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Posted

Throughout 2023, the BCF Book Club will be in session! We will vote on categories four times per year (January-March, April-June, July-September, October-December) and participants will choose a book from that category. This means that we might not all be reading the same book, but we will all be reading from the same category. 

 

Please leave your category suggestions for the first Book Club event below! It would be helpful if you could leave a book suggestion next to your suggested category. We will hold a poll to choose our final category on January 1st!

  • Like 1
Posted

My category suggestion:

 

A Book About Time

Books related to time travel would fit well with this, such as H.G. Wells' The Time Machine or Jodi Taylor's Chronicles of St Mary's series :).

Posted (edited)

Hard-boiled Crime - Richard Stark Parker Novels, Stephen King has written a couple

Gothic Fiction - The Castle of Otranto,  Horace Walpol

Horror - This is actually a wider genre than it would appear - Interview With The Vampire: Number 1 in series Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice 

Classic - All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque (Author), Brian Murdoch (Translator)

Poetry - Also a wide topic - The Luckiest Guy Alive, John Cooper Clarke 

Biography - American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin  

Stream of Consciousness - The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

Edited by lunababymoonchild
Posted

I'm not sure how this works.  I don't know how many members/participants there will be, but if we all list half a dozen possible categories, then there'll be more categories than people to vote on them, which means could well land up with a whole bunch of categories with just one vote.

Posted

We used to do this in a book group I was in and it worked really well, admittedly it wasn't as big as this one!  Maybe if we get more than one clear result we can go with the most popular choice, and then use the next popular for the next  read?

Posted
3 hours ago, willoyd said:

I'm not sure how this works.  I don't know how many members/participants there will be, but if we all list half a dozen possible categories, then there'll be more categories than people to vote on them, which means could well land up with a whole bunch of categories with just one vote.

I wasn't anticipating quite so many suggestions, (@lunababymoonchild you are too good at it :lol:). How would others feel about limiting to one suggestion per person? Of course, if you have more than one excellent idea, you can save one for the next challenge!

Posted

Probably a good idea to limit it to one per person, I think I still have the list from my old book group somewhere so there are quite a few topics on there.  Sometimes we made it a topical theme eg holidays for the summer read, and winter for the winter read, etc.

Posted

Let’s get our list up then! Please leave your suggestions in this thread and I’ll aim to get the poll up tomorrow if we have enough of a response :) 

Posted (edited)

I plan on taking part, and have liked all the suggestions (looking mostly at you lunababymoonchild :)) made.

 

Time travel or stream of consciousness so far? Yep! A happy reader here. 

Edited by Chrissy
  • Like 1
Posted

Thanks, Hayley. I liked the two suggestions already made, so felt it redundant to add one of my own.

 

If there is a stream of consciousness novel out there about time, then I will be delighted! 🙂

  • Like 1
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Hayley said:

Stream of Consciousness it is!

 

 

I really don’t know what I want to read for this one yet - what are you all going for!?

I don't know yet. It may be Dorothy M Richardson's Interim or try Samuel Beckett's the Unnamable again. Or something else .............

Edited by lunababymoonchild
Posted

I might give this one a miss, not really my type of thing, but will be interested to see what everyone thinks of their read.

Posted
35 minutes ago, Madeleine said:

I might give this one a miss, not really my type of thing, but will be interested to see what everyone thinks of their read.

If I may suggest, Orlando by Virginia Woolf is short and not - but that's just my opinion - difficult to understand, especially if you suspend your disbelief. It was the first s-o-c that I read and I loved it.

Posted
2 hours ago, Madeleine said:

I might give this one a miss, not really my type of thing, but will be interested to see what everyone thinks of their read.

I haven’t read many stream of consciousness texts (and, to be honest, I’ve disliked most of the ones I have read…) but I really liked Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf. It’s basically a really beautiful description of a nice garden! Plus it’s very short, so you haven’t wasted a lot of time if you don’t like it 😄

  • Like 1
Posted

I've been muddling over what to read for this, and have been looking for a stream of consciousness novel outside of the usual ones listed (Woolf, Faulkner etc),  but outside of the typically listed books are the interior monologue vs stream of consciousness debates, and without reading the books it will be tricky to tell which one a book may be. 

 

With this in mind, I thought I'd read Orlando by Virginia Woolf as my main read. I have planned on reading this for years, so now seems the perfect time to do so. I like the thought of Woolf's descriptive Kew Gardens (Thanks @Hayley), so I will throw that one in too. These are both considered definite Stream of Consciousness, so I will be fulfilling the requirement.

 

When looking for more modern S-o-C novels, a few titles that popped up as potentials were A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, and The Wall by Marlen Haushoffer. I'm pretty sure I have the Dave Eggers on a bookshelf here somewhere, and I am tempted to buy The Wall. Whether these are true S-0-C, or contain aspects that are, I really don't know, but I think I may read them to find out.  We have three months for this genre, I may as well fill those months. :)

Posted (edited)
26 minutes ago, Chrissy said:

I've been muddling over what to read for this, and have been looking for a stream of consciousness novel outside of the usual ones listed (Woolf, Faulkner etc),  but outside of the typically listed books are the interior monologue vs stream of consciousness debates, and without reading the books it will be tricky to tell which one a book may be. 

 

With this in mind, I thought I'd read Orlando by Virginia Woolf as my main read. I have planned on reading this for years, so now seems the perfect time to do so. I like the thought of Woolf's descriptive Kew Gardens (Thanks @Hayley), so I will throw that one in too. These are both considered definite Stream of Consciousness, so I will be fulfilling the requirement.

 

When looking for more modern S-o-C novels, a few titles that popped up as potentials were A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, and The Wall by Marlen Haushoffer. I'm pretty sure I have the Dave Eggers on a bookshelf here somewhere, and I am tempted to buy The Wall. Whether these are true S-0-C, or contain aspects that are, I really don't know, but I think I may read them to find out.  We have three months for this genre, I may as well fill those months. :)

 

If you are looking for something different I can recommend Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage. It's 13 sections which she called chapters and "Pointed Roofs was the first volume of Pilgrimage, the first complete stream of consciousness novel published in English." credit Wikipedia. She hated the term stream of consciousness and called it interior monologue (which is confusing).

 

Yes, thanks @Hayley for Virigina Woolf's Kew Gardens recommendation. I bought that in a collection of her short stories and will undoubtedly read it. I still haven't decided what I will read but I will read stream of consciousness as it's my favourite technique (and I'll pace myself as I have until March).

Edited by lunababymoonchild
dodgy typing
  • 2 months later...
Posted

Just a reminder that you only have until the end of the week for the first book club category - Stream of Consciousness!

 

Look out for voting on the next category :) 

Posted
3 hours ago, Hayley said:

Just a reminder that you only have until the end of the week for the first book club category - Stream of Consciousness!

 

Look out for voting on the next category :) 

Thanks I had forgotten

 

To that end  Monday or Tuesday, Virginia Woolf. Two pages of exquisiteness, highly recommended. 

  • Like 1
Posted
On 3/27/2023 at 3:02 PM, Hayley said:

Just a reminder that you only have until the end of the week for the first book club category - Stream of Consciousness!

 

Look out for voting on the next category :) 

 

I'm on it!

Making my way at a good (ish) pace through Orlando

Really glad we did this, as I would have continued to put off reading this, and I'm really enjoying it. 🙂

  • Like 1
Posted
8 hours ago, Chrissy said:

Making my way at a good (ish) pace through Orlando

Really glad we did this, as I would have continued to put off reading this, and I'm really enjoying it. 🙂

Orlando was one of the books I nearly chose too! I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it 😄

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