Question about Mary Reilly - Do you think we should read the original Jekyll/Hyde story before reading the re-telling? Is it something we might want to try as a pairing?

I don't think it's necessary, but it might be fun to compare and contrast the pairing. (This from someone who -- cough -- never read the original but loooved the book written from its mythology.)

I'm up for Wolfram picking the first book, and randomizing the pick from there on out is fine with me, too, although (and I think someone already said this) the list should probably be whittled down first.

I'm with Heather on the excitement. And the going to smoke, actually.

ETA P-C, does that mean you're emailing it to me? Wheee!

Okay. I may be a little out of line, or against the grain, or whatever with this suggestion, but I REALLY like it.

I think we shouldn't make a pool of books and then randomly choose books. Instead, we should make a pool of participants in the Book Club who might be interested in suggesting books, and randomly choose THEM (without duplication, or at least with no chance of choosing two books too near each other), to pick books themselves. A book suggestion list on the side is great, I've enjoyed reading these recs and stuff, and they could be helpful in the picking process for whoever's in the hotseat.

I think this might maximize breadth of genre, among other things. And somebody out there could make a simple web page to keep track of the current participants, with easy ability to add and remove themselves from the list as necessary. And it will help prevent people with lots of books they want to recommend from having too much of a say in the list of books.

(All that said, I've got no recs. I wanna read new stuff. But I would also love to re-read Remains of the Day.)

How retro.

Isn't it though?

Personally, I like the idea of us each nominating one book and drawing from those names. If several people want a particular one it's chances are higher of being selected, but all the books have a shot.

I like Nova's idea, too. Select the selector. Everyone gets a turn.

Tim Winton-- Ooh, I worshipped Cloudstreet, his previous novel. Brilliant writer. Plus, Australian!

Cloudstreet also won the Miles Franklin, back in '92.

I see that as a pairing. I see Paradise Lost and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a pairing, too.

Why, what's the connection? We could also have Red Tent and the Bible as a pairing. Seriously though, Red Tent sounds very interesting.

Maybe we can keep the recs open for the next 24 hours, then someone can compile the books with a short pimp from the reccor (possibly a three sentence maximum) and we can whittle down the list to 10 using Mr. Poll or something.

Either way. Though I am leaning toward Nova's. How would new people enter? Or would new people just go to the end.

I also wanted to mention for future recs- graphic novels would also be cool. I've been dying to read Persepolis

I'm going to throw nonfiction into the mix.

First, a book about which I am, well, obsessed.

The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

It was number one in the Modern Library's listing of the best nonfiction of the 20th century.

"'I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams,' said Gore Vidal. 'He was remarkably prescient about the coming horrors.'

"His political ideals shaped by two presidential ancestors--great-grandfather John Adams and grandfather John Quincy Adams--Henry Adams was one of the most powerful and original minds to confront the American scene from the Civil War to the First World War."

Printed privately in 1907 and published to wide acclaim shortly after the author's death in 1918, The Education of Henry Adams is a brilliant, idiosyncratic blend of autobiography and history that charts the great transformation in American life during the so-called Gilded Age."

The book is Adams' cynical view on the events of the late 19th century, focusing on why he is a "failure," that is, why he, grandson and great-grandson of presidents, was not a political power.

"He was not, by any measure but his own, a failure. And the proof of the pudding is The Education of Henry Adams itself, which remains among the oddest and most enlightening books in American literature. It contains thousands of memorable one-liners about politics, morality, culture, and transatlantic relations: "The American mind exasperated the European as a buzz-saw might exasperate a pine forest." There are astonishing glimpses of the high and mighty: "He saw a long, awkward figure; a plain, ploughed face; a mind, absent in part, and in part evidently worried by white kid gloves; features that expressed neither self-satisfaction nor any other familiar Americanism..." (That would be Abraham Lincoln; the "melancholy function" his Inaugural Ball.) But most of all, Adams's book is a brilliant account of how his own sensibility came to be. A literary landmark from the moment it first appeared, the Autobiography confers upon its author precisely that prize he felt had always eluded him: success."

And it includes this:

"Indeed, one day when Adams was pleading with a Cabinet officer for patience and tact in dealing with Representatives, the Secretary impatiently broke out:—'You can’t use tact with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout!' Adams knew far too little, compared with the Secretary, to contradict him, though he thought the phrase somewhat harsh even as applied to the average Congressman of 1869;—he saw little or nothing of later ones;—but he knew a shorter way of silencing criticism. He had but to ask:—'If a Congressman is a hog, what is a Senator?' "

I can compile the list of recs for tomorrow. Cut off at 2pm, list posted at 3 okay?

(eta: board time)

Killer. Do it.