MobileRead October Book Club Vote

[WT Sharpe]

October 2013 MobileRead Book Club Vote

Help us choose a book as the October 2013 eBook for the MobileRead Book Club. The poll will be open for 5 days. There will be no runoff vote unless the voting results a tie, in which case there will be a 3 day run-off poll. This is a visible poll: others can see how you voted. It is multiple-choice: you may cast a vote for each book that appeals to you.

We will start the discussion thread for this book on October 20th. Select from the following Official Choices with three nominations each:

• Solomon Kane by Robert E. Howard
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub

Spoiler:

From Kobo:

Solomon Kane is a sixteenth century anti-hero created by renowned sword and sorcery author Robert E Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian).

When Solomon Kane meets the Devil's Reaper, he postpones his fate by renouncing violence - a vow that is soon tested by the forces of evil. Compelled to once again strap on his weapons, he embarks on an epic journey of redemption.

• Dr. Izard by Anna Katharine Green
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: Kindle

Spoiler:

(from Amazon) By a mysterious contrivance, penniless and parentless Polly Earle has become an heiress with $20,000. (A respectable little fortune in 1895, when DOCTOR IZARD was published). Raised by kind neighbors in a village in Massachusetts, Polly is now eighteen and a beauty.

Her happiness seems assured. But there are ominous questions in the background. What made her father disappear so abruptly when Polly was four years old? Is there a mystery about her mother's death as well? Why does Polly's friend Doctor Izard avoid village society? And who is that sinister old tramp hanging around town, saying nothing and observing everything?

• The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub / Kindle

Spoiler:

Dorothy Leigh Sayers 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages. She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, that remain popular to this day. However, Sayers herself considered her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to be her best work. She is also known for her plays, literary criticism and essays.

The nine tailors
Nine strokes from the belfry of an ancient country church toll the death of an unknown man and call the famous Lord Peter Wimsey to one of his most brilliant cases, set in the atmosphere of a quiet parish in the strange, flat, fen-country of East Anglia.

• Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub (Illustrated) / German ePub / Kindle / PDF / more.

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

Shipwrecked castaway Lemuel Gulliver’s encounters with the petty, diminutive Lilliputians, the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the abstracted scientists of Laputa, the philosophical Houyhnhnms, and the brutish Yahoos give him new, bitter insights into human behavior. Swift’s fantastic and subversive book remains supremely relevant in our own age of distortion, hypocrisy, and irony.

• Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Montgomery
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: Kindle

Spoiler:

Here's a little review from an Amazon reader:

"This is a gentle coming-of-age story set in late-Victorian Canada. Anne is an orphan adopted by a middle aged brother and sister, who originally intend to offer a home to a boy who can work on the farm. Anne is a fiercely imaginative and impulsive child and the story follows her life from age ten to sixteen, as she involves her friends in all manner of exploits. The countryside is an integral part of the narrative and is affectionately described. The story is warm-hearted, but pulls back from being sweetly sentimental."

• The Case of the Golden Coprolite by Ralph Sir Edward
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: Kindle

Spoiler:

Patricia Clark:

A mystery by our own Sir Sir Ralph Sir Edward, issued first in serial form in the Lounge, and now in a single volume for your delectation.

The cover image is by sa majesté, Zelda, reine de Pinwheel herself.

• Le Morte Darthur by Thomas Malory
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub / Kindle

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

An immortal story of love, adventure, chivalry, treachery and death. Edited and first published by William Caxton in 1485, Le Morte D'Arthur is Sir Thomas Malory's unique and splendid version of the Arthurian legend. Mordred's treason, the knightly exploits of Tristan, Lancelot's fatally divided loyalties and his love for Guenever, the quest for the Holy Grail; all the elements are there woven into a wonderful completeness by the magic of his prose style.

The result is not only one of the most readable accounts of the knights of the Round Table but also one of the most moving. As the story advances towards the inevitable tragedy of Arthur's death the effect is cumulative, rising with an impending sense of doom and tragedy towards its shattering finale.

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: Kindle

Spoiler:

From Wiki:

... The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twelve stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his famous detective ...

• The Shepherd of the Hills by Harold Bell Wright
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub

Spoiler:

This quote is from Branson.com, a tourism site for Branson, Missouri:

Harold Bell Wright, an ailing minister-author who traveled to the Ozarks for his health discovered much more than he sought in the hill country. As he regained his strength in the healthful, peaceful atmosphere, he began writing a manuscript which would become the fourth most widely-read book in publishing history. It would also spark a nationwide interest and bring the first wave of tourism into the Missouri Ozarks.

Wright was born in 1872 in Rome, NY. He traveled extensively in his early career as a minister and a writer. At one point, he pastored a church in Pittsburg, KS. He lived there when he discovered that he had tuberculosis.

Concern for his health was complicated by despondency over a flagging career as a minister and writer. A cure for both problems seemed to be offered in the milder climate of the Ozark Mountains.

In the spring of 1896, he traveled as far into the Ozark hills as the rails took him. The end of the line was Marionville, MO where he set off on horseback into the rugged hills. Turning back from a flood swollen White River, he sheltered at the homestead of John and Anna Ross on a ridge near Mutton Hollow.

He intended only to spend the night, but Wright stayed for the summer. He returned to the Ross homestead each summer for eight years as he slowly regained his health.

He was a witness of a drought in 1902, as the homesteaders were pushed to the edge of starvation when their crops were scorched, the streams dried and the game disappeared. The settlers' desperation led to a series of events which would form the nucleus of Wright's most famous book, The Shepherd of the Hills.

In 1904, Wright began recording his impressions of the settlers and the events which shaped their lives at his campsite in a corn field on the Ross homestead. The completed novel lay unpublished until 1907, when one of Wright's friends insisted on backing its publication in 1907.

The Shepherd of the Hills marked a spectacular turning point in Wright's literary career. The book's success was almost immediate. Millions of copies were sold in several languages, and four movies versions were filmed. Wright's 40-year career as a writer resulted in 19 books, many scripts for stage plays, and a number of magazine articles before his death in 1944.

The legend Harold Bell Wright began in a novel continues to live in a nationally popular attraction, the Shepherd of the Hills Homestead and Outdoor Theatre.

• The Martyrs of Science by David Brewster
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: Kindle

Spoiler:

Biographies of Galileo, Brahe and Kepler.

[crich70]

Looks like a close run between Dr. Izard and Le Morte Darthur at the present time.

[HomeInMyShoes]

I might be tempted to read this one.

[WT Sharpe]

Dr. Izard it is.

[crich70]

Looks. like it was a close run vote between Dr. Izard and Le Morte D'Arthur.

[John F]

Looks like the ebook could use some cleaning up. I'll volunteer if:

1) I assume it is out of copyright (I'm in the U.S.), so I can modify it.
2) someone can give me an epub. I'd use Calibre to convert the mobi to an epub, but I'm not sure if this would be a good starting point.
3) members PM me with typos. I have the technical skills to make simple typo corrections.

OR

We can all send our comments to crich and he can make the changes.

Anyone interested?

[crich70]

Originally Posted by John F

Looks like the ebook could use some cleaning up. I'll volunteer if:

1) I assume it is out of copyright (I'm in the U.S.), so I can modify it.
2) someone can give me an epub. I'd use Calibre to convert the mobi to an epub, but I'm not sure if this would be a good starting point.
3) members PM me with typos. I have the technical skills to make simple typo corrections.

OR

We can all send our comments to crich and he can make the changes.

Anyone interested?

What cleaning up do you mean John F? The epub is here at MR Dr. Izard and I assume it is out of copyright as it was 1st published in 1895 (I have a hard copy somewhere). Certainly a lot of her books are over at PG so they must be PD.

[Bookpossum]

There were a lot of typos in it, presumably from scanning. For example, double L always seemed to appear as two digits, eg he'11.

However it is possible to understand what should be there so I'm not sure it is worth doing a clean-up.

[John F]

Originally Posted by crich70

What cleaning up do you mean John F? The epub is here at MR Dr. Izard and I assume it is out of copyright as it was 1st published in 1895 (I have a hard copy somewhere). Certainly a lot of her books are over at PG so they must be PD.

Here is an example paragraph (second paragraph, first chapter, I underlined and bolded what looks like "typos"):

They were both men. The one on the right of the nurse was middle-aged; the one on the

left somewhat older. Both were gaunt, both were hollow-e.yed' both had been given up by the doctors-arid "attendants. Yet there was one point of-difference between them. He on the left, the;-older of the two, had an incurable cqmpjaint for which no remedy was possible, while he on the right, though seemingly as ill ,'as his fellow, was less seriously affected, and stood some chance of being saved if only he would arouse from his apathy and exert his will toward living. But nothing had as yet been found to interest him, and he seemed likely to die from sheer inanition. It is through this man's eyes that we must observe the scene which presently took place in this quiet room.

It does get better, but there are a lot of errors that could be fixed by selective global search and replaces (extra spaces at end of sentences before punctuation, extra spaces in contractions, ...).

[crich70]

Hmm. It does seem that whomever did the original epub work did mess up things. Probably something done by the Internet Archive originally.

[Bookpossum]

What happened to a discussion thread for October? Or is there an unspoken consensus that it's better to move on without it!

[Stephjk]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

What happened to a discussion thread for October? Or is there an unspoken consensus that it's better to move on without it!

Lol

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

What happened to a discussion thread for October? Or is there an unspoken consensus that it's better to move on without it!

I had that exact thought.

It never looked like the sort of book that I would enjoy or get anything out of so I never even bothered to obtain it. So the unspoken consensus is that I missed nothing?

[Stephjk]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

It never looked like the sort of book that I would enjoy or get anything out of so I never even bothered to obtain it. So the unspoken consensus is that I missed nothing?

I'd be hard pressed to join in any discussion - forgotten most of it already!