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

[Bobblehead]

This draft it trucking right along, good work everyone.

[Ronald Pagan]

DAMN YOU IFF!!!!

That was my next pick!

[troutman]

I was going to pick Kafka's The Trial next. Now, I'm not so sure.

[octothorp]

Trade to report:

to Iowa Flames Fan: historical / political non-fiction
to Octothorp: graphic novel / comic book

[liamenator]

Crap... My pick.... OK I'd like to select, in the World category, The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.

Yes... I know Diaz is an American... However he was born in the Dominican Republic, it is about a family of Dominican immigrants, and the bulk of the novel takes place in the DR... So I think that should qualify it for World? If not, I guess I'll slide it into a Wildcard.

Great, great novel. And a Pulitzer Prize winner, to boot.

[RatherDashing]

With our 3rd round selection, RatherDashings "24 CCs of Heart" select in the Childrens Lit Category, Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls.




Where the Red Fern Grows is the story of a young boy growing up in the Ozark Mountains. Billy Coleman lives with his parents on a small farm in the middle of the mountain range, and as a boy desires nothing more than a pair of dogs to hunt raccoons with. This is a tale about adventure, family, and the love of a boy for his dogs.

This book is by far my favourite childrens book. It is a great story, and is very well written. The characters are sympathetic, and most importantly for a childrens book, it leaves the reader wanting nothing more than to go tromping around in the woods with your dogs.

[troutman]

In the Anthology Category, I select THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (my edition 1993, one volume, over 1000 pages, Magpie/Parragon, W.J. Craig ed.)



I think this is a fair choice. I go back to it from time to time, and have read about one-third of it so far.

From the cover: "a volume comparable to the Bible in terms of its universal appeal and influence . . . here is the whole range of human experience described in the greatest flowering of English prose and verse which has ever been known"

The complete works on-line:

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/

Macbeth:

Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace.
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

A bell rings

I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Hmm. Didn't see that coming, but hard to argue with that pick. Does that mean I can't take King Lear as a single work then?

[Eastern Girl]

I have that anthology, never thought to pick it for some reason. I've always enjoyed Shakespeare.

[kermitology]

Originally Posted by RatherDashing

This book is by far my favourite childrens book. It is a great story, and is very well written. The characters are sympathetic, and most importantly for a childrens book, it leaves the reader wanting nothing more than to go tromping around in the woods with your dogs.

Totally agree.. that was one of the best books I read as a kid. Kind of makes me want to read it right now.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

Hmm. Didn't see that coming, but hard to argue with that pick. Does that mean I can't take King Lear as a single work then?

I think it is okay to highlight individual works too.

[driveway]

I think that it would have been fine for someone to have taken Lear before you went and drafted the whole she-bang, but now that the entire anthology has been taken, they're off the table.

Likewise the Sonnets and Poems. So now I can't get The Rape of Lucrece in Pre-20th Century.

*shaking fist* Troutmannnn!!!!!

[kermitology]

Not that I'm participating.. but that's pretty crazy that you can take the collected works of Shakespeare. Sounds like it would be more appropriate to isolate that type of rule to a series involving the same characters or that are all related.

It's collected in an anthology, but that's HUGE. Seems more that it's in an anthology simply because it's Shakespeare.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by kermitology

Not that I'm participating.. but that's pretty crazy that you can take the collected works of Shakespeare. Sounds like it would be more appropriate to isolate that type of rule to a series involving the same characters or that are all related.

It's collected in an anthology, but that's HUGE. Seems more that it's in an anthology simply because it's Shakespeare.

Lord of the Rings is longer.

GMs - should I pick again?

[Bobblehead]

As long as the individual works are still available, I am fine with this pick.

[octothorp]

I think maybe a distinction needs to be made between series and anthologies. The way I'd set it up is: if someone chooses a series, all books within the series are considered taken. If someone chooses an anthology that is a collection of essentially unrelated works, those individual works are still available.

[kermitology]

Originally Posted by troutman

Lord of the Rings is longer.

GMs - should I pick again?

Well I mean it's a huge collection of individual works.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by octothorp

I think maybe a distinction needs to be made between series and anthologies. The way I'd set it up is: if someone chooses a series, all books within the series are considered taken. If someone chooses an anthology that is a collection of essentially unrelated works, those individual works are still available.

Excellent distinction. I concur.

[jammies]

For my 3rd pick, under the category of European Literature, jammies' Fahrenheit 451 picks the Gormenghast novels by Mervyn Peake.



The books follow the life of Titus Groan, heir to the 77th Earl of Gormenghast, a realm dominated by a vast, crumbling castle of ancient provenance and exacting ritual. Titus' world is full of strange, obsessive characters, whose personalities seem pinched down with cold secrets and passionless pastimes, and his struggles against his fated path of Earldom in a dead world and against the expectations of tradition and duty play out against the various madnesses of these odd creatures.

The mood is entirely Gothic and the prose both dense and slow-moving - somewhat like willingly submitting yourself to imprisonment - yet once submitted the incredible amount of detail becomes both engrossing and utterly fascinating. The novels have been described as "fantasy", but are more properly termed surreal - nothing magic happens, but the world and the people in it are skewed off the axis of reality as we know it.

The novels are also remarkable in that the protagonist is not particularly likeable, and is not even all that central to the story for long stretches of the work. Indeed, the first novel starts as he is born, and he acts more as a catalyst to what happens until he is an adolescent, well into the second novel. It is also odd in that his enemy, Steerpike, is motivated much like Titus is himself - both wish to transcend the limitations of their birth (Steerpike as a kitchen boy, Titus as the heir to Gormenghast) and act in the world by their own right and not according to their assigned place.

How these two battle against each other and against their kismet makes for a great, albeit unfinished (the series was to go on 'till Titus' death, but the death of the author precluded such an ending) work that has few stylistic kin.

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by jammies

For my 3rd pick, under the category of European Literature, jammies' Fahrenheit 451 picks the Gormenghast novels by Mervyn Peake.



The books follow the life of Titus Groan, heir to the 77th Earl of Gormenghast, a realm dominated by a vast, crumbling castle of ancient provenance and exacting ritual. Titus' world is full of strange, obsessive characters, whose personalities seem pinched down with cold secrets and passionless pastimes, and his struggles against his fated path of Earldom in a dead world and against the expectations of tradition and duty play out against the various madnesses of these odd creatures.

The mood is entirely Gothic and the prose both dense and slow-moving - somewhat like willingly submitting yourself to imprisonment - yet once submitted the incredible amount of detail becomes both engrossing and utterly fascinating. The novels have been described as "fantasy", but are more properly termed surreal - nothing magic happens, but the world and the people in it are skewed off the axis of reality as we know it.

The novels are also remarkable in that the protagonist is not particularly likeable, and is not even all that central to the story for long stretches of the work. Indeed, the first novel starts as he is born, and he acts more as a catalyst to what happens until he is an adolescent, well into the second novel. It is also odd in that his enemy, Steerpike, is motivated much like Titus is himself - both wish to transcend the limitations of their birth (Steerpike as a kitchen boy, Titus as the heir to Gormenghast) and act in the world by their own right and not according to their assigned place.

How these two battle against each other and against their kismet makes for a great, albeit unfinished (the series was to go on 'till Titus' death, but the death of the author precluded such an ending) work that has few stylistic kin.

Dammit!! I seriously love these books and had really thought they'd drop at least another round or two. Peake's prose is remarkable; you can open the book to any page and find some of the most complex and poetic writing anywhere. Every winter I pull these out and read at least a portion of these books.