August / Salman Rushdie Reading Poll

[Scheherazade]

Please vote for the Salman Rushdie book you would like to read in August by July 31st.

The aim of the Book Club is to read and discuss new books together with other members.

Please try to avoid voting for the books you have already read

and/or do not intend to (re)read with us.


Midnight's Children (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Midnights-Children-Salman-Rushdie/dp/0099578514/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/203-0011263-7238300?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183242605&sr=8-2)

Shalimar the Clown (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shalimar-Clown-Salman-Rushdie/dp/0099421887/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/203-0011263-7238300?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183242705&sr=8-3)

The Moor's Last Sigh (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Moors-Last-Sigh-Salman-Rushdie/dp/009959241X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_5/203-0011263-7238300?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183242753&sr=8-5)

The Ground Beneath Her Feet (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ground-Beneath-Her-Feet/dp/0099766019/ref=pd_bbs_sr_7/203-0011263-7238300?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183242802&sr=8-7)

Fury (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fury-Salman-Rushdie/dp/0099421860/ref=pd_bbs_sr_8/203-0011263-7238300?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183242876&sr=8-8)

Shame (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shame-Salman-Rushdie/dp/0099578611/ref=pd_bbs_sr_9/203-0011263-7238300?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183242919&sr=8-9)

The Satanic Verses (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Satanic-Verses-Salman-Rushdie/dp/0963270702/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/203-0011263-7238300?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183243064&sr=8-1)

East, West (http://www.amazon.co.uk/East-West-Salman-Rushdie/dp/0099533014/ref=pd_bbs_sr_10/203-0011263-7238300?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183243173&sr=8-10)


Book Club Procedures (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=57103#post57103)

[NickAdams]

I'm interested in the Satanic Verses, because of the controversy. Shalimar the Clown, because it's his most recent. But Midnight's Children sounds like the best read and already owning it doesn't hurt.;)

[papayahed]

I just read Shalimar which was fairly good. Maybe I'll sell my vote again.....Although like Nick said Satanic Verses might be a good choice.

[motherhubbard]

since school will start again in August I chose from the two shorter books.

[grace86]

I don't think I will be able to participate in August. The Count of Monte Cristo might take up that time. I'll give it a thought before voting.

[Nossa]

Out of curiosity, I might vote for Midnight's Children. I'm not sure yet.

[Moira]

I've read Fury and liked the novel.
I'll vote for the Satanic Verses, I'm so curious to see/ read why was there so much fuss about this book.

[NickAdams]

Looks like I'll be clearing my schedule for Midnights Children.

[ozbey]

I have never read any of Salman Rushdie's book.But Midnights Children is ahead.So I'll vote for it.

[motherhubbard]

I was hoping for a shorter book. School starts again on the 20th, but I may go ahead and get the book and get started.

[Granny5]

I don't remember reading any Rushdie. Midnight's Children sounds like it might be interesting so I'll vote for it.

[NickAdams]

I'll start tonight.

[motherhubbard]

I forgot to get it today, that stinks!

[Moira]

I didn't find Midnight's Children and bought Shalimar the Clown and it's just so amazing, loved it from the first pages.

[NickAdams]

I found Midnight's Children on the sidewalk- left for the department of sanitation- two years ago.

I enjoy the metafictional format of the work. Nothing amzing about the style, but interesting incidents make up fo that. I love his grandparents courtship. Funny stuff. Reminds me of Hundred Years of Solitude in its hyperbole.

I'm enjoying it.

[papayahed]

I'm on page two.

[NickAdams]

Will a seperate thread be started for the book?

[Pensive]

Will a seperate thread be started for the book?

I am wondering the same thing.

[Ron Price]

RUSHDIE and ME

A week after I retired from full-time work as a teacher and lecturer, after 32 years in the classroom and another 18 as a student, the website CNN Entertainment published an article entitled: “Rushdie’s new book out from under shadow of fatwa.”(1) The book referred to was The Ground Beneath her Feet and it was about a completely different world than that of his 1988 book The Satanic Verses. The new world of Rushdie’s 1999 book was: rock ‘n roll music, New York and the crossover cultures between the east and the west.

Rushdie, an Indian-born novelist, in 1999 was still getting used to a more visible life. A decade before, in 1989, Iran’s revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a death edict against him for allegedly blaspheming Islam in that book The Satanic Verses. Khomeini died soon afterward, but Rushdie had to go into hiding for nearly a decade. It wasn’t until September 1998 that Tehran disassociated itself from Khomeini’s edict, as part of a deal aimed at restoring full diplomatic relations with Britain.-Ron Price with thanks to (1)the website CNN Entertainment, 15 April 1999.

Your book is a variation on the Orpheus/Eurydice
myth with rock music replacing the Orpheus lyre.
The myth works as a red thread from which you
sometimes stray, but to which you attach endless
references. You gave us a sort of report on life at
the end of the 20th century….I was far too busy to
read it getting-out from under 50 years of those
classrooms, Baha’i responsibilities in the big-city
and ready to take a sea-change from many jobs.

Your book provided a background and an alternate
history to those ‘50s to ‘90s period of rock music’s
growth……You give us, the reviewers said, humour
in a predictable unpredictability, a rat-tat-tat pace.
For clear shots of insight into the human condition
and the universe as it might be, you always moved
the ground beneath our feet.2 So perhaps during
these years of my sea-change, at 55+++, I may just
finally get ‘into’ you---but only time will tell since I
have had to recreate my life-style, my entire MO.3

1 On 10 May 1999, six hundred people attended a reading and book signing of author Salman Rushdie’s new book The Ground Beneath Her Feet. –Zarminae Ansari, “Salmon Rushdie’s “rock and roll” novel,” The Tech: Online Edition, 4 June 1999. By June 1999 I had finished marking the last pieces, scripts, papers, I was given after my classroom teaching had come to an end.
2 Linda L. Richards, “The Earth Moves,” January Magazine, April 1999.
3 modus operandi is a Latin expression used in who-dun-its. It means method of operating or way of going about things.

Ron Price
14 November 2011