The Mookse and the Gripes discussion
General Non-Book Discussions
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Café Quito: 'pub' thread for general discussions
Ang wrote: "I found a spreadsheet earlier in the year which I use. I will try to find the blog entry. She creates a new one each year and creates a video on how to use it."Ang - that's the spreadsheet that started me on spreadsheets for reading! She's amazing. I used her sheets for a couple of years and they are so much easier to search than my previous little red notebooks.
I made my own for the last two years - included a bunch of columns & categories for things like translators/translations, original country/lang/date of orig pub etc. But her sheet is terrific - it's the best of the many book spreadsheets out there. I have the link to her website on my home computer - so I'll add that when I get home b/c it's very useful. I especially love how it adds up the savings from using the library. I'm always impressed by that number (until I look at my year's spending, which is impressive in a bad way.)
I haven't used the purchases section. (Scared to).
Ang wrote: "I haven't used the purchases section. (Scared to)."Might be a good idea to just leave it alone. Also, the books you borrow show savings - but they also add to your TBA, which is extreme in my case.
The shortlist for a literary prize was announced today and features some books which have been mentioned in the forum:https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
Val wrote: "The shortlist for a literary prize was announced today and features some books which have been mentioned in the forum:https://www.theguardian.com/books/201......"
I love these awards - they're always hilarious, even if the books themselves are just fine. I tend to simply block out less-than-perfect sex scenes, so some of these seemed totally new to me.
Note that the award is for “the year’s most outstandingly awful scene of sexual description in an otherwise good novel”, so a listing should not put anyone off reading any of the books.
I know someone who was nominated in a recent year (a bit of detective work would let you find out who it was) and I recall he was quite put out by it.
Those were some pretty bad scenes, though. Eww.
From memory Paul congratulated him on Twitter of his prize nomination (but without giving full details, assuming he already knew) and part of it was disappointment at it not being for a more serious literary prize (which would have been much more deserved).
Gumble's Yard wrote: "From memory Paul congratulated him on Twitter of his prize nomination (but without giving full details, assuming he already knew) and part of it was disappointment at it not being for a more seriou..."Er, yes that was a bit unfortunate!
He really was quite annoyed at the award generally, as I think he felt the passage concerned was rather good.
One of my favourite books of 2019 is on this year's list - River Capture - although I did find the passage concerned rather odd when I read it, so I can see why it is there.
An article from a nominee last year https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
Headline
This book prize doesn’t only encourage disdain for authors on the basis of a few sentences, it feeds a dangerously censorious culture
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Gumble's Yard wrote: "An article from a nominee last year https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
Headline
This book prize doesn’t only encourage disdain for authors on the basis o..."
That's a great article. It made me laugh aloud several times, and never about bad sex. He's funny and interesting. Now I think I might need to read one of his books.
But I disagree with his premise:
So why do we write sex when we know it is risky? Because leaving sex out of fiction falsifies our picture of humanity. If fiction can’t address life’s most difficult, complex and interesting areas, then why write or read it?
There are SO many things that all humans do that don't make it into books, I find this unconvincing. Unless it serves a real purpose: somehow explaining/portraying the relationship or b/c they've invented some new way of doing things that everyone MUST know about, or it makes a serious mark on the characters that matters after the sex is over, why not leave it out?
In reality, sex scenes rarely ever offer more than a sex scene that ends then the actual book starts again. I honestly don't think most sex scenes offer anything difficult, complex or interesting. A good sex scene would be lovely, but sadly it does more to distract often than it would to draw me in.
I find it interesting that I don't have any issue with straight up sex books. Like "erotica" or what I call "those porn books by my bed." But those books never have actually good stories. It seems like people who can write sex well can't write anything else well and vice versa. Perhaps like actors get body doubles, writers should get sex scene doubles. Not sure, but I do wish they'd all just stop.
Edit - I'm back, having read the first few paragraphs of the novel Mr. Gough wrote & got nominated for -- and I completely understand why that book needs to have a sex scene in it. If it is about the child, then it SHOULD be a bad sex scene. Darnit, my library doesn't have a copy, and I wonder how it's all going to work out now.
Reading that article and the slightly longer excerpt in another article, I don't think that scene even qualifies as "bad sex." There seem to be two kinds of sex scenes nominated: those which are actually not written badly but contain some kind of comparison/metaphor that people feel squidgy about (in this case, comparing the sexualized nipple to the mother's nipple, which seems completely fair as the author explains it with regards to the character), and completely self-indulgent/ridiculous sex scenes, like the encounter with a Norwegian model that James Frey won for in 2018.
Here are the excerpts from this year's nominees:https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
If it were me judging, Mary Costello would win. I think the Elizabeth Gilbert excerpt is much worse, but it's so bad that I can't imagine the rest of the book being an "otherwise good novel." And the other three didn't strike me as that bad at all.
Emily wrote: "Reading that article and the slightly longer excerpt in another article, I don't think that scene even qualifies as "bad sex." Totally agree (though I still stand by my words above) this is exactly the kind of sex scene that I qualified as being worthy of inclusion. It's seems, from reading the first pages of the novel, that the whole thing is about an awkward young man who has lived outside of the "real world" for far too long, hence he's gonna BE awkward in all of his encounters. Also, the mother/son r'ship seems incredibly important from the synopses & the samples I read.
"There seem to be two kinds of sex scenes nominated: those which are actually not written badly but contain some kind of comparison/metaphor that people feel squidgy about (in this case, comparing the sexualized nipple to the mother's nipple, which seems completely fair as the author explains it with regards to the character), and completely self-indulgent/ridiculous sex scenes, like the encounter with a Norwegian model that James Frey won for in 2018.."
Perfect explanation. Well done.
Where the Booker goes, the Bad Sex award follows.Prize world rocked tonight with another deadlocked judging panel leading to a joint prize.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
No doubt there will be protests from certain publishers that this meant their book never stood a chance.
And now the art equivalent of the Booker prize, the Turner prize, goes one further. Awarded jointly to all 4 shortlistees at their request. I think the Booker Prize decision of 2019 will increasingly be seen as an inspirational moment in artistic prizes.
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Interesting twist on the Turner Prize story.The BBC report on the decision referred to the Booker precedent, saying the prize was shared between Margaret Atwood "and another author".
Which, unsurprisingly, hasn't gone down well with Bernadine Evaristo:
https://twitter.com/BernardineEvari/s...
There are those who might argue this rather proves the point of those arguing the dual prize was a bad thing.
That must have been corrected, as it reads:'And earlier this year, the Booker Prize was split between two winners - Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo - after the judges refused to select a single victor.'
but it is sloppy reporting to mention the Booker and not to look up the name of the joint winner.
The tweet links to a video which is less easy to correct. I hope they have apologised.
She also asked people to retweet - so she must've been pretty pissed off. Next up: Graywolf Press is having a survey & giving away a year's worth of titles to some lucky respondent:
https://twitter.com/GraywolfPress/sta...
That, “and another author,” was an unforgivable slight. How could that presenter not make himself aware of the other Booker winner?! There were only two, not several dozen. We hope that it’s about the folly of dual winners and not that women of color are easily dismissed and forgotten.
Don't the BBC have "We apologise, it was an editorial oversight" on auto-reply these days?
Ang & I were discussing spreadsheets, and since the new year is approaching at a crazy rate of speed, I finally got around to finding the blog that offers a spreadsheet if anyone is interested. She's posted her 2020 sheet (it's a copy of the last couple, it seems) but here are the links: Main page for info on the sheet/how to:
https://crini.de/2019/12/04/spreadshe...
The "Manual" on how to use the sheet:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_...
And the sheet itself (it's read-only, so you need to make yourself a copy then you can do what you want with it.) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
Does anyone have end of the year/starting a new year book traditions? I used to make sure my first and last books were Saramago and Patrick White. That hasn’t been the case for some time, but since I just received Memoirs of Many in One by Patrick White, I will end the year with him and start the year with either Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Comyns, or Sylvia Townsend Warner. I like the idea of a trusted older author to ring out and ring in the year.My favorite tradition is one I’ve lifted from Iceland: I give my adult children wrapped books to give to each of my grandkids on Christmas Eve after the kids are tucked in for the night. (I told a few of the moms in my office and they love the idea and will be doing it with their kids.)
I’m particularly excited about the beautiful Jackie Morris books the youngest kids are getting this year, her books are art books as much as poetry and story books.
WndyJW wrote: "My favorite tradition is one I’ve lifted from Iceland: I give my adult children wrapped books to give to each of my grandkids on Christmas Eve after the kids are tucked in for the night...."that is a very nice tradition. I also try to buy books for my friends'kids and nephew but I find it difficult to know what are good children's books sometimes.
my mom usually buys books for me she wants to read herself :-)
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I like to start with a short book so something has been finished asap - but that doesn't have to stand. Currently my first finished book of 2019 looks like A Christmas Carol, but once I have finished the rest of the Penguin Classics ... and other Christmas Writings, I intend to remove the end date for the standalone and fold it into the collection, with a finish date in December 2019 (as I am not re-reading A Christmas Carol again), and the first finished book of the year will be Tom Jones.
That need to finish a short book early stems from when I used to activate the challenge at the beginning of the year with 1 book so I would have the display box to keep track. Now I am not activating it until nearly the end of the year.
My end of year tradition is trying to finish the books I've started but lost track of along the way. This year things have gotten way out of control, and I need to finish at least four in the next week and a half.I like to start the year with something relatively quiet, and that can be relied upon to not be awful (just as I like to eat salad after new year, and wear neutral colours, it's a bit of a coming down from the extremes of Christmas). This past year I started with Zadie Smith, the year before with Gilead. I think I might start next year with Death in Spring
Antonomasia wrote: "I just prefer it if the titles don't sound ominous in some way. e.g. I remember rushing through other books one December to make sure Crime and Punishment wasn't the last-finished book of the year...."I’ve done the same- a short book added on at the end of the year to avoid an unappealing title.
I still set my GR goal of one book- that’s one less stress in my life-and I accomplish one New Year resolution.
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Exactly! It was quite early on that I noticed I felt a sort of continual tension until I'd finished the reading challenge, and even if I set it at 10 that still got in the way for several weeks. One was the solution.
Two rather irrational ones for me. I save books I know I will like a lot till the New Year as I have already decided on my favourite books of the year. And in terms of last books I often. delay finishing/ reviewing one or two into the New Year to get my TBR challenge off to a good start.
I'm fickle and have already ditched Memoirs of Many in One. And I think I'd rather start the New Year with a new (to me) author. so I'll pick another trusted author to end the year and start 2020 with one of books from subscriptions on my shelves.
So much like sports fans we too have a traditions to ensure a good outcome for next season's reading adventures.
Antonomasia wrote: "Tracy wrote: "I still set my GR goal of one book- that’s one less stress in my life."Exactly! It was quite early on that I noticed I felt a sort of continual tension until I'd finished the readin..."
The other nice thing about this is that I have no idea how many books I read in 2019, besides being more than one. I don't want my reading to be performative. I also decided no challenges from here on. Many of them also created tension for me. I just want my reading to be a bit like summertime - where the livin' is easy.
I started the year by finishing an older Krasznahorkai and will end this year by reading a new Krasznahorkai. (I might finish it too early though, over halfway through.) There tends to be a chunky classic at the end of each year: last year it was unexpectedly The Golden Days, this year it appears to be Daniel Deronda as a friend of mine spend two years of her life full-time translating it beautifully into Finnish and now it’s finally out.I notice the same tendency of reading something quick at the beginning of the year. Wonder what it will be in 2020!
I try my hardest to start the year with a new book
Why do I vote in the GR choice awards? Nothing I've ever voted for has actually won. I think only two books have made it past the first stage... As for year-ending books, I'm not sure what that will be. I think I may end the year with a reread in honor of a "favorite" author who only ever wrote one book: Problems by Jade Sharma. I was eagerly awaiting whatever came next from her, and she died earlier this year. Selfishly, that made me feel something different from sad: more like denied more good books. I dunno what she would've done, but I would have read whatever it was. I know she was working on her second novel. I loved PROBLEMS. It made my stomach hurt laughing when I read it.
I know I will be beginning the new year with a big fat book called Don Quixote.
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Heh. I thought I was the only person who missed web 1.0 (I thought it would have a resurgence, but if my site visits are any indication, we're still suffering from the belief that everyone wanted video.)EDIT!!! PS: Everyone should read the article on John Williams! It's amazing. (And it follows that in every single discussion of books missing from the "great books" type lists, John Williams is ALWAYS left out. I don't see how you can read Stoner or Augustus and not want everyone on earth to also read those books. Everything he wrote was wonderful to me.)
I enjoyed Stoner (solid 4 star) but as a big reader of late Republic/early Imperial Rome non fiction and novels, Augustus left me a little indifferent.
The article makes me VERY glad to have only known him through his writing. I really adore Stoner. It is probably up there with my favorite all-time books, and I love the restraint in his writing, including in Augustus. But that article is really something - it might put people off reading his books, but still - it's a good read.
Thanks for the recommendation. I somehow associate Stoner as dude bro literature, perhaps unjustifiably – should give it a go some time.
Oh and I’m a bit sad about the disappearance of web 1.0 too, and dream of launching a website one day with a design straight from the early 2000s.
The Mookse and the Gripes
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