Fiction Book Suggestions for NEXT official discussion

[Chris OConnor]

Fiction Book Suggestions for NEXT official discussion

READ THESE RULES please.

1. You must have 25+ total posts on our forums to suggest a book.
2. You can suggest up to 3 total books and no more.
3. You must include a link to a book description on Amazon.com or another site.
4. You must participate in this book suggestion thread by not only making your suggestions, but by giving feedback on the other suggestions. Which of the other suggestions do you like or not like?

We're starting this fiction book suggestions process again because the last suggestion thread contained absolutely no feedback on the suggestions. Suggestions are great, but FEEDBACK is even more important.

Please help BookTalk.org by looking at other peoples suggestions and leaving feedback here in this thread as to which books you like or don't like.

No books will ever be placed on a poll if the only person saying they'll read that book is the person who suggested it. We need at least 5 members indicating an interest in reading and discussing any one book to warrant creating a brand new forum for discussing that book.

When is the next fiction book discussion?

Only when enough members have indicated an interest in reading and discussing the same fiction book.

[MaryLupin]

Because of Chris' "suggestions" I am going to content myself with posting just one novel (yes, you read that correctly.)

I am going to suggest The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon. I spent a while thinking about which book I would like to suggest for a group reading. While I stand by my earlier (multiple) suggestions, I felt that this book might be more likely to appeal to the (nicely) diverse group that posts here. Read the blurbs below and see if you agree with me about that. Also, the subject matter of the novel rather nicely ties in (if tangentially) with the new non-fiction book up for June.

http://www.amazon.ca/Curious-Incident-D ... 867&sr=1-1

Amazon.ca
Mark Haddon's bitterly funny first novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, is a murder mystery of sorts--one told by an autistic version of Adrian Mole. Christopher John Francis Boone is a 15-year-old boy, mathematically gifted and socially hopeless, raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with their child's quirks. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behaviour of his elders and peers.

Late one night, Christopher comes across his neighbour's poodle, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork. Wellington's owner finds him cradling her dead dog in his arms, and has him arrested. After spending a night in jail, Christopher resolves--against the objection of his father and neighbours--to discover just who has murdered Wellington. He is encouraged by Siobhan, a social worker at his school, to write a book about his investigations, and the result--quirkily illustrated, with each chapter given its own prime number--is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.

Haddon's novel is a startling performance. This is the sort of book that could turn condescending, or exploitative, or overly sentimental, or grossly tasteless very easily, but Haddon navigates those dangers with a sureness of touch that is extremely rare among first-time novelists. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is original, clever, and genuinely moving: this one is a must-read. --Jack Illingworth --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
Christopher Boone, the autistic 15-year-old narrator of this revelatory novel, relaxes by groaning and doing math problems in his head, eats red-but not yellow or brown-foods and screams when he is touched. Strange as he may seem, other people are far more of a conundrum to him, for he lacks the intuitive "theory of mind" by which most of us sense what's going on in other people's heads. When his neighbor's poodle is killed and Christopher is falsely accused of the crime, he decides that he will take a page from Sherlock Holmes (one of his favorite characters) and track down the killer. As the mystery leads him to the secrets of his parents' broken marriage and then into an odyssey to find his place in the world, he must fall back on deductive logic to navigate the emotional complexities of a social world that remains a closed book to him. In the hands of first-time novelist Haddon, Christopher is a fascinating case study and, above all, a sympathetic boy: not closed off, as the stereotype would have it, but too open-overwhelmed by sensations, bereft of the filters through which normal people screen their surroundings. Christopher can only make sense of the chaos of stimuli by imposing arbitrary patterns ("4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day, which is a day when I don't speak to anyone and sit on my own reading books and don't eat my lunch and Take No Risks"). His literal-minded observations make for a kind of poetic sensibility and a poignant evocation of character. Though Christopher insists, "This will not be a funny book. I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them," the novel brims with touching, ironic humor. The result is an eye-opening work in a unique and compelling literary voice.

[Chris OConnor]

We read that one! LOL Check out the BOOKS page.

But you have good taste in fiction, Mary. I absolutely loved that book.

[MaryLupin]

rats

[Suzanne]

Hello Mary:

I loved your previous selections. Have you read this one? I have, and I have to say, Oh boy is it a stinker! The last 50 pages or so is torture! It should be used by the government.

Also, I don't see any discussion that can connect with it. I fear autisim will be the only discussion, not the book.

Suzanne

[Chris OConnor]

http://www.booktalk.org/the-curious-inc ... n-f24.html

[Suzanne]

Sorry Chris:

Oh you mean that one! Ah, Um , yeah, it was great.

Suzanne

[MaryLupin]

Hello Mary:

I loved your previous selections. Have you read this one? I have, and I have to say, Oh boy is it a stinker! The last 50 pages or so is torture! It should be used by the government.

Also, I don't see any discussion that can connect with it. I fear autisim will be the only discussion, not the book.

I haven't read it yet but I plan to. I have it on hold at my local bookstore. Since Chris pointed out that it has already been done here, it won't go into the poll this time.

About the connection though, autism in humans has entered the conversation about how morality works neurologically. That is what I had in mind viz Primates and Philosophers. Still, doesn't matter now.

Most of the books I suggested before I have read at some point. All of them were standouts as far as I am concerned. Still James Welch's book keeps coming to mind recently. I may have to get my old copy and reread it.

I will have to come up with another suggestion for this thread though.

[Suzanne]

"House Keeping"
Marilynne Robinson

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/produc ... 55&s=books

"So precise, so distilled, so beautiful that one doesn't want to miss any pleasure it might yield."--The New York Times Book Review

"Here's a first novel that sounds as if the author has been treasuring it up all her life...You can feel in the book a gathering voluptuous release of confidence, a delighted surprise at the unexpected capacities of language, a close, careful fondness for people that we thought only saints felt."--Anatole Broyard, The New York Times

"I found myself reading slowly, than more slowly--this is not a novel to be hurried through, for every sentence is a delight."--Doris Lessing

Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award

A modern classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience.

Suzanne

[MaryLupin]

"House Keeping"
Marilynne Robinson

I read this several years ago and have to say, despite my disagreement with some of her implications, it is one fantastic book. Her writing is amazing.

She also has a book of essays out called The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought which is also really good. I don't agree with some of what she says, but man can the woman write.

http://www.amazon.ca/Death-Adam-Essays- ... 573&sr=1-4

She also has a newer novel called Gilead. I actually own this although I haven't yet read it.

http://www.amazon.ca/Gilead-Marilynne-R ... 573&sr=1-1

What problems I do have with Robinson is that she is intensley Protestant and everything she writes is essentially a meditation on faith.