New Leaf Nominations for March 2018 • The Book Came First

[issybird]

Happy February and let's hope that Phil doesn't see his shadow tomorrow.

Help us select the book that the New Leaf Book Club will read for March 2018. The theme is The Book Came First: books adapted to screen. We mean that literally, for once, in that novelizations of films and shows don't count, nor books related to a screen franchise. The book had to come first!

The nominations will run through 9 AM EST February 7, 2018. Each nomination requires a second and a third to make it to the poll, which will remain open for four days. The discussion of the selection will start on March 15, 2018. Don't forget to show up for the discussion of the first selection of the New Leaf Book Club, Passing, on February 15.

FAQs for the Nomination, Selection and Discussion process

General Guidelines for the New Leaf Book Club

Official choices with three nominations:

Story of Your Life, from Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Amazon US | Amazon US, film tie-in edition | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon AU | Kobo US | Kobo UK | Kobo CA | Kobo AU

Spoiler:

Description of Story of Your Life (from me):

Two threads run through this story: a woman remembering her daughter growing up; and the woman being called as a linguistic expert to try and communicate with aliens that have landed. These two threads are related in an unexpected way.

Description for the book Stories of Your Life and Others (from Kobo):

With his masterful first collection, multiple-award-winning author Ted Chiang deftly blends human emotion and scientific rationalism in eight remarkably diverse stories, all told in his trademark precise and evocative prose.
From a soaring Babylonian tower that connects a flat Earth with the firmament above, to a world where angelic visitations are a wondrous and terrifying part of everyday life; from a neural modification that eliminates the appeal of physical beauty, to an alien language that challenges our very perception of time and reality. . . Chiang's rigorously imagined fantasia invites us to question our understanding of the universe and our place in it.

Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
University of Adelaide - free (ePub and Kindle downloads) | Amazon UK - £2.23 | Amazon US - $2.99

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by Goodreads

Universally recognized as a landmark in American literature, Elmer Gantry scandalized readers when it was first published, causing Sinclair Lewis to be "invited" to a jail cell in New Hampshire and to his own lynching in Virginia. His portrait of a golden-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church--a saver of souls who lives a life of duplicity, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence--is also the record of a period, a reign of grotesque vulgarity, which but for Lewis would have left no trace of itself. Elmer Gantry has been called the greatest, most vital, and most penetrating study of hypocrisy that has been written since the works of Voltaire.

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
Overdrive | Kobo UK | Kobo US | Kobo CA | Kobo AU | Amazon UK | Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon AU

Spoiler:

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, who keeps meticulous records and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel insists the baby is a “gift from God,” and against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
FadedPage -- FREE | AmazonUS -- $9.99 | AmazonUK -- £5.99 | AmazonAU -- $2.04 | KoboUS -- $6.49 | KoboUK -- £5.49 | KoboCA -- $0.99 | AudibleUK -- £6.75 (or £5.99 WhisperSync) | AudibleUS -- $11.15 (or $8.49 WhisperSync )

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by Goodreads

It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Using the simple, powerful language of a fable, Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of defeat and personal triumph won from loss and transforms them into a magnificent twentieth-century classic.

This is a short book (132 pages in hardcover), it's FREE in Canada and Life+50 countries, and is both powerful and approachable. Really, if you read no other Hemingway, read this one.

Despite the Falling Snow Shamim Sarif
Amazon US -$3.99 | Kobo - $3.99 | Amazon CA - $5.99 | Amazon AU - $5.99 |
Amazon UK - £2.99 GBP | Overdrive | Scribd

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

The action of Despite the Falling Snow moves between present day Boston and 1950s Moscow. After an early career amongst the political elite of Cold War Russia, Alexander Ivanov has lived in the States for forty years. Here he has built a successful business; and here he has managed to bury the tragic memories surrounding his charismatic late wife, Katya - or so he believes.

For into his life come two women - one who will start to open up the heart he has kept protected for so long; another who is determined to uncover the truth about what really happened to Katya all those years ago. The novel's journey back to the snowbound streets of post-Stalinist Moscow reveals a precarious, dangerous world of secrets and treachery.

“a perfectly balanced novel of love and tragedy.…The beauty of the streets of Moscow is a majestic backdrop to a play of mistrust and deception where friends, even the best of friends, can turn against each other in fear.” Waterstones

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
Amazon - $7.64 | Kobo - $11.99 | Amazon UK - £9.99

Spoiler:

Strangers on a Train (1950) is a psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith about two men whose lives become entangled after one of them proposes they 'trade' murders. He then goes ahead and fulfills his end of the imaginary bargain, leading to fatal consequences for both.

It was adapted as a film in 1951 by director Alfred Hitchcock. It has since been adapted in whole or in part for film and television several times. The novel was adapted for radio in 2004 by Craig Warner, and adapted for the stage in 2013 (also by Warner). In 2015, it was announced that director David Fincher and writer Gillian Flynn are working on a remake for Warner Bros. that is said to be a "modern take" of the Hitchcock version.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller [GA Russell, Bookpossum, bfisher]
Amazon US | Kobo | Nook - $11.99 for all

Spoiler:

One wag said that it was written during Korea, set in World War II, but about Viet Nam!

Before the Fact by Francis Iles
Amazon - $4 | Amazon UK - £2 | Kobo Canada | Kobo UK

Spoiler:

This book is the basis for Hitchcock's film Suspicion, and has what I consider one of the grabbiest openings ever:

Some women give birth to murderers, some go to bed with them, and some marry them. Lina Aysgarth had lived with her husband for nearly eight years before she realized that she was married to a murderer.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Spoiler:

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep begat the movie Blade runner, which set the standard for the dystopian future in the 1980's and was an early entry in what became known as the cyberpunk sub-genre.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
1831 edition: MobileRead mobi | MobileRead epub
Original 1818 version: | MobileRead mobi

Spoiler:

At once a Gothic thriller, a passionate romance, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of science, Frankenstein tells the story of committed science student Victor Frankenstein. Obsessed with discovering the cause of generation and life and bestowing animation upon lifeless matter, Frankenstein assembles a human being from stolen body parts but; upon bringing it to life, he recoils in horror at the creature's hideousness. Tormented by isolation and loneliness, the once-innocent creature turns to evil and unleashes a campaign of murderous revenge against his creator, Frankenstein.

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

Still Life by Louise Penny Chief Inspector Gamache #1
AmazonCA -- $3.99 CAD | AmazonUK -- £2.99 |
AmazonUS -- $7.99 | AmazonAU - $4.99 | AudibleUS --$12.99 WhisperSync |
AudibleUK -- £6.49 WhisperSync | KoboUS -- $7.99 | KoboUK -- £2.99 | KoboAU -- $4.99 | KoboCA -- $3.99 | Overdrive

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montréal and yet a world away. Jane Neal, a long-time resident of Three Pines, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it's a tragic hunting accident and nothing more but Gamache smells something foul this holiday season…and is soon certain that Jane died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.

With this award-winning first novel, Louise Penny introduces an engaging hero in Inspector Gamache, who commands his forces--and this series--with power, ingenuity, and charm.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Amazon | Kobo | Nook

Spoiler:

With the publication of her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music. Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated—and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.

Richard Wright praised Carson McCullers for her ability "to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness." She writes "with a sweep and certainty that are overwhelming," said the New York Times. McCullers became an overnight literary sensation, but her novel has endured, just as timely and powerful today as when it was first published. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is Carson McCullers at her most compassionate, endearing best.

The Body by Stephen King, from his collection of four novellas Different Seasons
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon AU | Kobo US | Kobo UK | Kobo CA | Kobo AU

Spoiler:

Description of The Body (from me):

Gordon Lachance, the narrator 20 years on, tells how he and three other 12yo boys, Chris Chambers, Vern Tessio and Teddy Duchamp, went to see a dead body. The body was that of Ray Brower, a boy much their own age, he had been hit by a train - he was known to be missing, the police were still searching for him.

Description of Different Seasons (from Amazon):

Read the original stories which became the celebrated films STAND BY ME, APT PUPIL and THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, voted the world's most popular movie.

In this classic collection of four novellas, the grand master takes you on irresistible journeys into the far reaches of horror, heartache and hope.

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption is the story of two men convicted of murder - one guilty, one innocent - who form the perfect partnership as they dream up a scheme to escape from prison.

In Apt Pupil a golden schoolboy entices an old man with a past to join in a dreadful union.

The Body sees four young boys venture into the woods and find life, death . . . and the end of innocence.

The Breathing Method is the tale of a doctor who goes to his club and discovers a woman determined to give birth - no matter what.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Amazon UK - £4.99 | Amazon CAN - $8.99 | Amazon US - $7.99 | Amazon Oz - $12.99 | Kobo US - $7.99 | [Kobo UK | Kobo AU | Kobo CA | Overdrive



Nominations:

***Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck [orlok, CRussel, dazrin]
Amazon UK - £4.99 | Amazon CAN - $8.99 | Amazon US - $7.99 | Amazon Oz - $12.99 | Kobo US - $7.99 | [Kobo UK | Kobo AU | Kobo CA | Overdrive

***The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman [JSWolf, Bookworm_Girl, June]
Overdrive | Kobo UK | Kobo US | Kobo CA | Kobo AU | Amazon UK | Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon AU

Spoiler:

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, who keeps meticulous records and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel insists the baby is a “gift from God,” and against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

***The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway [CRussel, orlok, JSWolf]
FadedPage -- FREE | AmazonUS -- $9.99 | AmazonUK -- £5.99 | AmazonAU -- $2.04 | KoboUS -- $6.49 | KoboUK -- £5.49 | KoboCA -- $0.99 | AudibleUK -- £6.75 (or £5.99 WhisperSync) | AudibleUS -- $11.15 (or $8.49 WhisperSync )

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by Goodreads

It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Using the simple, powerful language of a fable, Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of defeat and personal triumph won from loss and transforms them into a magnificent twentieth-century classic.

This is a short book (132 pages in hardcover), it's FREE in Canada and Life+50 countries, and is both powerful and approachable. Really, if you read no other Hemingway, read this one.

***Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis [issybird, bfisher, latepaul]
University of Adelaide - free (ePub and Kindle downloads) | Amazon UK - £2.23 | Amazon US - $2.99

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by Goodreads

Universally recognized as a landmark in American literature, Elmer Gantry scandalized readers when it was first published, causing Sinclair Lewis to be "invited" to a jail cell in New Hampshire and to his own lynching in Virginia. His portrait of a golden-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church--a saver of souls who lives a life of duplicity, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence--is also the record of a period, a reign of grotesque vulgarity, which but for Lewis would have left no trace of itself. Elmer Gantry has been called the greatest, most vital, and most penetrating study of hypocrisy that has been written since the works of Voltaire.

***Story of Your Life, from Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang [gmw, Alohamora, Dazrin]
Amazon US | Amazon US, film tie-in edition | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon AU | Kobo US | Kobo UK | Kobo CA | Kobo AU

Spoiler:

Description of Story of Your Life (from me):

Two threads run through this story: a woman remembering her daughter growing up; and the woman being called as a linguistic expert to try and communicate with aliens that have landed. These two threads are related in an unexpected way.

Description for the book Stories of Your Life and Others (from Kobo):

With his masterful first collection, multiple-award-winning author Ted Chiang deftly blends human emotion and scientific rationalism in eight remarkably diverse stories, all told in his trademark precise and evocative prose.
From a soaring Babylonian tower that connects a flat Earth with the firmament above, to a world where angelic visitations are a wondrous and terrifying part of everyday life; from a neural modification that eliminates the appeal of physical beauty, to an alien language that challenges our very perception of time and reality. . . Chiang's rigorously imagined fantasia invites us to question our understanding of the universe and our place in it.

***Catch-22 by Joseph Heller [GA Russell, Bookpossum, bfisher]
Amazon US | Kobo | Nook - $11.99 for all

Spoiler:

One wag said that it was written during Korea, set in World War II, but about Viet Nam!

***Despite the Falling Snow by Shamim Sarif [Bookworm_Girl, Bookpossum, gmw]
Amazon US -$3.99 | Kobo - $3.99 | Amazon CA - $5.99 | Amazon AU - $5.99 |
Amazon UK - £2.99 GBP | Overdrive | Scribd

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

The action of Despite the Falling Snow moves between present day Boston and 1950s Moscow. After an early career amongst the political elite of Cold War Russia, Alexander Ivanov has lived in the States for forty years. Here he has built a successful business; and here he has managed to bury the tragic memories surrounding his charismatic late wife, Katya - or so he believes.

For into his life come two women - one who will start to open up the heart he has kept protected for so long; another who is determined to uncover the truth about what really happened to Katya all those years ago. The novel's journey back to the snowbound streets of post-Stalinist Moscow reveals a precarious, dangerous world of secrets and treachery.

“a perfectly balanced novel of love and tragedy.…The beauty of the streets of Moscow is a majestic backdrop to a play of mistrust and deception where friends, even the best of friends, can turn against each other in fear.” Waterstones

*M*A*S*H [Ralph Sir Edward]

Spoiler:

To read the parts that both the movie and TV series left out. . .

***Frankenstein by Mary Shelley [latepaul, June, Catlady]
1831 edition: MobileRead mobi | MobileRead epub
Original 1818 version: | MobileRead mobi

Spoiler:

At once a Gothic thriller, a passionate romance, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of science, Frankenstein tells the story of committed science student Victor Frankenstein. Obsessed with discovering the cause of generation and life and bestowing animation upon lifeless matter, Frankenstein assembles a human being from stolen body parts but; upon bringing it to life, he recoils in horror at the creature's hideousness. Tormented by isolation and loneliness, the once-innocent creature turns to evil and unleashes a campaign of murderous revenge against his creator, Frankenstein.

***Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith [astrangerhere, Bookpossum, bfisher]
Amazon - $7.64 | Kobo - $11.99 | Amazon UK - £9.99

Spoiler:

Strangers on a Train (1950) is a psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith about two men whose lives become entangled after one of them proposes they 'trade' murders. He then goes ahead and fulfills his end of the imaginary bargain, leading to fatal consequences for both.

It was adapted as a film in 1951 by director Alfred Hitchcock. It has since been adapted in whole or in part for film and television several times. The novel was adapted for radio in 2004 by Craig Warner, and adapted for the stage in 2013 (also by Warner). In 2015, it was announced that director David Fincher and writer Gillian Flynn are working on a remake for Warner Bros. that is said to be a "modern take" of the Hitchcock version.

***Before the Fact by Francis Iles [Catlady, issybird, June]
Amazon - $4 | Amazon UK - £2 | Kobo Canada | Kobo UK

Spoiler:

This book is the basis for Hitchcock's film Suspicion, and has what I consider one of the grabbiest openings ever:

Some women give birth to murderers, some go to bed with them, and some marry them. Lina Aysgarth had lived with her husband for nearly eight years before she realized that she was married to a murderer.

***A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick [dangrsone, orlok, Alohamora]

***Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick [dangrsone, GA Russell, astrangerhere]

Spoiler:

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep begat the movie Blade runner, which set the standard for the dystopian future in the 1980's and was an early entry in what became known as the cyberpunk sub-genre.

***Still Life by Louise Penny Chief Inspector Gamache #1 [CRussel, JSWolf, Alohamora]
AmazonCA -- $3.99 CAD | AmazonUK -- £2.99 |
AmazonUS -- $7.99 | AmazonAU - $4.99 | AudibleUS --$12.99 WhisperSync |
AudibleUK -- £6.49 WhisperSync | KoboUS -- $7.99 | KoboUK -- £2.99 | KoboAU -- $4.99 | KoboCA -- $3.99 | Overdrive

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montréal and yet a world away. Jane Neal, a long-time resident of Three Pines, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it's a tragic hunting accident and nothing more but Gamache smells something foul this holiday season…and is soon certain that Jane died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.

With this award-winning first novel, Louise Penny introduces an engaging hero in Inspector Gamache, who commands his forces--and this series--with power, ingenuity, and charm.

*The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe [Catlady]
Amazon | Kobo | Google all US$12.99, but also in OverDrive |
Amazon UK | Kobo UK - both £4.99

Spoiler:

When Rona Jaffe’s superb page-turner was first published in 1958, it changed contemporary fiction forever. Some readers were shocked, but millions more were electrified when they saw themselves reflected in its story of five young employees of a New York publishing company. Almost sixty years later, The Best of Everything remains touchingly—and sometimes hilariously—true to the personal and professional struggles women face in the city. There’s Ivy League Caroline, who dreams of graduating from the typing pool to an editor’s office; naïve country girl April, who within months of hitting town reinvents herself as the woman every man wants on his arm; and Gregg, the free-spirited actress with a secret yearning for domesticity. Jaffe follows their adventures with intelligence, sympathy, and prose as sharp as a paper cut.

The book was made into a wonderfully trashy, glossy soap-opera-ish movie, with a star-studded cast: Joan Crawford, Hope Lange, Diane Baker, Suzy Parker, Stephen Boyd, Louis Jourdan, Martha Hyer.

***The Body by Stephen King, from his collection of four novellas Different Seasons [gmw, dangersone, binaryhermit]
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon AU | Kobo US | Kobo UK | Kobo CA | Kobo AU

Spoiler:

Description of The Body (from me):

Gordon Lachance, the narrator 20 years on, tells how he and three other 12yo boys, Chris Chambers, Vern Tessio and Teddy Duchamp, went to see a dead body. The body was that of Ray Brower, a boy much their own age, he had been hit by a train - he was known to be missing, the police were still searching for him.

Description of Different Seasons (from Amazon):

Read the original stories which became the celebrated films STAND BY ME, APT PUPIL and THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, voted the world's most popular movie.

In this classic collection of four novellas, the grand master takes you on irresistible journeys into the far reaches of horror, heartache and hope.

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption is the story of two men convicted of murder - one guilty, one innocent - who form the perfect partnership as they dream up a scheme to escape from prison.

In Apt Pupil a golden schoolboy entices an old man with a past to join in a dreadful union.

The Body sees four young boys venture into the woods and find life, death . . . and the end of innocence.

The Breathing Method is the tale of a doctor who goes to his club and discovers a woman determined to give birth - no matter what.

***The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers [drofgnal, issybird, astrangerhere]
Amazon | Kobo | Nook

Spoiler:

With the publication of her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music. Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated—and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.

Richard Wright praised Carson McCullers for her ability "to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness." She writes "with a sweep and certainty that are overwhelming," said the New York Times. McCullers became an overnight literary sensation, but her novel has endured, just as timely and powerful today as when it was first published. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is Carson McCullers at her most compassionate, endearing best.

[gmw]

For those that might like a bit of extra inspiration, BookDepository sent me the following link that you might find helpful: Books Made Into Movies.

(BookDepository is for paperbooks, so you will need to check for ebook availability separately, but I thought it was a very convenient page to help anyone short of ideas for the March nominations.)

[orlok]

I'll kick off with Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. It may finally force me to read something by him.

Amazon UK - £4.99
Amazon CAN - $8.99
Amazon US - Surprisingly, I can't find the ebook version
Amazon US - $7.99
Amazon Oz - $12.99
Kobo US - $7.99

[JSWolf]

Of Mice and Men

Kobo UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/of-mice-and-men-1
Kobo AU: https://www.kobo.com/au/en/ebook/of-mice-and-men-1
Kobo CA: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/of-mice-and-men-2
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Mice-Men-John.../dp/B001BC2ZS6
Overdrive: https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=o...john+steinbeck

[CRussel]

@orlok: A trick to finding ebook versions on amazon when they aren't properly linked to pbook versions. Start from: www.amazon.com/kindle-ebooks (or the smile equivalent). This limits the search to ebooks only.

[JSWolf]

I'm going to nominate The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman. It is an amazing book. Well worth the read. if you read any other book instead, give yourself a kick on the backside.

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, who keeps meticulous records and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel insists the baby is a “gift from God,” and against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

Overdrive: https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=L...s+M.L.+Stedman

Kobo UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the...tween-oceans-1
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the...tween-oceans-2
Kobo CA: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/the...tween-oceans-2
Kobo AU: https://www.kobo.com/au/en/ebook/the...between-oceans

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Light-Betwe.../dp/B006WAIV4Y
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Light-Between.../dp/B0064CL1T2
Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/Light-Between-.../dp/B0064CL1T2
Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/Light-Betw.../dp/B007D3ROSI

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by gmw

For those that might like a bit of extra inspiration, BookDepository sent me the following link that you might find helpful: Books Made Into Movies.

A few more links in the same vein that might be useful...

From page to screen -- Kindle Store

Read it before you see it -- Kobo

From page to screen -- Google Play

[JSWolf]

The above link to Google Play is not working. Here is a working link.

https://play.google.com/store/books/...movietv_tieins

[CRussel]

I would like to nominate Ernest Hemingway's best book, made into a superb movie starring Spencer Tracy. The movie got one Oscar win, and two additional nominations. The book? It got a Pulitzer Prize.

Originally Posted by Goodreads

It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Using the simple, powerful language of a fable, Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of defeat and personal triumph won from loss and transforms them into a magnificent twentieth-century classic.

This is a short book (132 pages in hardcover), it's FREE in Canada and Life+50 countries, and is both powerful and approachable. Really, if you read no other Hemingway, read this one.

FadedPage -- FREE
AmazonUS -- $9.99 USD
AmazonUK -- £5.99
AmazonAU -- $2.04 AUD

KoboUS -- $6.49
KoboUK -- £5.49
KoboCA -- $0.99


AudibleUK -- £6.75 (or £5.99 WhisperSync)
AudibleUS -- $11.15 (or $8.49 WhisperSync )

I finally read this a couple of years ago when Hemingway became Public Domain in Canada. And I'd like to highly recommend it. Powerful, timeless, and a quite approachable read.

[issybird]

I'm going to nominate Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis. Lewis was the first American Nobelist in Literature and the movie won three Oscars in 1961, including Burt Lancaster as Best Actor.

From Goodreads:

Universally recognized as a landmark in American literature, Elmer Gantry scandalized readers when it was first published, causing Sinclair Lewis to be "invited" to a jail cell in New Hampshire and to his own lynching in Virginia. His portrait of a golden-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church--a saver of souls who lives a life of duplicity, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence--is also the record of a period, a reign of grotesque vulgarity, which but for Lewis would have left no trace of itself. Elmer Gantry has been called the greatest, most vital, and most penetrating study of hypocrisy that has been written since the works of Voltaire.

Sinclair Lewis is in the public domain in Canada and other Life+50 countries and in Australia. The Amazon US and UK editions are a little dubious, but they link to a legitimate Whispersync Audible version.

University of Adelaide - free (ePub and Kindle downloads)
Amazon UK - £2.23
Amazon US - $2.99

[CRussel]

Thanks for the link to the Australian site, since this one hasn't yet been converted in Canada!

[issybird]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Thanks for the link to the Australian site, since this one hasn't yet been converted in Canada!

I looked, at both usual places, and nope! Which is why I spelled out the pd situation.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by issybird

I looked, at both usual places, and nope! Which is why I spelled out the pd situation.

Did you look at Kobo?

https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/elmer-gantry

[issybird]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Did you look at Kobo?

https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/elmer-gantry

Thanks, Jon. I figured since it's public domain in Canada, there's no point in Canadians paying for it and the Adelaide link will work for them as well.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by issybird

Thanks, Jon. I figured since it's public domain in Canada, there's no point in Canadians paying for it and the Adelaide link will work for them as well.

I had a quick look at the HTML online for the PD version and it looks pretty good.