MobileRead Book Club
December 2012 Nominations
Help us select the next book that the
MobileRead Book Club will read for December, 2012.
The nominations will run through midnight EST November 30 or until 10 books have made the list. The first poll will then be posted and will be open for 4 days, followed by a 3 day run-off poll between the two
* top choices.
Book selection category for December is:
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 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.
*
In case of a first or second place tie in the first voting poll, the run-off poll may have more than two choices.
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 nominations are now closed.