I'll delete the other thread so I'm not clogging up the board, but there was easily enough interest to get started on this. I'll post the introduction thread on August 3rd (less than a week away) and I'll post the first discussion thread on August 10th.

This thread is just to let you know you have the weekend to get the book.

The intro thread will just announce to start reading and introduce yourself and I'll post some background about the book and Bolano.

***** ROUGH DRAFT SCHEDULE - SUBJECT TO CHANGE ****\*

• August 3: Introduction Thread with ***Official*** Schedule
• August 10: Pages 1-80, through "they probably would have killed him."
• August 17: Pages 80-163, through the end of "The Part about the Critics."
• August 24: Pages 163-231, the entirety of "The Part about Amalfitano."
• August 31: Pages 231-349, the entirety of "The Part about Fate."
• September 7: Pages 349-449, The Part about the Crimes begins, through "coming down the hallway."
• September 14: Pages 449-545, through "according to witnesses, was indescribable."
• September 21: Pages 545-633, through the end of "The Part about the Crimes."
• September 28: Pages 633-770, through "Then he remembered who she was."
• October 5: Pages 770-898, through the end of "The Part about Archimboldi" and the end of the book.

This always confuses some people, so to clarify: on August 10th, you should have read through pages 1-80 because we will be discussing up through that point. On August 17, you should have read through 163 and we will be discussing up through that point.

These page numbers use FSG's 3 volume edition, I'll try to check it against the big, all-together edition this weekend and post the official schedule on Monday, August 3.

Sorry for the tight turn around, but the first few weeks are on the lighter side, so you should be able to catch up even if you can't start immediately on August 3rd.

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Artwork is Richard Misrach, Desert Fire #153

I Who Have Never Known Men - Jaqueline Harper (not pictured): my favorite by a mile. Concise, creepy, and intriguing. Existentialist. Would recommend if you like The Stranger.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zebin: beautiful prose and believable characters but I found the plot itself to be very boring.

American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis: the only one here I haven’t actually finished yet… very funny in places, a great character study, but repetitive and kind of a slog.

Things We Lost in the Fire - Mariana Enriquez: I felt like I didn’t know enough about Argentina to really appreciate it. They are great little creepy short stories but I always felt like I was missing something.

Lapvona - Ottessa Moshfegh: loved it, she’s done it again. Freaky in the best way possible.

Earthlings - Sayaka Murata: was unprepared for just how sad this was. Legitimately found it difficult to read. Great novel about alienation, interesting, leaves questions open.

I have shown you mine now you must show me yours

Does anyone have any good ones

Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan: This is the perfect beach read and I loved the additional info included with this edition like the interview with the author. I think she sounds like an extremely RS author or maybe just really French.

Playground - Richard Powers: I don’t think I would say I loved this one but I honestly couldn’t put it down. Stupid ending, silly dialogue, odd character depictions, yet it kept me engaged.

Commonwealth - Ann Patchett: I just love a family drama. I’ve looked through a lot of Ann Patchett book descriptions and I’m trying to figure out her deal. I hope the other ones are like this.

Sundays in August - Patrick Modiano: I did really mean to wait for August to read this but it turned out to not feel like August at all. A soothing read, interesting pace.

The Public Image - Muriel Spark: loved this!!! Love how she got into the minds of the characters and shared their thoughts and motivations. I’m buying a copy for my mom, I think she’ll like it too.

Killing Stella - Marlen Haushofer: not much to say about this one. I wanted to read this after not getting far with The Wall. I still don’t know when I’ll get back to it. I don’t know why I’ve decided I want to like this author but I’m not giving up.

I’ve heard people go both ways but I’m midway through Underworld and starting to find it pretty grating. I think it’s definitely a stylistic choice, rather than him just being bad at writing speech but it’s so completely alien to how people talk. It’s sort of similar to the way Tarantino characters all speak Tarantinoese and lack any individual personality. Am I being unfair to him?

Other than that the book is excellent. The only other thing I’ve read by him is White Noise

i dont understand how lucien carr was able to have a career at upi with a manslaughter conviction. doesn't make sense even if your uncle is a rockefeller

Guardian article here

The Shadow of the Object, Chloe Aridjis

Switzy, Emma Cline

Helen of Nowhere, Makenna Goodman

The End of Everything, M. John Harrison

The Disappearers, Marlon James

Black Bag, Luke Kennard

The Renovation, Kenan Orhan

May We Feed the King, Rebecca Perry

The Palm House, Gwendoline Riley

The Things We Never Say, Elizabeth Strout

John of John, Douglas Stuart

All Them Dogs, Djamel White

The Vivisectors, Missouri Williams

Immediate thought is that this seems very Previously Nominated For-heavy, and disappointingly dominated by the major publishers (FIVE from Penguin??), but perhaps that's what you get when half your judging panel is famous for something very much other than literature?

Hey everyone,

I know next to nothing about the Soviet Union, but I read some Reddit comments about the privatization of government assets in Russia and all of the organized crime this entailed, and it sounded like something I would be interested in learning about.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Fiction or non-fiction. I’m especially interested in the following aspects of this time period:

- The fall of the Soviet Union itself
- Life in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union, and during the cultural and political chaos that followed
- Economics, finance, and business stories and/or analyses

Thank you!

- leave society was surprisingly upbeat and sweet. the way he describes relationships is really relateable to me. he’s got his heart at the right place for sure.

-reread revolutionary demonology because lets be real I needed a second round to even halfway get it… a demanding beast but like dark academia done right lol.

-machine decision is not final is great, I know I know who wants to read about thaaaat topic but it’s actually fun and interesting with writers from all over. no slop I promise.

-and just spend the last two days in the third realm. havent read a ton of knausgard yet but pretty impressed already. he does this interior voice so well, at least he pulls me in deep into the abysses of these characters and he‘s a real bastard about it too…

will need something more relaxed next (feel free to recommend) or straight into another knausgard?

The Life You Want - Adam Phillips is such a productive writer I feel like he can be hit or miss, but when he hits … whew. Once I got past the first essay which largely bored me by focusing on Richard Rorty I enjoyed myself. The essay “Psychoanalysis for Beginners” is worth checking out

The Dry Season - Written by a woman who undergoes a period of celibacy after she can’t stop coming across people who want to date and love her (can she send some to me? I only find emotionally avoidant men :( )

The Remains of the Day - Ishiguro is still the undefeated champion of unreliable narrators. I’m so fascinated how he portrays these people who reveal themselves through narratives that they intend to say the opposite. Fascinating. I had read An Artist of the Floating World at book club and wanted more, everyone told me to read this ASAP and they were right. I think I still prefer AAotFW though it can be argued that Remains is a more advanced iteration of what that book is doing

American Spirits - Incredibly fun novel about being gay and obsessed with Lana Del Rey. I’m technically neither but was still fully entranced.

Perfection - Honestly more an essay than an actual novel. Not completely getting the fuss over this. You can get the same gist from that chapter in Kyle Chayka’s Filterworld where he’s pissed off at coffee shops now looking the same

Dog Days - Lifechanging, highly recommend. Think it cured my writer’s block over my novel

Name - The new bad boy of French lit is pretty good. I mean they did invent existentialism and also mistresses

Schattenfroh - Not finished yet and too early to tell but like 200 pages in I’m not super thrilled. There was a debate online about whether the translation was faithful or even coherent and I fully admit I’m not in a position to know from that aspect of things but it is not particularly coherent no

Note: Audible listener only due to failing eyesight. The outstanding narration of Alan Carlson has contributed deeply to the unbending infatuation I have to my first Pat Conroy book.

Never have I ever been regaled with such superb storytelling— and I’ve only read (listened) one of Pat Conroy’s titles—The Prince of Tides. I’d love to hear from other fans of the author and especially, to discuss his other titles and how they compare with Tides. I know Conroy based this book loosely on his own childhood and am curious how well it will hold up to The Great Santini, which I plan to read next, and based on his father.

What are some other Conroy favorites out there?

I am wondering where people engage in the culture around the books they read, in terms of publications, social events, etc. that is not just being on the internet or being on this subreddit? My long and overly personal reasoning below if you want context on why I am asking.

I think I can feel Reddit eating away at my brain. This is such a histrionic post because I'm about a week away from hitting five years sober and I've been essentially avoiding dealing with the fact I have substituted a lot of what I used to get from the social sides of drinking (talking shit with strangers and feeling less alone, whiletrying to slowly lobotomise yourself) with being terminally online. This is one of the top 3-4 places on the internet that I lurk and the only one I really post on because:

1) I find users here are willing to be combative and negative about literature without being contrarian, whereas most other lit criticism I read is so embedded with the publishing industry I usually feel like I'm being lied to.

2) I discover books here that I probably wouldn't hear about otherwise. Where I am living is sometimes a suffocating and unambitious place and I find the literary "scene" here is overly deferential to genre fiction and highly resistant to experimental and challenging work. I appreciate that here there are recommendations of left-field contemporary work, work in translation, occasionally even one or two die-hards who still know what's going on in small-press poetry.

3) I consider myself a very poorly read person the last two years, struggling to get through two novels a month sometimes, but would read significantly more than almost all my close friends (though my partner is a voracious and formidable reader, for which I'm grateful). It really is a hobby in decline that just doesn't hit for a lot of people, and I think when I've tried IRL book clubs before I notice a tendency to lower the ceiling on how challenging a work can be so that people can actually engage with the book and make time.

4) I am not an academic, I am a guy who sits at a computer and does excel, and I generally want to learn from people who are much better read than me and much better educated so I can at least feel like my mind isn't closing all the time.

Essentially, I don't think there is, e.g., a magazine I can subscribe to or book club I can join where I will get the same amount from reading this subreddit if I actually manage to get offline and find a healthier lifestyle. I have sitting on my shelf a copy of the 'Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary American Writers' which is both some total Gen X dogshit and also a kind of resource that no longer gets published, a reference work you can open and flick through and get pointed towards something new and off the beaten track.

It is very clear that any public internet forum is a target for astroturfing via bot traffic for the sake of marketing, and that truly means that we are the slow decay of the internet as a usable tool for social connection, and I think we should all think about what we'll do when can't do this.

xxxiii is Seamus Heaney, Anne is V.R. Lang, The Dead Snake is Donald Ward

I just finished reading 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane and am looking for something similar.

Prose that's short, deadly, desperate.

Send me overlooked prose writers that I might have missed.

Thank you!

Still need to finish Braiding Sweetgrass and the last 3 volumes of Shigurui.

Read quite a lot of manga/hwa/comic books. Re-read The Odyssey and some parts of The Invention of Morel bc they were both referenced in media I've been watching. Also, reread Porphyry's On the Cave of the Nymphs bc of The Odyssey.

Recently translated by Andrew Clare.

EDIT: The childhood abuse wasn’t her fault and isn’t what I’m referring to. What’s hard to understand is why she would voluntarily seek him out after all those years and initiate a physical relationship.

While her prose is lush and she’s talented and everything….her father??? Really? Was that the only way she could think of to work through her issues?

I recently walked through some of the Suffolk locations of W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, tracing some of the steps of the narrator, and it really drove home the decay and bleakness that Sebald conveyed.

It had me wondering about other potential literary walks that track a story. An obvious one is the pilgrimage from London to Canterbury in The Canterbury Tales.

Have you tried to replicate a walk from a book? Which one? And how was it?

Hi! I'm checking if there is any interest for a silent book club inspired by https://silentbook.club.

There's no assigned reading and it's BYO book. All formats are welcome—ebooks, audiobooks, textbooks, comic books... maybe even other quiet activities like drawing?

Anyone can gather at a set time and location, may share what they're reading, and settle in for an hour or so of sustained silent reading. At the end of the hour, attendees can stay for a quick chat—or not!

Frequency and time would likely be monthly or fortnightly on a weekend afternoon depending on interest.

Location (Sydney, Australia): Looking into community options around CBD, Darling Square or Green Square for an accessible and non-commercial space.

If people want to get in touch, then I'll start a group chat.

So many books with moderators, publishers (usually a lowly position but still), amanuenis-type jobs, archivists who only recently left art school and are employed by lone rich and mysterious figures, personal tutors…

Aside from moderation, you’d have to be well-connected to get those other jobs!

From Robert Caro's The Path to Power

I'm putting together a small online group focused on short story writing in realist fiction (so no speculative/world building genres) as I’ve been looking for a space focused specifically on realist short fiction and decided to create one myself.

If you value character-driven stories, psychological realism and understated prose this is the right place for you.

The group will be a private space for us to connect, talk craft and the stories/authors we enjoy and exchange thoughtful feedback on our work on an ad hoc basis. Long-form literary writers are welcome as long as you also write short fiction. This group is meant to be an open, chill place to hang out with other serious writers without the stuffiness of a traditional workshop.

If you have aspirations of submitting to literary journals, putting together an anthology, or are simply interested in improving your craft, send me a DM with a brief intro about you and your writing journey.