MobileRead November 2015 Book Club Vote

[WT Sharpe]

November 2015 MobileRead Book Club Vote

Help us choose a book as the November 2015 eBook for the MobileRead Book Club. The poll will be open for 5 days. There will be no runoff vote unless the voting results a tie, in which case there will be a 3 day run-off poll. This is a visible poll: others can see how you voted. It is You may cast a vote for each book that appeals to you.

We will start the discussion thread for this book on November 20th. Select from the following Official Choices with three nominations each:

• We, The Drowned by Carsten Jensen
Amazon UK / Amazon US / Kobo

Spoiler:

NPR:

Life in a small seaside town in Denmark becomes the basis for high drama in Carsten Jensen's international bestseller, We, the Drowned, just now hitting U.S. shelves. This is a book for lovers of seafaring tales, adventure myths and whimsical coming-of-age stories.

Goodreads:

It is an epic drama of adventure, courage, ruthlessness and passion by one of Scandinavia’s most acclaimed storytellers.
In 1848 a motley crew of Danish sailors sets sail from the small island town of Marstal to fight the Germans. Not all of them return – and those who do will never be the same. Among them is the daredevil Laurids Madsen, who promptly escapes again into the anonymity of the high seas.
As soon as he is old enough, his son Albert sets off in search of his missing father on a voyage that will take him to the furthest reaches of the globe and into the clutches of the most nefarious company.
...
From the barren rocks of Newfoundland to the lush plantations of Samoa, from the roughest bars in Tasmania, to the frozen coasts of northern Russia, We, The Drowned spans four generations, two world wars and a hundred years. Carsten Jensen conjures a wise, humorous, thrilling story of fathers and sons, of the women they love and leave behind, and of the sea’s murderous promise. This is a novel destined to take its place among the greatest seafaring literature

• The Train by Georges Simenon
Amazon US / Kobo/ OverDrive

Spoiler:

Amazon and Goodreads have the same blurb:

Against all expectations Marcel Féron has made a “normal” life in a bucolic French suburb in the Ardennes. But on May 10, 1940, as Nazi tanks approach, this timid, happy man must abandon his home and confront the “Fate” that he has secretly awaited. Separated from his pregnant wife and young daughter in the chaos of flight, he joins a freight car of refugees hurtling southward ahead of the pursuing invaders. There, he meets Anna, a sad-looking, dark- haired girl, whose accent is “neither Belgian nor German,” and who “seemed foreign to everything around her.” As the mystery of Anna’s identity is gradually revealed, Marcel leaps from the heights of an exhilarating freedom to the depths of a terrifying responsibility—one that will lead him to a blood-chilling choice.

A quote from the NY Times:

There is no false note, not one word or sigh or smile which strikes me as anything but unavoidable. This is not a writer’s romancing story of a little man caught in the war; it is the unknown history of many little men in that vast war.

• Skylark by Deszö Kosztolányi
Amazon US / Kobo / OverDrive

Spoiler:

From a New York Review of Books review:

This short, perfect novel seems to encapsulate all the world’s pain in a soap bubble. Its surface is as smooth as a fable, its setting and characters are unremarkable, its tone is blithe, and its effect is shattering.

Any story about people is implicitly concerned with fate: How has it come about that this thing rather than that thing has happened to this person rather than that person? Much fiction employs one sort of crude causation or another to strongarm events into a clumsily trumped-up case asserting that A has led inexorably to Z, or, at the other pole, drops in front of us a heap of arbitrary incident and demands that we marvel at the inscrutability of life’s course—which in fact is something we can do perfectly well on our own.

And as we’re well aware that one thing rather than another happens to each person, why should we be interested in what happens to someone who was made up in the first place? We look to fiction writers to divine the true relationships—or true lack of them—between the elements that constitute a human life. In Skylark, we encounter lives that contain no hidden exits or negotiable margins, and we come away from the book feeling that we have experienced the inalterable workings of destiny.

Dezso Kosztolányi ingeniously poises his leading characters to expose, over the course of a week—not only to us but also to themselves—the tangle of intractable emotions that has taken years to develop and binds them hand and foot. The current of satire that runs through Skylark—sometimes faint and melancholy, sometimes rollickingly gleeful—as well as the book’s brevity, might suggest a slight work; on the contrary, the book is essential, a distillation of the heart’s properties.

• How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by Saša Stanišić
Goodreads

Spoiler:

For young Aleksandar - the best magician in the non-aligned states and painter of unfinished things - life is endowed with a mythic quality in the Bosnian town of Višegrad, a rich playground for his imagination. When his grandfather dies, Aleks channels his storytelling talent to help with his grief.

It is a gift he calls on again when the shadow of war spreads to Višegrad, and the world as he knows it stops. Though Aleks and his family flee to Germany, he is haunted by his past - and by Asija, the mysterious girl he tried to save. Desperate to learn of her fate, Aleks returns to his hometown on the anniversary of his grandfather's death to discover what became of her and the life he left behind.

• Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto
Amazon US / Kobo

Spoiler:

Goodreads:

The corpse of an unknown provincial is discovered under the rails of a train in a Tokyo station, and Detective Imanishi is assigned to the case.

In a police procedural by Japan's foremost master of mystery, Inspector Imanishi Eitaro, a typically Japanese detective fond of gardening and haiku, must follow a killer's trail across the social strata of Japan.

• Memoirs of Hadrian by Margeurite Yourcenar
Goodreads

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

Both an exploration of character and a reflection on the meaning of history, Memoirs of Hadrian has received international acclaim since its first publication in France in 1951. In it, Marguerite Yourcenar reimagines the Emperor Hadrian's arduous boyhood, his triumphs and reversals, and finally, as emperor, his gradual reordering of a war-torn world, writing with the imaginative insight of a great writer of the twentieth century while crafting a prose style as elegant and precise as those of the Latin stylists of Hadrian's own era.

• Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Goodreads

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle - yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.

• Resurrection by Wolf Haas
Goodreads

Spoiler:

THE FIRST INSPECTOR BRENNER NOVEL

The darkly comic book that launched the bestselling series . . .

Wolf Haas is firmly established as one of the world’s bestselling crime novelists. And now the novel that introduced Simon Brenner, Haas’s inimitable protagonist—a detective who always gets where he’s going, but never the way anyone else would—is available for the first time 
in English.

When the corpses of two Americans turn up on a ski lift in the idyllic Swiss town of Zell, former police inspector Brenner, who needs a new job, not to mention more migraine medication, agrees to investigate the deaths for an insurance company.

But as Brenner gets acquainted with the finer points of curling, community theater, and certain sexy local schoolteachers, he notices one thing starkly missing: any semblance of a clue.

Until he stumbles across a buried secret that might have explosive consequences.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Choices, choices, choices. I'm going to let this one sit for a couple of days. There's a couple I'm not sure about yet.

[Dazrin]

Only two of these titles are available at my library so I am going to put a couple more requests in and wait a bit to see if I can get any others.

[HomeInMyShoes]

^Are you talking as eBook or as any format? My library is only missing The Train which is actually one of the ones I am deciding if I am going to vote for.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

^Are you talking as eBook or as any format? My library is only missing The Train which is actually one of the ones I am deciding if I am going to vote for.

Just ebooks. I have basically given up paper books because of the convenience of ebooks and getting to the library is not easy to fit into my schedule. I have even gotten rid of almost all of my (fiction) paper books and am down to only 1 shelf these days.

I did go and check paper availability to see how that helps and it only added 2 options for me.

We, The Drowned - Electronic and Paper available
The Train - Not available
Skylark - Not available
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone - Not available
Inspector Imanishi Investigates - Paper only
Memoirs of Hadrian - Paper only
Kafka on the Shore - Electronic and Paper available
Resurrection - Not available

[HomeInMyShoes]

My library failed miserably for electronic availability:

We, the Drowned - paper
The Train - not available
Skylark - paper
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone - paper
Inspector Imanishi Investigates - paper
Memoirs of Hadrian - paper
Kafka on the Shore - electronic and paper
Resurrection - paper

Only one electronic offering, but overall good availability with only one not in the system. I trust my library to be able to get me the one not in the system as well.

[issybird]

I know Murakami is both highly regarded and hugely popular, but I was underwhelmed by his weirdly Western After the Quake when it was a choice in the other club. I'm hoping for pretty much anything else.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by issybird

I know Murakami is both highly regarded and hugely popular, but I was underwhelmed by his weirdly Western After the Quake when it was a choice in the other club. I'm hoping for pretty much anything else.

I am enjoying 1Q84 right now so on one hand I wouldn't mind trying this one at some point. On the other hand, 1Q84 is about 1,200 pages and I am not sure I want to tack on another 500 pages* of Murakami directly after reading this.

*Goodreads says 430-700+ pages depending on version.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

I am enjoying 1Q84 right now so on one hand I wouldn't mind trying this one at some point. On the other hand, 1Q84 is about 1,200 pages and I am not sure I want to tack on another 500 pages* of Murakami directly after reading this.

*Goodreads says 430-700+ pages depending on version.

Oy, I didn't realize it was so long. I'm not sure I've got the time for such a lengthy tome.

ETA: Simenon's only 144 pages, folks!

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by issybird

I know Murakami is both highly regarded and hugely popular, but I was underwhelmed by his weirdly Western After the Quake when it was a choice in the other club. I'm hoping for pretty much anything else.

He's one of my favourite authors, but he is weird and wouldn't normally be my pick for a general bookclub.

My support lies elsewhere this month.

[HomeInMyShoes]

I'd like to see Skylark make it. I'd like to read more works from Russia.

[WT Sharpe]

I'd like to see one of the mysteries win.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I'd like to see one of the mysteries win.

I'd like to see one of my nominations win.

[CRussel]

I'm holding back for a couple of days while I check on availability and cost, as well as length. But I definitely would prefer one of the mysteries to win.

[CRussel]

I'm definitely not liking the current leader. I truly have zero desire to read it. So I've gone ahead and voted for The Train, and Inspector Imanishi. I can see reading either one, and even enjoying it. But no matter how worthy, I'm not interested in anything Kafka.