Well, the original idea of the Select the Selectors plan was that the selectors would be selected randomly. Sorta kills the popularity thing. But I'm not feeling the pushing urge.

D'oh! I didn't catch that. Brainpower is on low today.

Brainpower is on low today.

Me too. I think there's something going around.

I guess I assumed because nobody objected to this it had the tacit approval of the stompies. But in re-read that may not be the case.

Errr... well I'm a stompy and I'm fine with it. But I don't think it's for a stompy to decide.

Speaking of stompies, if you want to use Lilty's first post as a "sticky" post, and she's not around, any stompy can edit any post (bwahahahaha!).

I'm reading The Good Soldier now, and I'd be thrilled to discuss it with Buffistas once I'm done.

Also, I'd like to sneak in a rec for Barbara Gowdy's Mister Sandman. The amazon.com review is here:

This riotous account of "the family unit" was a smash hit in Europe, Canada, and England. In the Times Literary Supplement, author Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale) praised Barbara Gowdy's novel as surprising and delightful, containing moments "at the same time preposterous and strangely moving." The Canary family guards many secrets, including the mystery of tiny daughter, Joan, who was dropped on her head at birth and has never spoken. Joan plays the piano like Mozart, yet has never had a lesson. The outrageous hilarity rises into a climax that creates a stunning new definition of family togetherness.

Also seconding the suggestions of Girl in Landscape, which has been on my meaning-to-read-it list for years, Homicide , Neil Gaiman's Sandman (though that may be a hard one because not all libraries stock graphic novels, and new it costs about $15 for one volume. but if we can do it, we should.) and anything by Lorrie Moore.

Small World - David Lodge: Not only one of the funniest books I've ever read, but also (a) a neat structural parody of Medieval romances - so a history lesson tossed in, (b) a satire of academia and specifically deconstruction jargon. But don't worry - it's incredibly fun and absorbing, the kind of book you can't wait to pick up again.

Rides of the Midway - Lee Durkee: Growing up Southern, teen boys, beautifully rendered. Also a ghost from a baseball mishap.

At Swim Two Birds - Flann O'Brien: One of the great comic novels. Irish to the very very core. Told in parts as a scathingly hilarious account of a scholarly ne'er do well, and then leavened with big chunks of Irish lore, told beautifully and comically.

Available Light - Ellen Currie: A book so good I tracked down her scant short stories. A woman, a man with a saxophone. Romantic, Irish again. Finding your place in the world after mistakes. Beautifully written and affecting.

Oh yeah - I really want to read The Intuitionist. I've picked it up a few times and it looked fascinating.

Buffista Book Club: It Should Be Smelly

I like this too.

Brainpower is on low today.

Me too. I think there's something going around.

This wouldn't affect Hayden, but DC seems awfully humid for summer.

And to get back to topic --

Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy. Very long (my copy is about 875 pages), but a relatively fast read. Young man on the make gets job at factory owned by wealthy uncle, dates fellow employee with tragic results.

And I'm not sure how available it is these days, and it's very, very long (well over 1000 pages) -- ...And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer. A big bestseller in the mid-'80s (and a bit of a cause celebre, because the author was also in her 80s -- at least -- and it was the first novel she'd published in over 50 years). A group of young women in a small town in Ohio in 1868 form a "women's club" to pursue intellectual endeavors. The novel follows the life of the town -- emphasizing the club members and their families -- from 1868 to 1932. Won't endorse the author's politics (economic laissez faire), but a fascinating study of a small Midwest town during a certain era.

Hayden, here's Ron Rosenbaum on Pale Fire (and Rosenbaum on "shoplift lit").

Even though I probably won't participate in the book club very often, being rather lazy and all, I'll throw out a selection suggestion. What about a combination of a designated selector and a vote? Which is to say, the month's "leader" would be selected randomly (& without repeat until everyone who wants to has a shot) and then s/he would suggest 3 or 4 books, or more if s/he wants to, which would then be voted on. Leader gets some say but it's not a complete imposition of will. It would have to be decided whether the voting would be straight (sheer number of votes) or weighted (rank your choices from first to last, total points takes it, with first place votes as a tiebreaker.)

This wouldn't affect Hayden, but DC seems awfully humid for summer.

It's either mold or lack of sleep or extra-boring workload or any combination thereof.

From Joe's link

Before venturing further into the depths and delights of Pale Fire theories, I want to pause here for the benefit of those who have not yet tasted the pleasures of Pale Fire. Pause to emphasize just how much pure reading pleasure it offers despite its apparently unconventional form. Following a brief foreword, the novel opens with a 999-line poem in rhymed heroic couplets formally reminiscent of Alexander Pope, but written in accessible American colloquial language at least on the surface. Please don’t be intimidated by the poem’s length or formality; it’s a pleasure to read: sad, funny, thoughtful, digressive, discursive, filled with heart-stopping moments of tenderness and beauty.

Following the poem (entitled "Pale Fire") which is identified in the foreword as the last work of John Shade, a fictional Frost-like American poet, another voice takes over: the commentator Charles Kinbote. A delightful, deluded, more than a bit demented voice whose 200 pages of commentary and annotations on the poem constitute the remainder of the novel. Kinbote’s voice is completely mad–he is the ultimate unreliable narrator, the mad scholar colonizing the poem with his own baroque delusion–but also completely irresistible. Kinbote weaves into his footnoted annotations on the poem the story of his own relationship with the poet, John Shade. How he befriended him during the last months of his life while Shade was composing "Pale Fire." How he’d disclosed to Shade, a colleague at the college where they both taught literature, the fantastic story of his (Kinbote’s) supposed secret identity: that he was not really Charles Kinbote, but rather the exiled King of Zembla, a "northern land" where he once ruled as Charles the Beloved until he was deposed by evil revolutionaries from whom he fled into exile. Revolutionaries who sent an assassin to hunt him down, an assassin whose bullet, meant for Kinbote, mistakenly killed John Shade instead.

And now, having absconded with the dead poet’s manuscript of "Pale Fire," holed up in a cheap motel in the mountains, Kinbote attempts to demonstrate with his commentary that Shade’s last masterpiece is really about him, about Kinbote, about his own tragic and romantic life as King of Zembla, his flight and exile. All this despite the fact that, on the surface, neither Kinbote nor Zembla appears anywhere in "Pale Fire," despite the fact that the poem seems on the surface to be John Shade’s attempt to come to terms with his own tragedy, the suicide of his beloved daughter Hazel Shade–and his efforts to explore the possibility of contacting her in the Afterlife, across the border between life and death which has exiled her from him.

As I said, it only seems complicated and cerebral. In fact, reading Pale Fire, both novel and poem, is an almost obscenely sensual pleasure. I guarantee it.

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh Possibly the most viciously funny book novel ever written.

In Hollywood, at Whispering Glades, a full-service funeral home for departed greats, the mononymonous Mr. Joyboy and Aimee Thanatogenos fall in love...with each other and their work. He is chief embalmer, she a crematorium cosmetician. They spend their days contentedly prepping the loved ones for a final appearance.

Into this idyllic scene comes Denis Barlow, aspiring poet and funerary colleague. But Denis is downscale, his employer the Happier Hunting Ground, a pet cemetery. Denis looks to Aimee for professional reconstruction, falls in love with her instead, and sets up a triangle that is literally more than Aimee can bear.