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.

Are we going to go by people who suggested or books?

Pending further instructions, I can make two lists :-)

I'm up for either one -- suggestion-making person or book.

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

I second Nova's idea. With two caveats - First, I think we should pick a book from the list of recs to start and then go with selectors. Second, I think it's important that the selector propose more than one book and get some feedback from the club and/or let people consense/vote on several book proposals. I don't think it would be good if Buffista X could sign up to be a selector and then force the club to spend a month on [your worst literary nightmare here] without any recourse.