MobileRead October 2010 Book Club Nominations

[pilotbob]

Help us select the next book that the Mobile Read book club will read for October 2010.

The nominations will run through Sep 25 or until 10 books have made the list.
Voting (new poll thread) will run for 5 days starting Sep 25.

Book selection category for October per the "official" club opening thread is:

October 2010
Horror


In order for a book to be included in the poll it needs THREE NOMINATIONS (original nomination, a second and a third).

How Does This Work?
The Mobile Read Book Club (MRBC) is an informal club that requires nothing of you. Each month a book is selected by polling. On the last week of that month a discussion thread is started for the book. If you want to participate feel free. There is no need to "join" or sign up. All are welcome.
*
How Does a Book Get Selected?
Each book that is nominated will be listed in a pool at the end of the nomination period. The book that polls the most votes will be the official selection.

How Many Nominations Can I Make?
Each participant has 3 nominations. You can nominate a new book for consideration or nominate (second, third) one that has already been nominated by another person.

How Do I Nominate a Book?
Please just post a message with your nomination. If you are the FIRST to nominate a book, please try to provide an abstract to the book so others may consider their level of interest.

How Do I Know What Has Been Nominated?
Just follow the thread. This message will be updated with the status of the nominations as often as I can. If one is missed, please just post a message with a multi-quote of the 3 nominations and it will be added to the list ASAP.

When is the Poll?
The poll thread will open at the end of the nomination period, or once there have been 10 books with 3 nominations each. At that time a link to the poll thread will be posted here and this thread will be closed.

The floor is open to nominations.


Official choices each with three nominations:


[3] The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

PRC and IMP by =X= - LRF and ePub by Madam Broshkina
Multiple formats @ feedbooks - free audio @ LibriVox - Inkmesh search

Spoiler:

In case anyone isn't familiar with the plot, Dr. Jekyll is a kindly doctor who is experimenting with "mind altering" drugs. One of these drugs accidentally turns him in a homicidal maniac, who calls himself Edward Hyde, and whose personality gradually takes over that of Dr. Jekyll, until he can no longer control his transformations. A story of a man's decent into madness. Still as gripping today as when it was written in 1886. (HarryT)

[3] Risen by Jan Strnad

Inkmesh search - MR ebook thread

Spoiler:

blurb:
Terror has come to the small town of Anderson, Kansas, where Death has gone on holiday and the recently deceased are returning to life, not as shambling zombies, but seemingly as good as new. Are the resurrections a miracle, or something far more sinister? Previously published by Pinnacle Books under the pseudonym of J. Knight. Revised in 2010.

[3] Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

Inkmesh search

Spoiler:

Wikipedia describes the book as: "The novel's protagonist, Dexter Morgan, works for the Miami-Dade Police Department as a forensic blood spatter pattern analyst. In his spare time, Dexter is a serial killer with a catch: he only kills murderers that he believes have escaped judicial punishment." Lindsey has a series of 4 books starring Dexter Morgan. A great read and even made into a TV series.

[GA Russell]

Bob, is there a list of previous Book Club winners?

[jabberwock_11]

I would like to nominate Frostbite: A Werewolf Tale, by David Wellington. It is an excellent book and one of the best werewolf stories that I have ever read. It does an excellent job of mixing suspense and knee jerk reaction surprise to create a a tense atmosphere.

Some folks may know David Wellington from his vampire series or his zombie books. Frostbite has a similar sort of feel to it without being a regurgitation of his other plots. I think that it would be the perfect book to read in October.

[dreams]

Space holder for adding links to this month's Horror nominations.

Those ebooks available on MR will have formats listed with links to the ebooks here on MR.

I will use spoiler tags to contain book descriptions.

Three Nominations

[3] The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

PRC and IMP by =X= - LRF and ePub by Madam Broshkina
Multiple formats @ feedbooks - free audio @ LibriVox - Inkmesh search

Spoiler:

In case anyone isn't familiar with the plot, Dr. Jekyll is a kindly doctor who is experimenting with "mind altering" drugs. One of these drugs accidentally turns him in a homicidal maniac, who calls himself Edward Hyde, and whose personality gradually takes over that of Dr. Jekyll, until he can no longer control his transformations. A story of a man's decent into madness. Still as gripping today as when it was written in 1886. (HarryT)

[3] Risen by Jan Strnad

Inkmesh search - MR ebook thread

Spoiler:

blurb:
Terror has come to the small town of Anderson, Kansas, where Death has gone on holiday and the recently deceased are returning to life, not as shambling zombies, but seemingly as good as new. Are the resurrections a miracle, or something far more sinister? Previously published by Pinnacle Books under the pseudonym of J. Knight. Revised in 2010.

[3] Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

Inkmesh search

Spoiler:

Wikipedia describes the book as: "The novel's protagonist, Dexter Morgan, works for the Miami-Dade Police Department as a forensic blood spatter pattern analyst. In his spare time, Dexter is a serial killer with a catch: he only kills murderers that he believes have escaped judicial punishment." Lindsey has a series of 4 books starring Dexter Morgan. A great read and even made into a TV series.

--------------

Nominations

[1] Frostbite: A Werewolf Tale by David Wellington - Inkmesh search

Spoiler:

Description: Nipped by a wolf during an Arctic camping expedition, Cheyenne Clark suddenly finds herself feeling ferally frisky when the moon is up in Wellington's far from routine werewolf tale. It turns out that Monty Powell, the loner who gives Chey refuge, is no ordinary guy, but the werewolf who turned her. But then Chey is no ordinary camper: she was sent to draw Monty out by a band of professional … more »hunters who want the oil beneath the vast acreage Monty prowls—and to avenge the death of her father, whom Monty coincidentally slaughtered two decades before. Wellington ( 23 Hours ) gets surprising mileage out of this tortuously improbable plot, hinging it on Chey's difficulty choosing between the gun-toting human mercenaries who are using her as bait and Monty, a victim of supernatural circumstances who understands her plight better than anyone else. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. "Entertaining and thrilling...Wellington is a vivid storyteller, whether describing gruesome attacks, expressing the subtle attraction between man and woman or chronicling the life of a troubled teen" - Associated Press From the Trade Paperback edition. (from Amazon.com)

[1] The Invasion by William Meikle - Inkmesh search - MR ebook thread

Spoiler:

From Amazon: It started during a winter storm on the North Eastern Seaboard which brought with it a strange green rain. Where it fell, everything withered, died, and was consumed. The residents of remote outposts in Maritime Canada escaped the worst of the early damage, but that was a blessing in disguise, for they were left to watch as first North America, then the world, was subsumed in the creeping green carpet of terror.

And that was just the beginning. New life forms began to arise from the ooze, simple organisms at first, but multiplying with ever-increasing complexity. The few human survivors are faced with a full-scale invasion... and only radical measures will guarantee the survival of the human race.

[2] SoulStorm by Chet Williamson and Neil Jackson - Inkmesh search

Spoiler:

Three men are offered a million dollars each if they will spend a month in an isolated Pennsylvania mansion, the Pines. There they will confront madness, murder and the ultimate evil....so that their billionaire host might find the key to life beyond the grave. But as they learn, dead souls dwell in the Pines. And death is just the beginning.... (recluse)

[2] American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis - Inkmesh search

Spoiler:

This review is based on the galley issued by Ellis's original publisher, Simon & Schuster, before it cancelled the book. The book is now going through the editing process at Vintage. There may be some changes in the final version. The indignant attacks on Ellis's third novel (see News, p. 17; Editorial, p. 6) will make it difficult for most readers to judge it objectively. Although the book contains horrifying scenes, they must be read in the context of the book as a whole; the horror does not lie in the novel itself, but in the society it reflects. In the first third of the book, Pat Bateman, a 26-year-old who works on Wall Street, describes his designer lifestyle in excruciating detail. This is a world in which the elegance of a business card evokes more emotional response than the murder of a child. Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, Bateman calmly and deliberately blinds and stabs a homeless man. From here, the body count builds, as he kills a male acquaintance and sadistically tortures and murders two prostitutes, an old girlfriend, and a child he passes in the zoo. The recital of the brutalization is made even more horrible by the first-person narrator's delivery: flat, matter-of-fact, as impersonal as a car parts catalog. The author has carefully constructed the work so that the reader has no way to understand this killer's motivations, making it even more frightening. If these acts cannot be explained, there is no hope of protection from such random, senseless crimes. This book is not pleasure reading, but neither is it pornography. It is a serious novel that comments on a society that has become inured to suffering. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/90 and 12/90. - Nora Rawlinson, "Library Journal" Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. “Bret Easton Ellis is a very, very good writer [and] American Psycho is a beautifully controlled, careful, important novel…. The novelist’s function is to keep a running tag on the progress of culture; and he’s done it brilliantly…. A seminal book.” —Fay Weldon, The Washington Post “A masterful satire and a ferocious, hilarious, ambitious, inspiring piece of writing, which has large elements of Jane Austen at her vitriolic best. An important book.” —Katherine Dunn “A great novel. What Emerson said about genius, that it’s the return of one’s rejected thoughts with an alienated majesty, holds true for American Psycho …. There is a fever to the life of this book that is, in my reading, unknown in American literature.” —Michael Tolkin “The first novel to come along in years that takes on deep and Dostoyevskian themes…. [Ellis] is showing older authors where the hands come to on the clock.” —Norman Mailer, Vanity Fair From the Trade Paperback edition. (from Amazon.com)

[1] The Killing Kind by Bryan Smith - Inkmesh search

Spoiler:

A group of college friends are ready for a week of partying at their rented beach house. They didn-t count on a pair of homicidal maniacs crashing the party. (from Amazon.com)

[2] Let the Right One In (US Title - Let Me In) by John Ajvide Lindqvist - Inkmesh search

Spoiler:

From the publisher:
Set in 1983,Let Me In is the horrific tale of Oskar and Eli. It begins with the grizzly discovery of the body of a teenage boy, emptied of blood. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come at long last—revenge for all the bad things the bullies at school do to him, day after day. While Oskar is fascinated by the murder, it is not the most important thing in his life. A new girl has moved in next door—a girl who has never seen a Rubik’s cube before, but who can solve it at once. They become friends. Then something more. But there is something wrong with her, something odd. And she only comes out at night. . . .

[1] The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson - lrf by Roy White - ePub - mobi / prc by crutledge - @ feedbooks

Spoiler:

In 1877, two gentlemen, Messrs Tonnison and Berreggnog, head into Ireland to spend a week fishing in the village of Kraighten. Whilst there, they discover in the ruins of a very curious house a diary of the man who had once owned it. Its torn pages seem to hint at an evil beyond anything that existed on this side of the curtains of impossibility (Wikipedia)

[1] At the Mountains of Madness by H.P.Lovecraft - @ manybooks

Spoiler:

from manybooks:
On an expedition to Antarctica, Professor William Dyer and his colleagues discover the remains of ancient half-vegetable, half-animal life-forms. The extremely early date in the geological strata is surprising because of the highly-evolved features found in these previously unkown life-forms. Through a series of dark revelations, violent episodes, and misunderstandings, the group learns of Earth's secret history and legacy.

[HarryT]

I'm going to nominate Robert Louis Stevenson's classic story "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", which is what we'd call a "novella" today.

In case anyone isn't familiar with the plot, Dr. Jekyll is a kindly doctor who is experimenting with "mind altering" drugs. One of these drugs accidentally turns him in a homicidal maniac, who calls himself Edward Hyde, and whose personality gradually takes over that of Dr. Jekyll, until he can no longer control his transformations. A story of a man's decent into madness. Still as gripping today as when it was written in 1886.

[Latinandgreek]

I second "The Stange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde".

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Bob, is there a list of previous Book Club winners?

The easiest way to find the previous books read is to at the top of the Reading Recommendations section select the "Book Club" prefix in the filter section and click on "show threads". Then just scan down the list at the threads that start with "Discussion".

Other than that no... I used to maintain a list in the book club community, but I gave up on it.

BOb

[GA Russell]

Thanks! I see that my idea won last year.

[lene1949]

I would like to nominate The Invasion by William Meikle.

From Amazon:

It started during a winter storm on the North Eastern Seaboard which brought with it a strange green rain. Where it fell, everything withered, died, and was consumed. The residents of remote outposts in Maritime Canada escaped the worst of the early damage, but that was a blessing in disguise, for they were left to watch as first North America, then the world, was subsumed in the creeping green carpet of terror.

And that was just the beginning. New life forms began to arise from the ooze, simple organisms at first, but multiplying with ever-increasing complexity. The few human survivors are faced with a full-scale invasion... and only radical measures will guarantee the survival of the human race.

[lene1949]

Originally Posted by Latinandgreek

I second "The Stange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde".

I'll third this one..

[recluse]

I nominate "SoulStorm" by Chet Williamson.
Three men are offered a million dollars each if they will spend a month in an isolated Pennsylvania mansion, the Pines. There they will confront madness, murder and the ultimate evil....so that their billionaire host might find the key to life beyond the grave. But as they learn, dead souls dwell in the Pines. And death is just the beginning....
Available from the Kindle Store for $2.99

[lila55]

I would like to nominate "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis.

Available here.

[GraceKrispy]

I would like to nominate "Risen" by our own MR member, Jan Strnad.

blurb:
Terror has come to the small town of Anderson, Kansas, where Death has gone on holiday and the recently deceased are returning to life, not as shambling zombies, but seemingly as good as new. Are the resurrections a miracle, or something far more sinister? Previously published by Pinnacle Books under the pseudonym of J. Knight. Revised in 2010.


C'mon, do I have a second?

<--first nomination ever... just now discovering this part of the world!

[jhempel24]

I'd nominate Storm Front by Jim Butcher...those novels are just classic!!

[dreams]

Originally Posted by jhempel24

I'd nominate Storm Front by Jim Butcher...those novels are just classic!!

This month's book nominations are for Horror.

Is this considered Horror?

I found it listed as SF / Fantasy?