MobileRead April 2013 Book Club Nominations

[WT Sharpe]

MobileRead Book Club
April 2013 Nominations

Help us select the next book that the MobileRead Book Club will read for April, 2013.

The nominations will run through midnight EST March 30 or until 10 books have made the list. The poll will then be posted and will remain open for five days.

Book selection category for April is:

Classics

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 poll 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 initial poll thread will be posted here and this thread will be closed.

The floor is open to nominations. Please comment if you discover a nomination is not available as an ebook in your area.

* In case of a first or second place tie in the first voting poll, the run-off poll may have more than two choices.


Official choices with three nominations each:

(1) The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne [Hamlet53, fantasyfan, desertblues]
No links provided.

Spoiler:

No synopsis provided.

(2) The American Senator by Anthony Trollope [issybird, fantasyfan, poohbear_nc]
No links given, but issybird says, "Available here at MR; if people don't want to convert to ePub it's also available at Manybooks. Free audio at LibriVox."

Spoiler:

From Wikipedia:

[I]t is notable for its depictions of rural English life and for its many detailed fox hunting scenes. In its anti-heroine, Arabella Trefoil, it presents a scathing but ultimately sympathetic portrayal of a woman who has abandoned virtually all scruples in her quest for a husband. Through the eponymous Senator, Trollope offers comments on the irrational aspects of English life..... Through his often-tactless remarks in conversation, through his letters to a friend in America, and through a lecture in London titled "The Irrationality of Englishmen", he comments on British justice and government, the Church of England, the custom of primogeniture, and other aspects of English life.

(3) A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes [sun surfer, fantasyfan, issybird]
No links provided.

Spoiler:

From Amazon:

Richard Hughes's celebrated short novel is a masterpiece of concentrated narrative. Its dreamlike action begins among the decayed plantation houses and overwhelming natural abundance of late nineteenth-century Jamaica, before moving out onto the high seas, as Hughes tells the story of a group of children thrown upon the mercy of a crew of down-at-the-heel pirates. A tale of seduction and betrayal, of accommodation and manipulation, of weird humor and unforeseen violence, this classic of twentieth-century literature is above all an extraordinary reckoning with the secret reasons and otherworldly realities of childhood.

"This brilliant, gorgeously written, highly entertaining, and apparently light-hearted idyll quickly reveals its true nature as a powerful and profoundly disquieting meditation on the meaning of loyalty and betrayal, innocence and corruption, truth and deception." - Francine Prose, Elle

"During one snowy day, I read the whole book in one gulp. It was remarkable, tiny, crazy. I felt just like I did as a kid. ... A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes is like those books you used to read under the covers with a flashlight, only infinitely more delicious and macabre." - Andrew Sean Greer, All Things Considered, NPR

“Cross a wacky seafaring adventure--Conrad gone awry via inept piracy--with an exploration of the consciousness of a child as radical and insightful as that provided by Henry James in What Maisie Knew, and you have A High Wind In Jamaica by Richard Hughes....By turns funny, ironic, and brutally sad, this is a complex and astonishing novel." - Sue Miller, Barnes and Noble Review


-Included in Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century

(4) The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton [John F, Hamlet53, Nyssa]
No links provided.

Spoiler:

The Age of Innocence won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize.

(5) The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles [sun surfer, desertblues, Synamon]
No links provided.

Spoiler:

From Amazon:

American novelist and short-story writer, poet, translator, classical music composer, and filmscorer Paul Bowles has lived as an expatriate for more than 40 years in the North African nation of Morocco, a country that reaches into the vast and inhospitable Sahara Desert. The desert is itself a character in The Sheltering Sky, the most famous of Bowles' books, which is about three young Americans of the postwar generation who go on a walkabout into Northern Africa's own arid heart of darkness. In the process, the veneer of their lives is peeled back under the author's psychological inquiry.

"It stands head and shoulders above most other novels published in English since World War II." - The New Republic

"[The Sheltering Sky] is one of the most original, even visionary, works of fiction to appear in this century." - Tobias Wolff


-Included in Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century
-Included in Time's 100 Best English-Language Novels Published Since 1923

(6) A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [WT Sharpe, Nyssa, tilia]
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: Mobi / Mobi Omnibus / ePub Omnibus

Spoiler:

From Wikipedia:

The story begins in 1881, where Dr. Watson runs into an old friend, Stamford. Due to a leg injury sustained in the Anglo-Afghan War, Watson was forced to retire and is now looking for a place to live. Stamford mentions that an acquaintance of his, one Sherlock Holmes, is looking for someone to split the rent at a flat at 221B, Baker Street, but cautions about Holmes' eccentricities.

Stamford takes Watson to the local hospital's lab where they find Holmes experimenting with a reagent for haemoglobin detection. Holmes explains its significance in convicting criminals based on bloodstains. Then, upon shaking Watson's hand, deduces that the Dr. has seen military action but waves off the question of how he knows. Watson broaches the subject of their mutual flat-mate search. At Holmes' prompting, the two review their various shortcomings to make sure that they can accept living together.

After seeing the rooms at 221B, they move in and grow accustomed to their new situation.

Watson is amazed by Holmes, who has profound knowledge of chemistry and sensational literature, very precise but narrow knowledge of geology and botany; yet knows little about literature, astronomy, philosophy, and politics. Holmes also has multiple guests visiting him at different intervals during the day.

"There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it."
— A Study in Scarlet, Chapter 4: "What John Rance Had to Tell"

(7) Animal Farm by George Orwell [Bookpossum, Billi, Asawi]
No links provided.

Spoiler:

ANIMAL FARM is a short novel that can be read in a single two-hour sitting. The name seems to imply a children's novel, indeed the words are simple enough, but the satire is thick on every page. This novel is a companion to Orwell's equally famous novel, NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR. Both are essential reading.

Absolutely essential.

Animal Farm is the most famous satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism. Published in 1945, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era. Orwell, a democratic socialist, and a member of the Independent Labour Party for many years, was a critic of Joseph Stalin, and was suspicious of Moscow-directed Stalinism after his experiences with the NKVD during the Spanish Civil War.

The book was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best English language novels (1923 to 2005) and was number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20th Century Novels.

The novel describes how a society's ideologies can be manipulated and twisted by individuals in positions of social and political power, including how a utopian society is made impossible by the corrupting nature of the very power necessary to create it.

(8) The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek [Billi, issybird, Hamlet53]
Amazon

Spoiler:

More Information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_Švejk

(9) All Men Are Mortal by Simone de Beauvoir [desertblues, sun surfer, orlok]
No links provided.

Spoiler:

'All Men Are Mortal' is a captivating exemplum of the existentialist credo. A beautiful and accomplished your actress revives a downcast stranger at a French resort. He becomes thoroughy attached to her at first and confides a terrifying truth; he is immortal. At this point, the power in their relationship shifts. She can think of nothing greater than having her performances remembered forever. She, too, will then become immortal. But having been resuscitated into enjoying life again, this former medieval ruler starts breaking free from her grasp and all notions of morality.

(10) The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper [Billi, John F, Bookpossum]
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: Mobi / Mobi

Spoiler:

No synopsis provided.

The nominations are now closed.

[Nyssa]

Wondering if a particular book is available in your country? The following spoiler contains a list of bookstores outside the United States you can search. If you don't see a bookstore on this list for your country, find one that is, send me the link via PM, and I'll add it to the list. In addition, if members let me know that an ebook is unavailable in a particular geographic location, I'll note it in this post, right beside the Inkmesh search for that particular book.

Spoiler:

Australian
Angus Robertson
Booktopia
Borders
Dymocks
Fishpond
Google

Canada
Amazon. Make sure you are logged out. Then go to the Kindle Store. Search for a book. After the search results come up, in the upper right corner of the screen, change the country to Canada and search away.
Google
Sony eBookstore (Upper right corner switch to/from US/CA)

UK
BooksOnBoard (In the upper right corner is a way to switch to the UK store)
Amazon
Foyle's
Google
Penguin
Random House
Waterstones
WH Smith

Nominations:

* Les Miserables by Victor Hugo [John F]
No links provided.

Spoiler:

From Amazon:
Quote:
Les Misérables ... is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century. It follows the lives and interactions of several French characters over a seventeen-year period in the early nineteenth century, starting in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion.

** Watership Down by Richard Adams [drofgnal, Hamlet53]
No links provided.

Spoiler:

No synopsis provided.

The nominations are now closed.

[issybird]

I'd like to nominate The American Senator by Anthony Trollope. From Wikipedia:

it is notable for its depictions of rural English life and for its many detailed fox hunting scenes. In its anti-heroine, Arabella Trefoil, it presents a scathing but ultimately sympathetic portrayal of a woman who has abandoned virtually all scruples in her quest for a husband. Through the eponymous Senator, Trollope offers comments on the irrational aspects of English life..... Through his often-tactless remarks in conversation, through his letters to a friend in America, and through a lecture in London titled "The Irrationality of Englishmen", he comments on British justice and government, the Church of England, the custom of primogeniture, and other aspects of English life.

Public domain, of course. Available here at MR; if people don't want to convert to ePub it's also available at Manybooks. Free audio at LibriVox.

[John F]

I'll nominate The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.

A blurb :

Spoiler:

The Age of Innocence won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize.

[fantasyfan]

I'll second The American Senator.

[sun surfer]

I nominate-

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

Spoiler:

From Amazon:

American novelist and short-story writer, poet, translator, classical music composer, and filmscorer Paul Bowles has lived as an expatriate for more than 40 years in the North African nation of Morocco, a country that reaches into the vast and inhospitable Sahara Desert. The desert is itself a character in The Sheltering Sky, the most famous of Bowles' books, which is about three young Americans of the postwar generation who go on a walkabout into Northern Africa's own arid heart of darkness. In the process, the veneer of their lives is peeled back under the author's psychological inquiry.

"It stands head and shoulders above most other novels published in English since World War II." - The New Republic

"[The Sheltering Sky] is one of the most original, even visionary, works of fiction to appear in this century." - Tobias Wolff


-Included in Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century
-Included in Time's 100 Best English-Language Novels Published Since 1923

&

A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes

Spoiler:

From Amazon:

Richard Hughes's celebrated short novel is a masterpiece of concentrated narrative. Its dreamlike action begins among the decayed plantation houses and overwhelming natural abundance of late nineteenth-century Jamaica, before moving out onto the high seas, as Hughes tells the story of a group of children thrown upon the mercy of a crew of down-at-the-heel pirates. A tale of seduction and betrayal, of accommodation and manipulation, of weird humor and unforeseen violence, this classic of twentieth-century literature is above all an extraordinary reckoning with the secret reasons and otherworldly realities of childhood.

"This brilliant, gorgeously written, highly entertaining, and apparently light-hearted idyll quickly reveals its true nature as a powerful and profoundly disquieting meditation on the meaning of loyalty and betrayal, innocence and corruption, truth and deception." - Francine Prose, Elle

"During one snowy day, I read the whole book in one gulp. It was remarkable, tiny, crazy. I felt just like I did as a kid. ... A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes is like those books you used to read under the covers with a flashlight, only infinitely more delicious and macabre." - Andrew Sean Greer, All Things Considered, NPR

“Cross a wacky seafaring adventure--Conrad gone awry via inept piracy--with an exploration of the consciousness of a child as radical and insightful as that provided by Henry James in What Maisie Knew, and you have A High Wind In Jamaica by Richard Hughes....By turns funny, ironic, and brutally sad, this is a complex and astonishing novel." - Sue Miller, Barnes and Noble Review


-Included in Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century

[desertblues]

I nominate a modern classic
Simone de Beauvoir ' All men are mortal'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir

Spoiler:

'All Men Are Mortal' is a captivating exemplum of the existentialist credo. A beautiful and accomplished your actress revives a downcast stranger at a French resort. He becomes thoroughy attached to her at first and confides a terrifying truth; he is immortal. At this point, the power in their relationship shifts. She can think of nothing greater than having her performances remembered forever. She, too, will then become immortal. But having been resuscitated into enjoying life again, this former medieval ruler starts breaking free from her grasp and all notions of morality.

I couldn't find it as ebook.

[fantasyfan]

I'll second A High Wind In Jamaica.

I would like to nominate The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

I will second Age of Innocence.

[fantasyfan]

I'll second The Scarlet Letter with my last nomination.

[desertblues]

I second the Sheltering Sky
I third the Scarlet Letter

[John F]

I'll nominate Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.

From Amazon:

Les Misérables ... is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century. It follows the lives and interactions of several French characters over a seventeen-year period in the early nineteenth century, starting in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion.

[poohbear_nc]

I'll third the American Senator

[issybird]

I'll third A High Wind in Jamaica.

[Nyssa]

I will 3rd The Age of Innocence.