. I want to broaden my horizons away from my ‘usual’ stuff.

So, there you go!!

 

[Desert Eagle]

Okay I've done the random order thingy and our book of the month for February is Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi.

In 1750, Kintu Kidda unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations. In this ambitious tale of a clan and of a nation, Makumbi weaves together the stories of Kintu’s descendants as they seek to break from the burden of their shared past and reconcile the inheritance of tradition and the modern world that is their future.

Story set in Buganda, a regional kingdom in Uganda.

 

[Salt Bailly]

Cool, looking forward to it.

 

[Champ]

Have started Kintu today, bit early I know but am reading another 600 page book also so will be chopping between the two.

I have a the epub file for Kintu if anyone can't find it or hasn't got spare cash to purchase.

 

[Wumminator]

Yes! I’d love to join this!

 

[K Stand Knut]

I’ve just reserved my copy of this from my local library

 

[Salt Bailly]

Have started Kintu today, bit early I know but am reading another 600 page book also so will be chopping between the two.

I have a the epub file for Kintu if anyone can't find it or hasn't got spare cash to purchase.

My library doesn't have it so that would be lovely please mate.

 

[Champ]

My library doesn't have it so that would be lovely please mate.

https://we.tl/t-nspRYUK6cB

WeTransfer link with the epub file, should be fine for kindles etc

 

[Salt Bailly]

https://we.tl/t-nspRYUK6cB

WeTransfer link with the epub file, should be fine for kindles etc

Thanks mate.

 

[WeePat]

Okay I've done the random order thingy and our book of the month for February is Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi.

In 1750, Kintu Kidda unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations. In this ambitious tale of a clan and of a nation, Makumbi weaves together the stories of Kintu’s descendants as they seek to break from the burden of their shared past and reconcile the inheritance of tradition and the modern world that is their future.

Story set in Buganda, a regional kingdom in Uganda.

Awesome, I'm already about 9 chapters into this one. I was planning on this being my next read anyway so convenient that it gets picked for the book of the month.

 

[Champ]

How's everyone getting on with Kintu?

I'm a third of the way through it, been slacking the last week if I'm honest but I'm finding it hard going.
Really hasn't gripped me at all and finding it a bit of a slog to read at the moment.