Well, we met; we talked; we buried Algernon. None of us loved the book. The loose concensus of our three Book Talk books ranked in order of best to worst: Dandelion Wine, Flowers for Algernon, Slaughterhouse-Five. I, myself, put Algernon dead last. What a heavy-handed book, nothing like what I remember from high school. Maybe I read the shorter, magazine-length story back then.
Our next book will be Mary Karr's Liar's Club, a memoir. We want to meet on Wednesday, October 8 (look, Erin, a non work night!). Please consider reading it and joining us for our discussion at the book store.
Any other Book Talk comments, folks?
What else is everyone reading?
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11 comments:
I've decided to read Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Thus far I've only read the preface and most of the acknowledgments, and I do like his style of writing (as well as his pro-memoir, or perhaps just anti-anti-memoir, reasoning).
It will be nice to pass the time away with this book today while I get this whole leaky pipe/mold situation straightened out. You should see the parade of people who have been through my condo and the condo downstairs today. It's a party up in here.
~Lisa
Good luck with your mold party, Lisa.
I, too, will be reading Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, for a class in the fall.
Right now, however, I am still working on the first half of the Complete Sherlock Holmes. I've gotten to the short stories. They are fun.
I'm cleaning bookshelves rather than reading the books. Preparation for my parents' visit.
I'd take Algernon over Billy Pilgrim any day. Sorry Christine! But still the whole premise of the experiment just didn't sit well with me, even though, yes, - I know it's just a story Don.
Whoo hoo! A talk I can attend. I will be there or be rhomboid.
Flowers for Algernon was a lot different from what I remember from eighth grade. We may have read an edited version, I'm not sure. In any case, there were some parts that worked, some parts that didn't. Yes, much of it was Keyes lobbing Bricks of Meaning at the reader. I specifically liked the issue of monstrosity. Pre-experiment, Charlie's perceived as a sort of monster, a mistake of nature, albeit a harmless one. Yet how natural is it for his intelligent to be altered? I found him equally monstrous post-change, although not wholly because of his personality shift.
BUT. My biggest peeve was the absolutely inexcusable way Charlie, and by extension the author, treated Alice and Faye. Here we have yet again an exploitation of the light/dark woman, the madonna and the temptress.
Faye became little more than an outlet for Charlie's base sexuality, a way to purge himself of lust, thus allowing him to remain "pure" for Alice. In that same vein, she was kept chaste for him, preserving her image as the maiden. So it was totally permissable for Charlie to sleep with Faye on a whim, because it meant his "first time" with Alice could be special. I'm not even going to touch how both women's sexuality was sacrificed on the alter of Charlie.
Stuff it, Keyes. Stuff it with a ball peen hammer.
*hands back thread* Yeah, not that I've been holding that in for a while or anything.
Those are interesting and insightful ideas that didn't come up in discussion, Erin. Actually, we all laughed about how creepy Alice appeared, because she seemed to want to have sex with Charlie as soon as he became relatively intelligent (she did advise distance at first, but not for long), and she even suggested when he was "on the way down" that he might be ready because he was "about at her level" again. There were even some crass elevator jokes made.
~Lisa
I already read all of the books i brought with me (underestimated how much i would be reading) so ive been digging through everyone else's books to find something to read. I ended up reading One Flew over the Cookoos nest the other day, which i really liked.
You know, a less mature person than I would take this opportunity to reference "Love in an Elevator." That or Alice "servicing" Charlie's "industrial cable" if you know what I mean and I think you do. *is twelve*
Really, though, as angry as the Alice/Faye thing made me, I did sort of like how Keyes used their environments to contrast their characters. The pillows on Alice's couch really stuck out for me, how Charlie notes that they're precisely placed. (Hm, maybe Alice had traces of the old OCD herself? The world may never know.) Then you look at Faye's apartment; she says she just lets stuff fall "where it will." So in addition to the madonna/temptress imagery, there's implications of reason vs. emotion, chaos vs. order.
I think it's pretty safe to say that Alice was repressing big time and had exacting ideas of what love is and should entail (lady and knight painting), whereas Faye was more concerned with getting and giving as much romantic/sexual attention as possible. Neither of which are healthy ways to go about the love thing. Like I said, my problem was that the women didn't come off so much as characters so much as external encapsulations of Charlie's struggle with his psychic and physical impotence/virility.
...I really am giving the thread back now. I promise.
Oh, no need to give back the thread, Erin! I believe Christine designated it as both a "what are you reading now?" thread and a "post-book talk" thread. We could have used you at the discussion--glad you can make it to the next one!
~Lisa
Great to have the Algernon talk continue here! And glad that you can make the next one, Erin.
Don, we all know you're busy listening to your new iPod Touch (!), but what are you reading?
Ben, I still haven't read Perks of Being a Wallflower!
Thanks, Lisa. I'm glad I can make the next one, too. I need to share my weirdness in person. I mean, uh, discuss the sociopolitical meaning of the third comma on page 42.
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