Organizing our Margaret Atwood Project

[Alexa]

Announcing that the winner of our Single Author Group Read poll was Margaret Atwood! (Drum roll please!) So now we need to consider how best to organize this. Some questions to consider 1) Do we want to focus primarily on her novels and just dip into some of her other works, or do we want to be more exhaustive? (The original nomination mentioned primarily the novels, but I then noticed that mention was made of her short stories and poetry.) 2) Do we want to try and make all of this fit into one year (that's a lot of reading!) or do we want to keep it to one book a month and let it take as long as it needs?

I'm going to next attempt to create a bibliography for her that will hopefully allow us to contemplate these questions with a bit more knowledge!

[Alexa]

This list includes her novels, her short stories, her poetry, and her non-fiction. I have left out her children's books, recordings and dramatic scripts, and editing works (I had to draw the line somewhere!). I only included small press editions if they seemed reasonably easy to get our hands on. If anyone sees any gaping holes in this or other errors, please let me know!

Poetry, 1966, The Circle Game: Poems
Poetry, 1969, The Animals in that Country
Novel, 1969, The Edible Woman
Poetry, 1970, The Journals of Susanna Moodie
Poetry, 1970, Procedures For Underground
Poetry, 1971, Power Politics: Poems
Non-Fiction, 1972, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature
Novel, 1972, Surfacing
Poetry, 1974, You are Happy
Poetry, 1976, Selected Poems: 1965-1975
Novel, 1976, Lady Oracle
Short Stories, 1977, Dancing Girls
Poetry, 1978, Two-Headed Poems
Novel, 1979, Life Before Man
Novel, 1981, Bodily Harm
Poetry, 1981, True Stories
Non-Fiction, 1982, Second Words: Selected Critical Prose
Short Stories, 1983, Murder in the Dark: Short Fictions and Prose Poems
Short Stories, 1983, Bluebeard's Egg
Poetry, 1984, Interlunar
Novel, 1985, The Handmaid's Tale
Poetry, 1986, Selected Poems II: 1976 - 1986
Novel, 1988, Cat's Eye
Short Stories, 1991, Wilderness Tips
Short Stories, 1992, Good Bones
Novel, 1993, The Robber Bride
Poetry, 1995, Morning in the Burned House
Non-Fiction, 1995, Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature
Novel, 1996, Alias Grace
Poetry, 1998, Eating Fire: Selected Poetry 1965-1995
Novel, 2000, The Blind Assassin
Non-Fiction, 2002, Negotiating with the Dead
Poetry, 2003, Selected Poems: 1966 1984
Novel, 2003, Oryx and Crake
Novel, 2003, The Penelopiad
Non-Fiction, 2004, Moving Targets: Writing with Intent 1982 - 2004
Non-Fiction, 2005, Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing 1970-2005
Non-Fiction, 2005, Writing With Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose, 1983-2005
Short Stories, 2006, The Tent
Short Stories, 2006, Moral Disorder: and Other Stories
Poetry, 2007, The Door
Non-Fiction, 2008, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
Novel, 2009, The Year of the Flood
Non-Fiction, 2011, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination
Short Story, 2012, I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth
Novel, 2013, MaddAddam
Short Stories, 2014, Stone Mattress: Nine Tales
Novel, 2015, The Heart Goes Last

It's difficult to tell, with the poetry, short story collections, and non-fiction collections, which are unique and which are simply collections of other titles. So some of these may be repetitions. Without having them physically in my hand I just couldn't tell. I tried to use both Margaret Atwood's own website and the Goodreads listing to get the most accurate list; but sometimes they just didn't agree! In particular, Goodreads lists some recent e-books that her website makes no mention of. So if anybody knows more and can make corrections, or point out duplicates, or point out obvious omissions, I would really appreciate it!

[Alexa]

So shall we start with The Circle Game: Poems in January and work our way through, one book per month, or does anyone have an alternative suggestion?

[Taylor]

That sounds good to me! She has soooo much... I'm excited to get started!

[Madeline]

I like the idea of one book per month. We may want to limit the project to one year and try a different author in 2016. However, either way I'm very excited to get started.

[Taylor]

If we want to limit it to one year with one book per month, maybe we can compile a shortened list of 12 essential Atwood titles... can that even be done? :)

[Alexa]

I wouldn't know where to start! At a minimum I'd think you would have to at least include the 14 novels, then at least a taste of the poetry and the short stories and the essays - so at a bare minimum we're at 17 works. Or we could read them at one a week? That might be hard for some folks with a novel, but might be easier with poetry etc. Or we could do three or four a month, making sure we only have one novel per month? At one book a week, it would take almost a year, lots of us would be behind, but we could still be having some really interesting discussions about her work as a whole.

I'm finding myself more intrigued by the one book a week idea, and then if people wanted to just skip over some of the works that would work well. (I'm also pretty sure some of those volumes of collected poems must just be collections of the smaller works, so that would work as a catch-up week.)

And then for the really enthusiastic, for the final weeks of the year we could throw out a biography or some critical analysis?

[Taylor]

I like the idea of one per week! You are right, the poetry editions would be easy to read in 1 week, and I'm sure there are lots of us who have already read many of her works so we could just be in on the discussion thread and not have to power read as much.

What does everyone else think? Is one per week totally insane??

[Alexa]

Does anybody have any further thoughts? We really want to set this up in whatever way best meets everyone's needs and desires!

[Erin]

I'd love to do 1 per week, but it may be hard for everyone to keep up.

What if we do 1 novel and 1 poetry/short story per month; i.e. one short read, one long? Or even 1 novel and 2 short reads per month (1 short read the 1st-15th, 1 poetry 15th-31th)? Another book club I follow does something similar.

[Alexa]

That's an interesting idea Erin. I was just assuming we would be reading it all in chronological order, but I guess that isn't absolutely essential. I'm also interested that you personally like the idea of one per week. Maybe some of us are hard core enough to do one a week, while others of us may just read some here or there?

[Sandy]

The CBC Books website has some special features this week in honour of Margaret Atwood's 75th birthday tomorrow (November 18).

ww.cbc.ca/books/atwood75/index.html

[Taylor]

Also today only is a daily deal at Audible for the audio book edition of The Edible Woman, just $3.95 (marked down from the slightly ludicrous regular price of $43.80)

http://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/The...

[Alexa]

So, I'm thinking the discussion is leaning towards this consensus: 2015 is our year of Margaret Atwood and our goal is to read her entire body of work in that year. In order to do so, one book of hers will be featured each week in chronological order. Several of these will be short works of poetry and some will be longer. Some of the collections may also likely be collections of what we will have already covered. This will give us some flexibility in our schedule. I'll list each book on the calendar as one per week though and a new thread will open for each new book each week, and then obviously everyone can contribute on their own individual timeline. How's that for a proposal?

[Taylor]

Yeah let's do it!

[Holly]

I just want to pop in to mention that several other works are listed on her wiki page that are not listed here. Apologies for making this project more arduous. :x

[Alexa]

Sigh. Thank you. I think. ;)

I'll see if I can fix it up!

[Alexa]

Holly, I went back and double-checked the Wikipedia article against Margaret Atwood's own website. The article does list some additional works, but when double-checking they seem to be either combinations of earlier works, or small-press editions that just seemed to me might be impossible for many of us to find. So in the end I decided to let Atwood's own website http://margaretatwood.ca/full-bibliog... be the authority. If there is any particular work where you think I'm wrong though, please let me know!

[Story]

I'm looking forward to being part of this@ Her collection Good Bonesis rich enough for a few week's discussion all on it's own.

[Alexa]

Yes, a week per book is just working as a suggestion, we're flowing around fairly loosely here! So glad to have you join us!

[Alexa]

And, (drum roll please) we now get to add another book onto the end of the list: The Heart Goes Last!

[Taylor]

Alexa wrote: "And, (drum roll please) we now get to add another book onto the end of the list: The Heart Goes Last!"

YAAAAAAY

[Alexa]

I recently ran across one of her children's books, Up in the Tree. It's a fun silly little poem/tale. I can see her creating this for her own daughter and then reading it to her over and over again. In the version I have, a republication from 2005, she seems proudest of it as a publication venture - the Canadian publishing industry is clearly very close to her heart.

[Alexa]

I just read this interesting interview:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/boo...