December 2012 Mobile Read Book Club 1st Vote
Help us choose a book as the December 2012 eBook for the Mobile Read Book Club. The poll will be open for 4 days, followed by a 3 day run-off poll between the two
* most popular choices. The vote this month will be
visible.
We will start the discussion thread for this book on December 20th. Select from the following
Official Choices with three nominations each:
(1) The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck
Amazon (UK) /
Amazon (US) /
B&N /
Kobo
(2) Crime and Punishment by F.M. Dostoevsky
Amazon UK /
Amazon US (free) /
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: LRF
(3) Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: EPUB /
LRF /
PRC
Spoiler:
From "Wikipedia":
"Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero", commonly known as "Quo Vadis", is a historical novel written by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Quo vadis is Latin for "Where are you going?" and alludes to a New Testament verse (John 13:36). The verse, in the King James Version, reads as follows,
"Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou can not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards."
Quo Vadis tells of a love that develops between a young Christian woman, Ligia (or Lygia), and Marcus Vinicius, a Roman patrician. It takes place in the city of Rome under the rule of emperor Nero around AD 64.
Sienkiewicz studied the Roman Empire extensively prior to writing the novel, with the aim of getting historical details correct. As such, several historical figures appear in the book. As a whole, the novel carries a powerful pro-Christian message.
Published in installments in three Polish dailies in 1895, it came out in book form in 1896 and has since been translated into more than 50 languages. This novel contributed to Sienkiewicz's Nobel Prize for literature in 1905.
Several movies have been based on Quo Vadis. The most famous movie is the Hollywood production "Quo Vadis" filmed in 1951.
(4) I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Amazon (US) /
B&N /
BooksOnBoard /
Kobo /
Sony
(5) Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: PRC /
Gutenberg EPUB /
Amazon UK /
Amazon US /
Barnes & Noble /
Dymocks Australia /
Kobo /
Sony Reader Store
(6) Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Amazon /
Inkmesh /
Kobo
(7) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: PRC /
Project Gutenberg
(8) The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
No links provided.
Spoiler:
From Amazon:
Muriel Spark’s timeless classic about a controversial teacher who deeply marks the lives of a select group of students in the years leading up to World War II
“Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life!” So asserts Jean Brodie, a magnetic, dubious, and sometimes comic teacher at the conservative Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh. Brodie selects six favorite pupils to mold—and she doesn’t stop with just their intellectual lives. She has a plan for them all, including how they will live, whom they will love, and what sacrifices they will make to uphold her ideals. When the girls reach adulthood and begin to find their own destinies, Jean Brodie’s indelible imprint is a gift to some, and a curse to others.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is Spark’s masterpiece, a novel that offers one of twentieth-century English literature’s most iconic and complex characters—a woman at once admirable and sinister, benevolent and conniving.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Muriel Spark including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s archive at the National Library of Scotland.
Also:
"A perfect book." - Chicago Tribune
A short classic novel about an eccentric Edinburgh teacher who inspires cultlike reverence in her young students.
At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher extraordinaire Miss Jean Brodie is unmistakably, and outspokenly, in her prime. She is passionate in the application of her unorthodox teaching methods, in her attraction to the married art master, Teddy Lloyd, in her affair with the bachelor music master, Gordon Lowther, and—most important—in her dedication to "her girls," the students she selects to be her crème de la crème. Fanatically devoted, each member of the Brodie set—Eunice, Jenny, Mary, Monica, Rose, and Sandy—is "famous for something," and Miss Brodie strives to bring out the best in each one. Determined to instill in them independence, passion, and ambition, Miss Brodie advises her girls, "Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth, and Beauty come first. Follow me."
And they do. But one of them will betray her.
(9) Flush by Virginia Woolf
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: IMP /
LRF /
PRC /
EPUB (in the Complete Works)
(10) Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: EPUB /
IMP /
LRF /
PRC
Spoiler:
From Amazon:
Left penniless after his feckless father's death, young Nicholas Nickleby has no choice but to make his own way in the world. For the sake of his mother and sister, he is forced by his hard-hearted uncle to take a post as an assistant master at Dotheboys Hall, a school for unwanted boys, run by the cruel and tyrannical headmaster, Wackford Squeers. But this is only the beginning of Nicholas's adventures in this most entertaining of Charles Dickens's novels. We follow the progress of Nicholas and his slow-witted companion Smike on their travels and encounter a supporting cast of delectable characters including the rambunctious Crummles theatre company and their talented performing pony, the dastardly Sir Mulberry Hawk, the delightful Mrs. Nickleby, the preposterous Kenwings, and many more. Like many of Dickens's novels, Nicholas Nickleby is characterized by his criticism of cruelty and social injustice, but is above all one of the greatest comic masterpieces of nineteenth-century literature.
The fine print:
*Should the first vote produce a 3-way or more tie for first place, or 2-way or more tie for second, the second poll will have more than two choices.