MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - MobileRead January 2011 Mobile Read Book Club Vote

pilotbob · 12-19-2010, 07:20 PM

Help up choose a book as the January 2011 eBook for the Mobile Read Book Club. The poll will be open for 7 days. We will start the discussion thread for this book on January 20th. Select from the following books:

(Reminder, January is "Second Chance" month so there is no nomination thread. The books in the poll are the 2nd place titles from the 2010 months.)

Disclaimer:
There were two ties for second place. As self-appointed grand pooba I have broken those ties with my personal choice. Sorry if this offends anyone.

December, classic:
War of the Worlds by H G Wells
Uploaded by HarryT epub & mobi/prc & lrf | Upload by JSWolf lrf | Project Gutenberg | feedbooks | Inkmesh search

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.

November, science fiction:
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy By Douglas Adams - [obs20, lila55, ficbot, Quake1028]
Inkmesh search

Description: "IRRESISTIBLE!" --The Boston Globe Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor. Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by … more »quotes from The Hitchhiker's Guide ("A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have") and a galaxy-full of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox--the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod's girlfriend (formally Tricia McMillan), whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student who is obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he bought over the years. Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? Why do we spend so much time between wearing digital watches? For all the answers stick your thumb to the stars. And don't forget to bring a towel! "[A] WHIMSICAL ODYSSEY...Characters frolic through the galaxy with infectious joy." --Publishers Weekly From the Paperback edition. (from eBooks.com)

October, horror:
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
In case anyone isn't familiar with the plot, Dr. Jekyll is a kindly doctor who is experimenting with "mind altering" drugs. One of these drugs accidentally turns him in a homicidal maniac, who calls himself Edward Hyde, and whose personality gradually takes over that of Dr. Jekyll, until he can no longer control his transformations. A story of a man's decent into madness. Still as gripping today as when it was written in 1886. (HarryT)

September, Mystery/Crime:
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Harry T says: "The Moonstone", published in 1868, is widely regarded as the precursor of the modern mystery and suspense novels. T. S. Eliot called it "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels"...A fabulous story. Both a classic and fun to read...

August, free for all:
Sh*t My Dad Says by Halpern, Justin
More than a million people now follow Mr. Halpern's philosophical musings on Twitter, and in this book, his son weaves a brilliantly funny, touching coming-of-age memoir around the best of his quotes. An all-American story that unfolds on the Little League field, in Denny's, during excruciating family road trips, and, most frequently, in the Halperns' kitchen over bowls of Grape-Nuts, Sh*t My Dad Says is a chaotic, hilarious, true portrait of a father-son relationship from a major new comic voice.

July, fantasy:
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Titans clash, but with more fuss than fury in this fantasy demi-epic from the author of Neverwhere. The intriguing premise of Gaiman's tale is that the gods of European yore, who came to North America with their immigrant believers, are squaring off for a rumble with new indigenous deities: "gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon." They all walk around in mufti, disguised as ordinary people, which causes no end of trouble for 32-year-old protagonist Shadow Moon, who can't turn around without bumping into a minor divinity. Released from prison the day after his beloved wife dies in a car accident, Shadow takes a job as emissary for Mr. Wednesday, avatar of the Norse god Grimnir, unaware that his boss's recruiting trip across the American heartland will subject him to repeat visits from the reanimated corpse of his dead wife and brutal roughing up by the goons of Wednesday's adversary, Mr. World. At last Shadow must reevaluate his own deeply held beliefs in order to determine his crucial role in the final showdown. Gaiman tries to keep the magical and the mundane evenly balanced, but he is clearly more interested in the activities of his human protagonists: Shadow's poignant personal moments and the tale's affectionate slices of smalltown life are much better developed than the aimless plot, which bounces Shadow from one episodic encounter to another in a design only the gods seem to know. Mere mortal readers will enjoy the tale's wit, but puzzle over its strained mythopoeia. (One-day laydown, June 19)Forecast: Even when he isn't in top form, Gaiman, creator of the acclaimed Sandman comics series, trumps many storytellers. Momentously titled, and allotted a dramatic one-day laydown with a 12-city author tour, his latest will appeal to fans and attract mainstream review coverage for better or for worse because of the rich possibilities of its premise.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

June, thriller/suspense:
Shutter Island by Dennis LeHane
The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this remote and barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance. As a killer hurricane bears relentlessly down on them, a strange case takes on even darker, more sinister shades--with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. But then neither is Teddy Daniels.

May, classic
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
Kim is an orphan boy in India in the late 1800s. He becomes involved in an old Lama's search for a sacred river, and in a British spy ring, playing the "Great Game".
"The book presents a vivid picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the bazaars and the road."
..........— The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. Ed. Margaret Drabble and Jenny Stringer. Oxford University Press, 2007.

April, humor:
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
"The first in a series of outlandishly clever adventures featuring the resourceful, fearless literary detective Thursday Next-a New York Times bestseller!In Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Bront?'s novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde's ingenious fantasy-enhanced by a Web site that re-creates the world of the novel-unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix."

March, Nonfiction:
Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things by Richard Wiseman.
An award-winning psychologist exposes the truth behind life's little oddities and absurdities in this quirky and practical guide to life.
For over twenty years, psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman has examined the quirky science of everyday life. In Quirkology, he navigates the backwaters of human behavior, discovering the tell-tale signs that give away a liar, the secret science behind speed-dating and personal ads, and what a person's sense of humor reveals about the innermost workings of their mind-- all along paying tribute to others who have carried out similarly weird and wonderful work. Wiseman's research has involved secretly observing people as they go about their daily business, conducting unusual experiments in art exhibitions and music concerts, and even staging fake séances in allegedly haunted buildings. With thousands of research subjects from all over the world, including enamored couples, unwitting pedestrians, and guileless dinner guests, Wiseman presents a fun, clever, and unexpected picture of the human mind.

February, romance:
Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
Dead Until Dark is the first book in Charlaine Harris's series The Southern Vampire Mysteries / Sookie Stackhouse novels. In this first installment, the author introduces the character of Sookie Stackhouse, a young telepathic waitress from the fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana, and her world, an alternate history where vampires, shapeshifters and other supernatual beings coexist with humans. In Dead Until Dark Sookie begins a romantic entanglement with her vampire neighbor and is faced with a series of murders in town.
Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews. It's a romantic mystery / urban fantasy. It's actually written by married couple. It has an e-book version.

12-19-2010, 07:20 PM	#1
pilotbob Grand Sorcerer Posts: 19,832 Karma: 11844413 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Tampa, FL USA Device: Kindle Touch	January 2011 Mobile Read Book Club Vote Help up choose a book as the January 2011 eBook for the Mobile Read Book Club. The poll will be open for 7 days. We will start the discussion thread for this book on January 20th. Select from the following books: (Reminder, January is "Second Chance" month so there is no nomination thread. The books in the poll are the 2nd place titles from the 2010 months.) Disclaimer: There were two ties for second place. As self-appointed grand pooba I have broken those ties with my personal choice. Sorry if this offends anyone. December, classic: War of the Worlds by H G Wells Uploaded by HarryT epub & mobi/prc & lrf \| Upload by JSWolf lrf \| Project Gutenberg \| feedbooks \| Inkmesh search 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. November, science fiction: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy By Douglas Adams - [obs20, lila55, ficbot, Quake1028] Inkmesh search Description: "IRRESISTIBLE!" --The Boston Globe Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor. Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by … more »quotes from The Hitchhiker's Guide ("A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have") and a galaxy-full of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox--the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod's girlfriend (formally Tricia McMillan), whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student who is obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he bought over the years. Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? Why do we spend so much time between wearing digital watches? For all the answers stick your thumb to the stars. And don't forget to bring a towel! "[A] WHIMSICAL ODYSSEY...Characters frolic through the galaxy with infectious joy." --Publishers Weekly From the Paperback edition. (from eBooks.com) October, horror: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson In case anyone isn't familiar with the plot, Dr. Jekyll is a kindly doctor who is experimenting with "mind altering" drugs. One of these drugs accidentally turns him in a homicidal maniac, who calls himself Edward Hyde, and whose personality gradually takes over that of Dr. Jekyll, until he can no longer control his transformations. A story of a man's decent into madness. Still as gripping today as when it was written in 1886. (HarryT) September, Mystery/Crime: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins Harry T says: "The Moonstone", published in 1868, is widely regarded as the precursor of the modern mystery and suspense novels. T. S. Eliot called it "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels"...A fabulous story. Both a classic and fun to read... August, free for all: *Sht My Dad Says** by Halpern, Justin More than a million people now follow Mr. Halpern's philosophical musings on Twitter, and in this book, his son weaves a brilliantly funny, touching coming-of-age memoir around the best of his quotes. An all-American story that unfolds on the Little League field, in Denny's, during excruciating family road trips, and, most frequently, in the Halperns' kitchen over bowls of Grape-Nuts, Sht My Dad Says is a chaotic, hilarious, true portrait of a father-son relationship from a major new comic voice. July, fantasy: American Gods* by Neil Gaiman Titans clash, but with more fuss than fury in this fantasy demi-epic from the author of Neverwhere. The intriguing premise of Gaiman's tale is that the gods of European yore, who came to North America with their immigrant believers, are squaring off for a rumble with new indigenous deities: "gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon." They all walk around in mufti, disguised as ordinary people, which causes no end of trouble for 32-year-old protagonist Shadow Moon, who can't turn around without bumping into a minor divinity. Released from prison the day after his beloved wife dies in a car accident, Shadow takes a job as emissary for Mr. Wednesday, avatar of the Norse god Grimnir, unaware that his boss's recruiting trip across the American heartland will subject him to repeat visits from the reanimated corpse of his dead wife and brutal roughing up by the goons of Wednesday's adversary, Mr. World. At last Shadow must reevaluate his own deeply held beliefs in order to determine his crucial role in the final showdown. Gaiman tries to keep the magical and the mundane evenly balanced, but he is clearly more interested in the activities of his human protagonists: Shadow's poignant personal moments and the tale's affectionate slices of smalltown life are much better developed than the aimless plot, which bounces Shadow from one episodic encounter to another in a design only the gods seem to know. Mere mortal readers will enjoy the tale's wit, but puzzle over its strained mythopoeia. (One-day laydown, June 19)Forecast: Even when he isn't in top form, Gaiman, creator of the acclaimed Sandman comics series, trumps many storytellers. Momentously titled, and allotted a dramatic one-day laydown with a 12-city author tour, his latest will appeal to fans and attract mainstream review coverage for better or for worse because of the rich possibilities of its premise. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. June, thriller/suspense: Shutter Island by Dennis LeHane The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this remote and barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance. As a killer hurricane bears relentlessly down on them, a strange case takes on even darker, more sinister shades--with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. But then neither is Teddy Daniels. May, classic Kim by Rudyard Kipling Kim is an orphan boy in India in the late 1800s. He becomes involved in an old Lama's search for a sacred river, and in a British spy ring, playing the "Great Game". "The book presents a vivid picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the bazaars and the road." ..........— The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. Ed. Margaret Drabble and Jenny Stringer. Oxford University Press, 2007. April, humor: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde "The first in a series of outlandishly clever adventures featuring the resourceful, fearless literary detective Thursday Next-a New York Times bestseller!In Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Bront?'s novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde's ingenious fantasy-enhanced by a Web site that re-creates the world of the novel-unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix." March, Nonfiction: Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things by Richard Wiseman. An award-winning psychologist exposes the truth behind life's little oddities and absurdities in this quirky and practical guide to life. For over twenty years, psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman has examined the quirky science of everyday life. In Quirkology, he navigates the backwaters of human behavior, discovering the tell-tale signs that give away a liar, the secret science behind speed-dating and personal ads, and what a person's sense of humor reveals about the innermost workings of their mind-- all along paying tribute to others who have carried out similarly weird and wonderful work. Wiseman's research has involved secretly observing people as they go about their daily business, conducting unusual experiments in art exhibitions and music concerts, and even staging fake séances in allegedly haunted buildings. With thousands of research subjects from all over the world, including enamored couples, unwitting pedestrians, and guileless dinner guests, Wiseman presents a fun, clever, and unexpected picture of the human mind. February, romance: Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris Dead Until Dark is the first book in Charlaine Harris's series The Southern Vampire Mysteries / Sookie Stackhouse novels. In this first installment, the author introduces the character of Sookie Stackhouse, a young telepathic waitress from the fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana, and her world, an alternate history where vampires, shapeshifters and other supernatual beings coexist with humans. In Dead Until Dark Sookie begins a romantic entanglement with her vampire neighbor and is faced with a series of murders in town. Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews. It's a romantic mystery / urban fantasy. It's actually written by married couple. It has an e-book version.