Ballot for 2009 - 2010 selections

Ballot for next year's books:

Blood and Guts in High School - Kathy Acker

Louis Reil: A Comic-Strip Biography - Chester Brown

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino

Cronopios and Famas - Julio Cortazar

House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski

The Dark Night Returns - Frank Miller

The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid - Michael Ondaatje

Tropisms - Nathalie Sarraute

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

Email me your top four selections in order of preference before our meeting on May 21st, OR make sure to come to the May 21st meeting and vote with a paper ballot. In the event we elect to read lengthy works, I'll split them up as need be.

It was also suggested that we meet once a month, instead of every other month. If you would prefer this, let me know before May 21st or come to the May 21st reading voice your opinion.

Our next book is Bearheart by Gerald Vizenor

Gerald Vizenor’s first novel reverses the sentiment of Manifest Destiny as Proude Cedarfair and his wife Rosina travel south through the ruins of a white world that ran out of gas. The Cedarfairs, and a bizarre collection of disciples, are forced on a pilgrimage when government agents descend on the reservation to claim their sacred cedar trees for fuel.

An unclassifiable mix of mythology, fictional satire, cultural theory, and esoteric history, Vizenor’s prose will point your mind into unseen nooks of the American psychic landscape.

If you're digging around for a used copy, Bearheart was originally released with title Darkness in St. Louis: Bearheart.

May's meeting will also be the final vote for next year's selections, so if don't vote via email before then, be sure to come that this meeting. (And Vizenor is one of favorite authors, so you should come anyway.)

We'll be meeting to discuss this book May 21st at the Main Library in Conference Rm 3 at 6pm. Feel free to bring food and drink.

Some thoughts about Labyrinths...

- Borges is always sited as being highly influential. Heck, even I said it when whipping up a blurb for this blog. What aspects of his work are influential? In the works we’ve read so far can we see his influence?

- Borges is also cited as a giant in “world” literature. His works seem totally European to me. Any thoughts about this?

- I found these stories, sometimes, very funny. Would you consider his stories satire? Why do scholars and readers have so much trouble classifying his stories?

- Two ideas that recur over and over are the circular nature of time and that all persons are really a singular person. Do these ideas have any validity in reality?

Here’s a great Borges website:

http://www.themodernword.com/borges/

We'll be meeting to discuss this book March 19th at the Main Library in Conference Rm 3 at 6pm. Feel free to bring food and drink.