Does anyone know what sort of boundaries are in place for the books that are eligible for discussion? I know this is exclusively intended for contemporary literature, but at what point can the book in question blur between mainstream literature and genre? For example, I would love to submit Ben Okri's The Famished Road or Nick Harkaway's The Gone-Away World/ Angelmaker for possible discussion, but would magical realism or gonzo post-apocalyptic scenarios veer too much away from the focus of the book club? They're marketed as lit with a capital L, but they clearly straddle genre conventions.
It would be an incredibly narrow, short sighted, snobbish, and quite simply a dumb action to take, in limiting books to those marketed as Literary. The works of Poe, Shakespeare, Borges, Wolfe, Bradbury, Ellison, and legions of others are no less worthy of consideration just because they are authors who work primarily as fantasists.
The Thumbs crew seem to be too well rounded and read to fall into such a limited criteria.
Anyway, some none Pop-Lit recommendations:
The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe
Shriek:An Afterward by Jeff Vandermeer
Growing up Dead in Texas by Stephen Graham Jones
Non-Fiction:
The Demon Haunted World:Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
The Idle Book Log: unofficial recommendations for forthcoming Idle Thumbs Book Clubs.
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It would be an incredibly narrow, short sighted, snobbish, and quite simply a dumb action to take, in limiting books to those marketed as Literary. The works of Poe, Shakespeare, Borges, Wolfe, Bradbury, Ellison, and legions of others are no less worthy of consideration just because they are authors who work primarily as fantasists.
The Thumbs crew seem to be too well rounded and read to fall into such a limited criteria.
Anyway, some none Pop-Lit recommendations:
The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe
Shriek:An Afterward by Jeff Vandermeer
Growing up Dead in Texas by Stephen Graham Jones
Non-Fiction:
The Demon Haunted World:Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
Discarded Science by John Grant