Help! I need to pick a book for book club

I have to pick a book for book club tonight and I have no clear idea.

Most of my picks have tended to be either SportsJournalists.com regulars — thanks Jones — or writers I know because they are friends of a friend of another friend sort.

Any suggestions? The clock is ticking...

 

'Skinny Legs and All' - Tom Robbins

 

There was a story on NPR today about good books for book clubs. I'll post a link later.

 

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

You're welcome!

 

'Geek Love' was fantastic.
I still recommend 'Skinny Legs and All,' though.

 

Disturbing lack of love for Everybody Poops

 

Geek Love will freak too many people out. Incestuous dwarf sex/pregnancy might go over like a giant turd with some of your book clubbers.

Instead, try:

And Then Things Came To The End, by Joshua Ferris.

Think of it as Catch-22 meets the Dunder Mifflin gang from Scranton, PA.

Funny, creative, sad, timely, relateable. Maybe about 50 pages too long in the middle, but definitely one of the best works of popular literature in the last few years.

My other suggestion would be Netherland, by Joseph O'Neil. A powerful meditation on memory, post-9/11 NYC, and the death of the American dream. A bit like Gatsby, but with cricket.

 

Great call.

 

That's a strong argument in favor of 'Geek Love.' Most book clubs need a turd in the punchbowl.
I'll point out that 'Skinny Legs and All' deals with the omphalos, terroris attacks in NYC more than a decade before they actually happened, sex, Salome and the Dance of the Seven Veils, a giant Airstream trailer shaped like a turkey, the secret lives of inanimate objects, art and bab ganoush.
There's a lot going on that book.



THIS IS THE ROOM of the wolfmother wallpaper. The toadstool motel you once thought a mere folk tale, a corny, obsolete, rural invention.

This is the room where your wisest ancestor was born, be you Christian, Arab, or Jew. The linoleum underfoot is sacred linoleum. Please remove your shoes. Quite recently, the linoleum here was restored to its original luster with the aid of a wax made from hornet fat. It scuffs easily. So never mind if there are holes in your socks.

This is the room where your music was invented. Notice the cracked drumhead spiked to the wall, spiked to the wolfmother wallpaper above the corner sink where the wayward wife washed out her silk underpants, inspecting them in the blue seepage from the No Vacancy neon that flickered suspiciously out in the thin lizard dawn.

What room is this? This is the room where the antler carved the pumpkin. This is the room where the gutter pipes drank the moonlight. This is the room where moss gradually silenced the treasure, rubies being the last to go. Transmissions from insect antennae were monitored in this room. It's amazing how often their broadcasts referred to the stars.

A clue: this is the room where the Painted Stick was buried, where the Conch Shell lay wrapped in its adoring papyrus. Lovers, like serpents, shed their old skin in this clay room. Now do you remember the wallpaper? The language of the wallpaper? The wolfmother's blood roses that vibrated there?

Enough of this wild fox barking. You pulled up in the forest Cadillac, the vehicle you claimed you'd forgotten how to drive. You parked between the swimming pool and the row of blackened skulls. Of course, you know what room this is.

This is the room where Jezebel frescoed her eyelids with history's tragic glitter, where Delilah practiced for her beautician's license, the room in which Salome dropped the seventh veil while dancing the dance of ultimate cognition, skinny legs and all.

 

This would have been good advice, like, 10 books ago. Been there, done that.

Turns out the SOS was a month too early. I'm not picking until next time.

Geek Love will be my choice, I like a good freak show.

Here's the last few books, with the most current selection and editorial comment on each:

 

So, you've disliked every book picked for the past 13 months? Really?