MobileRead April 2014 Book Club Nominations

[WT Sharpe]

MobileRead Book Club
April 2014 Nominations

Help us select the book that the MobileRead Book Club will read for April, 2014.

The nominations will run through midnight EST March 31 or until 10 books have made the list. The poll will then be posted and will remain open for five days.

Book selection category for April is:

Classics

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.


Official choices with three nominations each:

(1) Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: LRF │ Amazon US / Kobo

Spoiler:

Dreiser's unsparing story of a country girl's rise to riches as the mistress of a wealthy man marked the beginning of the naturalist movement in America. Both its subject matter and Dreiser's objective, nonmoralizing approach made it highly controversial, and only a heavily edited version could be published in 1900.

(2) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
No links provided.

Spoiler:

An Amazon blurb:

Supreme masterpiece recounts in feverish, compelling tones the story of Raskolnikov, an impoverished student tormented by his own nihilism, and the struggle between good and evil.

(3) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: / ePub / ePub (Complete Works) / Kindle │ Uncensored Version: Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / De Gruyter

Spoiler:

From Wikipedia:

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine. The magazine's editors feared the story was indecent as submitted, so they censored roughly 500 words, without Wilde's knowledge, before publication. But even with that, the story was still greeted with outrage by British reviewers, some of whom suggested that Wilde should be prosecuted on moral grounds, leading Wilde to defend the novel aggressively in letters to the British press. Wilde later revised the story for book publication, making substantial alterations, deleting controversial passages, adding new chapters, and including an aphoristic Preface that has since become famous in its own right. The amended version was published by Ward Lock & Co in April 1891. Some scholars believe that Wilde would today have wanted us to read the version he originally submitted to Lippincott's.

The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. Basil is impressed by Dorian's beauty and becomes infatuated with him, believing his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art. Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view. Espousing a new hedonism, Lord Henry suggests the only things worth pursuing in life are beauty and fulfilment of the senses. Realizing that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian (whimsically) expresses a desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than he. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, and when he subsequently pursues a life of debauchery, the portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered a work of classic Gothic fiction with a strong Faustian theme.

(4) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: Oz Omnibus: BBeB/LRF (Illustrated) / ePub / Kindle / Kindle (Illustrated)

Spoiler:

We all know and love the movie, but as we all know "the book is always better than the movie". Let's find out if that is true and discuss together...

(5) The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf and Eugine Petrov
Amazon US

Spoiler:

Book Description (from Amazon.com):
Publication Date: December 2, 2013
Ostap Bender is an unemployed con artist living by his wits in postrevolutionary Soviet Russia. He joins forces with Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, a former nobleman who has returned to his hometown to find a cache of missing jewels which were hidden in some chairs that have been appropriated by the Soviet authorities. The search for the bejeweled chairs takes these unlikely heroes from the provinces to Moscow to the wilds of Soviet Georgia and the Trans-caucasus mountains; on their quest they encounter a wide variety of characters: from opportunistic Soviet bureaucrats to aging survivors of the prerevolutionary propertied classes, each one more selfish, venal, and ineffective than the one before.

(6) The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
Amazon US / Kobo

Spoiler:

"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world.

By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper then embarks on a quest to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths of those who perished in the tragedy. His search leads to his own death -- and to the author's timeless investigation into the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition.

(7) Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub / Kindle

Spoiler:

No description provided.

(8) Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
No links provided.

Spoiler:

No summation provided.

(9) The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub / Kindle / Kindle (Books 1 & 2) │ Amazon

Spoiler:

Contains these stories:
MOWGLI'S BROTHERS
KAA'S HUNTING
TIGER! TIGER!
THE WHITE SEAL
RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI
TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS
HER MAJESTY'S SERVANTS
PARADE-SONG OF THE CAMP ANIMALS

(10) Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub (D'Artagnan Romances, Vol 1) / ePub (French) / ePub (French/English) / Kindle (D'Artagnan Romances, Vol 1) / Kindle (French/English)

Spoiler:

Amazon blurb:

With its rousing cry of "One for all, and all for one," Alexandre Dumas's thrilling adventure novel has captivated generations of readers since its initial publication in 1844. Action, intrigue, and romance abound in this swashbuckling epic, which traces a country lad's path to the French court of the early 1600s and the glorious fraternity of the king's men, the Musketeers.

The nominations are now closed.

[WT Sharpe]

Wondering if a particular book is available in your country? The following spoiler contains a list of bookstores outside the United States you can search. If you don't see a bookstore on this list for your country, find one that is, send me the link via PM, and I'll add it to the list.

Spoiler:

Australian
Angus Robertson
Booktopia
Borders
Dymocks
Fishpond
Google

Canada
Amazon. Make sure you are logged out. Then go to the Kindle Store. Search for a book. After the search results come up, in the upper right corner of the screen, change the country to Canada and search away.
Google

UK
BooksOnBoard (In the upper right corner is a way to switch to the UK store)
Amazon
Foyle's
Google
Penguin
Random House
Waterstones
WH Smith

*** The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum [Dazrin, fantasyfan, WT Sharpe]
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: Oz Omnibus: BBeB/LRF (Illustrated) / ePub / Kindle / Kindle (Illustrated)

Spoiler:

We all know and love the movie, but as we all know "the book is always better than the movie". Let's find out if that is true and discuss together...

*** Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser [sun surfer, Hamlet53, Billi]
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: LRF │ Amazon US / Kobo

Spoiler:

Dreiser's unsparing story of a country girl's rise to riches as the mistress of a wealthy man marked the beginning of the naturalist movement in America. Both its subject matter and Dreiser's objective, nonmoralizing approach made it highly controversial, and only a heavily edited version could be published in 1900.

*** Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky [John F, Billi, ccowie]
No links provided.

Spoiler:

An Amazon blurb:

Supreme masterpiece recounts in feverish, compelling tones the story of Raskolnikov, an impoverished student tormented by his own nihilism, and the struggle between good and evil.

*** The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder [Hamlet53, Billi, BelleZora]
Amazon US / Kobo

Spoiler:

"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world.

By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper then embarks on a quest to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths of those who perished in the tragedy. His search leads to his own death -- and to the author's timeless investigation into the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition.

*** Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe [ccowie, Synamon, sun surfer]
No links provided.

Spoiler:

No summation provided.

*** The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde [WT Sharpe, Synamon, pynch]
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: / ePub / ePub (Complete Works) / Kindle │ Uncensored Version: Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / De Gruyter

Spoiler:

From Wikipedia:

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine. The magazine's editors feared the story was indecent as submitted, so they censored roughly 500 words, without Wilde's knowledge, before publication. But even with that, the story was still greeted with outrage by British reviewers, some of whom suggested that Wilde should be prosecuted on moral grounds, leading Wilde to defend the novel aggressively in letters to the British press. Wilde later revised the story for book publication, making substantial alterations, deleting controversial passages, adding new chapters, and including an aphoristic Preface that has since become famous in its own right. The amended version was published by Ward Lock & Co in April 1891. Some scholars believe that Wilde would today have wanted us to read the version he originally submitted to Lippincott's.

The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. Basil is impressed by Dorian's beauty and becomes infatuated with him, believing his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art. Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view. Espousing a new hedonism, Lord Henry suggests the only things worth pursuing in life are beauty and fulfilment of the senses. Realizing that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian (whimsically) expresses a desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than he. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, and when he subsequently pursues a life of debauchery, the portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered a work of classic Gothic fiction with a strong Faustian theme.

*** The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf and Eugine Petrov [obs20, BelleZora, Gronk]
Amazon US

Spoiler:

Book Description (from Amazon.com):
Publication Date: December 2, 2013
Ostap Bender is an unemployed con artist living by his wits in postrevolutionary Soviet Russia. He joins forces with Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, a former nobleman who has returned to his hometown to find a cache of missing jewels which were hidden in some chairs that have been appropriated by the Soviet authorities. The search for the bejeweled chairs takes these unlikely heroes from the provinces to Moscow to the wilds of Soviet Georgia and the Trans-caucasus mountains; on their quest they encounter a wide variety of characters: from opportunistic Soviet bureaucrats to aging survivors of the prerevolutionary propertied classes, each one more selfish, venal, and ineffective than the one before.

*** Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift [GA Russell, Dazrin, BelleZora]
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub / Kindle

Spoiler:

No description provided.

*** Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas [John F, tidegirl, samhy]
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub (D'Artagnan Romances, Vol 1) / ePub (French) / ePub (French/English) / Kindle (D'Artagnan Romances, Vol 1) / Kindle (French/English)

Spoiler:

Amazon blurb:

With its rousing cry of "One for all, and all for one," Alexandre Dumas's thrilling adventure novel has captivated generations of readers since its initial publication in 1844. Action, intrigue, and romance abound in this swashbuckling epic, which traces a country lad's path to the French court of the early 1600s and the glorious fraternity of the king's men, the Musketeers.

*** The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling [Dazrin, tidegirl, John F]
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub / Kindle / Kindle (Books 1 & 2) │ Amazon

Spoiler:

Contains these stories:
MOWGLI'S BROTHERS
KAA'S HUNTING
TIGER! TIGER!
THE WHITE SEAL
RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI
TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS
HER MAJESTY'S SERVANTS
PARADE-SONG OF THE CAMP ANIMALS

The nominations are now closed.

[sqdancer]

Just an FYI, you might want to remove the Sony Reader Store from the list since it's closing in less than 24 hours.

[Dazrin]

I will start nominations with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.

We all know and love the movie, but as we all know "the book is always better than the movie". Let's find out if that is true and discuss together...

It is available as an omnibus put together by Nate the great in the Patricia Clarke Memorial Library in several formats: ePub, Mobi (Kindle) (and others). A stand-alone version is also available with illustrations LRF and Mobi (the LRF format has more per the comments.)

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by sqdancer

Just an FYI, you might want to remove the Sony Reader Store from the list since it's closing in less than 24 hours.

Good point. Done.

[John F]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Good point. Done.

Since you're making changes...

... I'll note it in this post, right beside the Inkmesh search for that particular book.

How about replacing Inkmesh with luzme?

[sun surfer]

I nominate Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser.

From Goodreads:
Dreiser's unsparing story of a country girl's rise to riches as the mistress of a wealthy man marked the beginning of the naturalist movement in America. Both its subject matter and Dreiser's objective, nonmoralizing approach made it highly controversial, and only a heavily edited version could be published in 1900.

Available free from:
MR Library (lrf) - Amazon - Kobo

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by John F

Since you're making changes...

How about replacing Inkmesh with luzme?

Wow, that template is out-of date, isn't it? We haven't used Inkmesh for months.

I'll give Luzme a look when I get time.

[John F]

I'll nominate Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

An Amazon blurb:

Supreme masterpiece recounts in feverish, compelling tones the story of Raskolnikov, an impoverished student tormented by his own nihilism, and the struggle between good and evil.

Why would I nominate this? I was watching Freaks and Geeks and they had a stereotypical English teacher assigning and describing it; it sounded good. Plus, it looks shorter than The Brothers Karamazov.

Originally Posted by sun surfer

I nominate Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser.

From Goodreads:
Dreiser's unsparing story of a country girl's rise to riches as the mistress of a wealthy man marked the beginning of the naturalist movement in America. Both its subject matter and Dreiser's objective, nonmoralizing approach made it highly controversial, and only a heavily edited version could be published in 1900.

Available free from:
MR Library (lrf) - Amazon - Kobo

I'll second this.

I nominate The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder.

"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world.

By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper then embarks on a quest to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths of those who perished in the tragedy. His search leads to his own death -- and to the author's timeless investigation into the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition.

Available as an ebook from Amazon & Kobo. That and just about any public library will have it available in paper.

[Billi]

I support

Crime and Punishment, Sister Carrie and the The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

[ccowie]

I'd like to nominate Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

And I'll third Crime and Punishment

[WT Sharpe]

I'll nominate The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Thanks to Jellby, it's available for free right here in our own Patricia Clark Memorial Library in painstakingly proofread ePub and Kindle editions.

Spoiler:

From Wikipedia:

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine. The magazine's editors feared the story was indecent as submitted, so they censored roughly 500 words, without Wilde's knowledge, before publication. But even with that, the story was still greeted with outrage by British reviewers, some of whom suggested that Wilde should be prosecuted on moral grounds, leading Wilde to defend the novel aggressively in letters to the British press. Wilde later revised the story for book publication, making substantial alterations, deleting controversial passages, adding new chapters, and including an aphoristic Preface that has since become famous in its own right. The amended version was published by Ward Lock & Co in April 1891. Some scholars believe that Wilde would today have wanted us to read the version he originally submitted to Lippincott's.

The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. Basil is impressed by Dorian's beauty and becomes infatuated with him, believing his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art. Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view. Espousing a new hedonism, Lord Henry suggests the only things worth pursuing in life are beauty and fulfilment of the senses. Realizing that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian (whimsically) expresses a desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than he. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, and when he subsequently pursues a life of debauchery, the portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered a work of classic Gothic fiction with a strong Faustian theme.

[Synamon]

I could use some incentive to read Uncle Tom's Cabin so I'll second it and The Picture of Dorian Gray is my all-time favourite classic so I'll second that too.