June '15 Reading Nominations

Please nominate the books you would like to read in June in this thread.

The poll will open on May 15th.

To Rise Again At a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Lovely, Dark, Deep by Joyce Carol Oates
Even the Dead--Benjamin Black (John Banville)
To the Lighthouse--Virginia Woolf

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Originally Posted by Pike Bishop

To Rise Again At a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Lovely, Dark, Deep by Joyce Carol Oates
Even the Dead--Benjamin Black (John Banville)
To the Lighthouse--Virginia Woolf

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Only one nomination, please... Something you will also enjoy reading with us.

But they are all so intriguing, and I haven't read TTL in so long. If I have to pick one, I'll go with the Booker Prize-short listed digital age version of Dostoevsky's The Double:

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour--Joshua Ferris

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, it is then!

I will nominate the Pulitzer winner All the Light That We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, it is then!

I will nominate the Pulitzer winner All the Light That We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

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^ oohhh. That's a good book!

No other nominations? The poll will open tomorrow!

Is it too late to nominate We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves?

Please vote by May 31st!

Going once...

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

Going once...

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Which book won? I read ATLWCS not too long ago, so if anyone else read it and wants a discussion, fire away!

You got me, easy. I read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, though, and enjoyed it.

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Originally Posted by easy75

Which book won? I read ATLWCS not too long ago, so if anyone else read it and wants a discussion, fire away!

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AJ has said how much he liked that one, Easy. I mentioned your name to him as someone who had read it, so hopefully he will see this post.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

AJ has said how much he liked that one, Easy. I mentioned your name to him as someone who had read it, so hopefully he will see this post.

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Thanks PB! So you read both options, or just We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves?
I have had that book recommended a couple of times. It is on my short list of to be reads...
If you didn't read All The Light We Cannot See, I would strongly recommend it. It was one of the better books I read last year.

Thanks Easy. I haven't read it yet, but I keep hearing great things about it, so yes, it's on my short list, too. I just started Hilary Mantel's Thomas Moore books, though, so that may it may be a long-is short list. :) I'll let AJ know you're here by PM. Wasn't there some one else here who read it, too?

In the meantime, here is my review of We Are Completely Beside Ourselves from another thread:

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

Plastered on the front cover of Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is an assurance by Dan Chaon, author of this, that, and a book of short stories, that it "doesn't just break your heart; it takes your heart and won't give it back." It's a lie. We Are All Beside Ourselves is a riot. It has a high energy, just-this-side-of-hip narrative style, a moving but unsentimental story, and most of all, a dry, dead-on and hilariously effective sense of humor. The novel, which was short listed for the 20014 Booker Prize, may have its faults, but being a tearjerker isn't one of them.

That is not to say that We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a lark in the park. It is a "message book," and its message is disturbing enough. But Fowler is an effective enough dissembler to know to put her best jokes up front as a kind of fish bait, and to reel her readers in with fun and intimate conversational style. Now that we've laughed together, we're friends, right? Her cause, which she doesn't directly address for the first third of the book, is animal rights, and more specifically the notion that our closest evolutionary relatives ought to be treated as persons. The sucker punch comes when one of the characters--but maybe you should read it for yourself.

If We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves has a weakness, it's plot. But even that needs qualification. Fowler is a savvy writer and the novel is a tour de force. She handles the intricacies of its plot deftly enough until the reappearance of the narrator's brother, Lowell, in the second half. Fowler continues to control the plot and its out-of-sequence structure (middle-beginning-composite time) well later, too, but after Lowell's reappearance, the story begins to play second bassoon to the message, and certain characters (the nutty and slutty Harlow, for example) are left at looser ends than would have been completely effective. But Fowler's only real gaffe is a drunken college night sequence that is too long. Aside from that she knows exactly what she's doing.

I recommend We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves to those on any side of animal rights issues. It is funny enough that any objecting to emotional aspects of her appeal will not get too flustered, and there is plenty of rational argument for those of us who prefer things that way. Bring an open mind, though. Compassion is a feeling not a thought; whoever or whatever is on the receiving end.

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