21st Century Literature discussion

Please nominate your choices for books you would like to see read for our July Open Pick!

Once again, the rules:
- Everyone is allowed one nomination, eligible books must be works of fiction published from 2000-2014.
- Selections that are overly genre or fail to meet the group standards of literary quality will not be permitted in the final poll.
- Anyone voting for a book is expected to read the book and participate in the discussion. A certified death certificate may be accepted as an excuse not to participate unless you nominated the winning book, in which case death is no excuse.

Nominations will be open until late next week. So, happy nominating, everyone!

I'd like to nominate The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld.

"Beautiful and transcendent, The Enchanted reminds us of how our humanity connects us all, and how beauty and love exist even amidst the most nightmarish reality."

A very apt discription of what this small, powerful novel has to offer. I'd love to re-read it and discuss with the group.

I nominate The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson. This book has been on my TBR shelf for far too long.

Published in 2012, it won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The story takes place in North Korea. A couple of authors that I like a lot - Abraham Verghese and David Mitchell - wrote blurbs of praise for the book jacket. Mitchell is quoted as saying, in part, -- "An addictive novel of daring ingenuity, a study of sacrifice and freedom in a citizen-eating dynasty ... ."

Excellent nominations, both are on my TBR list.

I'll support Orphan Master's Son. I just finished it. It's an extremely powerful and moving book. And very believable, despite the surreal society it it's set in.

I nominate Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem. I haven't read any Lethem since his first two books in the mid-90's, and a book that is described as "strongly influenced by Saul Bellow, Philip K. Dick, Charles Finney and Hitchcock’s Vertigo" is hard for me to resist. I never in my life expected to see those three authors mentioned in the same sentence.

I have read The Enchanted and The Orphan Master's Son. Both are excellent books.

I have never read Lethem. I do have Dissident Gardens on my to be read list. I have never heard of Chronic City, but it sounds interesting.

I have two friends who just came back from North Korea who are raving about The Orphan Master's Son and how it sheds light on that society. Definitely on my TBR list.

Chronic City definitely sounds interesting.

I'd like to nominate Open City, by Teju Cole. It is the story of a cerebral, emotionaly distant psychiatrist who was born in Nigeria to a German mother and African father and who now resides in NYC. Although I nearly put the book down early on as pretentious, a few things soon began to catch my attention and suggest tht there was a great deal more depth to it than that. The "pretentiousness" I had noted turned out to be in service of character development. The book demands a great deal of the reader, but rewards the effort. It is a masterful character study of a man struggling with half-awareness of his central flaws.

Karen, good nomination! It helps if you post a link to your nomination, just click on the "add book/author" link above the text box to add it, like so: Open City.

Karen wrote: "This is the link to the author."

Now all together: Open City by Teju Cole.

;-0 [LOL]

(This one was sort of funky to find -- had to get the author first, then the book, then choose other editions. Needs some librarian work, but I'm not in the mood to set it up for that group right now -- never certain quite how to tell them for messy ones like this one.)

Choice caught my attention enough on other thread a few days ago that I put it on my next library visit list.

Oh AWWright -- Have a little patience with a newbie!

Karen wrote: "Oh AWWright -- Have a little patience with a newbie!"

Oh, Karen, I thought it was neat when you came back with a link to the author! Sorry you erased the entry -- you deserved the showoff. I certainly didn't intend criticism, just a bit of fun. But I guess that doesn't always work as well online as it might face to face. Mea culpa.

I picked up the book yesterday at my library and spent a fair part of the evening reading it. I find Open City on the NYT list of 100 notable books for 2011:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/boo...

I'm much enjoying the walks in the City and the esoteric links to artists and philosophers, but so far haven't found the plot. (I did a little forward peeking.) I will continue to explore the character study to which you refer -- am wondering about its relationship to the author, but may wait a bit to dig for any more about Teju Cole and his work. Open City certainly garnered the attention of various prize groups: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teju_Cole

The plot is minimal in the extreme. It's all interior, and demands that the reader connect many dots. There's more to the digressions than initially meets the eye.

Opps, your flakey moderator lost track of time and left this open a bit long. Last chance for nominations, poll will go up in the next couple days!

I nominate The Ghost in Love by Jonathan Carroll. Carroll is one of my favorite writers of magical realism, and this one is not quite as dark as some of his works. The goodreads blurb says:

"Welcome to the luminous and marvelously inventive world of The Ghost in Love. A man falls in the snow, hits his head on a curb, and dies. But something strange occurs: the man "doesn’t "die, and the ghost that’s been sent to take his soul to the afterlife is flabbergasted. Going immediately to its boss, the ghost asks, what should I do now? The boss says, we don’t know how this happened but we’re working on it. We want you to stay with this man to help us figure out what’s going on.

The ghost agrees unhappily; it is a ghost, not a nursemaid. But a funny thing happens—the ghost falls madly in love with the man’s girlfriend, and things naturally get complicated. Soon afterward, the man discovers he did not die when he was “supposed” to because for the first time in their history, human beings have decided to take their fates back from the gods. It’s a wonderful change, but one that comes at a price.

The Ghost in Love is about what happens to us when we discover that we have become the masters of our own fate. No excuses, no outside forces or gods to blame—the responsibility is all our own. It’s also about love, ghosts that happen to be gourmet cooks, talking dogs, and picnicking in the rain with yourself at twenty different ages."

The choices this month have been so intriguing that I wasn't going to make a nomination. But I have been working with the "Rooster Award" from the Morning News Tournament the past couple of days (its new books for 2014 list) and am deciding to bring to the group's attention a book that had escaped my notice to date. While I still haven't decided whether I'll vote for it, I will nominate:

The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara

If you are not familiar with the book, I suggest reading the description of its fate in the quarterfinal round versus Donna Tartt's Goldfinch, whether or not you are interested in voting for the book:

http://www.themorningnews.org/tob/201...

I am going to have to sit out July with family commitments but might join in the discussion late with some of these pics which look pretty interesting.

Think An Untamed State by Roxanne Gay would be an interesting pick from what I have read so far and I might end up suggesting it for August.

Great suggestions, everyone! The nominations are now closed and the poll is up here: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

Remember, if you vote you will be expected to participate in the discussion if your choice wins.

Having read the article above on The People in the Trees. I was startled to recognize the true story on which it is based. The real researcher was the Nobel laureate, Daniel Gadjusek, who always denied that he had caused any harm.

Poll will close day after tomorrow, so get over there and vote if you haven't! It's a close race, so changing your vote to bump your second choice up is always an option as well.

And the winner is - The Enchanted! I'm looking forward to this one, for sure! It was a close vote, so people may want to consider renominating their favorites in future polls.

Discussion will start July 1st (ish) and run through the month, and possibly beyond. So join in anytime.