February & March 2008 Fiction Book Suggestions

[Chris OConnor]

February & March 2008 Fiction Book Suggestions

Please use this thread for making Fiction book suggestions for our February & March 2008 Fiction book selection. Do your best to make suggestions that should be appealing to a broad audience, but no reason to stick with a "top 1000" or bestsellers list. Just put plenty of thought into your suggestion and explain why you're making it. Tell us more than just the book title and author -- tell us why you think your suggestion would make for a quality book discussion. And please create an active link directly to where other members can read more about your particular book suggestion, such as a book review or Amazon.com book description. If you don't know how to create a link I'll help you with it by editing your post and making the book title an active link.

We will replace Wicked if we can get some quality suggestions that generate enough interest by multiple members. You'll be helping us all if you comment on each and every one of the other suggestions made by other members. Don't be shy. If you see a book that you would not enjoy reading and discussing say so. If you see one that you would read and discuss, in the event that it wins, please tell us this too.

[Ophelia]

Chris,

I have a question for both fiction and non fiction:

1- How old are the books that are usually selected at Booktalk?

So for 2008, are we looking at books that were first published in:

- 2007 and 2008

- 2006

- Other years?

2- What bracket are we looking for in term of number of pages?

If I felt like writing about a book I'd like to know what the criteria are.

[MadArchitect]

Our non-fiction selections have traditionally been pretty recent -- I would say, published within 5 years. When we previously attempted a fiction component, those books tended to range more broadly. We read "The March" and "The Road", which then were brand spanking new, but we also read "Ender's Game" and "I, Claudius", both of which were about 30 years old at the time. Those serve as pretty good rough guidelines.

That said, before I got to BookTalk, they had also read "The Demon-Haunted World" and "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee", both non-fiction, but neither of them spring chickens. So older non-fiction books might still work.

On the whole, I think too many guidelines early on can only cramp our style. The suggestion process is partly about narrowing down those suggestions as well, discussion which are most appropriate and which are probably better reserved for private reading. So I say, suggest whatever you think would be good for discussion, and let the process decide which make it to the next round.

[Chris OConnor]

MadArchitect explained it well.

[lovesbooks07]

I would like to nomatie Wicked by Jilly Cooper because it looks like there plenty of things going in that would be good for discusson.

From fanficton ( http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/c/jil ... wicked.htm)

Britain's number one bestselling author turns her brilliant pen to the explosive world of education.

Two schools, both in leafy Larkminster, but worlds apart, are turned upside down when the ambitious and fatally attractive headmaster of fashionable Bagley Hall, Hengist Brett-Taylor, hatches a plan to share the highly superior facilities of his school with the students at Larkminster Comprehensive. His reasons for doing so are purely financial but he is also encouraged by the opportunities the scheme gives him for frequent meetings with Janna Curtis, the young, pretty and enthusiastic new principal of the comprehensive school. The determined Janna has been drafted in to save what is a fast-sinking school from closure, and she will do anything to rescue her run-down, demoralized and cash-strapped school.

The parents of Bagley Hall's rich and pampered children are none too keen on this radical move, but the students see it as a great opportunity to get up to even more mayhem than usual. And for the pupils at the comprehensive school, many of them struggling with appalling home backgrounds, violence and lack of any parental support (problems which are not unknown to some of the Bagley Hall pupils) mixing with the posh school up the road is often a mixed blessing.



P.S i hope i did this right. [/img][/list]

[jales4]

I'd like to recommend one of these two:

The Girls by Lori Lansens
http://www.amazon.ca/Girls-Lori-Lansens ... 172&sr=1-1

In 29 years, Rose Darlen has never spent a moment apart from her twin sister, Ruby. She has never gone for a solitary walk or had a private conversation. Yet, in all that time, she has never once looked into Ruby's eyes. Joined at the head, "The Girls" (as they are known in their small Ontario town) are the world's oldest surviving craniopagus twins. In her astonishing second novel, Lori Lansens (author of Rush Home Road) ventures into the strange world of physical abnormality that Barbara Gowdy so chillingly explored in We So Seldom Look on Love. While some writers might be tempted to play up the grotesque aspects of life as a conjoined twin, Lansens treats her so-called freaks with sensitivity and respect. The result is an extraordinarily moving narrative about human connectedness that questions the very meaning of "normal."
The Girls is a fictional autobiography of the Darlen twins, mostly told by Rose but with occasional chapters by Ruby. The stronger and more frustrated of the two, Rose longs to become a published writer but tends to conceal or distort disturbing incidents from their shared past. Ruby, by contrast, tells it like it is, but is much more accepting of their intertwined fate. (Ruby is also the prettier twin, and one of the most poignant and shocking scenes in the novel is Rose's account of her--or rather their--first sexual experience.) As Rose and Ruby describe their relatively sheltered childhood, rocky adolescence, and tentative experiments with love, the interplay between these two distinct voices heightens the dramatic tension of what's to come. The saddest part is saying good-bye--to "The Girls" and to this compassionately written novel. --Lisa Alward

Or:

The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte
http://www.amazon.ca/Club-Dumas-Arturo- ... 289&sr=1-1

#1 International Bestseller
Lucas Corso is a book detective, a mercenary hired to hunt down rare editions for wealthy and unscrupulous clients. When a well-known bibliophile is found hanged, leaving behind part of the original manuscript of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, Corso is brought in to authenticate the fragment. He is soon drawn into a swirling plot involving devil worship, occult practices, and swashbuckling derring-do among a cast of characters bearing a suspicious resemblance to those of Dumas's masterpiece. Aided by a mysterious beauty named after a Conan Doyle heroine, Corso travels from Madrid to Toledo to Paris in pursuit of a sinister and seemingly omniscient killer.

Part mystery, part puzzle, part witty intertextual game, The Club Dumas is a wholly original intellectual thriller by the author of The Flanders Panel and The Seville Communion.

[jales4]

While I'm recommending, I'd also like to second Dissident Heart's recommendation (made in the Book chat tonight) for the book the Schopenhauer Cure by Irvin Yalom:

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0066214 ... sib_rdr_dp

Having taken on the origins of psychotherapy in the popular When Nietzsche Wept, psychiatrist-novelist Yalom now turns to group therapy and the thinker sometimes known as the "philosopher of pessimism," in this meticulous, occasionally slow-moving book. Julius Hertzfeld, a successful therapist in San Francisco, is shocked by the news that he suffers from terminal cancer. Moved to reassess his life's work, he contacts Philip Slate, whose three years of therapy for sexual addiction Julius describes as an "old-time major-league failure." Philip is now training to be a therapist himself, guided by the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, and he offers to teach Julius about Schopenhauer as a way of helping him deal with his looming death. Julius and Philip strike a deal: Julius will serve as Philip's clinical supervisor, but only if Philip joins the ongoing therapy group Julius leads. To complicate matters further, Pam, a group member, is one of the hundreds of women Philip seduced and then rejected. Yalom often refers to his books as "teaching novels," and his re-creation of a working therapy group is utterly convincing. At the same time, his approach can be overly documentary, as the inner workings of therapy, often repetitious and self-referential, absorb much of the novel's momentum. A parallel account of Schopenhauer's life sheds light on the philosopher's intellectual triumphs and emotional difficulties.

[JulianTheApostate]

Here are some random suggestions. While I own the first two books, I haven't read any of them.

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

Satrapi's autobiography is a timely and timeless story of a young girl's life under the Islamic Revolution. Descended from the last Emperor of Iran, Satrapi is nine when fundamentalist rebels overthrow the Shah. While Satrapi's radical parents and their community initially welcome the ouster, they soon learn a new brand of totalitarianism is taking over. Satrapi's art is minimal and stark yet often charming and humorous as it depicts the madness around her. She idolizes those who were imprisoned by the Shah, fascinated by their tales of torture, and bonds with her Uncle Anoosh, only to see the new regime imprison and eventually kill him. Thanks to the Iran-Iraq war, neighbors' homes are bombed, playmates are killed and parties are forbidden. Satrapi's parents, who once lived in luxury despite their politics, struggle to educate their daughter. Her father briefly considers fleeing to America, only to realize the price would be too great. "I can become a taxi driver and you a cleaning lady?" he asks his wife. Iron Maiden, Nikes and Michael Jackson become precious symbols of freedom, and eventually Satrapi's rebellious streak puts her in danger, as even educated women are threatened with beatings for improper attire. Despite the grimness, Satrapi never lapses into sensationalism or sentimentality. Skillfully presenting a child's view of war and her own shifting ideals, she also shows quotidian life in Tehran and her family's pride and love for their country despite the tumultuous times. Powerfully understated, this work joins other memoirs-Spiegelman's Maus and Sacco's Safe Area Goradze-that use comics to make the unthinkable familiar.

Then We Came to the End: A Novel by Joshua Ferris

In this wildly funny debut from former ad man Ferris, a group of copywriters and designers at a Chicago ad agency face layoffs at the end of the '90s boom. Indignation rises over the rightful owner of a particularly coveted chair ("We felt deceived"). Gonzo e-mailer Tom Mota quotes Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the midst of his tirades, desperately trying to retain a shred of integrity at a job that requires a ruthless attention to what will make people buy things. Jealousy toward the aloof and "inscrutable" middle manager Joe Pope spins out of control. Copywriter Chris Yop secretly returns to the office after he's laid off to prove his worth. Rumors that supervisor Lynn Mason has breast cancer inspire blood lust, remorse, compassion. Ferris has the downward-spiraling office down cold, and his use of the narrative "we" brilliantly conveys the collective fear, pettiness, idiocy and also humanity of high-level office drones as anxiety rises to a fever pitch. Only once does Ferris shift from the first person plural (for an extended fugue on Lynn's realization that she may be ill), and the perspective feels natural throughout. At once delightfully freakish and entirely credible, Ferris's cast makes a real impression.

Turning on the Girls by Cheryl Benard

Women have taken over the world in this gender-centric, rollicking good novel. Called on the carpet for bad behavior and general ineptness, the worst specimens of the male sex are banished to Zone Six by an elite group of New Age Femi-Nazis; borderline males are "re-educated" with counseling and medication. But a creeping romantic urge survives in the triumphant female population. Women still long for male companionship, and black market sales of romantic novels are corroding the very foundations upon which the Revolution was fought. Enter Lisa, an operative of the lauded Ministry of Thought, who is charged with finding an acceptable sexual fantasy for women. Researching centuries of erotica, pornography and outright s&m, Lisa concludes that women have always dreamed and written about dominant, testosterone-laden men. Just as she's about to give up in despair, she is given a new assignment. With Justin, her administrative assistant and a current re-education subject, she is ordered to infiltrate Harmony, a counterrevolutionary underground men's movement. Despite discovering that Harmony meetings are rife with such archaic pursuits as makeovers for women and coed dancing, Lisa and Justin have little to report until they are invited to a special meeting and find themselves stranded in Zone Six with simpering women, redneck men and positive proof of an antirevolutionary coup attempt but no way to transmit their knowledge. Though hampered by a long-drawn-out beginning, the novel is saved by wry humor, backstabbing betrayals and fabulous secondary characters. Deeper than a mere "what-if" fantasy, this contra-Atwoodesque social fiction may satirize political correctness, but it also manages to salute present and future feminist triumphs, albeit in roundabout fashion. (Mar.)Forecast: The title is terrific; the cover that carries it is not: flowery, it gives little clue as to the nature of the novel. But this book will succeed primarily through word of mouth, of which there will be plenty.

[Ophelia]

I'm delighted Jullian has suggested Turning on the girls, by Cheryl Benard.


This is exactly the novel I wanted to introduce, but the last time I checked at amazon, it was out of print, and I couldn't think of a better idea.

Benard is a feminist with a great sense of humour. Who hasn't dreamt of women (at last!) taking power, and what the world would be like?
The women in the book are fair (no revenge or bad treatment of men who live by the rules), and the humour comes mainly from the fact that the narrator is a man who is very good at going with the flow.

Then there are the nasties: one of the problems in this new society is what to do with those few macho males who insist on clinging to their old, violent way of life.

It's not a perfect novel (I think the ending might attract criticism), but it's a breath of fresh air, and God knows a good laugh can be a welcome relief
(the intellectual excuse would be that we would be, in all seriousness, discussing the war of the sexes...).

Finally, if the silly cover picture of the paperback edition of the novel puts you off, just ignore it, I have no idea why the publisher chose it, for me it's got nothing to do with the book
.http://search.barnesandnoble.com/bookse ... 786&itm=10

[irishrose]

Actually, if the goal is to choose a book that explores gender issues, I'd prefer to do something a little different than Turning on the Girls. After needing to swallow an implausible premise the size of a cinderblock, and slogging through tired gender stereotypes, I'm not really sure how much of a contribution Benard's book really is to actual gender discussions.

If considering "feminist" texts, I'd suggest Woolf's To the Lighthouse. First to recommend it, it's short