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The Idle Book Log: unofficial recommendations for forthcoming Idle Thumbs Book Clubs.

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Yes, I can hear you thinking: Idle Thumbs Book Club hasn't even launched yet! But I thought this might be a good place for fan recommendations of novels for forthcoming episodes, specifically in the interest of texts that would inspire meaningful conversation.

I'd like to put forth my recommendation for the recent Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson. Haven't read all of it yet, but it's captivating and memorable. And, David Mitchell loved it, so that's saying something for me ^_^ . The Thumbsters might like it.

Blaine Harden's biography of Shin Dong-hyuk also appears to be a good non-fiction companion to it; it's called Escape from Camp 14. What about you guys? Is there anything you'd like to see on the upcoming Idle Thumbs Book Club?

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SInce I'm reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet now, I think anything by David Mitchell would be interesting.

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Considering the names that keep coming up (Barnes, Wallace, Mitchell, Eco), I would say A House for Mr Biswas, The Wind-up Bird Chronical, and If on a winter's night a traveler, would all be pretty good fits.

however, I'd really endorse whole hearted off piece excursions into non-fiction, or authors like Achebe, Jean Rhys, Dangarembga, Caryl Phillips, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Nadeem Aslam.

(book cast needs to be more then one a month)

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(book cast needs to be more then one a month)

We'll see how it goes, but I think that would be tough. It's already going to be keeping us busy to be putting out five podcasts a month on top of full time jobs, especially on my end due as the editor.

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On top of that, that might be too rushed for a book cast? If the idea is to give people the chance to read the book and participate with questions, two weeks is a stiff deadline on both ends.

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Yeah, especially during the school year, I barely have time to get through a book a month. Hell, typically from September - April, recreational reading is off the table as everything I read is for class anyway. One a month is already going to be taxing to me in terms of finding time to actually read.

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A month would be a minimum for me as well. You should actually consider announcing two books in the first cast (or a new book now) and in the following casts naming the book that is to be discussed in two months (or casts).

Of course, collections of short stories and or essays can be discussed over multiple casts. Labyrinths by Borges has been sitting in my bookshelf for quite some time now...

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The near short-story length of Sense of an Ending (which was great, btw!) made me think of another book on my "to read" list: CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders. I've read other shorts by Saunders and they're really fantastic, and this is supposedly his best.

Just a thought, looking forward to the first book cast.

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Just glancing at my shelves, some of the shortest reads that would provide plenty of discussion fodder:

The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason

Stoner by John Williams (or Butcher's Crossing or Augustus)

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

Tinkers by Paul Harding

Non-Fiction:

Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler

River of Shadows by Rebecca Solnit

Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson

(all highly recommended)

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Of course, collections of short stories and or essays can be discussed over multiple casts. Labyrinths by Borges has been sitting in my bookshelf for quite some time now...

Oh Borges is the best. Also dead, so if you didn't already have Labyrinths, I would never recommend a small collection over the entire collected fiction. Oh, aside from portability reasons, I guess.

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Oh Borges is the best. Also dead, so if you didn't already have Labyrinths, I would never recommend a small collection over the entire collected fiction. Oh, aside from portability reasons, I guess.

Actually, I remember having a hard time figuring out which Borges collection to buy. Collected Fictions was (and is) unavailable at Amazon.co.uk, so I ended up with Labyrinths. I might buy a more comprehensive collection at some point and donate the Labyrinths to someone.

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Oh Borges is the best. Also dead, so if you didn't already have Labyrinths, I would never recommend a small collection over the entire collected fiction. Oh, aside from portability reasons, I guess.

But you'll still miss out on his D&D Monster Manual.

I have never really got on with Borges, which is odd, I think, when Calvino is one of my favourite writers.

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AreThe Great Gatsby or Lolita sufficiently interesting and short? I've wanted to read those for ages.

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Interested in that one!

Trying to express opinions about this book in an hour is impossible. You really need to key in and jam if you want to draw anything meaningful from this pool.

I have never really got on with Borges, which is odd, I think, when Calvino is one of my favourite writers.

Well Borges was a baller and machismo, Calvino had some glory days (his father was a baller like Jorge) but not as fierce.

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Well was a baller and machismo, Calvino had some glory days (his father was a baller like Jorge) but not as fierce.

Calvino's dad was pretty cool (his mum was cooler), Borges was wishy-washy as heck though.

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His father, Mario, was a tropical agronomist and botanist who also taught agriculture and floriculture. Born 47 years earlier in San Remo, Italy, Mario Calvino had emigrated to Mexico in 1909 where he took up an important position with the Ministry of Agriculture. In an autobiographical essay, Italo Calvino explained that his father "had been in his youth an anarchist, a follower of Kropotkin and then a Socialist Reformist". In 1917, Mario left for Cuba to conduct scientific experiments, after living through the Mexican Revolution.

- http://en.wikipedia....Calvino#Parents

Pretty baller. Can't find a bio on his mother, got some to share?

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Just the stuff in Hermit in Paris, the thing I remember most is on the wiki page too. "not least when the blackshirts three times pretended to shoot my father in front of her eyes" implying that she either called their bluff, or what I prefer, that she just did not give a fuck.

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Holy shit yeah both of his parents were pretty awesome.

And a question to the book-cast, will it be about literature (literary or genre-fiction) or about books in general (taken to mean history, science, humanities, and such)? I prefer the former when discussions regarding form, language and presentation are encouraged rather than critical discussion regarding the content, which would be hard or limited in usefulness without expertise (books about video games are excused).

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The near short-story length of Sense of an Ending (which was great, btw!) made me think of another book on my "to read" list: CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders. I've read other shorts by Saunders and they're really fantastic, and this is supposedly his best.

Just a thought, looking forward to the first book cast.

Saunders is absolutely wonderful (and so is CivilWarLand in Bad Decline). I wonder, though, if the fact that it's a short story collection would make it more difficult to discuss in a podcast.

I think Joshua Ferris' books, The Unnamed and Then We Came to the End, would both make for pretty interesting discussion.

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I would put forward JM coetzee's " disgrace" or Arundhati (sp?) roy's " the god of small things" . Both won the booker when that actually meant something.

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Disgrace would be really great for discussion. I found it really unsettling and am unsure how to feel about it.

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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.

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