MobileRead March 2011 Book Club Nominations

[WT Sharpe]

We've discussed this before, and if I recall correctly, universal availability isn't a necessary requirement, but in practice, it usually pretty well determines that it won't win, because too many people are cut out.

BOB, is my memory correct on this?

[pilotbob]

Must be available as a legal ebook...

Does not need to be available in every jurisdiction. If that were the case the choices would be greatly reduced... also, it would be hard to verify this is so.

BOb

[edbro]

I nominate Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. I'm about 3/4 of the way through and this is a great book. I can hardly put it down.

From Amazon:

From the 1936 Olympics to WWII Japan's most brutal POW camps, Hillenbrand's heart-wrenching new book is thousands of miles and a world away from the racing circuit of her bestselling Seabiscuit. But it's just as much a page-turner, and its hero, Louie Zamperini, is just as loveable: a disciplined champion racer who ran in the Berlin Olympics, he's a wit, a prankster, and a reformed juvenile delinquent who put his thieving skills to good use in the POW camps, In other words, Louie is a total charmer, a lover of life--whose will to live is cruelly tested when he becomes an Army Air Corps bombardier in 1941. The young Italian-American from Torrance, Calif., was expected to be the first to run a four-minute mile. After an astonishing but losing race at the 1936 Olympics, Louie was hoping for gold in the 1940 games. But war ended those dreams forever. In May 1943 his B-24 crashed into the Pacific. After a record-breaking 47 days adrift on a shark-encircled life raft with his pal and pilot, Russell Allen "Phil" Phillips, they were captured by the Japanese. In the "theater of cruelty" that was the Japanese POW camp network, Louie landed in the cruelest theaters of all: Omori and Naoetsu, under the control of Corp. Mutsuhiro Watanabe, a pathologically brutal sadist (called the Bird by camp inmates) who never killed his victims outright--his pleasure came from their slow, unending torment. After one beating, as Watanabe left Louie's cell, Louie saw on his face a "soft languor.... It was an expression of sexual rapture." And Louie, with his defiant and unbreakable spirit, was Watanabe's victim of choice. By war's end, Louie was near death. When Naoetsu was liberated in mid-August 1945, a depleted Louie's only thought was "I'm free! I'm free! I'm free!" But as Hillenbrand shows, Louie was not yet free. Even as, returning stateside, he impulsively married the beautiful Cynthia Applewhite and tried to build a life, Louie remained in the Bird's clutches, haunted in his dreams, drinking to forget, and obsessed with vengeance. In one of several sections where Hillenbrand steps back for a larger view, she writes movingly of the thousands of postwar Pacific PTSD sufferers. With no help for their as yet unrecognized illness, Hillenbrand says, "there was no one right way to peace; each man had to find his own path...." The book's final section is the story of how, with Cynthia's help, Louie found his path. It is impossible to condense the rich, granular detail of Hillenbrand's narrative of the atrocities committed (one man was exhibited naked in a Tokyo zoo for the Japanese to "gawk at his filthy, sore-encrusted body") against American POWs in Japan, and the courage of Louie and his fellow POWs, who made attempts on Watanabe's life, committed sabotage, and risked their own lives to save others. Hillenbrand's triumph is that in telling Louie's story (he's now in his 90s), she tells the stories of thousands whose suffering has been mostly forgotten. She restores to our collective memory this tale of heroism, cruelty, life, death, joy, suffering, remorselessness, and redemption.

[snipenekkid]

there are some really wonderful sounding books nominated this month...nice!!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by edbro

I nominate Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. I'm about 3/4 of the way through and this is a great book. I can hardly put it down.

From Amazon:

I'll second Unbroken.

[dreams]

Nominations are updated up to this post and a list can be found at post #23 in this thread.

Thank you lene1949 for checking on the availability of nominated ebooks. It seems that some nominated ebooks may not be available to all members.

[sun surfer]

Thanks for the clarification!

I quickly googled "buy into africa ebook" and went to the first couple of sites selling it (both smaller ones from the looks of it). Neither had any policy that I could find on which countries could buy it, and one even had a currency converter for other countries. There's a good possibility I'm missing something (maybe those sites won't let people from certain countries check out?), but if I'm not then that book and possibly others may be available in other countries on the smaller sites.

[beppe]

I dare to propose
Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal [Kindle Edition]
Rob Riemen

Product Details

* Format: Kindle Edition
* Print Length: 160 pages
* Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0300136900
* Publisher: Yale University Press (June 16, 2008)
* Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
* Language: English
* ASIN: B001CXK1TY
* Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Written with such elegance, erudition and skill, a singular reflection of fundamental problems, virtues and vices, of our time."-Ivan Klima (Ivan Klima 20081022)

"Rob Riemen's essays spring from a deep and firm conviction-they are like water from artesian wells and this is, I think, the main reason why they are so important and refreshing."-Adam Zagajewski (Adam Zagajewski )

"The author's vast cultural knowledge, his firm commitment to liberal ideals and the agility of his pen make these essays an invaluable guide to orient us amid the great political and cultural problems-and the ideological confusions-of the world in which we live."-Mario Vargas Llosa (Mario Vargas Llosa )

"Rob Riemen has written a rare and much needed book, one which we appreciate not because we necessarily agree with its views, but for its commitment to ideas and its passion for imagination. It is a timely reminder of how imaginative knowledge can become a way of questioning, connecting to and changing the world as well as ourselves."-Azar Nafisi (Azar Nafisi )

"Mr. Riemen's Nobility of Spirit is intended as a meditation on the forces that threaten civilization and, no less important, on the forces that are desperately needed to sustain it."-Darrin M. McMahon, Wall Street Journal (Darrin M. McMahon Wall Street Journal )

"Agree or disagree with Riemen's profound, ambitious and high-minded plea, you will be thinking about his words for a long time. It's been ages since a work of non-fiction moved us this way. Read it."-The Elegant Variation (Blog) (The Elegant Variation (Blog) )
Product Description

In the pages of this slim, powerful book Rob Riemen argues with passion that “nobility of spirit” is the quintessence of a civilized world. It is, as Thomas Mann believed, the sole corrective for human history. Without nobility of spirit, culture vanishes. Yet in the early twenty-first century, a time when human dignity and freedom are imperiled, the concept of nobility of spirit is scarcely considered.



Riemen insists that if we hope to move beyond the war on terror and create a life-affirming culture, we must address timeless but neglected questions: What is a good society? Why art? Why culture? What is the responsibility of intellectuals? Why anti-Americanism? Why nihilism? Why the cult of death of fundamentalists? In a series of three essays, the author identifies nobility of spirit in the life and work of Baruch Spinoza and of Thomas Mann; explores the quest for the good society in our own time; and addresses the pursuit of truth and freedom that engaged figures as disparate as Socrates and Leone Ginzburg, a Jewish Italian intellectual murdered by Nazis.



“The forces now aligned against humanistic values are manifold,” observes George Steiner in the foreword to the book. In this imaginative and compelling volume, Riemen addresses these forces and speaks to every reader who believes in the power of classical ideas to restore Western civilization’s highest values.
(20080610)

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by beppe

I dare to propose
Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal [Kindle Edition]
Rob Riemen

I second this nomination.

[obs20]

I'd like to nominate The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman.
http://www.inkmesh.com/ebooks/guns-o...ara+W.+Tuchman

[SameOldStory]

Originally Posted by Latinandgreek

I second this nomination.

I'll second that second nomination.

Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal is also in EPUB & PDF.

I rarely comment on books, but I'll make an exception for this book.

[The Terminator]

I nominate godless by Ann Coulter

[beppe]

I'd like to nominate
What Am I Doing Here? by Bruce Chatwin

inkmesh

Spoiler:

Description: This is the last of Bruce Chatwin's works to be published while he was still alive (he penned the introduction in 1988, a few months before he died). It's a collection of Chatwin gems--profiles, essays, and travel stories that span the world, from trekking in Nepal and sailing down the Volga to working on a film with Werner Herzog in Ghana and traveling with Indira Gandhi in India. Chatwin … more »excels, as usual, in the finely honed tale. Whether he is cruising down the Volga, gauging the effects of French colonialism in Algeria or searching for the Yeti ("Abominable Snowman") in the Himalayas, Chatwin, who died recently, exudes natural curiosity and a nose for adventure. By the author of In Patagonia and The Songlines , this mosaic of travelogues, profiles, semi-fictionalized stories and fragments is an endless feast, rich in small discoveries and larger perceptions of the world. In India, Chatwin investigates the case of a "wolf-boy" who survived years living in the wild. In Hong Kong he meets a geomancer, who determines the best site for a building or a marriage bed by aligning it with the Earth's "dragon-lines." There are pieces on art auctioneering, nomads, Afghanistan, a California LSD guru who thinks he's the Savior, power politics in ancient China. There are also perceptive encounters with filmmaker Werner Herzog, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Indira Gandhi, Andre Malraux, couturier Madeleine Vionnet and many others. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. (from Amazon.com)

3.4 stars out of 5 Review from GoodReads

Posted October 10, 2010 by James, Chicago, IL
The author of one of my favorite short novels, Bruce Chatwin here demonstrates his story-telling ability amidst the realities of travel and the vast world of his extended friendships and acquaintances. The joy of reading his prose is surpassed only by the delight in knowing that opening the book to any page you will be engrossed by the words upon the page. A reader's delight that persuades you with its charm that you should return to one of his other books as soon as possible.

[dreams]

Post #23 is updated to and including post #58. There now appears to be 2 fully nominated books.

[beppe]

Isecond Progress and Poverty with my 3rd punch.

Actually I third it.