MobileRead March 2012 Run-Off Vote

[WT Sharpe]

Mobile Read Book Club
March 2012 Run-Off Vote

Help us choose a book as the March 2012 eBook for the Mobile Read Book Club. This is the run-off poll. It will be open for 3 days. The winner determines the book we will read for March. The vote this month will be hidden.

We will start the discussion thread for this book on March 20th. Select from the following two choices:

Along came a spider by James Patterson
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Spoiler:

A missing little girl named Maggie Rose. A family of three brutally murdered in the projects of Washington, D.C. The thrill-killing of a beautiful elementary school teacher. A psychopathic serial kidnapper/murderer who calls himself the Son of Lindbergh. He is so terrifying that the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police cannot outsmart him-even after he's been captured.Gary Soneji is a mild-mannered mathematics teacher at a Washington, D.C., private school for the children of the political and social elite. He's so popular that the kids all call him "Mr. Chips." And he's very, very smart. Growing up, he always knew he was smarter than the rest of them-he knew that the Great Ones always fooled everybody. He kidnaps Maggie Rose, the golden-haired daughter of a famous movie actress, and her best friend, Shrimpie Goldberg, the son of the secretary of the treasury, right out from under the noses of their two Secret Service agents. But Gary Soneji is not surprised at his skill. He's done it before. Hundreds of times before.Alex Cross must face the ultimate test as a psychologist: how do you outmaneuver a brilliant psychopath? Especially one who appears to have a split personality-one who won't let the other half remember those horrific acts?Soneji has outsmarted the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police. Who will be his next victim?

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
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Spoiler:

In an article entitled "The Best Thrillers of All Time", Reader's Digest says: "Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane (2003), will not only scare you silly but fool you as well. Just try to guess the ending."

From the Amazon Hardcover edition:

Summer, 1954.

U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Along with his partner, Chuck Aule, he sets out to find an escaped patient, a murderess named Rachel Solando, as a hurricane bears down upon them.

But nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems.

And neither is Teddy Daniels.

Is he there to find a missing patient? Or has he been sent to look into rumors of Ashecliffe’s radical approach to psychiatry? An approach that may include drug experimentation, hideous surgical trials, and lethal countermoves in the shadow war against Soviet brainwashing. . . .

Or is there another, more personal reason why he has come there?

As the investigation deepens, the questions only mount:

How has a barefoot woman escaped the island from a locked room?

Who is leaving clues in the form of cryptic codes?

Why is there no record of a patient committed there just one year before?

What really goes on in Ward C?

Why is an empty lighthouse surrounded by an electrified fence and armed guards?

The closer Teddy and Chuck get to the truth, the more elusive it becomes, and the more they begin to believe that they may never leave Shutter Island. Because someone is trying to drive them insane. . . .

[JSWolf]

Tough choice. The two best books in the list are up for grabs. Both are good and both fit the bill for a good read. I've read one and seen both movies. The movie for Along Came a Spider is not bad. But the book is better. I've seen Shutter Island but not read the book.

[sun surfer]

Ugh, just terrible. Two of the three I least wanted to read have made the run-off. I've seen both the films so already know the twists and turns of both.

Along Came A Spider wasn't bad, but it's pretty basic stuff and I can see getting nothing extra out of reading the book.

So I'm going with Shutter Island. It won't be thrilling to me since I know what happens, but at least the book may delve a little more into everything, and I really liked the atmosphere. It was a good thrilling film with a great mystery and story, so I expect the book will be good too.

[GA Russell]

I have both books, and would like to read both books. So I don't know...I'm going to sleep on it.

[Asawi]

I will probably read both books (and a couple of the others from this month's vote) at some point, but probably not in time for the discussion.
So I prioritize and vote for the one that I haven't seen the movie, because I want to not know the ending right away. Having said that, I'm really curious about how the book actually portrayed the twists and turns of Shutter Island. Or maybe the movie took liberties? Hmmm...
Shutter Island is probably the better of the books, but I'm voting for Along Came a Spider anyway because it's more likely I'll read that in time for the discussion...

[banjomike]

Well, Along Came A Spider was one of the crappiest, most disjointed films I have ever seen. Shutter Island was by Scorsese and had Max von Sydow.

Not the best way to pick a book but Shutter Island gets my vote.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by banjomike

Well, Along Came A Spider was one of the crappiest, most disjointed films I have ever seen. Shutter Island was by Scorsese and had Max von Sydow.

Not the best way to pick a book but Shutter Island gets my vote.

No, that's not the best way to pick a book, but it's the way to make me chuckle. I got a kick out of your post.

Of course, if I'd only seen the Disney Movie version, and had never seen the TV series or heard the radio broadcasts, I would never have bothered to read any of Douglas Adam's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books (much less all of them), and would have lived the rest of my life comedically impoverished and ignorant of the what the Real Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything is to which the answer is 42.

And that would have been a tragedy too depressing to contemplate.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Tough choice. The two best books in the list are up for grabs. Both are good and both fit the bill for a good read. I've read one and seen both movies. The movie for Along Came a Spider is not bad. But the book is better. I've seen Shutter Island but not read the book.

exactly, except I'm not sure I agree they were the best books on the list. I originally voted for one of the Nesbo books.

Originally Posted by sun surfer

Ugh, just terrible. Two of the three I least wanted to read have made the run-off. I've seen both the films so already know the twists and turns of both.

Along Came A Spider wasn't bad, but it's pretty basic stuff and I can see getting nothing extra out of reading the book.

So I'm going with Shutter Island. It won't be thrilling to me since I know what happens, but at least the book may delve a little more into everything, and I really liked the atmosphere. It was a good thrilling film with a great mystery and story, so I expect the book will be good too.

I have now voted for Shutter Island, as I've read the Patterson twice.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by banjomike

Well, Along Came A Spider was one of the crappiest, most disjointed films I have ever seen. Shutter Island was by Scorsese and had Max von Sydow.

Not the best way to pick a book but Shutter Island gets my vote.

Along Came a Spider is a rather good book despite the lackluster movie. So don't vote based on the movie, vote based on the fact that the book is good and the movie not so much.

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Along Came a Spider is a rather good book despite the lackluster movie. So don't vote based on the movie, vote based on the fact that the book is good and the movie not so much.

Too late, already voted. Anyway, neither book would probably have made it to my non-bookclub "must read" list even without the film aspect but the movie of Along Came a Spider was just too damned bad to ignore, at least in my opinion.

[GA Russell]

I get the impression that Dennis Lehane is a better author than James Patterson, but my 96 year old aunt in Boston whom I speak with every week was a big fan of Patterson's before she lost her eyesight, so I have voted for Spider to give me something to talk about with my aunt.

[Synamon]

Meh, I've read both these, nothing for me this month.

[John F]

I voted for Shutter Island. I've been wanting to read a Lehane book.

[issybird]

My favorite choices were Redbreast and Spies of Warsaw, but I thought The Secret Agent would get more votes, so that's what I picked. I was right, but it wasn't enough.

Originally Posted by GA Russell

I get the impression that Dennis Lehane is a better author than James Patterson.

Me, too! Patterson seems to write potboilers. I'm willing to give Lehane a shot.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by issybird

Me, too! Patterson seems to write potboilers. I'm willing to give Lehane a shot.

The Alex Cross series is not a bunch of potboilers. The potboilers are his stand alone books.