The Book Club's Very Unofficial Pointless Announcements Thread

I read pretty slow. One night stands for you might be month long partners for me.

shiiiiiiiiiiiit!

Yeah.

HELP!

If I were to purchase one Easton-Ellis book--just one--to make or break my fanhood... which would you suggest?

Also: Stephen Graham Jones?

NOT Lunar Park and don't start with Imperial Bedrooms. I vote Less Than Zero immediately followed by American Psycho.

SGJ - All the Beautiful Sinners

I used to love to read, and read all the time, but finding a book that keeps my interest these days is proving very difficult.
Every time I go into a bookshop I'm there for about 40 minutes and then come out with nothing.

I wish there was a book matchmaking website... or is there?

BEE: without a doubt, LTZ.

And I am yet to read SGJ, but I keep hearing Sinners as the favourite among fans. That, demon theory and ledfeathee are all sitting on my bedside table, waiting patiently to be consumed.

As much as I liked Lunar Park - It will make no sense without reading at least some other BEE.

Very cool guys! Thanks!

Glamorama is my favorite.

Also, LibraryThing and GoodReads.

So I went to the booksale. Bought 17 books for $8.50.

List them and their prices or it's not true!

Alright, let's see...

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Light in August - William Faulkner
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Fuck Up - Arthur Nersesian
Eunichs for the Kingdom of Heaven - Uta Ranke-Heinemann
Knowing Woman - Irene de Castillejo
My Name is Asher Lev - Chaimi Potok
The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards
Year of Wonders - Geraldine Brooks
A Well Behaved Child - Ericka Lutz

And 6 children's books for Emma. The only one I can remember off the top of my head is There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Spider.

Everything was .50 a piece.

Nicely done. I absolutely loved The Fuck Up, such a great read. Something about the tone just sucks you in.

I just looked that one up. sound like i may enjoy it.

Natalie and I are reading The Bell Jar together at the present. I'm relly enjoying it.

good score, Timb.

THE FUCK UP is great, I love Nersesians books!

I just ordered from Amazon for 80p, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (Betty Smith), I hope it will change my life, somehow (re: Mirka's recent thread). I really like the 'coming of age' genre. If not I will probably order Await Your Reply.

yeah, we do this sometimes. have a book that we read in bed together. take turns reading chapters out loud to each other. it's awesome fun.

Cool article in on Times Online today....

March 24, 2010
The 10 best novels about money

Money makes us happy, it makes us sad, it fuels ambition, it nourishes greed, it incites murder, it .... I could go on, but you get the message. Money makes for some great stories so it should come as no surprise that many novels and short stories feature money-related issues. Here are Money Central's 10 favourite.

1. L'argent

Published in 1891, Emile Zola's Money deals with financial speculation - its highs and its lows. Inspired by the collapse of the French financial house, l'Union Generale, the main character Aristide Saccard raises money to set up a bank, supposedly to back projects in the Middle East but principally to make money for himself. Saccard ramps his stock on the Paris stock exchange, even buying newspapers to sing its praises and all goes well - until the bubble bursts. Thrilling.

2. The Way We Live Now

Augustus Melmotte, the mysterious financier at the centre of Anthony Trollope's masterpiece, is one of the great characters of 19th Century fiction. A Victorian Madoff, he lures well-to-do Londoners into a get-rich-quick scheme to build a railway from California to Mexico. None of these backers ask how or when the railroad is going to make a profit. This magnificent 1875 novel is about so much more than money - the hypocrises of class, anti-Semitism - but greed and financial speculation are at its core.

3. Money: A Suicide Note

Martin Amis's savage satire features the greedy, debauched John Self who spends money on everything he shouldn't - booze, drugs, pornography, junk food - as he tries to make his first feature film. Dark, funny and downright dirty.

4. The Pit

This 1903 novel by Frank Norris about commodities trading in Chicago centres on Curtis Jadwin who attempts to corner the wheat market by bidding up the price of grain. He ends up losing his fortune but love triumphs in the end.

5. Madame Bovary

Illicit sex and romance (poor Emma Bovary doesn't receive much love) may be at the heart of Gustave Flaubert's masterpiece, first published as a book in 1857. However, debt is the heroine's fatal flaw. Emma's desire to live the high life (to escape the tedium of a humdrum time in the provinces) leads her hopelessly into the black - eventually leading to .... (musn't give the end away). Stirring stuff.

6. How Much Land Does a Man Need?

Leo Tolstoy's brilliant short story features Pahom, a peasant, who begins the tale boasting that if he owned lots of land he would not fear anything, even the Devil himself. Unfortunately, for him, the Devil is sitting behind his stove and decides to teach him a lesson. Pahom acquires some land but soon finds that what he owns is never enough. By encouraging his greed the Devil takes his revenge.

7. The Financier

From an early age, Frank Algernon Cowperwood, the anti-hero of Theodore Dreiser's 1912 novel, is interested in only one thing - making money (although he is also quite hooked on power and women). Full of double-dealing and betrayal, The Financier is a scathing critique of the American dream.

8. Martin Chuzzlewit

Money issues make an appearance in many of Charles Dickens' novels, but Martin Chuzzlewit makes the list because of the Ponzi-style insurance scam - the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan & Life Assurance Co - which is critical to its plot. Several of the main characters get embroiled in the scam which collapses leaving many of them ruined. A rich feast.

9. The Bottle Imp

Robert Louis Stevenson's short story offers a neat twist on the conventional get-rich-quick tale. It focuses on a strange bottle containing an imp who will grant whoever owns the bottle whatever they wish for. The catch - the bottle has to be sold for less than the owner paid for it. Anyone left owning the bottle when they die will be damned to eternity. As the story progresses the price of the bottle falls until it almost reaches zero, but there is always someone willing to take the risk of buying it.

10.The Count of Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas' magnificent mid-19th Century page-turner traces Edmond Dantes' plot to take revenge against the scoundrels who got him thrown into prison for being a traitor. By a circuitous route he eventually appears in Paris as the fabulously wealthy Count of Monte Cristo, a title that he bought on his travels. The Count then manipulates the government bond market to destroy a large part of his enemies' fortune. Bad luck on the stock market does the rest.

very cool, Harriet, very cool indeed.

i love lists like this.

Scored a copy of TCH online. 12 bucks with shipping.

Paper. Great condition. Seller has awesome rating. Pretty stoked!

That is awesome! I ordered two copies off Amazon and it says 1-4 months for delivery which is weird. I asked Guy over at M/C what's up with that and he said they're printed and in the warehouse...he even has a copy for me next time I see him.

That is weird that it would take such a long time to fetch one from a warehouse. Pretty cool that you know a "guy", though.

The guy's name is Guy.

Gosh. Franny and Zooey was just such a special book. i could talk and talk and talk about it. i really could. but there's no point posting in the freakin' official book club thread because no bastard will reply. so i'm posting here.

it's the first book in a while where i have savoured it. it's only a tiny little thing but i just kept holding off reading it. i'd read a few pages. 10 or 20 and then sit down and think about it for ages. i was just so into it. hard to explain. it just consumed me. it hit me on a whole other level. the words. the dialogue. such stong dialogue. possibly the most true and real dialogue i have read yet. this story is much much better than Catcher. hardly even comparable, in my opinion. damn.

it's a shame so few people have read it around here. i think i might be because a lot of the people don't like catcher that much. shame. wow. don't know. i'm excited about this book.

i normally take great care of my books, too. but poor Franny and Zooey has been demolished because i dragged it around with me everywhere for a week or two. reading pages over. it's all dog eared and hs scuff marks all over it. poor thing.

ahhh. well. that's good to get out of the old system.

I have been trying to get hold of that for so long, you wouldn't believe. It's always out of print on Amazon and I really resent paying ridiculous prices for such a small Penguin paperback in the shops.

i'm not sure of what stuff you like, Harriet, but i hope you like this. this is one of those books where i would consider liking a person a considerable amount less if they didn't like it. there's honestly just something about it. i can't put my finger on it. i can't. i need to talk about the book to completely understand it and how i feel about it. but it certainly has stayed with me. it's beauiful and seems like a perfect example of fiction reflecting real-life.

try this:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?fromanz=fromanz&sortby=17&...

Thanks for posting that, it was an interesting list.
I think I would add Upton Sinclair's Oil! to the mix - I was surprised how many of the monetary and governmental themes in the book are still highly relevant today.

Esquire has just posted an excerpt from Imperial Bedrooms By Bret Easton Ellis.

http://www.esquire.com/fiction/bret-easton-ellis-imperial-bedrooms-excer...

It's the beginning of the book. This is just teasing those of us who are waiting for it to be released!

I finished Death Be Not Proud, finally.
Now I'm reading Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore.

i used to imagine giant razors when i did that. they would slice through everything. it wasnt just in the car though. im not in the book club so i will back up off your topic, without anyones panties getting into their bundle of choice.

you are the best for finding and posting this.

i wasn't going to read it, but i coudn't help myself. it's a bit of a trip. but in a good way, a really good way. i like it so far. still can't wait for the book.

This is fucking weird.

Am I in the book club?

who cares who's in the damn book club! we don't have discussions. we just post what we're reading and then leave! damn it!

Wow Matt - all hopped up on the Fosters?

Yeah Matt, can you cool it with the Fosters already? Geez!

I stole this link from Jane. It's an audio archive of David Foster Wallace's "Interviews & Profiles, Readings, Eulogies & Remembrances and ‘Brief Interviews’ Staged Readings."

Very Cool!

David Foster Wallace Audio Archive

Jane posts all the cool shiz to my Facebook wall.

^^ Yesssss.

In other news, I love the information age sometimes. I emailed Paste magazine (which is where I found that link to the Wallace archive) about an article, and received a personal response from the department head in less than two minutes, who told me he'd forwarded my note on to the author of the article in question (a review of "War" by Sebastian Junger). Like, what! I love that shit.

I TOLD YA! I DON'T DRINK TH AT PUSSY FOSTER'S PISS, I DRINK A REAL AUSSIE BREW--BLOODY COOPERS, MATE!

AAHAAHAHAHHHAAAHAAAAAAAA!

I'm going to see Chuck read tonight! I'm excited!

lets hope you hear him read, too.

No, I'll be stuffing my ears with cotton, the man writes about such filthy things!