YES! I think coke is tied conceptually to the yuppies of the 80s.
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I can definitely say it wasnât me. Still, looking on the bright side, at least thereâs no pressure on the choice for the next one. 
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It was @aeon @miasmâs suggestion.
To be fair, lots of people voted for it. I wanted to read it. I just didnât like it. And if Iâd bothered reading anything about it other than just going by author, I might have not voted for it. Câest la vie. It was just a few days of reading, and Iâve read worse.
And you - you should be captaining a spaceship around Charybdis instead of reading this. You had your chance.
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Nah, itâs good. Iâve got commitment issues when it comes to RPGs.
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Ah yes. I hated that conversation so much I skimmed a lot of it.
BTW, on that topic, this article from The Atlantic is excellent: The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous - The Atlantic
(spoiler: neither Ali nor Hol is right)
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Yeah, that was my joke: most of us did vote for it, after all. But I do really like discussing chapter-by-chapter, discovering the story together. That wouldnât work so well with a book some of us had read before, and so the choice is gonna be a kind of crapshoot when none of us have read the book.
Sometimes, the bear eats you, after all. But I love the way this discussion has unfolded, and I personally wouldnât change a thing. I hope next time we again choose a book none of us has read, and I hope we read it the same way too, though I wouldnât object to quickening the pace by discussing twice a week rather than once. But for myself, this pace has served my needs perfectly, but we also talk all week long about other things, too.
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I think weâve discovered the real reason for the voting setup: itâs a way to ensure that no one can claim they didnât vote for the selection after the fact!
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Pat Cadigan on talking to people with cancer (like herself), including some bits about Banks.
As far as the whole âweâre seeing these people through Kitâs problematic eyesâ thing, Iâm finding that problematic. It excuses some character issues, but Iâm not really seeing it evident enough to imply authorial intent. I think weâre Rorschach-blotting, trying to make the writing better than it is.
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This is a tangent but I think Family Plot is great. Itâs just that itâs an outright comedy, while his other films arenât - though they are almost all deeply, and darkly, comic, which is essential to his work.
I think it also helps to consider it in context - itâs partly a satire of other types of crime movies and TV that came out in the late 60s and early 70s (like Columbo, which I do love). Obviously not entirely successful and not as objectively âgoodâ as Hitchcockâs masterworks, but thoroughly enjoyable.
I suppose if I hadnât seen it only after seeing almost all of his other stuff first I might have felt differently about it - reminiscent perhaps of Cory Doctorowâs review of The Quarry - but then not really, because Hitchcockâs films donât really build on each other, they are great in a stand-alone way (and if someoneâs never seen any of them, they can start almost anywhere and pretty much any of them will potentially get you hooked - I think even if you start with Family Plot).
my roommate and I are watching Columbo right now! slow tv is best tv.
was it explained/strongly alluded to why Kit rappelled into the quarry? did I miss it or was it left intentionally unexplained? he saw some stuff that turned out to be bones and he saw some more but wasnât sure if it was bones or notâOK, got thatâbut why was he so fired up to investigate in such a risky, un-Kit-like way? and gee, how convenient that Guy had that rope in the garage because reasons.
the only good part was the verbal chess with Ali and Kit. good as in good-compared-to-the-low-bar-this-book-has-set, not necessarily objectively good : /
The book is not in front of me now, but itâs explained either by the end of the chapter or soon into the next one.
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The bones do not turn out to be those of his unknown mother.
Which was vastly disappointing to me.
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I was shocked when they turned out to be those of Lord Lucan. Good plot twist. And then chucking Shergar in there too. Nice touch.
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Gosh, and I thought I was dark. Never even occurred to me.
Really? Momâs never been seen; house on the edge of a quarry; creepy, asshole-dad who used to drive around in a hearse; kid spots bones. These things donât add up for anybody else?
Just call me Mr. GrimDark, I guess.
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Kinda wishing youâd written this book now.
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Heck, no - in my hands the next door neighbor would turn out to be Mad Maxine, an old crotchety hard-driving transvestite with a thing for Angora. And then proceed to go even further off the rails, as Maxine and Heidi open up a nightclub (La Cage au TonnerredĂ´me) to provide for Kit.
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[quote=âOtherMichael, post:36, topic:54020â]
Just call me Mr. GrimDark, I guess.
[/quote]
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Isnât that the Finnish Olympic Luge team?
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