1Kit99Read
Hi, I am Catherine and I am just dipping my toes into the LibraryThing world for the first time. I fell into a bit of a reading slump this year and have recently found this site and I think it will be a great idea to keep track of the books I read.
I completed an English degree last year and, more recently, I just finished my masters degree in contemporary literature. As a result, I have been reading pretty constantly for the last few years but now I am looking forward to making my own choices and reading for pleasure. I really enjoy the community aspect of reading and learning about other reader’s perspectives on books I have read, but I am the kind of person who freezes up and gets way too anxious in group situations. So I think online book clubs such as this are a good way of bridging that gap and I am just looking forward to keeping myself accountable and reading as much as possible.
In the past month, I have read:
1. Gilead - Marilynne Robinson. (5/5)
2. If on a winter’s night a traveler - Italy Calvino (5/5)
3. I’m Glad My Mom Died - Jennette McCurdy (4/5)
4. Man’s Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl (4.5/5)
5. Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin (4/5)
I have a few books that have been waiting on the shelf for a long time, so those will be my next focus. I want to finish those this year and then next year get into a more structured flow of reading. So, we’ll see how this goes. I’m obviously open to any input or opinion.
The books I am hoping to read before the end of the year:
1. Geek Love - Katherine Dunn
2. 2666 - Roberto Bolaño
3. The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
4. House of Leaves - Mark Z Danielewski
5. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
6. The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy
7. The Emperor of All Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee
8. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I don’t have any theme I am following, just anything that catches my interest. I’ll be happy if I get these finished by the end of the year. I’ll check in and out each time I finish one, and I can write reviews or comment on the 5 books I have already read maybe. I really enjoyed all of them immensely. I’m just glad I found this group to keep me reading. Thanks.
I completed an English degree last year and, more recently, I just finished my masters degree in contemporary literature. As a result, I have been reading pretty constantly for the last few years but now I am looking forward to making my own choices and reading for pleasure. I really enjoy the community aspect of reading and learning about other reader’s perspectives on books I have read, but I am the kind of person who freezes up and gets way too anxious in group situations. So I think online book clubs such as this are a good way of bridging that gap and I am just looking forward to keeping myself accountable and reading as much as possible.
In the past month, I have read:
1. Gilead - Marilynne Robinson. (5/5)
2. If on a winter’s night a traveler - Italy Calvino (5/5)
3. I’m Glad My Mom Died - Jennette McCurdy (4/5)
4. Man’s Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl (4.5/5)
5. Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin (4/5)
I have a few books that have been waiting on the shelf for a long time, so those will be my next focus. I want to finish those this year and then next year get into a more structured flow of reading. So, we’ll see how this goes. I’m obviously open to any input or opinion.
The books I am hoping to read before the end of the year:
1. Geek Love - Katherine Dunn
2. 2666 - Roberto Bolaño
3. The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
4. House of Leaves - Mark Z Danielewski
5. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
6. The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy
7. The Emperor of All Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee
8. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I don’t have any theme I am following, just anything that catches my interest. I’ll be happy if I get these finished by the end of the year. I’ll check in and out each time I finish one, and I can write reviews or comment on the 5 books I have already read maybe. I really enjoyed all of them immensely. I’m just glad I found this group to keep me reading. Thanks.
2dianeham
Welcome. I have family in Donegal - my father grew up there. You have a very eclectic list there. I always mean to read Geek Love.
3Kit99Read
>2 dianeham: That sounds interesting, Donegal’s a beautiful part of the country. And I mean, it’s always fun to hear about Irish connections around the world.
Yeah, Geek Love is something a little different, and it stands out, so I’ve been looking forward to reading it for a while.
Yeah, Geek Love is something a little different, and it stands out, so I’ve been looking forward to reading it for a while.
4AnnieMod
Welcome to the madhousethe Club, Catherine.
In case noone warned you, chances of you escaping without adding a tone of books to your TBR are slim to none so unless you are very disciplined in your plans, chances are that some of these books will remain for next year because something else around here will catch your eye - book bullets tend to fly very low and very fast in our group... Other from that (or possibly because of that), have fun! :)
In case noone warned you, chances of you escaping without adding a tone of books to your TBR are slim to none so unless you are very disciplined in your plans, chances are that some of these books will remain for next year because something else around here will catch your eye - book bullets tend to fly very low and very fast in our group... Other from that (or possibly because of that), have fun! :)
5Kit99Read
>4 AnnieMod: oh I definitely considered that! I already have a long list of books ready to read next year, but I may be set for a few years yet. I'm always open to suggestions and I am looking forward to learning about book that have evaded me thus far.
6dchaikin
Welcome and nice to see your thread and what you have been reading. In my eyes you have had an amazing month - all five books are either ones I’m really attached to or ones I’ve wanted to read. I would certainly be interested in your thoughts on them.
7MissBrangwen
Hi and welcome!
I am fairly new as well and just joined this group in the beginning of this year. It has influenced my reading in the best way possible and definitely helps me to keep reading and to discover new authors that I have not heard of before.
Congratulations on completing your degrees and have fun reading what you want now!
I am fairly new as well and just joined this group in the beginning of this year. It has influenced my reading in the best way possible and definitely helps me to keep reading and to discover new authors that I have not heard of before.
Congratulations on completing your degrees and have fun reading what you want now!
8labfs39
I'm so glad you started a thread, Catherine. I'm already enjoying it and seeing what you've read recently (I've been meaning to get to the Frankl for AGES) and your plans. I just finished reading my first Bolaño, I picked the much less violent and shorter, By Night in Chile. Dan/dchaikin and I read it at the same time so that we could talk about it. I liked it a lot and will definitely seek out more Bolaño. Have you read any of his other works? I really liked The Sparrow and pretty much anything else she has written. Such diverse things. I heard her speak once, and she's very funny in person. I hated Love in the Time of Cholera, but I loved One Hundred Years of Solitude. Go figure!
9Kit99Read
>8 labfs39: I really enjoyed Man's Search for Meaning, it gave me a lot to think about especially with regard to his form of psychotherapy. I always like a book that can actually change my way of thinking too. I have actually never read any Bolaño before. I learned about 2666 just in passing while researching for an essay on degeneration in the 19th and 20th centuries and it looked interesting. I am also a big Cormac McCarthy fan, so I like a violent borderland epic, I guess. I am interested in the intersection of science fiction with religion, especially Catholicism, so that stoked the interest in The Sparrow. One of my favourite books is Hyperion by Dan Simmons and I thought Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz was very impressive also. I actually started Love in the Time of Cholera about a year ago and, while I found it engaging, I just didn't have time to get through it. One Hundred Years of Solitude is definitely on the list for the near future too.
10labfs39
>9 Kit99Read: I am interested in the intersection of science fiction with religion, especially Catholicism Have you read Anathem yet? It was a challenging read, but impressive and deals with this question too.
11Kit99Read
>10 labfs39: I haven't yet, but it is already on the longlist to read.i'm glad you found it impressive, I'm definitely interested in reading it.
12Kit99Read
Geek Love - Katherine Dunn (4.5/5)
I really enjoyed this book and it ended up being perfect reading just in time for Hallowe'en. It only loses half a point for making me visualise so many vile and repulsive acts and making me wonder what kind of author could think up these things. At a surface level, it is a difficult one to recommend and is maybe not one for the faint of heart, but I think it is very well written and has a lot of interesting things to say.
Geek Love follows the Binewski's, a family of carnival freaks whose parents have bred them, with the use of teratogenic drugs during gestation, to have their own specific mutations for use in their traveling show. They want them to have the "inherent ability to earn a living just by being themselves." (9-10) Arturo the Aqua Boy has flippers in place of limbs; Elly and Iphy are Siamese Twins; the book's narrator, Olympia, is an albino hunchback dwarf; while the youngest, Fortunato (or Chick) has telekinetic powers which take the novel into magical realism territory. The family reveres the unusual and the novel uses them to push the boundaries of what it means to identify as human by magnifying the beauty of the freak form and the grotesque of the human. Carnivals and freak shows have long been places where people can satiate their buried curiosities and acknowledge their base desires. Dunn ponders the fact that all people can at times feel uncomfortable in their own bodies and want to change things about themselves, and with the Binewski's, she shows that all bodies deserve to be looked upon as human.
The book could be written off as just grotesque monster story but those are useful in pointing out tensions and disharmony in society. It is important to be aware of our bodies as constructions that depend on social expectations.
The family recognise the power that comes with their deformity which is so often seen as incredibly personal but in this case is very public. Oly notes that people talk more freely to her as if they have to make up for how much she cannot hide of herself:
"My worst is out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves. They begin out of simple courtesy. Just being visible is my biggest confession" (156). As such, they are constantly in a state of observation.
Arturo, the Machiavellian antagonist of the novel, starts a religion/cult allows its followers to break out of the machine of society.
"I get glimpses of the horror of normality. Each of these innocents on the street is engulfed by a terror of their own ordinariness. They would do anything to be unique" (223)
The Arturans demonstrate this as the audience starts to get involved and change their bodies to become more freakish by having their limbs removed to be more like Arturo. They wish to find happiness in breaking out of the accepted conception of the human body.
Dunn manages not to be pitiful, but instead looks upon the family with quite bemusement.She uses a lot of made up words to emphasise how strange the world is, like "skuttered," "frowzled," and "rooched." Oly writes in a very childlike and descriptive way which works for the character and she never went to a traditional school, learning to read by looking over Arty's shoulder. She mentioned never liking reading and is only keeping the journal to give to Miranda. So it makes sense and helps with the worldbuilding. The whole book is very extreme and over the top. Obviously the most unrealistic aspect is Chick's telekinetic power. That doesn't necessarily make him a freak in the traditional sense like his siblings. In any other book he would be a superhero or something. In this one, he is just not strange enough. The inclusion of this supernatural changes the tone of the novel I think because it can be hidden and therefore is a malevolent mystery. He experiences the double isolation of being a freak within society and his own family and is perhaps the most tragic character in the novel, although he has a lot of competition.
The book also features a frame narrative in which an adult Oly looks back on her family history in order to find a way to explain it to her estranged daughter, Miranda. Miranda is being pursued by a rich woman named Miss Lick who offers to remove her vestigial tail which Oly had refused to have removed as a baby. Miss Lick's personal brand of 'feminism' means mutilating a whole generation of young and attractive women so that they will no longer be sexualised and can focus on their education and career. But the Binewski's are set on using and exploiting what you are born with. Oly insists that "a true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born." For Oly and her family, the body is meant to be observed, fetishised and capitalised upon.
There is a whole lot that I could say about this novel but I really think there is so much of it that should be read first without any spoilers. Just one more aspect of the novel I find interesting is use of references to Shakespeare's The Tempest, which is one of his plays which I think provides it with a rich literary significance and is a connection that could be worth exploring in greater detail.
I really enjoyed this book and it ended up being perfect reading just in time for Hallowe'en. It only loses half a point for making me visualise so many vile and repulsive acts and making me wonder what kind of author could think up these things. At a surface level, it is a difficult one to recommend and is maybe not one for the faint of heart, but I think it is very well written and has a lot of interesting things to say.
Geek Love follows the Binewski's, a family of carnival freaks whose parents have bred them, with the use of teratogenic drugs during gestation, to have their own specific mutations for use in their traveling show. They want them to have the "inherent ability to earn a living just by being themselves." (9-10) Arturo the Aqua Boy has flippers in place of limbs; Elly and Iphy are Siamese Twins; the book's narrator, Olympia, is an albino hunchback dwarf; while the youngest, Fortunato (or Chick) has telekinetic powers which take the novel into magical realism territory. The family reveres the unusual and the novel uses them to push the boundaries of what it means to identify as human by magnifying the beauty of the freak form and the grotesque of the human. Carnivals and freak shows have long been places where people can satiate their buried curiosities and acknowledge their base desires. Dunn ponders the fact that all people can at times feel uncomfortable in their own bodies and want to change things about themselves, and with the Binewski's, she shows that all bodies deserve to be looked upon as human.
The book could be written off as just grotesque monster story but those are useful in pointing out tensions and disharmony in society. It is important to be aware of our bodies as constructions that depend on social expectations.
The family recognise the power that comes with their deformity which is so often seen as incredibly personal but in this case is very public. Oly notes that people talk more freely to her as if they have to make up for how much she cannot hide of herself:
"My worst is out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves. They begin out of simple courtesy. Just being visible is my biggest confession" (156). As such, they are constantly in a state of observation.
Arturo, the Machiavellian antagonist of the novel, starts a religion/cult allows its followers to break out of the machine of society.
"I get glimpses of the horror of normality. Each of these innocents on the street is engulfed by a terror of their own ordinariness. They would do anything to be unique" (223)
The Arturans demonstrate this as the audience starts to get involved and change their bodies to become more freakish by having their limbs removed to be more like Arturo. They wish to find happiness in breaking out of the accepted conception of the human body.
Dunn manages not to be pitiful, but instead looks upon the family with quite bemusement.She uses a lot of made up words to emphasise how strange the world is, like "skuttered," "frowzled," and "rooched." Oly writes in a very childlike and descriptive way which works for the character and she never went to a traditional school, learning to read by looking over Arty's shoulder. She mentioned never liking reading and is only keeping the journal to give to Miranda. So it makes sense and helps with the worldbuilding. The whole book is very extreme and over the top. Obviously the most unrealistic aspect is Chick's telekinetic power. That doesn't necessarily make him a freak in the traditional sense like his siblings. In any other book he would be a superhero or something. In this one, he is just not strange enough. The inclusion of this supernatural changes the tone of the novel I think because it can be hidden and therefore is a malevolent mystery. He experiences the double isolation of being a freak within society and his own family and is perhaps the most tragic character in the novel, although he has a lot of competition.
The book also features a frame narrative in which an adult Oly looks back on her family history in order to find a way to explain it to her estranged daughter, Miranda. Miranda is being pursued by a rich woman named Miss Lick who offers to remove her vestigial tail which Oly had refused to have removed as a baby. Miss Lick's personal brand of 'feminism' means mutilating a whole generation of young and attractive women so that they will no longer be sexualised and can focus on their education and career. But the Binewski's are set on using and exploiting what you are born with. Oly insists that "a true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born." For Oly and her family, the body is meant to be observed, fetishised and capitalised upon.
There is a whole lot that I could say about this novel but I really think there is so much of it that should be read first without any spoilers. Just one more aspect of the novel I find interesting is use of references to Shakespeare's The Tempest, which is one of his plays which I think provides it with a rich literary significance and is a connection that could be worth exploring in greater detail.
13dchaikin
Sounds grotesquely weird 🙂 Reading your review and thinking about The Tempest, I’m imagining Caliban, or perhaps several Calibans. But there are a lot different ways blend or reference or build off the play.
14labfs39
>12 Kit99Read: I am both intrigued and repulsed by the premise of Geek Love. Flips the bioethics of gene manipulation on its head. Great review.
16rocketjk
Hey, welcome to Club Read. I read Geek Love a few years back. I found it progressively hard to get through, not because it wasn't really well written (it was), but because, as you say, it begins to describe ever greater evil. I found it to be an entirely memorable novel about the nature of evil and about the way an innocent can become bound to evil through love.
17AlisonY
Welcome, Catherine! I'm a bit behind with CR lately, so just found your thread.
Looking forward to your reviews - you have some great titles in your upcoming list. I read The Emperor of All Maladies earlier in the year (or was it last year - they all seem to merge since Covid) - I'll be interested in your thoughts.
I'm in Co. Down, so great to have another person from our fair isle on CR!
Looking forward to your reviews - you have some great titles in your upcoming list. I read The Emperor of All Maladies earlier in the year (or was it last year - they all seem to merge since Covid) - I'll be interested in your thoughts.
I'm in Co. Down, so great to have another person from our fair isle on CR!
