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-   -   MobileRead March 2015 Book Club Nominations (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=256194)

WT Sharpe 02-19-2015 11:22 AM
March 2015 Book Club Nominations
 
MobileRead Book Club March 2015 Nominations

Help us select the book that the MobileRead Book Club will read for March, 2015.

The nominations will run through midnight EST February 28 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 March is:

Travel/Adventure

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.


The nominations for March are now closed.

Official choices with three nominations each:

(1) West with the Night by Beryl Markham
Amazon US / Audible / Kobo
Spoiler:
[I]From Amazon:

Beryl Markham’s classic, engrossing memoir—a triumph of the pioneer spirit and an adventure-charged chronicle of a life lived to the fullest

Beryl Markham’s life was a true epic, complete with shattered societal expectations, torrid love affairs, and desperate crash landings. A rebel from a young age, the British-born Markham was raised in Kenya’s unforgiving farmlands. She learned to be a bush pilot at a time when most Africans had never seen a plane. In 1936, she accepted the ultimate challenge: to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, a feat that fellow female aviator Amelia Earhart had completed in reverse just a few years before. Her successes and her failures—and her deep, lifelong love of the “soul of Africa”—are all chronicled here with wrenching honesty and agile wit. Hailed by National Geographic as one of the greatest adventure books of all time, West with the Night is the sweeping account of a fearless and dedicated woman.


(2) The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby
No links provided.
Spoiler:
From Goodreads:

In 1938 an eighteen-year-old boy signed on for the round trip from Europe to Australia in the last commercial sailing fleet to make that formidable journey. The four-masted barque Moshulu ended up as a dockside restaurant in Philadelphia; the young apprentice went on to become one of the greatest travel writers of this century. The Last Grain Race is Eric Newby's spell-binding account of his time spent on the Moshulu's last voyage in the Australian grain trade.

As always, Eric Newby's sharp eye for detail captures the hardships, danger, squabbles, companionship and sheer joy of shipboard life - bedbugs, ferocious storms, eccentric Finnish crew and all. By pure chance, Eric witnessed the passing of the era of sail, and his tale is all the more significant for being the last of its kind.

From reviews cited at Amazon:

'Enthralling - I know of no other book about square-riggers that gives such a lively account of the daily round of men in the fo'c'sle' Sunday Times 'Indescribably pungent ... impossible to read without laughing' Observer 'Mr Newby proves himself to be a first-rate writer ... Years have dulled nothing of the spirit of his first voyage; he gives exactly the feel of working a tall ship in hard conditions; he did not just see these things; he felt and can convey them; the crew of "Moshulu" live, move and are real human beings - and go on living when the book is closed' Times Literary Supplement


(3) Timeline by Michael Crichton
Goodreads | Amazon US / Google Play / Kobo CA / Overdrive US / Overdrive
Spoiler:
From Goodreads:In an Arizona desert, a man wanders in a daze, speaking words that make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his body swiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around the world, archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site. Suddenly they are swept off to the headquarters of a secretive multinational corporation that has developed an astounding technology. Now this group is about to get a chance not to study the past but to enter it. And with history opened up to the present, the dead awakened to the living, these men and women will soon find themselves fighting for their very survival -- six hundred years ago.


(4) Lost Horizon by James Hilton
Goodreads | Amazon Au / Amazon Ca / Amazon US / Kobo
Spoiler:
From Goodreads:

While attempting to escape a civil war, four people are kidnapped and transported to the Tibetan mountains. After their plane crashes, they are found by a mysterious Chinese man. He leads them to a monastery hidden in "the valley of the blue moon" -- a land of mystery and matchless beauty where life is lived in tranquil wonder, beyond the grasp of a doomed world.

It is here, in Shangri-La, where destinies will be discovered and the meaning of paradise will be unveiled.


(5) A Lady Cyclist's Guide To Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson
Amazon US
Spoiler:
No synopsis provided


(6) South by Ernest Shackleton
Goodreads | Amazon US / Kobo US
Spoiler:
No synopsis provided.


(7) Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Albert Lansing
Amazon US / Kobo
Spoiler:
No synopsis provided.


(8) The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
[I]The Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub / Kindle
Spoiler:
From Wikipedia:

The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress is a travel book by American author Mark Twain published in 1869 which humorously chronicles what Twain called his "Great Pleasure Excursion" on board the chartered vessel Quaker City (formerly USS Quaker City) through Europe and the Holy Land with a group of American travelers in 1867. It was the best-selling of Twain's works during his lifetime, as well as being one of the best-selling travel books of all time.

WT Sharpe 02-19-2015 11:22 AM
March 2015 Book Club Nominations
 
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. In addition, if members let me know that an ebook is unavailable in a particular geographic location, I'll note it in this post, right beside the Inkmesh search for that particular book.

Spoiler:
Australian
Angus Robertson
Booktopia
Borders
Dymocks
FishpondGoogle

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
Sony eBookstore (Upper right corner switch to/from US/CA)

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



* Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places by Andrew Blackwell [HomeInMyShoes]
Goodreads | Amazon Au / Amazon Ca / Amazon UK / Amazon US
Spoiler:
From Goodreads:
For most of us, traveling means visiting the most beautiful places on Earth—Paris, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon. It’s rare to book a plane ticket to visit the lifeless moonscape of Canada’s oil sand strip mines, or to seek out the Chinese city of Linfen, legendary as the most polluted in the world. But in Visit Sunny Chernobyl, Andrew Blackwell embraces a different kind of travel, taking a jaunt through the most gruesomely polluted places on Earth.Bookworm_Girl

From the hidden bars and convenience stores of a radioactive wilderness to the sacred but reeking waters of India, Visit Sunny Chernobyl fuses immersive first-person reporting with satire and analysis, making the case that it’s time to start appreciating our planet as it is—not as we wish it would be. Irreverent and reflective, the book is a love letter to our biosphere’s most tainted, most degraded ecosystems, and a measured consideration of what they mean for us. Equal parts travelogue, expose, environmental memoir, and faux guidebook, Blackwell careens through a rogue’s gallery of environmental disaster areas in search of the worst the world has to offer—and approaches a deeper understanding of what’s really happening to our planet in the process.


*** Timeline by Michael Crichton [treadlightly, JSWolf, Luffy]
Goodreads | Amazon US / Google Play / Kobo CA / Overdrive US / Overdrive
Spoiler:
From Goodreads:In an Arizona desert, a man wanders in a daze, speaking words that make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his body swiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around the world, archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site. Suddenly they are swept off to the headquarters of a secretive multinational corporation that has developed an astounding technology. Now this group is about to get a chance not to study the past but to enter it. And with history opened up to the present, the dead awakened to the living, these men and women will soon find themselves fighting for their very survival -- six hundred years ago.


*** West with the Night by Beryl Markham [CRussel, Luffy, BelleZora]
Amazon US / Audible / Kobo
Spoiler:
[I]From Amazon:

Beryl Markham’s classic, engrossing memoir—a triumph of the pioneer spirit and an adventure-charged chronicle of a life lived to the fullest

Beryl Markham’s life was a true epic, complete with shattered societal expectations, torrid love affairs, and desperate crash landings. A rebel from a young age, the British-born Markham was raised in Kenya’s unforgiving farmlands. She learned to be a bush pilot at a time when most Africans had never seen a plane. In 1936, she accepted the ultimate challenge: to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, a feat that fellow female aviator Amelia Earhart had completed in reverse just a few years before. Her successes and her failures—and her deep, lifelong love of the “soul of Africa”—are all chronicled here with wrenching honesty and agile wit. Hailed by National Geographic as one of the greatest adventure books of all time, West with the Night is the sweeping account of a fearless and dedicated woman.


*** The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby [issybird, BelleZora, sun surfer]
No links provided.
Spoiler:
From Goodreads:

In 1938 an eighteen-year-old boy signed on for the round trip from Europe to Australia in the last commercial sailing fleet to make that formidable journey. The four-masted barque Moshulu ended up as a dockside restaurant in Philadelphia; the young apprentice went on to become one of the greatest travel writers of this century. The Last Grain Race is Eric Newby's spell-binding account of his time spent on the Moshulu's last voyage in the Australian grain trade.

As always, Eric Newby's sharp eye for detail captures the hardships, danger, squabbles, companionship and sheer joy of shipboard life - bedbugs, ferocious storms, eccentric Finnish crew and all. By pure chance, Eric witnessed the passing of the era of sail, and his tale is all the more significant for being the last of its kind.

From reviews cited at Amazon:

'Enthralling - I know of no other book about square-riggers that gives such a lively account of the daily round of men in the fo'c'sle' Sunday Times 'Indescribably pungent ... impossible to read without laughing' Observer 'Mr Newby proves himself to be a first-rate writer ... Years have dulled nothing of the spirit of his first voyage; he gives exactly the feel of working a tall ship in hard conditions; he did not just see these things; he felt and can convey them; the crew of "Moshulu" live, move and are real human beings - and go on living when the book is closed' Times Literary Supplement


* The Blood Cell by James Gross [JSWolf]
Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / eBooks / Foyles / Google Play / Kobo / Overdrive / Waterstones
Spoiler:
"Release the Doctor - or the killing will start."

An asteroid in the furthest reaches of space - the most secure prison for the most dangerous of criminals. The Governor is responsible for the worst fraudsters and the cruellest murderers. So he's certainly not impressed by the arrival of the man they're calling the most dangerous criminal in the quadrant. Or, as he prefers to be known, the Doctor.

What does impress the Governor is the way the new prisoner immediately sets about trying to escape. And keeps trying. Finally, he sends for the Doctor and asks him why? But the answer surprises even the Governor. And then there's the threat - unless the Governor listens to the Doctor, a lot of people will die.

Who is the Doctor and what's he really doing here? Why does he want to help the Governor? And who is the young woman who comes every day to visit him, only to be turned away by the guards?

When the killing finally starts, the Governor begins...


*** Lost Horizon by James Hilton [sun surfer, crich70, Bookworm_Girl]
Goodreads | Amazon Au / Amazon Ca / Amazon US / Kobo
Spoiler:
From Goodreads:

While attempting to escape a civil war, four people are kidnapped and transported to the Tibetan mountains. After their plane crashes, they are found by a mysterious Chinese man. He leads them to a monastery hidden in "the valley of the blue moon" -- a land of mystery and matchless beauty where life is lived in tranquil wonder, beyond the grasp of a doomed world.

It is here, in Shangri-La, where destinies will be discovered and the meaning of paradise will be unveiled.


*** A Lady Cyclist's Guide To Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson [obs20, treadlightly, ccowie]
Amazon US
Spoiler:
No synopsis provided


* Rowed Trip by Colin and Julie Angus [ccowie]
No links provided.
Spoiler:
From Goodreads:

Two bestselling authors combine their strengths in a travelogue, a search for roots, a romance — and a seat-of-your-pants adventure.

One sunny day in 2006, Julie and Colin Angus were talking about the future, as newly engaged couples do. More unusually, they were at the time travelling together from Moscow to Vancouver by human power — boat, bike, and foot.

That day, they were examining a road atlas and in particular the labyrinth of European inland waterways it revealed. Julie traced a route of interconnected canals, rivers, and coastlines that led from Colin’s parents’ homeland of Scotland past her mother’s homeland, Germany, and on to her father’s, Syria. She said, half-seriously: We could row (yes, row, as in propelling a tippy little boat on a pond) all the way from Scotland to Syria to visit our relatives. It was a reckless sort of joke to make, given the couple’s addiction to adventure. The result is Rowed Trip, an odyssey by oar (and bike) from Caithness, Scotland, across the English Channel, through France, across the Rhine, the Main-Donau Canal to the Danube, the Black Sea, the Bosphorous Straits, and the Mediterranean. Julie and Colin each describe how the trip allowed them to test their relationship, to explore their roots, and to indulge to the max their shared taste for adventure.


* The Longest Way Home by Andrew McCarthy [Alsicole]
Goodreads | Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Kobo
Spoiler:
No synopsis provided.


*** South by Ernest Shackleton [crich70, CRussel, Dazrin]
Goodreads | Amazon US (Illustrated) / Amazon US (Free) / Kobo US
Spoiler:
No synopsis provided.


* The Beach by Alex Garland [caleb72]
Amazon (UK) / Amazon (US) / Google (AU) / Barnes & Noble / Kobo
Spoiler:
The Khao San Road, Bangkok -- first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard's first night there, in a low-budget guest house, a fellow traveler slashes his wrists, bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to "the Beach."

The Beach, as Richard has come to learn, is the subject of a legend among young travelers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, freshwater falls surrounded by jungle, plants untouched for a thousand years. There, it is rumored, a carefully selected international few have settled in a communal Eden.

Haunted by the figure of Mr. Duck -- the name by which the Thai police have identified the dead man -- and his own obsession with Vietnam movies, Richard sets off with a young French couple to an island hidden away in an archipelago forbidden to tourists. They discover the Beach, and it is as beautiful and idyllic as it is reputed to be. Yet over time it becomes clear that Beach culture, as Richard calls it, has troubling, even deadly, undercurrents.

Spellbinding and hallucinogenic, The Beach by Alex Garland -- both a national bestseller and his debut -- is a highly accomplished and suspenseful novel that fixates on a generation in their twenties, who, burdened with the legacy of the preceding generation and saturated by popular culture, long for an un-ruined landscape, but find it difficult to experience the world firsthand.


*** Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Albert Lansing [CRussel, Dazrin, HomeInMyShoes]
Amazon US / Kobo
Spoiler:
No synopsis provided.


* I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb [WT Sharpe]
Goodreads | Amazon Au / Amazon Ca / Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Kobo
Spoiler:
From Goodreads:

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education.

On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive.

Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

I Am Malala is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.

I Am Malala will make you believe in the power of one person's voice to inspire change in the world.


*** The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain [issybird, HomeInMyShoes, WT Sharpe]
[I]The Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub / Kindle
Spoiler:
From Wikipedia:

The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress is a travel book by American author Mark Twain published in 1869 which humorously chronicles what Twain called his "Great Pleasure Excursion" on board the chartered vessel Quaker City (formerly USS Quaker City) through Europe and the Holy Land with a group of American travelers in 1867. It was the best-selling of Twain's works during his lifetime, as well as being one of the best-selling travel books of all time.


The nominations for March are now closed.

Brazen_NL 02-20-2015 04:20 AM
March 2015? ;)

HomeInMyShoes 02-20-2015 01:21 PM
Someone needs to start off the nominations. The book I really wanted to get behind is unfortunately not available as an eBook. Stupid technology, but I've got a few here, but I want to save my nominations for things other people find, so sticking with one. It's going to be...

Visit sunny Chernobyl : and other adventures in the world's most polluted places by Andrew Blackwell.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Goodreads
For most of us, traveling means visiting the most beautiful places on Earth—Paris, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon. It’s rare to book a plane ticket to visit the lifeless moonscape of Canada’s oil sand strip mines, or to seek out the Chinese city of Linfen, legendary as the most polluted in the world. But in Visit Sunny Chernobyl, Andrew Blackwell embraces a different kind of travel, taking a jaunt through the most gruesomely polluted places on Earth.

From the hidden bars and convenience stores of a radioactive wilderness to the sacred but reeking waters of India, Visit Sunny Chernobyl fuses immersive first-person reporting with satire and analysis, making the case that it’s time to start appreciating our planet as it is—not as we wish it would be. Irreverent and reflective, the book is a love letter to our biosphere’s most tainted, most degraded ecosystems, and a measured consideration of what they mean for us. Equal parts travelogue, expose, environmental memoir, and faux guidebook, Blackwell careens through a rogue’s gallery of environmental disaster areas in search of the worst the world has to offer—and approaches a deeper understanding of what’s really happening to our planet in the process.
amazon.com
amazon.ca
amazon.co.uk
amazon.au

For those interested, my other choice that was not available was The Cruelest Journey: Six Hundred Miles to Timbuktu

treadlightly 02-20-2015 02:02 PM
I'm going to take a looser definition of this month's category and expand it to Time Travel/Adventure. I'll nominate Timeline by Michael Crichton. It is 4th on Goodreads Best Time Travel Fiction listopia (as opposed to non-fiction, ha!) and is listed as both Time Travel and Adventure.

Description from Goodreads:
Quote:
In an Arizona desert, a man wanders in a daze, speaking words that make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his body swiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around the world, archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site. Suddenly they are swept off to the headquarters of a secretive multinational corporation that has developed an astounding technology. Now this group is about to get a chance not to study the past but to enter it. And with history opened up to the present, the dead awakened to the living, these men and women will soon find themselves fighting for their very survival -- six hundred years ago.
Amazon US
Kobo CA
Google Play (there is a cheaper version on Google Play but I don't know if it is legit)
Overdrive
Goodreads

CRussel 02-20-2015 06:59 PM
West with the Night
 
Beryl Markham's classic book of East Africa and flying across the Atlantic Ocean -- the wrong way!

Amazon Description:
Spoiler:

Beryl Markham’s classic, engrossing memoir—a triumph of the pioneer spirit and an adventure-charged chronicle of a life lived to the fullest


Beryl Markham’s life was a true epic, complete with shattered societal expectations, torrid love affairs, and desperate crash landings. A rebel from a young age, the British-born Markham was raised in Kenya’s unforgiving farmlands. She learned to be a bush pilot at a time when most Africans had never seen a plane. In 1936, she accepted the ultimate challenge: to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, a feat that fellow female aviator Amelia Earhart had completed in reverse just a few years before. Her successes and her failures—and her deep, lifelong love of the “soul of Africa”—are all chronicled here with wrenching honesty and agile wit. Hailed by National Geographic as one of the greatest adventure books of all time, West with the Night is the sweeping account of a fearless and dedicated woman.


Though one could argue that this is a biography, and it is that, it's also very much about Africa and the dawn of flying. This is truly one of the great books of the English language.

Kindle Unlimited
Audible (and WhisperSync)
Kobo

Overdrive (also three audio versions.)

JSWolf 02-20-2015 10:22 PM
This is a terrible category. They don't even have anything to do with each other.

So what does Rick Steves Europe Through the Back Door 2015 have to do with adventure? NOTHING! It's a travel book, not an adventure book.

Next year, this bad set of categories should definitely be done away with. Even just having adventure on it's own is not a good idea.

Dazrin 02-20-2015 11:01 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf (Post 3050900)
They don't even have anything to do with each other.
Not sure why they need to be related to make it a valid category. If what you want is one or the other or both you can still nominate it.

Luffy 02-20-2015 11:10 PM
I find no need to propose a book of my own. I second West with the Night. According to a quote copied from a goodreads review...

Spoiler:
Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins in 1942 :

"Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's log book. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers. The only parts of it that I know about personally, on account of having been there at the time and heard the other people's stories, are absolutely true . . . I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book."--Ernest Hemingway


This book needs to win. It's allegedly very good, and I'd love to read it. At less than 300 pages, it won't take up too much time. It's a perfect choice.

issybird 02-21-2015 09:56 AM
I'm nominating The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby.

The description from Goodreads, where it has a rating of 4.22 stars from 301 users:

Quote:
In 1938 an eighteen-year-old boy signed on for the round trip from Europe to Australia in the last commercial sailing fleet to make that formidable journey. The four-masted barque Moshulu ended up as a dockside restaurant in Philadelphia; the young apprentice went on to become one of the greatest travel writers of this century. The Last Grain Race is Eric Newby's spell-binding account of his time spent on the Moshulu's last voyage in the Australian grain trade.

As always, Eric Newby's sharp eye for detail captures the hardships, danger, squabbles, companionship and sheer joy of shipboard life - bedbugs, ferocious storms, eccentric Finnish crew and all. By pure chance, Eric witnessed the passing of the era of sail, and his tale is all the more significant for being the last of its kind.
Reviews cited at Amazon:

Quote:
'Enthralling - I know of no other book about square-riggers that gives such a lively account of the daily round of men in the fo'c'sle' Sunday Times 'Indescribably pungent ... impossible to read without laughing' Observer 'Mr Newby proves himself to be a first-rate writer ... Years have dulled nothing of the spirit of his first voyage; he gives exactly the feel of working a tall ship in hard conditions; he did not just see these things; he felt and can convey them; the crew of "Moshulu" live, move and are real human beings - and go on living when the book is closed' Times Literary Supplement

JSWolf 02-21-2015 10:47 AM
I'll go for something different. I'll nominate The Blood Cell by James Gross.

Quote:
"Release the Doctor - or the killing will start."

An asteroid in the furthest reaches of space - the most secure prison for the most dangerous of criminals. The Governor is responsible for the worst fraudsters and the cruellest murderers. So he's certainly not impressed by the arrival of the man they're calling the most dangerous criminal in the quadrant. Or, as he prefers to be known, the Doctor.

What does impress the Governor is the way the new prisoner immediately sets about trying to escape. And keeps trying. Finally, he sends for the Doctor and asks him why? But the answer surprises even the Governor. And then there's the threat - unless the Governor listens to the Doctor, a lot of people will die.

Who is the Doctor and what's he really doing here? Why does he want to help the Governor? And who is the young woman who comes every day to visit him, only to be turned away by the guards?

When the killing finally starts, the Governor begins to get his answers.
Overdrive (FREE): https://www.overdrive.com/media/1765398/the-blood-cell
Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/eb...the-blood-cell
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/...d=673CAwAAQBAJ
Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Who-Blo...the+blood+cell
Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/doct...the+blood+cell
eBooks.com: http://www.ebooks.com/1708823/doctor...ll/goss-james/
Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-B...the+blood+cell
Foyles: http://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/fictio...-9781448142354
Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/author/james-goss/13846

BelleZora 02-21-2015 11:30 AM
Second The Last Grain Race.

BelleZora 02-21-2015 11:32 AM
Third West With the Night.

JSWolf 02-21-2015 11:47 AM
I'll second Timeline if the US Overdrive link is added to the listing.

https://www.overdrive.com/media/37866/timeline

sun surfer 02-21-2015 02:10 PM
I nominate Lost Horizon by James Hilton.


From Goodreads:

While attempting to escape a civil war, four people are kidnapped and transported to the Tibetan mountains. After their plane crashes, they are found by a mysterious Chinese man. He leads them to a monastery hidden in "the valley of the blue moon" -- a land of mystery and matchless beauty where life is lived in tranquil wonder, beyond the grasp of a doomed world.

It is here, in Shangri-La, where destinies will be discovered and the meaning of paradise will be unveiled.


Goodreads / Kobo / Amazon US / Amazon CA / Amazon AU

sun surfer 02-21-2015 02:16 PM
Third The Last Grain Race.

obs20 02-21-2015 11:10 PM
I would like to nominate A Lady Cyclist's Guide To Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson

http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Cyclists-...9Z7HNDVB6J1V3A

JSWolf 02-21-2015 11:15 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by obs20 (Post 3051466)
I would like to nominate...
You have two problems with your link. First is, it doesn't work. Second is that when it's fixed, it goes to the mobile Amazon. Please fix the link so it works and does not go to the mobile Amazon site. Thanks.

JSWolf 02-21-2015 11:17 PM
I think it would be very nice to have a science fiction book as the winner. So let's get two more nods to A Blood Cell so it can get on the ballot.

Luffy 02-22-2015 02:28 AM
I third Timeline.

crich70 02-22-2015 02:33 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by sun surfer (Post 3051224)
I nominate Lost Horizon by James Hilton.
From Goodreads:

While attempting to escape a civil war, four people are kidnapped and transported to the Tibetan mountains. After their plane crashes, they are found by a mysterious Chinese man. He leads them to a monastery hidden in "the valley of the blue moon" -- a land of mystery and matchless beauty where life is lived in tranquil wonder, beyond the grasp of a doomed world.

It is here, in Shangri-La, where destinies will be discovered and the meaning of paradise will be unveiled.


Goodreads / Kobo / Amazon US / Amazon CA / Amazon AU
I second "Lost Horizon."

Bookworm_Girl 02-22-2015 12:35 PM
I third Lost Horizon.

obs20 02-22-2015 01:10 PM
At least Lost Horizon is eligible for promo codes on Kobo.

ccowie 02-22-2015 01:25 PM
I'd like to nominate Rowed Trip by Colin and Julie Angus.

From Goodreads:
Two bestselling authors combine their strengths in a travelogue, a search for roots, a romance — and a seat-of-your-pants adventure.

One sunny day in 2006, Julie and Colin Angus were talking about the future, as newly engaged couples do. More unusually, they were at the time travelling together from Moscow to Vancouver by human power — boat, bike, and foot.

That day, they were examining a road atlas and in particular the labyrinth of European inland waterways it revealed. Julie traced a route of interconnected canals, rivers, and coastlines that led from Colin’s parents’ homeland of Scotland past her mother’s homeland, Germany, and on to her father’s, Syria. She said, half-seriously: We could row (yes, row, as in propelling a tippy little boat on a pond) all the way from Scotland to Syria to visit our relatives. It was a reckless sort of joke to make, given the couple’s addiction to adventure. The result is Rowed Trip, an odyssey by oar (and bike) from Caithness, Scotland, across the English Channel, through France, across the Rhine, the Main-Donau Canal to the Danube, the Black Sea, the Bosphorous Straits, and the Mediterranean. Julie and Colin each describe how the trip allowed them to test their relationship, to explore their roots, and to indulge to the max their shared taste for adventure.

treadlightly 02-22-2015 06:32 PM
I'll second A Lady Cyclist's Guide To Kashgar.

ccowie 02-23-2015 09:50 AM
I'll third A Lady Cyclist's Guide To Kashgar.

Alsicole 02-23-2015 06:17 PM
I've been thinking about reading this for a while, so I'd like to nominate The Longest Way Home by Andrew McCarthy.

I grew up with the Brat Pack movies, but didn't know what Andrew had done since. He is now, apparently, a very accomplished travel writer.

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Kobo

Barnes & Noble

Goodreads link

crich70 02-23-2015 07:27 PM
I'd like to nominate South by Ernest Shakelton.
Amazon


Kobo US

CRussel 02-23-2015 09:12 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70 (Post 3052690)
I'd like to nominate South by Ernest Shakelton.
Amazon


Kobo US
Seconded. I read this 16 years ago and think it would be a good re-read.

Dazrin 02-23-2015 09:41 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70 (Post 3052690)
I'd like to nominate South by Ernest Shakelton.
Amazon


Kobo US
Quote:
Originally Posted by CRussel (Post 3052738)
Seconded. I read this 16 years ago and think it would be a good re-read.
I will third this.

Question: Would The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe be allowed as a nomination this month? It was nominated (and was runner-up) last year, so the 6-month rule doesn't apply. But the runner-up month is January and we voted on it then too. So maybe the 6-month rule does apply? I need some motivation to read this (or any non-fiction really) and since it did have a good showing last year thought it might still get some traction.

Edits:
1) Shackleton is misspelled in the OP and the nomination list post.
2) Since Shackleton died in 1922, shouldn't South be available in the PCML? I see several options but they are all in "Offline" forums so not usable. Editions uploaded by Patricia herself and nrapallo are both listed in various formats.
3) Here is a Goodreads link for South. There are too many versions/options available at Overdrive so no links.

crich70 02-23-2015 10:14 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dazrin (Post 3052754)
I will third this.

Question: Would The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe be allowed as a nomination this month? It was nominated (and was runner-up) last year, so the 6-month rule doesn't apply. But the runner-up month is January and we voted on it then too. So maybe the 6-month rule does apply? I need some motivation to read this (or any non-fiction really) and since it did have a good showing last year thought it might still get some traction.

Edits:
1) Shackleton is misspelled in the OP and the nomination list post.
2) Since Shackleton died in 1922, shouldn't South be available in the PCML? I see several options but they are all in "Offline" forums so not usable. Editions uploaded by Patricia herself and nrapallo are both listed in various formats.
3) Here is a Goodreads link for South. There are too many versions/options available at Overdrive so no links.
Ooop. My bad. I wasn't sure it would qualify as it is non-fiction but I figured what could be more of an adventure than trying to reach one of the poles?

Dazrin 02-23-2015 10:52 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70 (Post 3052769)
Ooop. My bad. I wasn't sure it would qualify as it is non-fiction but I figured what could be more of an adventure than trying to reach one of the poles?
I just misspelled "the" three times in a single sentence ("teh") to a friend so I have no standing to pass judgement on anyone's spelling, just wanted to get it corrected. :)

As for fiction vs non-fiction, I seem to remember that was part of the allure for this category, lots of ways to be interpreted.

CRussel 02-24-2015 01:56 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70 (Post 3052690)
I'd like to nominate South by Ernest Shackleton.
Amazon


Kobo US
FWIW, this is available as a free book from Amazon, with no DRM, and a free Audible WhisperSync for Voice book as well if you got it as part of KU. (It's a free to purchase eBook, but then the Audible version is $2.99.)

crich70 02-24-2015 02:20 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by CRussel (Post 3052832)
FWIW, this is available as a free book from Amazon, with no DRM, and a free Audible WhisperSync for Voice book as well if you got it as part of KU. (It's a free to purchase eBook, but then the Audible version is $2.99.)
I had forgotten that copy. I wonder if it is illustrated though. the link I included is to an illustrated copy that seems to have more pages (327 vs 264) and I have to wonder if it's because the free copy doesn't include the illustrations perhaps.

caleb72 02-24-2015 06:53 AM
I'm going to throw a new nomination out there: The Beach by Alex Garland.

Quote:
The Khao San Road, Bangkok -- first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard's first night there, in a low-budget guest house, a fellow traveler slashes his wrists, bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to "the Beach."

The Beach, as Richard has come to learn, is the subject of a legend among young travelers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, freshwater falls surrounded by jungle, plants untouched for a thousand years. There, it is rumored, a carefully selected international few have settled in a communal Eden.

Haunted by the figure of Mr. Duck -- the name by which the Thai police have identified the dead man -- and his own obsession with Vietnam movies, Richard sets off with a young French couple to an island hidden away in an archipelago forbidden to tourists. They discover the Beach, and it is as beautiful and idyllic as it is reputed to be. Yet over time it becomes clear that Beach culture, as Richard calls it, has troubling, even deadly, undercurrents.

Spellbinding and hallucinogenic, The Beach by Alex Garland -- both a national bestseller and his debut -- is a highly accomplished and suspenseful novel that fixates on a generation in their twenties, who, burdened with the legacy of the preceding generation and saturated by popular culture, long for an un-ruined landscape, but find it difficult to experience the world firsthand.
Amazon (US) - Link
Amazon (UK) - Link
Google (AU) - Link
Kobo - Link
B&N (US) - Link

In plenty of places in Overdrive as well.

CRussel 02-24-2015 02:34 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70 (Post 3052837)
I had forgotten that copy. I wonder if it is illustrated though. the link I included is to an illustrated copy that seems to have more pages (327 vs 264) and I have to wonder if it's because the free copy doesn't include the illustrations perhaps.
The free copy does not include the illustrations. Unfortunately.

CRussel 02-24-2015 03:12 PM
You know, if the goal is to read a book that is compelling, and we want to read about Shackleton's Endurance journey, then I'd actually suggest that we read Albert Lansing's Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. It's a much more compelling book, and includes the viewpoints of others on the Endurance. And it's also available as a KU book. I know when I first started reading about Antarctica before we went there in 1999/2000, I started with South, but had to drop it and read Lansing's book first, then go back to South. The language and tone of Shackleton's book is not nearly as approachable.

(Amazon - KU )
(Kobo - couponable)

treadlightly 02-24-2015 03:23 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by CRussel (Post 3053254)
You know, if the goal is to read a book that is compelling, and we want to read about Shackleton's Endurance journey, then I'd actually suggest that we read Albert Lansing's Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. It's a much more compelling book, and includes the viewpoints of others on the Endurance. And it's also available as a KU book. I know when I first started reading about Antarctica before we went there in 1999/2000, I started with South, but had to drop it and read Lansing's book first, then go back to South. The language and tone of Shackleton's book is not nearly as approachable.

(Amazon - KU )
(Kobo - couponable)
Wow, look at the star ratings of that book! I don't think I've seen such a strong skew towards 5-star.

Dazrin 02-24-2015 03:40 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by CRussel (Post 3053254)
You know, if the goal is to read a book that is compelling, and we want to read about Shackleton's Endurance journey, then I'd actually suggest that we read Albert Lansing's Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. It's a much more compelling book, and includes the viewpoints of others on the Endurance. And it's also available as a KU book. I know when I first started reading about Antarctica before we went there in 1999/2000, I started with South, but had to drop it and read Lansing's book first, then go back to South. The language and tone of Shackleton's book is not nearly as approachable.

(Amazon - KU )
(Kobo - couponable)
So, is that a nomination? If so, I will second it. If not, I will nominate it. :) Not free, but does appear to have good library availability and as you mention it is in KU.

HomeInMyShoes 02-24-2015 03:41 PM
Endurance and South have both been nominated at least once for this category. I was waiting for them to show up again.

I'll second Endurance.


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