It's Unanimous! Our next pick: The Vet's Daughter

The voting is finished, and the choice is in: we'll be reading Barbara Comyns's novel The Vet's Daughter as our next pick. The discussion will begin on January 15th. Everyone is welcome to join in!

At long last, time for another book!

Rohan got the ball rolling on choosing another book, and I volunteered to come up with a list for us to vote on, so here goes! But first, an explanation: this group is open to absolutely anybody who wants to participate. You don't need to do anything to join us except to read the book and participate in the discussion in whatever way you want to. That could include something as simple as reading along and commenting on the posts here, or perhaps publishing a post on your own blog, or possibly publishing a post on this site. Leave a comment here if you'd like to publish a post on this blog, and we'll figure out how to get that done.

For this round, I thought about what books I'd like to discuss with you all the most, and for some reason books from the 1950s were coming to mind. So, here's a list of titles I think we might enjoy. Let's vote by next Wednesday, November 26th. Perhaps we could discuss the book on or around January 15th? I thought that date was far enough away to give us plenty of time to read and also enough after the holidays that they won't interfere. If anyone thinks another date would be better, though, just let me know.

So, vote for your choice in the comments!

• Mary McCarthy's Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957): "Tempering memory with invention, McCarthy describes how, orphaned at six, she spent much of her childhood shuttled between two sets of grandparents and three religions—Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. One of four children, she suffered abuse at the hands of her great-aunt and uncle until she moved to Seattle to be raised by her maternal grandparents. Early on, McCarthy lets the reader in on her secret: The chapter you just read may not be wholly reliable—facts have been distilled through the hazy lens of time and distance."
•  Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter (1959): "The Vet's Daughter combines shocking realism with a visionary edge. The vet lives with his bedridden wife and shy daughter Alice in a sinister London suburb. He works constantly, captive to a strange private fury, and treats his family with brutality and contempt. After his wife's death, the vet takes up with a crass, needling woman who tries to refashion Alice in her own image. And yet as Alice retreats ever deeper into a dream world, she discovers an extraordinary secret power of her own."
• James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953): "First published in 1953 when James Baldwin was nearly 30, Go Tell It on the Mountain is a young man's novel, as tightly coiled as a new spring, yet tempered by a maturing man's confidence and empathy. It's not a long book, and its action spans but a single day--yet the author packs in enough emotion, detail, and intimate revelation to make his story feel like a mid-20th-century epic. Using as a frame the spiritual and moral awakening of 14-year-old John Grimes during a Saturday night service in a Harlem storefront church, Baldwin lays bare the secrets of a tormented black family during the depression."
• Yukio Mishima, Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956): "Because of the boyhood trauma of seeing his mother make love to another man in the presence of his dying father, Mizoguchi becomes a hopeless stutterer. Taunted by his schoolmates, he feels utterly alone until he becomes an acolyte at a famous temple in Kyoto. He quickly becomes obsessed with the beauty of the temple. Even when tempted by a friend into exploring the geisha district, he cannot escape its image. In the novel's soaring climax, he tries desperately to free himself from his fixation."
• Ira Levin, A Kiss Before Dying (1953): "A Kiss Before Dying not only debuted the talent of best-selling novelist Ira Levin to rave reviews and an Edgar Award, it also set a new standard in the art of psychological suspense. It tells the shocking tale of a young man who will stop at nothing—not even murder—to get where he wants to go. For he has dreams, plans. He also has charm, good looks, intelligence. And he has a problem. Her name is Dorothy; she loves him, and she’s pregnant. The solution may demand desperate measures. But, then, he looks like the kind of guy who could get away with murder."

Hello? Is Anybody Out There?

What happened? One minute we were all enthusiastically discussing Jamaica Inn, and the next minute it was complete radio silence! It hardly seems possible, but almost a year has gone by since our last read.

I don't think any one of us made a conscious decision to let this group lapse. Probably we were all just caught up in other things and other conversations. But tonight I was thinking that, much as I enjoy following the diverse book discussions we're all still having on our own sites or on Twitter, I rather miss meeting up here once in a while to talk all together about a book we have in common.

I put out a tweet to that effect and Rebecca said she felt the same way, so we started wondering how the rest of the group feels. A quick post here seemed like the best way to find out. Is there interest in picking up again? If people had lost interest, or it had stopped being fun, are there factors we could address and improve on -- book choices, pacing, anything else? Or do people already feel pulled in too many directions, so that this group has become that one thing too many? Energy ebbs and flows for this kind of thing, and that's only natural. It just seemed worth checking whether we were done or just paused.