Casper reccomends The Great Gatsby. Which, there's some potential there, although Gatsby is the country-to-city character, and we never get his viewpoint, only hints from Sam Waterston. (What is that character's name?? I am a dunce.)

But Gatsby himself always struck me as a story about reinvention -- he changes his name, throws some money around, presto! he's someone else.

Daisy Buchanan's story, now there's a character who needs to be beaten with a stick, and her flaws are associated with her living the monied life. And being a twit, I mean, but it's a lot harder to be a twit and get away with it if you live in a tenement on the Lower East Side.

(What is that character's name?? I am a dunce.)

Nick.

I don't think Kane is the point of the movie, particularly. It's a story about storytelling, not about him.

I *heart* Strega. That's what I loved about the movie. It's a narrative about narratives.

Also, since this is a lit thread, I thought I would proclaim The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time supremely underwhelming, and not worth your time if you have other options.

P-C, I appreciated it as an exercise in narrator voice and as a study of Ausberger's (which, according to my father, it's pretty accurate as), but I didn't enjoy it, per se.

I read Curious Incident to kids I was looking after, and it seemed to really interest them. It had them asking the questions it was supposed to, I think.

P-C, I appreciated it as an exercise in narrator voice and as a study of Ausberger's (which, according to my father, it's pretty accurate as), but I didn't enjoy it, per se.

Yeah, I agree. Although the exercise wore thin for me after a while, especially when the actual plot kicked in. It just irked me that interesting things were happening and the narrator didn't even realize it. And I know that's not the author's fault, but yeah. Kind of like with Moby Dick, I enjoyed the asides more than the story itself.

Yeah, I'm with Debet. I appreciated it, but I didn't enjoy it. And I usually do like to enjoy books.

Hi literary peeps! I don’t frequent this thread because, well so many threads, so little time. So I am popping in at the end to request suggestions.

Next month my neighborhood book group meets at my house, so when we meet this Thursday I have to announce my book choice. The primary objective is to pick something that will generate discussion because we actually discuss the book while consuming vast quantities of wine.

I’d like to move in a different direction than the last 2 books for the sake of variety. The last one was “How to be good” by Nick Hornby. A rather fun book for generating conversation. I probably wouldn’t have picked it up if it hadn’t been assigned. I haven’t finished it yet, so nothing else to add. The read before that was “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini. It was terribly disturbing, but the writing style itself was very interesting. Again, not something I would have picked myself. Yet, it did spur conversation.

So what might be totally different and worthy of discussion? I prefer fiction, but it can be non-fiction. I’ll need to bring a few suggestions because we like to pick something none of us has read yet. Ideas?

Ooh! Ooh! Let me think, now... I like Book by Robert Grudin -- it's funny and every chapter is written in a different literary style (yeah, it sounds pretentious, but I really enjoy it). Also The Bone People by Keri Hulme (about -- if I'm remembering correctly -- a Maori writer who lives in a tower and the man and his deaf foster son she meets). It's kind of depressing, actually, but, again, I liked it. Or Terry Pratchett for big fun.

ETA: Or for talking-inspiring, Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, with the immortal opening sentence, "You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler." Or Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman.

ETA2: The last two are books I used in my senior thesis, It's All a Big Lie: Authorial Presence from the 18th Century to the Present. Which reminds me to recommend Tristram Shandy as well.

For a non-fiction book, The Devil in the White City >[link]