April 2014 Book Club Nominations
 

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


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


(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


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


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


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


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


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


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


(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)


The nominations are now closed.

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.



*** 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)


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


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


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


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


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


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


*** 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)


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


The nominations are now closed.

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

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.)

Good point. Done.

Since you're making changes...

How about replacing Inkmesh with luzme?

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

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.

I'll nominate Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

An Amazon blurb:

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. :)

I'll second this.

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

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

I support

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

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

And I'll third Crime and Punishment

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.

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.

This is very exciting news. As some of you may know, when The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published in the July 1980 issue of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, it was heavily censored by the magazine's editors, who removed approximately 500 words (although still not enough to stop the uproar that followed). The censored version remained the only version available to the reading public until 2011, when Harvard University Press released the The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray; fully restored to the author's original vision, including the scenes of graphic homosexual content that the editors, fearing the wrath of offended Victorians, expunged.

It can be found (for a surprisingly low price) at Amazon (US), and at Barnes & Noble, and at De Gruyter.

I third The Picture of Dorian Gray (which, by the way, is also available on MR in the Complete Works epub).

A question to the mods: MR operating strictly under the Life+70 rule would mean that Oscar Wilde’s text of The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray can be uploaded here. Is that right?

(Just curious! I won’t do it as it is protected in Germany for 25 years.)

Does classics mean public domain only?

I wasn't interested in rereading Dorian Grey, but you sold me with this. Thirded.

ETA: Slow.

No, it doesn't.

Thanks.

Then I nominate Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

Amazon US

Glancing at wiki, it looks like there were three versions? An 1890 version, a longer 1891 version, and the 2011 version?

Over the years, the members of the MobileRead Book Club have seemingly decided that United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's definition of pornography can be equally and fittingly applied to the word "classic" as well: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it." :D

Try again. BTDT. ;)

Interesting question. Maybe that explains the $2.84 price for the ebook at Amazon?

Unfortunately, no, as Nicholas Frankel, who is currently Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, is listed as the editor of the uncensored version.

I just looked it up to be sure. It was copyrighted by Professor Frankel in 2011. The U.S. Copyright number is TX0007384271.

How is that relevant? Oscar Wilde is still the author and I don’t see how U.S. copyright plays any role here. To clarify: my question was if it can be uploaded on MR and not if it could be legally downloaded from MR in the U.S.

Just to be clear: The Picture of Dorian Gray (the one that's been with us for 120 years) is in the public domain. The original uncensored version as edited by Nicholas Frankel is fully protected by U.S. copyright laws.

By U.S. copyright laws, yes, of course. But not by Swiss law, as far as I know, which is the one relevant for MR.

I should have known :D
I have some Pearl S. Buck or John Steinbeck books in mind, but before suggesting any title I'll dig around a little more ;)

As the servers that house the library are going to be moving to the U.S. soon, we'll have to be compliant with U.S. copyright law as well.

No problem. I sometimes do a forum search of the Book Clubs sub-forum to find if something I plan to nominate has already won. Although when I don't, I find someone is sure to remind me. :D

But doesn't that imply that the original uncensored version is in the public domain? His edits may be copyrighted, but the original uncensored version is in the public domain.

I don't think Mr Frankel can have it both ways: being the original uncensored version and it being edited?

Like: http://www.amazon.com/Picture-Origin...ray+uncensored

I may be completely wrong about this. :o

Shocking news, and I really mean shocking! Is the question allowed why a site with one of the best collections of free epubs would decide to move to a state with the most restrictive copyright laws and threaten this legacy?

I'm no expert on U.S. copyright law. All I know is that the the edits to the original made by Nicholas Frankel made his version (with the edits) copyrightable. I assume that if you had in your possession the original, unedited manuscript, it would indeed be in the public domain, and you could make your own version and upload it. At least, I see no reason why that shouldn't be the case.

Not even a second for Wizard of Oz? Hmmm. Probably too many people have already read it. I also considered nominating The Hobbit but figured that would certainly have too many people who have read it.

I am still hoping for a less "literary" nomination.

I read The Wizard of Oz several years ago and didn't care for it much, but I understand your desire for something less "literary." A fast, easy read, but great classic is Gulliver's Travels. I've already nominated a book and seconded another. Not sure if I can nominate another new title.

Each person participating in the MobileRead Book Club is entitled to three nominations. You can use them to nominate three books, or second three nominations by other members, or any combination thereof. Since you've nominated one book and seconded another, you have one nomination left. :)

Yes, you can. You can nominate or support three books.