[pilotbob]

Help us select the next book that the Mobile Read book club will read for December 2010.

The nominations will run through Nov 25 or until 10 books have made the list.
Voting (new poll thread) will run for 5 days starting Nov 25.

Book selection category for December per the "official" club opening thread is:

December 2010
Classic


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

The floor is open to nominations.


Official choices each with three nominations:

*** (3) - The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky [GA Russell, montsnmags, adityadubey]
upload on MR by Roy White lrf & mobi/prc | upload by =X= lrf & mobi/prc & IMP | feedbooks | manybooks

Spoiler:

The Washington Post says: "[Dostoevsky is] at once the most literary and compulsively readable of novelists we continue to regard as great . . . The Brothers Karamazov stands as the culmination of his art – his last, longest, richest, and most capacious book." (quoted at Amazon's website)

*** (3) - Walden by Henry David Thoreau [twobits, lila55, montsnmags]
upload on MR by Strether lrf & mobi/prc | feedbooks | Project Gutenberg

Spoiler:

One of the great books of American letters and a masterpiece of reflective philosophizing. Accounts of Thoreau's daily life on the shores of Walden Pond outside Concord, Massachusetts, are interwoven with musings on the virtues of self-reliance and individual freedom, on society, government, and other topics.

*** (3) - Call of the Wild by Jack London [voodooblues, doreenjoy, lene1949]
upload on MR by Madam Broshkina lrf & mobi/prc | feedbooks

Spoiler:

From Wikipedia: The Call of the Wild is a novel by American writer Jack London. The plot concerns a previously domesticated and even somewhat pampered dog named Buck whose primordial instincts return after a series of events finds him serving as a sled dog in the treacherous, frigid Yukon during the days of the 19th century Gold Rushes.

Published in 1903, The Call of the Wild is one of London's most read books and it is generally considered one of his best. Because the protagonist is a dog, it is sometimes classified as a juvenile novel, suitable for children, but it is dark in tone and contains numerous scenes of cruelty and violence.

*** (3) - Great Expectations by Charles Dickens [adityadubey, doreenjoy, lene1949]
Upload on MR by HarryT (Illustrated) epub & lrf & mobi/prc | Project Gutenberg

Spoiler:

"Great Expectations" opens unforgettably in a twilit and overgrown churchyard on the eerie Kent marshes. There, the orphan Pip is disturbed to meet an escaped convict, Magwitch, but gives him food, in an encounter that is to haunt both their lives. How Pip receives riches from a mysterious benefactor, snobbishly abandons his friends for London society and "great expectations", and grows through misfortune and suffering to maturity is the theme of one of Dicken's best-loved novels.

In "Great Expectations", Dickens blends gripping drama with penetrating satire to give a compelling story rich in comedy and pathos: he has also created two of his finest, most haunting characters in Pip and Miss Havisham.

On a personal note I must add that this is one of my favourite of Dickens' novels and, indeed, one of my "all time" favourite books.

Contains the original black and white illustrations by Charles Green.

*** (3) - The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins [lila55, lilac_jive, Altoanto]
Upload on MR by HarryT lrf & mobi/prc | Upload by AlexBell (Illustrated) epub | Inkmesh search

Spoiler:

"Secrets, mistaken identities, surprise revelations, amnesia, locked rooms and locked asylums, and an unorthodox villain made this mystery thriller an instant success when it first appeared in 1860, and it has continued to enthrall readers ever since. From the hero’s foreboding before his arrival at Limmeridge House to the nefarious plot concerning the beautiful Laura, the breathtaking tension of Collins’s narrative created a new literary genre of suspense fiction, which profoundly shaped the course of English popular writing." (Amazon)

*** (3) - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas [lene1949, adityadubey, Altoanto]
Uploaded on MR by HarryT lrf & epub & mobi/prc | Uploaded by crutledge mobi/prc | Inkmesh search

Spoiler:

From Amazon: Set against the tumultuous years of the post-Napoleonic era, The Count of Monet Cristo recounts the swashbuckling adventures of Edmond Dantes, a dashing young sailor falsely accused of treason. The story of his long imprisonment, dramatic escape, and carefully wrought revenge offers up a vision of France that has become immortal.

*** (3) - A Room With A View by E. M. Forster [montsnmags, Ea, edbro]
Uploaded on MR by weatherwax epub | Upload by BenG lrf | Upload by MicheleC mobi/prc | Inkmesh search

Spoiler:

"This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England. A charming young English woman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson--who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist--Lucy is soon at war with the snobbery of her class and her own conflicting desires.

Back in England she is courted by a more acceptable, if stifling, suitor, and soon realizes she must make a startling decision that will decide the course of her future: she is forced to choose between convention and passion.

The enduring delight of this tale of romantic intrigue is rooted in Forster's colorful characters, including outrageous spinsters, pompous clergymen and outspoken patriots. Written in 1908, A Room With A View is one of E.M. Forster's earliest and most celebrated works."

***(3) - War of the Worlds by H G Wells [NickC42, Altoanto,voodooblues]
Uploaded by HarryT epub & mobi/prc & lrf | Upload by JSWolf lrf | Project Gutenberg | feedbooks | Inkmesh search

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.

*** (3) - Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain [jgaiser, voodooblues, jswolf]
upload on MR by Madam Broshkina mobi/prc & IMP | feedbooks

Spoiler:

Wikipedia: Life on the Mississippi is a memoir by Mark Twain detailing his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War.

The book begins with a brief history of the river from its discovery by Hernando de Soto in 1541. It continues with anecdotes of Twain's training as a steamboat pilot, as the 'cub' of an experienced pilot. He describes, with great affection, the science of navigating the ever-changing Mississippi River.

In the second half, the book describes Twain's return, many years later, to travel on a steamboat from St. Louis to New Orleans. He describes the competition from railroads, the new, large cities, and his observations on greed, gullibility, tragedy, and bad architecture. He also tells some stories that are most likely tall tales.

*** (3) - Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë [latinandgreek, edbro, drofgnal]
upload on MR by HarryT epub & Mobi/PRC

Spoiler:

Wuthering Heights is the only novel by Emily Brontë. It was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and a posthumous second edition was edited by her sister Charlotte.

The name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors on which the story centres (as an adjective; wuthering is a Yorkshire word referring to turbulent weather). The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.