h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

dave, I can't wait for you to get involved in the Baroque Cycle, where you'll start tripping over etymologies!

And it's absolutely true, what Lawrence Waterhouse discovered about the Great Laundry Conspiracy.

Marv, you'll like Going Postal.

That's why I've been doing my own laundry from a young age...

what's Going Postal?

Going Postal is the lastest Discworld book.

I thought it was fun, but not one of Pratchett's best.

Regarding Hypatia's rules, all of them from 1-12 have been broken in 'my' library, and quite a few of number 13's sub-rules (including people leaving their kids in the library while they attend a lecture!).

I have just finished reading The Turn of the Screw, which was rather spooky, as I was reading it on the train as day was drawing to a close. An unsettling story to be reading at dusk when you are the only person in the carriage.

David

Love Turn of the Screw. I love the ambiguity.

Speaking of spooky, I do like M.R. James. He wrote ghost stories 100 years ago and regularly made me adopt the 'axe-proof duvet' head-hiding tactic at night, worrying about what the curtains would turn into... Much better than the sort of ghost story with extra gore and innards, which is revolting rather than scary. *sigh*, they don't make them like they used to...

Will not discuss Cryptonomicon until I've read more of it. But Alan Turing is a hero of mine, so nice to meet him.

Going Postal - while not TP's best, is probably the one that will entertain and delight all techies the most. S is an 'e-specialist' in charge of websites and he adored it. And it contains one of the best fantasy homage jokes ever, near the end. S and I laughed hysterically for several minutes and S couldn't carry on reading aloud for a good quarter of an hour. But I shall say no more, and indeed wonder if anyone who has already read it found it half as funny as we did...

Oooooh, I love M.R. James too. I have a big collection of his ghost stories. He can really create a spooky atmosphere without one drop of blood or the slightest bit of violence. My favorite story is "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad".

Just finished Natsuo Kirino's Out this weekend and I highly recommend it to everyone. Fast paced, ultra-hip Japanese crime fiction. In the Sporky-abetted Pratchett reading spree I finished Jingo a couple weeks ago. Now I'm on White Devil, by Stephen Brumwell.

The novel we are discussing at tonight's book club is The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

Concerning our book club, it was started in 1913. There was a brief hiatus on two occassions, but it has pretty much met continuously all these years. It was started by one of our member's grandmother. I have been an off again/on again member. Now that I have my evenings to myself, I'm going to try and stick with it.

I know Lil belongs to a book club. Any others? The ones here at h2g2 don't seemed to have had much staying power. Anyone want to give it another shot?

hype try a look around here
http://www.writersdock.co.uk/modules.php?name=Reviews
it where a lot of refugees from get writing have stated a site ,you may reconise a few names from aroung h2g2 as well.

Hypatia, with your permission, we're doing just fine right here in the reading room! It can be difficult to devote threads to a single book, and sometimes people don't have anything more to say than that they liked a book.

As in, I really liked Poisonwood Bible! Our book group read it last year. And I felt greatly helped by reading King Leopold's Belgium at the same time, in understanding the background of injustice and inhumanity experienced by the native tribes of that part of Africa.

I would love to find a good book club in my community. All of them seem to revolve around a certain genre. If I knew the right people, heck I would start one myself. I suppose I could take out an ad in our local liberal arts rag: "Wanted: Bookworms".

I'm in a book group, and that's why I've just read Turn of the Screw. I now have a week to try and sort out my thoughts on it. I may investigate the Benjamin Britten opera as well, just for fun. It is so very ambiguous, and I like that, but there are members of the group that like everything to be tied off in a nice neat bow, so they won't be happy!

Recent book-group books include If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Brick Lane, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, Phantom of the Opera... We try to read a range of things.

Has anyone here read If On a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino? I read it and loved it, but am having difficulty persuading anyone else that it's worth reading. But then I like Borges, Lem and all sorts of other odd people, so maybe I'm the only one who would like it...

David

I tend to go vaguely along, in an armchair way, with Radio 4's Bookclub. Once a month, they announce the book, and then next month drag the author into the studio (or an expert on the author, if the author is unavailable (ie been dead for 60 years) and members of the audience get to ask questions. I try to read the book and nod sagely at the questions...

David, I LOVED If on a Winter's Night a Traveller! I love Calvino generally, and especially the Ancestors trilogy and Invisible Cities. Winter's Night is so clever. I always remember the musing on the falling gingko leaves and the author and the butterfly. If you haven't read the Ancestors, oh, do! do! They aren't always sold as the trilogy, so look for the Baron in the Trees, The Cloven Viscount and The Non-Existant Knight. The ending of Non-Existant Knight is my absolute ultimate favourite description of the act of writing.

(Utterly unnecessary show-off moment - I've read them in the original Italian as well, and can therefore give the translations a big thumbs up. Books are often turned into the most porridgy hideous translationese, but William Weaver is a star).

Sorry. "Never mind." Emily Latella.

Emily Latella??

David B, I only know one other person who reads Stanislaw Lem voluntarily. In respect of book clubs, I recommend that you try to keep the membership around a dozen, or else elect a major-domo to keep order. I hate it when there are several conversations going at once. We have, unfortunately an old dear who is likely to go all loghorreaic at the slightest provocation, and she will natter at whoever is sitting next to her without regard for whoever has the floor. I NEVER sit next to her.

Saturday Night Live - Gilda Radner

Home from my book club meeting. I misinformed you. The club wasn't founded in 1913. Sorry. It was 1909. I don't know where 1913 came from. It was probably because that's the year the library district was established and I had it on the brain.

I'm intrigued to know who else reads Stanislaw Lem on a voluntary basis. I particularly liked Memoirs Found In A Bathtub for sheer oddness.

Agapanthus, any tips on how I could persuade my book group to take a look at Winter's Night? I suggested it and someone said 'what's it about?' When I tried to explain without spoiling it, the response was 'how utterly fascinating' in the most withering voice I've ever heard.

Lor' David, how to convince people to read 'Winter's Night'. That's a tricky one. I read it because I'd already read Ancestors (which I read because I was studying the Italian Novel), and adored them. Frankly, you might have more luck getting them to read Ancestors, as they are after all straightforward narratives even if they are fairy-tale and fantastical. But I'd hate for people to have the chance to read Winter's Night and to go about NOT reading it... Mind you, when I turn enthusiastically to a friend or family member and about the wonderfulness of a book, they tend to go out of their way NOT to read it. S says this is because I use long words like dichotomy and zeugma and drag Shakespeare into it if I possibly can and infact seem to be getting very excited about something completely incomprehensible and obviously exhausting. So it's possibly best not to get to enthusiastic about the cleverness of the book. You could always point out it's not a very long book. Or that Salman Rushdie loves it. Or that having read a great many great novels about peopel and politics and such, wouldn't it be nice to read a great novel about novels?

And I HAVE actually READ Solaris. Never seen either of the films though... We could start a tiny Lem and Other Worthy Obscurities appreciation club.

That sounds good. My favourite obscurity is Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, whose work I find fascinating. Another one that people think is very odd! I rather like the original film of Solaris, subtitles and obsession with Bruegel and all, as well as the book. I haven't seen the new version, though, as I'm scared that Hollywood may well have ruined it.

I've decided I need more time to read, as I *still* have Don Quixote, the Aeneid, the Canterbury Tales, The Blind Assassin, A Prayer for Owen Meany, Jonathan Strange And Mr Norris and numerous other books beckoning me from my shelf. And that's still ignoring all those books I really ought to have read at some point, like Wuthering Heights (how did I get through school and two degrees without having read that?), Vanity Fair and P&P. Shocking!

David - who doesn't tend to use the word zeugma, but has been known to bring dichotomies into the conversation

*notes busily on 'To Do' list: Must read Borges!*

I'm still dragging myself veeerrrryyyy slowly through Don Quixote. It's taking me MONTHS to read. Normally I can read a book a day if I put my mind to it. Perhaps I've just got a dud translation.

I'm not keen on Wuthering Heights. I was forced to read it in a class of twittering girls who all thought all the sturm und drang was SO romantic. Ugh. It probably is, in all fairness, a very good novel, but boy did all the twittering spoil it. And I've always despised Byronic foul-tempered heros and tempestous free-spirited heroines. I like my romance witty, erudite, charming and sensible. Long live Elizabeth Bennet and Lord Peter Whimsey.

Hypatia, you could try telling them that the book is very expensive, or that Julia Roberts ADORED it...

I nominate Russell Hoban to the pantheon of the Worthily Obscure.