Literary The MobileRead Literary Book Club October 2011 Vote

[sun surfer]

Help us choose the October 2011 selection to read for the MobileRead Literary Book Club! The poll will be open for three days.

We will start the discussion thread for the selected work on October 17th and a thread for October's nominations will be created five days later on October 22nd. I will start the threads, but the discussion thread may have a "discussion leader" if one volunteers. Everyone can post whatever thoughts they wish on the month's selection, but the discussion leader's goal will be to continue the dialogue in a thought-provoking direction with discussion questions and the like.

In the event of a tie, there will be a one-day run-off poll. In the event that the run-off poll also ends in a tie, the tie will be resolved in favour of the selection that received all five of its initial nominations first.

NEW!

This month as a trial the poll results will not be visible for most until the poll has closed. Everyone is still free to discuss their own votes or anything else relative, if they so wish.

Moderators and I will be able to see results anytime, so if there are any moderators voting, I ask them to please refrain from looking at the results until they've voted (as I will do too) and to obviously please refrain from discussing them. Thanks!


Select from the following works:

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

Spoiler:

"Seeing The Glass Menagerie was like stumbling on a flower in a junkyard — Williams had pushed language and character to the front of the stage as never before." - Arthur Miller

"Delicate and perceptive, The Glass Menagerie inhabits a half-world between comedy and tragedy." - The New York Times

Abandoned by her husband, Amanda Wingfield comforts herself with recollections of her earlier, more gracious life in Blue Mountain when she was pursued by 'gentleman callers'. Her son Tom, a poet with a job in a warehouse, longs for adventure and escape from his mother's suffocating embrace, while Laura, her shy crippled daughter, has her glass menagerie and her memories. Amanda is desperate to find her daughter a husband, but when the long-awaited gentleman caller does arrive, Laura's romantic illusions are crushed.

Menagerie was Williams's first popular success and launched the brilliant, if somewhat controversial, career of our pre-eminent lyric playwright.

Candida by George Bernard Shaw

Spoiler:

Candida, a comedy, was first published in 1898, as part of Shaw's Plays Pleasant and concerns a beautiful married woman's choice between the two men who love her. The central characters are clergyman James Morell, his wife Candida and a youthful poet, Eugene Marchbanks, who tries to win Candida's affections. The play questions Victorian notions of love and marriage, asking what a woman really desires from her husband. The cleric is a Christian Socialist, allowing Shaw—himself a Fabian Socialist—to weave political issues, current at the time, into the story. Shaw's warm and witty play continues to challenge conventional wisdom about male/female relationships.

Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

Spoiler:

“This is a most remarkable play. Very funny. Very brilliant. Very chilling.” – The New York Times

“Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead [is] verbally dazzling…the most exciting, witty intellectual treat imaginable.” – Edith Oliver, The New Yorker

Acclaimed as a modern dramatic masterpiece, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is the fabulously inventive tale of Hamlet as told from the worm’s-eye view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare’s play. In Tom Stoppard’s best-known work this Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy finally get a chance to take the lead role but do so in a world where echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, where reality and illusion intermix and where fate leads our two heroes to a tragic but inevitable end.

Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen

Spoiler:

"Peer Gynt" captures humankind's unsure, imperfect and opportunistic nature, a portrait so intimate and accurate that the play has become a classic in Norwegian literature. This play was based on the Norwegian fairy tale and broke down the structural barriers of Norwegian theatre, as Ibsen wrote the entire play in verse-form. "Peer Gynt" drifts between the conscious and unconscious, blending realism and folkloric fantasy. Ibsen used this play to satirize transcendentalist ideas, new and revolutionary at the time, that encouraged a return to nature and simplicity. A year after finishing this work, Ibsen suffered his first severe stroke, and never wrote again. This play was incredibly controversial at the time it was written.

Originally intended to be a written drama, not for stage performance, Peer Gynt was Ibsen's last work to use poetry as a medium of dramatic expression, and the poetry is brilliantly appropriate to the imaginative swings between Scandinavian oral folk traditions, the Morrocan coast, the Sahara Desert, and the absurdist images of the Cairo madhouse.

[HomeInMyShoes]

This is going to be a tough vote for me. I'm torn between two choices right now.

[sun surfer]

Since I can see the results, I voted right away and I want to make this post right away so that no one may think the results are influencing me:

In most months so far I've been interested in almost all the choices, and this month I'm interested in three. But to be honest, I really dislike Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead!

I've had to study it in a class before, and it was probably the most annoying work I've ever studied. Yes it has merits, but the characters are idiots and the play aggravates me.

So I am rooting against it.

[Todd Young]

I'm going for The Glass Menagerie. I didn't realise, until I was told by a lecturer, that Tom is homosexual. His "going to the movies" is what this means.

[fantasyfan]

I nominated R&G and supported two of the other three. They are all good and it's a difficult choice. i think I will go for Shaw as he did keep a reader in mind when he wrote his plays. His stage directions are often very interesting and telling in themselves and make it easy to visualise the play.

Well I already miss getting to watch the “horse race,” though there are some clues . I have voted and will be happy with any of these. This is probably not a good test for the hidden polling concept, at least for me. The one play I would have had a strong preference for did not make it to the polling, and among the others none stand out good or bad that would make strategic voting an issue.

[toomanybooks]

I voted for Ibsen because I really enjoyed reading his play, A Doll's House.

I have already read Candida and am currently reading Peer Gynt so whoever wins I am happy that reading a few good plays got pushed past my TBR stack.

[paola]

well, I had to put my vote where my keyboard was
I like not being able to see the vote already cast, it definitely influences me less - whichever way it goes, I am pretty sure I am going to enjoy this month's choice!

[beppe]

Although I love going to theater, I do not read plays since the times of college, and then I read some Shakespeare, Moliere and Brecht. With dubious enjoyment, at least compared to the one of the live performances.

That is why I will not vote this time. The candidates do not attract me particularly and neither they repel me.

Nonetheless, I intend to read what is chosen, and follow the discussion. To see if I might find new interest in what never really caught me. I think I will read it in about the time that it takes to perform it on the stage. Maybe, after each scene, I will try to imagine how I would stage it.

Yeah one of the choices won.

Congratulations Ibsen! Still prefer the transparent poll option.

[fantasyfan]

Ibsen's play should be a very interesting experience, filled as it is with myth and fantasy. {And one can listen to Grieg's wonderful music written for the play at the appropriate sections }

However, the Internet Archive edition is riddled with scannos, badly formatted and not particularly easy to read. I looked through the Amazon Store but Peer Gynt seems particularly difficult to get. Even the Ibsen collected editions don't seem to include it. If there's no other alternative the free IA edition is still there, but does anyone know a good and inexpensive e-text?

There is this at Kobo: http://kobobooks.com/ebook/Peer-Gynt...2GA/page1.html

This at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Peer-Gynt-mobi...7471118&sr=8-9

This at Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=bDa...s_similarbooks

However, these all seem to be of questionable quality. For $0.99 I may buy the Kobo epub and if that does not work out I will just get a paper book from my library.

[issybird]

I see the local university has several editions available, so I'll choose among them. fantasyfan's right; the internet archive scan is unreadable.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

There is this at Kobo: http://kobobooks.com/ebook/Peer-Gynt...2GA/page1.html

This at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Peer-Gynt-mobi...7471118&sr=8-9

This at Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=bDa...s_similarbooks

However, these all seem to be of questionable quality. For $0.99 I may buy the Kobo epub and if that does not work out I will just get a paper book from my library.

The Kindle edition doesn't appear to be available in Canada either.

I found a couple on-line.

PDF Format from ibsen.net

Quite a Fun looking version to read online at Adelaide University

If I decide to pick up this month's club selection it'll be at my computer which is a bit frustrating. I'll check my local library too.

[fantasyfan]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

The Kindle edition doesn't appear to be available in Canada either.

I found a couple on-line.

PDF Format from ibsen.net

Quite a Fun looking version to read online at Adelaide University

If I decide to pick up this month's club selection it'll be at my computer which is a bit frustrating. I'll check my local library too.

If our library has a decent copy I'll probably take it out. In the event that it doesn't I'll give the Adelaide University copy a try on the computer and see how it goes.