Tomato Nation Read-Along #3: Poll
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on July 26, 2010 – 8:38 PM25 Comments
Okay, so that last one wasn’t so awesome. Live and learn.
The poll for the third TN Read-Along is below. The Wallace and the Cutrone have returned, as you’ll see, but I have a bet with myself about which book you’ll pick, and it ain’t either of those respectable tomes. And if I’ve bet correctly, that live chat IS ON. Mayhem! Can’t wait.
If I’ve not bet correctly, well, these other books look very good.
Voting’s open all week. Hit it.
Please pick as many as three (3) books you'd like to read along with:
- My Sweet Audrina (V.C. Andrews) / fucked-up YA fiction (22%, 169 Votes)
- Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words (Bill Bryson) / humor/language (19%, 145 Votes)
- Consider the Lobster (David Foster Wallace) / essays (14%, 109 Votes)
- You Shall Know Our Velocity! (Dave Eggers) / novel (10%, 75 Votes)
- Who the Hell's in It: Conversations with Hollywood's Legendary Actors (Peter Bogdanovich) / film (9%, 73 Votes)
- If You Have To Cry, Go Outside (Kelly Cutrone) / self-help/memoir (8%, 64 Votes)
- Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx (Adrian Nicole LeBlanc) / sociology (6%, 47 Votes)
- The Iowa Baseball Confederacy (W.P. Kinsella) / baseball novel (5%, 38 Votes)
- Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State / travel/essays (4%, 31 Votes)
- Circling My Mother (Mary Gordon) / memoir (3%, 25 Votes)
Total Voters: 399
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Tags: The TN Read-Along
I wish “fucked up YA fiction” was an actual section at the library.
How embarrassed should I be that the VC Andrews option is the only one I’ve read?
My book club just did Flowers in the Attic. It was fun!
Getting its ass kicked in the poll, but Random Family is just fascinating, for reals. Not a very happy book, but still. Loved it.
I know I read My Sweet Audrina in high school, but I don’t remember a thing about it except a general impression of fucked-up-ness.
I just bought ‘The Iowa Baseball Confederacy’ for $.25 at a book sale… it’s fate.
Oh, man… I remember how we all passed around copies of the V.C. Andrews books in junior high. Can’t remember if I read My Sweet Audrina, but the very idea of revisiting that whole genre amuses the hell out of me.
Random Family, now there’s a book. Have read it more than once, keep returning to it.
I would so be a regular visitor to the fucked-up YA section if there was one at my local library.
After all, my favourite book as a teenager was Liz Berry’s Easy Connections. (http://www.lizberrybooks.com/id24.htm) Spoiler alert: the main character gets raped and stalked by a rock star.
I had no idea there was a movie of Flowers in the Attic. Yikes. Grace, the VC Andrews is the only one I’ve read too.
Had to vote for Mary Gordon because she was one of my professors in college (one of the BEST — loved her!) and I have major guilt about not having read her memoir yet… gulp…
One of the first things my brother and I bonded on was the “WTF?”-ness of VC Andrews, where the annoying older brother/younger sister dynamic was temporarily replaced with a shared, “THE HELL?!”.
Another vote for RandFam. Thoroughly eye-opening; a terrific job of reportage.
Hmmm…apparently word nerds rule. I guess I’ll actually have to read this one if it remains at the top of the list since I voted for it as well.
I love Kinsella & particularly TIBC (not as big on the Silas & Frank stuff, though). Unfortunately, I lent it to someone who loved it, too, and never gave it back. I kept one of her books in retaliation, and rather than just exchange books, this reciprocal hostage situation has gone on for almost a decade.
And hee: My Sweet Audrina. Like MisShrew, I have fond memories of VC Andrews’ stuff as the pass-around evil books of my junior high years. I don’t know if they’d hold up to a re-read, though, but the laugh value is probably high.
I’d recommend Random Family to anyone. It’s a fantastic book.
If you go with Flowers in the Attic, check out this absolutely hilarious chapter-by-chapter analysis:
http://www.foreveryoungadult.com/2010/06/04/flower-scowler/
“I had no idea there was a movie of Flowers in the Attic. Yikes”
You haven’t missed a damn thing. I only saw it once years ago, but it cut out most of the trashiest stuff (the incest) and was very tame. Also completely changed the ending.
My Sweet Audrina is fucked up even by VC Andrews standards.
My Sweet Audrina is fucked up even by VC Andrews standards.
Heh, that’s what I was thinking. It’s the insane icing on the effed up cupcake of the Andrews bibliography. If it wins, that discussion is going to be amazing.
Yeah, I think we all know what wins. The only book ANY of us have read!
Well, thank you, Plantie. That link has assured I will not accomplish any more work today. Or this week.
I think I saw Flowers in the Attic before I ever knew it was originally a book. But the only VC Andrews book I ever read was something else. Can’t remember the name of it though.
I’m related to V.C. Andrews by a relative’s marriage and at least that section of the family is almost as screwed up as one of her books. Of course I didn’t find that out until way after I’d read her books, which put a whole new spin on things.
Hey, Bill Bryson! I like his stuff and he knows it backwards and forwards. Check.
I really do want to read Lobster, check.
Oh, who the hell am I kidding, bring on the neon lit, disco ball, Qualudes and Cocaine cocktail of fuckery that is My Sweet Audrina! So messed up it becomes primitive art, so trashy it houses a rat and cockroach Constantinople, let’s drop the act and dance in the wild moonlight, getting bombed on jug wine and stripey hair and generational pychosis! Good times!
“Fucked-up YA fiction”? I think that’s what’s called leading the witness(es), Sars. Of course we can’t refuse!
I think I read part of one Andrews back when I was a YA. The incest tone was so skeevy, I dropped it mid-way through. If MSA wins, we may need a drinking game (thanks to Plantie’s link, the horror is fresh in my memory).