MobileRead March 2017 Book Club Nominations

[issybird]

Help us select the book that the MobileRead Book Club will read for March, 2017.

The nominations will run through midnight EST February 26 or until 10 books have made the list. The poll will then be posted and will remain open for five days.

The book selection category for March is: Patricia Clarke Memorial Library.

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.

[I'm helping out while Tom is unavailable. Let me know if anything's wrong. Please be gentle!]

Official choices with three nominations each:

(1)Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

Spoiler:

Jules is a young man barely a century old. He's lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies…and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World. Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the longago twentieth century. Now in the care of a network of volunteer "adhocs" who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest hightech touches. Now, though, it seems the "ad hocs" are under attack. A new group has taken over the Hall of the Presidents and is replacing its venerable audioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfaces that give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln, and all the others. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of Disney World itself. Worse: it appears this new group has had Jules killed. This upsets him. (It's only his fourth death and revival, after all.) Now it's war: war for the soul of the Magic Kingdom, a war of evershifting reputations, technical wizardry, and entirely unpredictable outcomes. Bursting with cutting-edge speculation and human insight, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom reads like Neal Stephenson meets Nick Hornby: a comingofage romantic comedy and a kickbutt cybernetic tour de force.

(2)Lardner on the Loose (collected short fiction) by Ring Lardner
Kindle epub

Spoiler:

Ring Lardner was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical writings about sports, marriage, and the theatre. He was a contemporary of Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf and F. Scott Fitzgerald, all of whom professed strong admiration for his writing.

In 1916, Lardner published his first successful book, You Know Me Al, an epistolary novel written in the form of letters from “Jack Keefe”, a bush-league baseball player, to a friend back home. The letters made much use of the fictional author’s idiosyncratic vernacular, with semi-literate grammar and phonetic spelling. Like most of Lardner’s stories, You Know Me Al employs satire, in this case to show the stupidity and avarice of a certain type of athlete. Until 1920, Lardner continued to write follow-up stories about Jack Keefe, some of which were collected in the books Treat ‘Em Rough and The Real Dope, narrating Jack’s Army experiences in World War I.

Lardner later published such stories as “Haircut”, “Some Like Them Cold”, “The Golden Honeymoon”, “Alibi Ike”, “A Day with Conrad Green”, and dozens more. Sometimes narrated by a “wise boob”, with slyly satirical commentary on manners and morals (The Big Town), sometimes taking a poignant view (“Now and Then”, “Old Folk’s Christmas”), sometimes sliding into sheer noir (“Champion”), always entertaining. His frequent use of vernacular influenced sports fiction writing for generations to come.

(3)A to Izzard (collected short fiction) by Damon Runyon
Kindle epub

Spoiler:

He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the Brooklyn or Midtown demi-monde. The adjective "Runyonesque" refers to this type of character as well as to the type of situations and dialog that Runyon depicted.[4] He spun humorous and sentimental tales of gamblers, hustlers, actors, and gangsters, few of whom go by "square" names, preferring instead colorful monikers such as "Nathan Detroit", "Benny Southstreet", "Big Jule", "Harry the Horse", "Good Time Charley", "Dave the Dude", or "The Seldom Seen Kid". His distinctive vernacular style is known as "Runyonese": a mixture of formal speech and colorful slang, almost always in present tense, and always devoid of contractions. He is credited with coining the phrase "Hooray Henry", a term now used in British English to describe an upper-class, loud-mouthed, arrogant twit.

(4)The Red Cockade by Stanley J. Weyman
epub Kindle

Spoiler:

The Red Cockade is a Dumas-like swashbuckling historical romance, set around 1789 in Cahors and Nimes at the time of the French Revolution, and tells of the adventures of an aristocrat sympathetic to the cause of the people. The San Francisco Chronicle said this one 'deserves a place among the best historical fiction of the latter part of this [the nineteenth] century.' One of Weyman's finest.

(5)Humbugs of the World by PT Barnum

Spoiler:

This work exposes several of the chief humbugs of the world, written in the entertaining and humorous style Barnum is known for. Found within are discussions relative to hoaxes, money manias, adventurers, medicine and quacks, religious humbugs, trade and business impositions, spiritualists, ghosts and witchcrafts, and personal reminiscences.

(6)Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson

Spoiler:

Mrs. Lucas, Lucia (pronounced Lu-CHEE-A) to her intimates, resides in the village of Riseholme, a pretty Elizabethan village in Worcestershire, where she vigorously guards her status as "Queen" despite occasional attempts from her subjects to overthrow her. Lucia’s dear friend Georgie Pillson both worships Lucia and occasionally works to subvert her power.

A very witty book, you feel affection for Lucia and her affectations but at the same time you want to see her taken down a notch.

Kindle

(7)Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

Spoiler:

The most well-known and well-liked of Gaskell's works, this softly humorous picture of an English country village was first serialized in a magazine edited by Charles Dickens in 1851. Based on the village of Gaskell's childhood, "Cranford" is narrated by a young woman visiting the town who describes the genteel poverty of two middle-aged spinster sisters, Miss Matty and Miss Deborah. Gaskell tells of their little adventures in a confidential and almost chatty tone, perfectly conveying their habits and standards of propriety, decency, and kindness in reduced circumstances. The colorful characters and subtle class distinctions of the village of Cranford are captured in this compassionate and hopeful portrayal of small-town English life.

and from a Goodreads review:
the humor is so sly. at times it's difficult to believe that this was written over 150 years ago. I guess that gentle social humor has always been with us.

Kindle

(8)The Man of Property by John Galsworthy

Spoiler:

John Galsworthy (1867-1933) devoted virtually his entire professional career to creating a fictional but entirely representative family of propertied Victorians: the Forsytes. He made their lives and times, loves and losses, fortunes and deaths so real that readers accused him of including as characters in his drama real individuals whom they knew. He was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.

The entire saga comprises three trilogies of books, of which this is the first. The other two ("A Modern Comedy" and "End of the Chapter") are available as separate downloads.

This first trilogy, "The Forsyte Saga", chronicles the life of three generations of the Forsyte family, a wealthy upper middle class English family, in the turbulent years between the 1880s and the 1920s - a time period during which English society was completely transformed. The books are set against the great events of the day - the Boer War and WWI, the rise of Labour, the death of Queen Victoria, and much more.

This book was originally published as three novels, with a short story "interlude" between each one, the structure being:

The Man of Property
(Interlude) Indian Summer of a Forsyte
In Chancery
(Interlude) Awakening
To Let

Kindle Audible


Nominations:

***A to Izzard (collected short fiction) by Damon Runyon [issybird, GA Russell, CRussel]
Kindle epub

Spoiler:

He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the Brooklyn or Midtown demi-monde. The adjective "Runyonesque" refers to this type of character as well as to the type of situations and dialog that Runyon depicted.[4] He spun humorous and sentimental tales of gamblers, hustlers, actors, and gangsters, few of whom go by "square" names, preferring instead colorful monikers such as "Nathan Detroit", "Benny Southstreet", "Big Jule", "Harry the Horse", "Good Time Charley", "Dave the Dude", or "The Seldom Seen Kid". His distinctive vernacular style is known as "Runyonese": a mixture of formal speech and colorful slang, almost always in present tense, and always devoid of contractions. He is credited with coining the phrase "Hooray Henry", a term now used in British English to describe an upper-class, loud-mouthed, arrogant twit.

***Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow [JSWolf, Alohamora, WT Sharpe]

Spoiler:

Jules is a young man barely a century old. He's lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies…and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World. Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the longago twentieth century. Now in the care of a network of volunteer "adhocs" who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest hightech touches. Now, though, it seems the "ad hocs" are under attack. A new group has taken over the Hall of the Presidents and is replacing its venerable audioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfaces that give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln, and all the others. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of Disney World itself. Worse: it appears this new group has had Jules killed. This upsets him. (It's only his fourth death and revival, after all.) Now it's war: war for the soul of the Magic Kingdom, a war of evershifting reputations, technical wizardry, and entirely unpredictable outcomes. Bursting with cutting-edge speculation and human insight, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom reads like Neal Stephenson meets Nick Hornby: a comingofage romantic comedy and a kickbutt cybernetic tour de force.

***The Red Cockade by Stanley J. Weyman [issybird, bfisher, Dazrin]
epub Kindle

Spoiler:

The Red Cockade is a Dumas-like swashbuckling historical romance, set around 1789 in Cahors and Nimes at the time of the French Revolution, and tells of the adventures of an aristocrat sympathetic to the cause of the people. The San Francisco Chronicle said this one 'deserves a place among the best historical fiction of the latter part of this [the nineteenth] century.' One of Weyman's finest.

***Lardner on the Loose (collected short fiction) by Ring Lardner [GA Russell, issybird, CRussel]
Kindle epub

Spoiler:

Ring Lardner was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical writings about sports, marriage, and the theatre. He was a contemporary of Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf and F. Scott Fitzgerald, all of whom professed strong admiration for his writing.

In 1916, Lardner published his first successful book, You Know Me Al, an epistolary novel written in the form of letters from “Jack Keefe”, a bush-league baseball player, to a friend back home. The letters made much use of the fictional author’s idiosyncratic vernacular, with semi-literate grammar and phonetic spelling. Like most of Lardner’s stories, You Know Me Al employs satire, in this case to show the stupidity and avarice of a certain type of athlete. Until 1920, Lardner continued to write follow-up stories about Jack Keefe, some of which were collected in the books Treat ‘Em Rough and The Real Dope, narrating Jack’s Army experiences in World War I.

Lardner later published such stories as “Haircut”, “Some Like Them Cold”, “The Golden Honeymoon”, “Alibi Ike”, “A Day with Conrad Green”, and dozens more. Sometimes narrated by a “wise boob”, with slyly satirical commentary on manners and morals (The Big Town), sometimes taking a poignant view (“Now and Then”, “Old Folk’s Christmas”), sometimes sliding into sheer noir (“Champion”), always entertaining. His frequent use of vernacular influenced sports fiction writing for generations to come.

*The Art of Money Getting by PT Barnum [obs20]

Spoiler:

I believe it will give us great insight into the mind of our current president.

***Humbugs of the World by PT Barnum [obs20, WT Sharpe, Dazrin]

Spoiler:

This work exposes several of the chief humbugs of the world, written in the entertaining and humorous style Barnum is known for. Found within are discussions relative to hoaxes, money manias, adventurers, medicine and quacks, religious humbugs, trade and business impositions, spiritualists, ghosts and witchcrafts, and personal reminiscences.

**King of the Khyber Rifles by Talbot Mundy [GA Russell, BenG]

Spoiler:

The men who govern India—more power to them and her!—are few. Those who stand in their way and pretend to help them with a flood of words are a host. And from the host goes up an endless cry that India is the home of thugs, and of three hundred million hungry ones.

Kindle epub


***Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell [BenG, bfisher, sun surfer]

Spoiler:

The most well-known and well-liked of Gaskell's works, this softly humorous picture of an English country village was first serialized in a magazine edited by Charles Dickens in 1851. Based on the village of Gaskell's childhood, "Cranford" is narrated by a young woman visiting the town who describes the genteel poverty of two middle-aged spinster sisters, Miss Matty and Miss Deborah. Gaskell tells of their little adventures in a confidential and almost chatty tone, perfectly conveying their habits and standards of propriety, decency, and kindness in reduced circumstances. The colorful characters and subtle class distinctions of the village of Cranford are captured in this compassionate and hopeful portrayal of small-town English life.

and from a Goodreads review:
the humor is so sly. at times it's difficult to believe that this was written over 150 years ago. I guess that gentle social humor has always been with us.

Kindle


***Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson [BenG, bfisher, JSWolf]

Spoiler:

Mrs. Lucas, Lucia (pronounced Lu-CHEE-A) to her intimates, resides in the village of Riseholme, a pretty Elizabethan village in Worcestershire, where she vigorously guards her status as "Queen" despite occasional attempts from her subjects to overthrow her. Lucia’s dear friend Georgie Pillson both worships Lucia and occasionally works to subvert her power.

A very witty book, you feel affection for Lucia and her affectations but at the same time you want to see her taken down a notch.

Kindle

***The Man of Property by John Galsworthy [CRussel, Dazrin, sun surfer]

Spoiler:

John Galsworthy (1867-1933) devoted virtually his entire professional career to creating a fictional but entirely representative family of propertied Victorians: the Forsytes. He made their lives and times, loves and losses, fortunes and deaths so real that readers accused him of including as characters in his drama real individuals whom they knew. He was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.

The entire saga comprises three trilogies of books, of which this is the first. The other two ("A Modern Comedy" and "End of the Chapter") are available as separate downloads.

This first trilogy, "The Forsyte Saga", chronicles the life of three generations of the Forsyte family, a wealthy upper middle class English family, in the turbulent years between the 1880s and the 1920s - a time period during which English society was completely transformed. The books are set against the great events of the day - the Boer War and WWI, the rise of Labour, the death of Queen Victoria, and much more.

This book was originally published as three novels, with a short story "interlude" between each one, the structure being:

The Man of Property
(Interlude) Indian Summer of a Forsyte
In Chancery
(Interlude) Awakening
To Let

Kindle Audible

**The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells [JSWolf, WT Sharpe]

Spoiler:

H.G. Wells's science fiction classic, the first novel to explore the possibilities of intelligent life from other planets, it still startling and vivid nearly after a century after its appearance, and a half-century after Orson Wells's infamous 1938 radio adaptation. The daring portrayal of aliens landing on English soil, with its themes of interplanetary imperialism, technological holocaust and chaos, is central to the career of H.G. Wells, who died at the dawn of the atomic age. The survival of mankind in the face of "vast and cool and unsympathetic" scientific powers spinning out of control was a crucial theme throughout his work. Visionary, shocking and chilling, The War Of The Worlds has lost none of its impact since its first publication in 1898.

The nominations are now closed.

[CRussel]

Thanks for jumping in, issybird. A question for the group -- are we limiting this to only books in the PCML, or would any public domain book be acceptable assuming it would be eligible for the PCML? (I don't have a particular book in mind, just asking at this point. But I know some books would qualify that I don't have time or energy to go through and edit pursuant to uploading them here.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Thanks for jumping in, issybird. A question for the group -- are we limiting this to only books in the PCML, or would any public domain book be acceptable assuming it would be eligible for the PCML? (I don't have a particular book in mind, just asking at this point. But I know some books would qualify that I don't have time or energy to go through and edit pursuant to uploading them here.

Just speaking as a member of the group, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I have no particular objection to qualifying books and maybe it would get uploaded once nominated, which would be a good thing. On the other, at least to an extent this category is meant to showcase our library and it's also good to think that for this one month, the books are everywhere accessible* and free.

So all of that said, I personally see no reason not to go by our usual practice of letting people nominate what they will on the assumption that it will shake out in the nominating/voting process. But if Tom sees this and wants to issue a ruling, that would be good, too!

*Some books in the PCML may not be in the US public domain.

[JSWolf]

I would go for just what's posted to the PCML. I'll have to have a look to see what to nominate.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I would go for just what's posted to the PCML. I'll have to have a look to see what to nominate.

I do think that's the easiest answer, Jon! It's not as if there isn't an abundance of choices.

I don't have an idea yet. It would be no problem for me (look away, Jon!) to nominate a classic, but I don't think there'd be much interest. In any case, I'd like to see nominations more along the "corking great read" line, books like, say, Captain Blood, which I won't nominate because I read it too recently. Popular fiction that just happens to be old, but is still funny or adventurous or romantic or what have you?

And now that I've said that, I do have an idea which I'll post in a bit.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by issybird

In any case, I'd like to see nominations more along the "corking great read" line, books like, say, Captain Blood, which I won't nominate because I read it too recently.

I also won't nominate it because I can't! It used to be in the PCML, but was pulled when we went to Life + 70. On the plus side, I'll probably be ready to reread it in 2021, when it hits the library again.

[Sheesh, issy, get a grip]

[CRussel]

Well at least tell us what the book is, issy! After all, for those of us who live in life+50 countries, we might be able to get it and enjoy a good read. Even if it isn't part of this month's nominations!

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I would go for just what's posted to the PCML. I'll have to have a look to see what to nominate.

I'm fine with that. Was a question, not a request. I haven't actually thought about what I might want to read this time around. I just know I want it to be a fun read. Doesn't rule out a classic, just rules out ones that are too dark. Or worse, too dull.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Well at least tell us what the book is, issy! After all, for those of us who live in life+50 countries, we might be able to get it and enjoy a good read. Even if it isn't part of this month's nominations!

LOL, I did in my quote; see above. It's Captain Blood. I'm still planning to post my other nomination, which in fact is not entirely in the US public domain, but that's a matter for my countrymen's consciences, and not for discussion! We can always buy it if we want.

[CRussel]

Ah, thanks. I missed that. Thanks. I was thinking that it was a different book you were going to nominate, since Captain Blood was one you'd read too recently. Just me not following along clearly.

[issybird]

OK, I'll get things rolling with A to Izzard (collected short fiction), by Damon Runyon. It only hit the PCML last month when he came into PD in life + 70 countries, uploaded by the wonderful GrannyGrump (check out her other stuff; all winners).

Kindle
epub

From Wikipedia's bio of Runyon:

He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the Brooklyn or Midtown demi-monde. The adjective "Runyonesque" refers to this type of character as well as to the type of situations and dialog that Runyon depicted.[4] He spun humorous and sentimental tales of gamblers, hustlers, actors, and gangsters, few of whom go by "square" names, preferring instead colorful monikers such as "Nathan Detroit", "Benny Southstreet", "Big Jule", "Harry the Horse", "Good Time Charley", "Dave the Dude", or "The Seldom Seen Kid". His distinctive vernacular style is known as "Runyonese": a mixture of formal speech and colorful slang, almost always in present tense, and always devoid of contractions. He is credited with coining the phrase "Hooray Henry", a term now used in British English to describe an upper-class, loud-mouthed, arrogant twit.

[JSWolf]

I'll nominate Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow.

Jules is a young man barely a century old. He's lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies…and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World. Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the longago twentieth century. Now in the care of a network of volunteer "adhocs" who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest hightech touches. Now, though, it seems the "ad hocs" are under attack. A new group has taken over the Hall of the Presidents and is replacing its venerable audioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfaces that give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln, and all the others. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of Disney World itself. Worse: it appears this new group has had Jules killed. This upsets him. (It's only his fourth death and revival, after all.) Now it's war: war for the soul of the Magic Kingdom, a war of evershifting reputations, technical wizardry, and entirely unpredictable outcomes. Bursting with cutting-edge speculation and human insight, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom reads like Neal Stephenson meets Nick Hornby: a comingofage romantic comedy and a kickbutt cybernetic tour de force.

This was posted online via the creative commons license.

[JSWolf]

Are books removed going to be put back when they are allowed to be here or do we have to post them again?

An example is HG Wells who died 70 years ago and yet his books have not yet put back.

[WT Sharpe]

Harry's the librarian, so you may want to ask him. I do know that everything that was taken offline was duly recorded in a separate file to make it easier to restore when the time came.

[WT Sharpe]

If I was home is check into that, but some things are rather difficult to to on the phone. Issybird's filling in for me because I inadvertently left my iPad and Kindle home. Go figure. I remembered my Amazon Tap, iPod, and the shoulder bag that houses my Kindle and iPad when I'm on the road, and forgot the main things.