CP LITERATURE DRAFT - (Rapid Fire Free For All Round)

[Eastern Girl]

Very quickly, I will select in the category of Canadian Literature, Douglas Coupland's Hey Nostradamus!

The novel follows the stories of victims of a fictional school shooting in North Vancouver in 1988. Coupland has expressed his concern that the killers of the Columbine received more focus than the victims; this is his story about the victims of tragedy. [ ... ] The novel comprises four first-person narratives, each from the perspective of a character directly or indirectly affected by the shooting.

This is the only book of Couplands that I have read, but I really liked it. Very sad, very human.

[driveway]

Well, it's been three days. So I'm gonna assume that FanIn80 and Bobblehead are AK'd and make my pick.

In the Category of Humour team Discovery Channel chooses:

The Flashman Papers by George MacDonald Fraser



Comprising 12 books, the saga of Brigadier-General Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC KCB KCIE, Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur, US Congressional Medal of Honor, is a work of the most delightful fiction. General Harry Flashman is based on the Flashman character of Thomas Hughes' semi-autobiographical Tom Brown's Schooldays.

In Hughes' book, Flashman is the notorious bully of Rugby School who persecutes Tom Brown, and who is finally expelled for drunkenness. Twentieth century author George MacDonald Fraser had the idea of writing Flashman's memoirs, in which the school bully would be identified with an "illustrious Victorian soldier": experiencing many 19th century wars and adventures and rising to high rank in British army, acclaimed as a great soldier, while remaining by his unapologetic self-description "a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward—and oh yes, a toady." Fraser's Flashman is an antihero who runs from danger or hides cowering in fear, betrays or abandons acquaintances at the slightest incentive, bullies and beats servants with gusto, beds every available woman, carries off any loot he can grab, gambles and boozes enthusiastically, and yet, through a combination of luck and cunning, ends each volume acclaimed as a hero.

These books are, in addition to being hilarious, a phenomenal way to learn your 19th century history. Over the course of his adventures Flashman finds himself at, among other events: The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Battle of Gettysburg, The Battle of the Little Big Horn, The Indian Mutiny, The Boxer Rebellion, The Franco-Prussian War, was military adviser to HM Queen Ranavalona of Madacascar, and recorded the first hat-trick in recorded sports history when bowling for Mynn's Casuals against All-England IX.

Throughout the twelve books, Harry remains a coward, cheat, liar and womanizer par excellence. You can't help but cheer for him.

Unfortunately, Mr. Fraser passed away of cancer on January 2, 2008, leaving some aspects of Flashman's illustrious career forever a mystery. For example, Flashman's CV mentions service in Australia, but none of the books concern this period of the anti-hero's life.

[FanIn80]

Whoops. I thought we were taking a break for Christmas... I didn't realize people were waiting for me.

I'll have something up shortly.

[FanIn80]

Ok, for my next pick... in the Cooking category...

Gordon Ramsay's Fast Food!

[rogermexico]

Woah, I'm behind in both drafts. Back online now. I'll have something right away...

[Bobblehead]

To use up a Fantasy pick, the series A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin.



This is an ongoing series with 4 books currently published, a fifth being imminent, and no end in sight, although the plot does seem to be moving better than some other ongoing series. And while I had promised myself I wasn't going to start another series before it finished, well, I did. While some people do not like this series, I find it well written and I appreciate a story where the author is not afraid to kill off major characters. In many (most) stories of this genre you get used to the fact that bay the end of the story the hero will have saved the day. You cannot make that assumption in this series. Fiends and heroes alike find betrayal and brutal fates.

This is the tale of a kingdom, and the conflict within it is on multiple levels; within families, within country states, within factions, and even on a global level, although many of the characters are unaware of this, so focused are they on their own battles. It is an engrossing story.

And HBO has decided to turn the books into a series. This could be interesting since George Martin has written scripts for various TV series in the past (Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, Beauty and The Beast) so perhaps this will succeed, but I think much of the depth of the story will, by necessity be lost in translation to the screen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire
http://www.georgerrmartin.com/
http://www.amazon.ca/Fantasy-Science...8%2Cn%3A959138

[rogermexico]

For this round from the short story anthology category, I pick 60 Stories by Donald Barthelme.



Don B. blew my mind and still does. He writes seemingly silly, disjunctive stories that cut straight to really sharp emotional details in a way that few 'serious' writers are able to manage. I like 60 Stories slightly more than 40 Stories mostly because it's longer by 20.

[habernac]

under Canadian Lit:

WO Mitchell's Who Has Seen the Wind




Still as good today as it was 60 years ago.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Well, his more famous novel, Moby-Dick, went early in the draft. But Bartleby and the Scriveners are very pleased that Melville's less-famous but equally accomplished Billy Budd has fallen this far, and will select in Pre-20th Century (just barely) Billy Budd, Foretopman by Herman Melville.


Sometimes (as in this cover), this book is called "Billy Budd, Sailor"--and it's little wonder that there is confusion as to this book's title, since there is just as much confusion as to its provenance, and even its authoritative text. Billy Budd was never completed in Melville's lifetime--or at least not sent away for publication, though in a narrative sense it is at least relatively coherent. Different editions produce different parts of the text differently, and most correct for the fact that Melville is inconsistent throughout--one example is that he at first refers to Billy Budd's ship as the "Indomitable," but later settles on the name "Bellipotent" as more in keeping with the thematics of the story. These are but minor details, however.

As for the story itself, it is both shockingly modern in its concerns and ancient in its scope. The stakes are biblical--Billy, the "handsome sailor" is at once the object of erotic desire on the part of his shipmates, and also the "cynosure" that guides them toward purity and gentleness of spirit, while his nemesis Claggart is an envious and vengeful agent of chaos, suffering from a "defect according to nature" that leads him to simultaneously loathe and desire Billy. Billy is the innocent sacrificial lamb--Claggart is the serpent. The imagery is clear, yet in the end it is Billy who accidentally kills Claggart with a single blow and is forced to meet his death at the yardarm, blessing his captor and confessor Captain Vere with his final breath.

Billy Budd is one of those stories that complicates itself upon rereading--I've taught it about 8 times and each time I find some stunning facet or fold that sends me back leafing through the text again. The most painful irony to me is that this--perhaps Melville's best work--was left undone, literally sealed away in a coffee-can, as he languished in depression and obscurity at the end of his life. If only he had realized how far he had surpassed the less subtle bombast of Moby-Dick... or what a monumental achievement his literary career would turn out to be. But like many writers, he died believing himself to be a failure, which while fitting still strikes me as very tragic.

[liamenator]

I'll go with in the anthology category, Chuck Klosterman's low-culture manifesto, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs... a collection of essays on everything from "Sulking with Lisa Loeb on the Ice Planet Hoth" to "Being Zach Morris". A hysterical take on pop culture, I am one of Klosterman's biggest fans.

[RatherDashing]

With our 6th pick in the draft, RatherDashings "24 CC's of Heart" select in the Pre-20th Century Category, Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo.

[troutman]

In the Child Lit category, I select WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE by MAURICE SENDAK (1963):

I loved this book as a child, and read it to my own boys many times. I can almost recite the whole thing now. The illustrations are fantastic, and the story has a lyrical flow.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_the_Wild_Things_Are

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak is a children's picture book originally published by Harper & Row. The book is about the imaginary adventures of a young boy named Max, who is punished for "making mischief" by being sent to his room without supper. Max wears a distinctive wolf suit during his adventures and encounters various mythical creatures, the wild things. Although just ten sentences long, the book is generally regarded as a classic of American illustrated children's literature.

Written in 1963, it was awarded the Caldecott Medal in 1964. [1] It also won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and was an ALA Notable Book.

Francis Spufford suggests that the book is "one of the very few picture books to make an entirely deliberate, and beautiful, use of the psychoanalytic story of anger"

[octothorp]

Very nice, Troutman! My favorite picture book as a child.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Wow, there's another one off my list. I just read that book to my daughter a few days ago. Very nice pick, troutman!

[jammies]

For my pick in the category of Science Fiction, jammies' Fahrenheit 451 picks Behold the Man, by Michael Moorcock.

Stripped of most of Moorcock's usual over-digressive and wordy prose, this novel/novella tells the story of one Karl Glogauer, who travels back in time to try to meet the real Jesus of Nazareth. He both fails and succeeds (which you'd have to read the book to find out how), and in the meantime the story addresses one of the central philosophical questions of faith - does it matter whether myth is founded in fact, or is myth a deeper truth that transcends mundane reality?

[JerzeeGirl]

Team Writer's Block is proud to select in the Graphic Novel/Comic Book category Elfquest written & drawn by Wendy & Richard Pini since 1978.

I discovered EQ once my brother began collecting it back in the mid-80's and it is the only comic that has kept my attention since then even tho he quit collecting it a few years later. The stories are complex, the artwork (esp early on when it was just the Pini's drawings) is excellent and the characters fairly well fleshed out, not just 2-dimensional.

Most of their work can now be found available for free, online at their website, Elfquest.com, if you are curious and want to check it out.


From Wiki:
Origins

The elves of Elfquest are descended from highly advanced humanoid aliens known as the High Ones, who had immense and quasimagical psychic powers and could not die of old age. When their homeworld's resources were depleted by overpopulation, several groups of High Ones went spacefaring to explore the wider universe and to find new planets to settle. They controlled their egg-shaped vessels by telekinesis and were able to adapt to any ecosystem by shifting their own shapes and metabolisms. As companions, they brought two of the last surviving animal species from their home, both of which gradually evolved during the journey (and subsequent events) into two more races of sapient near-immortals: the insectoid-descended Preservers and the simian-descended Trolls.

After journeying to many different worlds, one of these vessels came to a two-mooned planet called Abode (known to its inhabitants as the World of Two Moons), where human civilization had reached a level comparable to Europe's medieval period on Earth. The humans' artwork and literature depicted beings which they called elves, and which suggested to the High Ones that others of their kind had previously visited Abode. In order to facilitate contact with the humans and seek out more information about these previous visitors, the High Ones deliberately formed themselves to match the humans' existing images of elves, and similarly reshaped their egg-vessel to resemble a beautiful floating castle that matched the native architectural idiom.

However, by this time the evolved simians (proto-Trolls) had become resentful of their subservient status. As the 'castle' began to descend, the simians violently rebelled, disrupting the telekinetic controls enough to hurl the entire vessel and its contents back through time to Abode's paleolithic era. Staggering out from the crash-landing, the High Ones found that their psychic powers were greatly weakened on Abode, leaving them unable to defend themselves from the prehistoric cave-dwelling humans who fearfully attacked them. Forcibly dispersed away from the massacre outside the palace-shaped vessel, many of the initial elf survivors soon died, unable to adapt to the hostile environment; the others gradually gathered into several widely-scattered tribes. The High Ones' evolved simian servants also fled, mainly into underground caverns where they became larger and established themselves as the subterranean race of Trolls, treasure-seeking miners and metalsmiths whose original links to the High Ones were forgotten.

The main story begins 10,000 years later, with elves and other beings having adapted with great difficulty to their home. Each tribe of elves has its own set of adaptations and traditions, and most of them are unaware that any of the other tribes even existed.

[Aeneas]

I am going to venture into the category titled: Picture Book/Coffee Table.

Not sure if this qualifies, but I like to look at the pictures...

"Lost Europe"
Subtitled: Images of A Vanished World

By Jean Loussier & Robin Langley Sommer, Editors

Published by Saraband Inc. 1997

This is a book devoted to pictures (black and white) of beautiful or interesting things in Europe that can no longer be seen in person. They have been destroyed by war, natural disaster, "progress", or through the megalomaniacal visions of some deranged dictators. Yes Mussolini and Ceausescu I am talking to you.

The book is divided into chapters. UK, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Russia.

Highlights would include:

The Elisabet Bridge over the Danube in Budapest (demolished WWII)

Chelsea Bridge over The Thames in London (progress)

Coal Exchange, London (progress)

Temple Bar, The Strand London (progress)

James Street Station Liverpool (bombed WWII)

Palais de Justice, Rouen (WWII)

Pellerhaus Nurnberg (WWII)

Hamburg (WWII)

Dresden (WWII)

Stari Most over the Neretva River in Mostar (bombed 1993)

Berzei Street,etc. Bucharest (Ceausescu)


I find this book interesting because unlike other "coffee table" books I have on art, architechture etc.; the views found in this book cannot be seen anymore.

[Jagger]

The Pen is Mightier than the Sword will select our 2nd Sci-Fi selection. We'll take the excellent,

Rendezvous with Rama

by

Arthur C. Clarke

Rendezvous with Rama is a novel by Arthur C. Clarke first published in 1972. Set in the 22nd century, the story involves a forty-kilometer-long cylindrical alien starship that enters Earth's solar system. The story is told from the point of view of a group of human explorers, who intercept the ship in an attempt to unlock its mysteries.

This novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards upon its release, and is widely regarded as one of the cornerstones in Clarke's bibliography. It is considered a science fiction classic, and is particularly seen as a key hard science fiction text.


This is classic science fiction. I read this when very young (10 or so) and was enthralled. Since then I've read the book several times. Excellent read and highly recommended.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Jagger

I was going to take that too. There is a movie being made based on it now.

http://www.revelationsent.com/movie_page.php?movieId=12

Morgan Freeman - Phillip Norton

David Fincher - Director


About the Story
The story is set in the 22nd century. A thirty-mile-long cylindrical starship is detected traveling on a course to pass through our solar system. A group of human explorers are selected and dispatched to intercept the ship in an attempt to discover it's purpose, as certain if there is any threat to Earth, and answer the mysterious questions regarding it's origins and purpose. Because all extant names for Roman and Greek gods have been used on other newly-discovered celestial objects at this point, the Hindu god Rama is invoked in naming the object, which is originally mistaken to be a comet. Arthur C. Clarke's novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards upon its release, and coming hard on the heels of "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Rendezvous With Rama" is widely regarded as one of Clarke's best works, and is often cited as a quintessential example of "hard" science fiction.

[RatherDashing]

Hey guys, I'm going to be away until the 12th, so please skip over me if my name comes up anytime this week.