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

[troutman]

Best Book Lists for 2008:

http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/...earend_on.html

NY Times Notable Books 2008:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/bo...le-t.html?_r=1

[Bobblehead]

In the Anthologies/Short Stories category, I will go with Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock



http://www.amazon.ca/Sunshine-Sketch...9468995&sr=8-3
http://www.penguin.ca/nf/Book/BookDi...065080,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshin..._a_Little_Town
And for those of you who would like a free copy courtesy of Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3533

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, by Stephen LEACOCK (Toronto, New York, London, 1912), is a series of vignettes dramatizing the comedy of day-to-day life in Mariposa, a bustling and big-time small town on the shores of the magnificent Lake Wissanotti. Thrumming with self-importance, endowed with a solemnly quirky populace, Mariposa is modelled on ORILLIA, Ont; for generations of readers, it has also been the centre of Leacock's fondest and most amusing portrait of small-town life. Leacock's humour depends on his gift for creating a straight-faced storyteller, an earnestly deadpan narrator who cannot imagine what his readers are laughing about. Nowhere is this gift more apparent than in Leacock's warm but gently mocking scrutiny of both the foibles and pretensions of his Mariposan Canadians.

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.c...=A1ARTA0007795

[driveway]

In the Category of Children's Literature Team Discovery Channel is proud to select:



The Call of the Wild by Jack London
Published 1903

This book was given to me for, I think it was my eighth birthday, in a beautiful cloth-bound and illustrated edition which I still own. It was one of the first novels I ever read and the first book where I cried when it ended. Not that it's a particularly sad ending - it's not particularly happy either - but it is a deeply cathartic experience.

One would be hard pressed to find a better writer about the relationship between dog and man than Jack London.

From Wikipedia:

The Call of the Wild is a novel by American writer Jack London. The plot concerns a previously domesticated and even somewhat pampered dog named Buck, whose primordial instincts return after a series of events finds him serving as a sled dog in the treacherous, frigid Yukon during the days of the 19th century Klondike Gold Rushes.
Published in 1903, The Call of the Wild is one of London's most-read books, and it is generally considered one of his best. Because the protagonist is a dog, it is sometimes classified as a juvenile novel, suitable for children, but it is dark in tone and contains numerous scenes of cruelty and violence..
London followed the book in 1906 with White Fang, a companion novel with many similar plot elements and themes as The Call of the Wild, although following a mirror image plot in which a wild wolf becomes civilized by a mining expert from San Francisco named Weedon Scott.

Quotes from the book:

"Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment's safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert, for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang."

"His muscles had wasted away to knotty strings, and the flesh pads had disappeared, so that each rib and every bone in his frame were outlined cleanly through the loose hide that was wrinkled in folds of emptiness. It was heartbreaking, only Buck's heart was unbreakable. The man in the red sweater had proved that."

[octothorp]

Man, this draft moves fast. So many great books being picked, but I wanted to single out Life of Pi and The Bell Jar as great picks; I really like both of those.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by octothorp

Man, this draft moves fast. So many great books being picked, but I wanted to single out Life of Pi and The Bell Jar as great picks; I really like both of those.

And there, for the first time you and I differ a little, I guess: Life of Pi didn't do anything for me. But my whole family loved it, including my wife, so I think it must just be me.

[Circa89]

I can see where the story started to stray a bit and get deep into the symbolism at lemur island but other than that I fail to understand how it wasn't enjoyable . I know, I know this is subjective but that was a crazy good story. Just my 2 cents obviously. The Life of Pi is not the book of the century but it did take me on a very entertaining adventure.

[Eastern Girl]

Originally Posted by octothorp

Man, this draft moves fast. So many great books being picked, but I wanted to single out Life of Pi and The Bell Jar as great picks; I really like both of those.

Holy crap, a compliment for one of my picks in this draft!

I'm shocked!

I also really enjoyed the book, I really do think Plath was a wickedly talented writer, her prose and poetry are very good.

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by Eastern Girl

Holy crap, a compliment for one of my picks in this draft!

I'm shocked!

You stole my pick for children's literature. I suppose that's a compliment, but I was so upset at the time I had to get away from the computer to cool down and I've found it hard to think about the incident ever since.

[Eastern Girl]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

You stole my pick for children's literature. I suppose that's a compliment, but I was so upset at the time I had to get away from the computer to cool down and I've found it hard to think about the incident ever since.

Thank you for that. I'm glad to hear it.

I was starting to think maybe I really do have bad taste in books...

[rogermexico]

Alright. In the memoir category team... team whatever the heck the name was ... pick The Game by Ken Dryden.




I never played hockey as a kid. Or ever, really. All I know about the game is what you can learn from watching it, and what you pick up from the talking heads who surround it. And those talking heads tend to say the same things over and over again. Ken Dryden brings something else. Here's a really unique critical mind, a really terrific writer, in a really unique situation: being on one of the best hockey teams ever.

The real strength of the book is the way that Dryden downplays the 'greatness' of that particular roster and that particular year, and makes it all about really small struggles and victories. You grow really attached to the characters on the team, you get a real detailed understanding of them. Not to mention all the other surrounding details - the social climate of Quebec at the time in the referendum era is really well described.

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by Eastern Girl

Holy crap, a compliment for one of my picks in this draft!

I'm shocked!

I also really enjoyed the book, I really do think Plath was a wickedly talented writer, her prose and poetry are very good.

I tend to be cynical about writers who write semi-autobiographical books about their depression, mental illness, drug abuse or similar problems, and there's a real proliferation of that sort of writing today. But the Bell Jar is just really raw and genuine and beautiful; it's exactly how this sort of story should be written.

[habernac]

Originally Posted by rogermexico

Alright. In the memoir category team... team whatever the heck the name was ... pick The Game by Ken Dryden.




I never played hockey as a kid. Or ever, really. All I know about the game is what you can learn from watching it, and what you pick up from the talking heads who surround it. And those talking heads tend to say the same things over and over again. Ken Dryden brings something else. Here's a really unique critical mind, a really terrific writer, in a really unique situation: being on one of the best hockey teams ever.

The real strength of the book is the way that Dryden downplays the 'greatness' of that particular roster and that particular year, and makes it all about really small struggles and victories. You grow really attached to the characters on the team, you get a real detailed understanding of them. Not to mention all the other surrounding details - the social climate of Quebec at the time in the referendum era is really well described.

A lot of people consider Dryden a bit of a windbag. But this book is simply spectacular. Yeah, I'm a Habs fan so it's easy for me to say. But the only other book (I would estimate I've read close to 200 sports biographies) that ever got as in depth with an entire team IMO was The Game of Their Lives by Peter Gzowski (if you can get over the fact that it's about the Oilers, I guarantee you'll love it). I'm a huge fan of sports biographies. Ken Dryden's The Game is most certainly in my top five.

[habernac]

I'll move Day of the Triffids to Sci Fi, Lord of the Rings to Fantasy.

Under European Literature, I'll select George Orwell's Animal Farm.



From wiki:

Animal Farm is a novel by George Orwell. Published in England on 17 August 1945, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II. Orwell, a democratic socialist,[1] and a member of the Independent Labour Party for many years, was a critic of Joseph Stalin, and was suspicious of Moscow-directed Stalinism after his experiences with the NKVD during the Spanish Civil War. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as his novel 'contre Stalin'.[2]
The original title was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. When published in the United States in 1946, the publishers dropped A Fairy Story. Only in Telugu, of all translations during Orwell's lifetime, was the original title retained. Other variations in the title include: A Satire, and A Contemporary Satire.[2] Orwell suggested for the French translation the title 'Unions des republiques socialistes animales' or URSA, which means "bear" in Latin.[2]
The book was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels (1923 to 2005),[3] was number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels and won a Retrospective Hugo in 1996.

I read this in junior high I think, along with his other book and both left a big impression on me. I was sad to read that he died soon after he wrote this of tuberculosis.

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by habernac

A lot of people consider Dryden a bit of a windbag.

I disagree. Most people know that Dryden is a windbag.

That being said, it really is a hell of a book. It got a little windy in spots but he told such great stories about how that team "worked", how the players got along, shaving cream in skates and all that.

He made Guy Lapointe come off like Rodney Dangerfield, but not in the way that a lot of sports biographies go off on telling wild tales of drunken debauchery for cheap (but good) laughs.

[Circa89]

It was a good read. I always get a Hockey book at Christmas. It was certainly a better book than By The Numbers by Scott Morrison that I received last year. No offense Scotty great book just not a novel. I have a sneaking suspicion that I will be receiving My Greatest Day by Mr. Morrison this Xmas.

Anyway good pick on The Game

[Circa89]

That's Odd that that was never considered a category ( Sports or Hockey Books). I think I have read at least twelve Hockey books but we have probably all read the same dozen books.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Well, I'll use this pick to fill what is a tough category for me. In the category of Mass/Pulp Fiction, Bartleby and the Scriveners select Peyton Place by Grace Metalious.


Peyton Place caused a sensation when it was published in 1956. It exposed the sordid, unspoken secrets of a street in New England. Following the lives of three women, a mother, her daughter out of wedlock and her employee, Peyton Place deals with numerous scandalous issues, including incest, sexual abuse, abortion, lecherous men, women of loose morals and sex, sex, sex, sex.

Needless to say, Metalious' novel was an instant bestseller--but it was also controversial. This was at a time when the concern over mass media had reached fever pitch, and Senate inquiries were being convened over the issues of "juvenile delinquency" and most people blamed the media for what they considered their out-of-control youth. (they should see young people now! ) In any case, the possibility of government censorship of mass media was in no way remote, and Metalious more or less stepped into a controversy-in-progress with her novel about female sexual identity. She was practically disowned by the prim and proper New Englanders of her home town, but one wonders if their reaction was so intense because she hit a little close to the mark.

Is it a good book? Well, Metalious is no Hemingway, that's for sure. But it's definitely an interesting book, and in its own way it was genre-defining, and there's no question that Metalious changed the media landscape in ways we can all appreciate. Without Metalious, I imagine the racks upon racks of Harlequin romances and "airport novels" we see around us would all be a lot tamer. So for those who enjoy a little prurience now and then--you may have Metalious to thank.

[habernac]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

I disagree. Most people know that Dryden is a windbag.

That being said, it really is a hell of a book. It got a little windy in spots but he told such great stories about how that team "worked", how the players got along, shaving cream in skates and all that.

He made Guy Lapointe come off like Rodney Dangerfield, but not in the way that a lot of sports biographies go off on telling wild tales of drunken debauchery for cheap (but good) laughs.

I got him to autograph my copy of the book on a book tour about 12 years ago. He had a huge smile on his face, seeing how dog eared my copy was, I think I'd read it 3 or 4 times.

[driveway]

Originally Posted by habernac

I'll move Day of the Triffids to Sci Fi, Lord of the Rings to Fantasy.

Under European Literature, I'll select George Orwell's 1984.

1984 was already taken. Selected by Mean Mr. Mustard in the first round:

11-24-2008, 07:08 AM #146 Mean Mr. Mustard
Franchise Player

Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Calgary
Exp:



Under the category of Science-Fiction, one of my favorite books of all time, might be picking it a bit early and there are other novels on my radar, but alas 1984 by George Orwell. Will most info/book cover later.

[habernac]

Originally Posted by driveway

1984 was already taken. Selected by Mean Mr. Mustard in the first round:

well crap, I even searched the list and found nothing. I'll have another selection up shortly.