[WT Sharpe]

July 2016 MobileRead Book Club Vote

Help us choose a book as the July 2016 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 You may cast a vote for each book that appeals to you.

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

• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Goodreads | Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Kobo US / Overdrive
Print Length: 610 pages

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky.

• City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi by William Dalrymple
Goodreads | Amazon UK
Print Length: 352 pages

Spoiler:

‘Could you show me a djinn?’ I asked. ‘Certainly,’ replied the Sufi. ‘But you would run away.’

From the author of the Samuel Johnson Prize-shortlisted ‘The Return of a King’, this is William Dalrymple’s captivating memoir of a year spent in Delhi, a city watched over and protected by the mischievous invisible djinns. Lodging with the beady-eyed Mrs Puri and encountering an extraordinary array of characters – from elusive eunuchs to the last remnants of the Raj – William Dalrymple comes to know the bewildering city intimately.

He pursues Delhi’s interlacing layers of history along narrow alleys and broad boulevards, brilliantly conveying its intoxicating mix of mysticism and mayhem.

‘City of Djinns’ is an astonishing and sensitive portrait of a city, and confirms William Dalrymple as one of the most compelling explorers of India’s past and present.

• The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker
Goodreads | Amazon UK / Amazon US
Print Length: 657 pages

Spoiler:

New York, 1899. Two strangers, one destiny.

Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic. [She] arrives in New York in 1899.

Ahmad is a djinni, a being of fire, born in the ancient Syrian desert. Trapped in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard centuries ago, he is released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop.

The Golem & The Djinni is their magical, unforgettable story; unlikely friends whose tenuous attachment challenges their opposing natures.

• Nothing But Blue Skies by Tom Holt
Goodreads | Amazon US / Kobo US / Overdrive
Print Length: 336 pages

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

There are very many reasons why British summers are either non-existent or, alternatively, held on a Thursday. Many of these reasons are either scientific, dull, or both - but all of them are wrong, especially the scientific ones. The real reason why it rains perpetually from January 1st to December 31st (incl.) is, of course, irritable Chinese Water Dragons. Karen is one such legendary creature. Ancient, noble, near-indestructible and, for a number of wildly improbable reasons, working as an estate-agent, Karen is irritable quite a lot of the time. Hence Wimbledon. But now things have changed and Karen's no longer irritable. She's FURIOUS.

• Something Fresh (original title: Something New) by P.G. Wodehouse
Goodreads | Amazon US / Audible / Many Books / Whispersync
Print Length: 284 pages

Spoiler:

This is the first Blandings novel, In which P.G. Wodehouse intorduces us to the delightfully dotty Lord Emsworth, his bone-headed younger son, the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, his log-suffering secretary, the Efficient Baxter, and Beach the Blandings butler.

As Wodehouse wrote, 'without at least one imposter on the premises, Blandings Castle is never itself'. In Something Fresh there are two, each with an eye on a valuable Egytian amulet which Lord Emsworth has acquired without quite realizing how it came into his pocket. But of course things get a lot more complicated than this...

• Death in the Dordogne (Bruno Chief of Police Book 1) by Martin Walker
Goodreads | Amazon UK
Print Length: 262 pages

Spoiler:

It's market day in St Denis, a small town in the Périgord region of South West France. The locals are on the alert because inspectors are expected to make a 'surprise visit' in an attempt to enforce the unpopular and bureaucratic EU hygiene rules. But for Captain Bruno Courrèges, St Denis' Chief of Police, this particular market day turns into something far more serious.

An old man, head of a local immigrant North African family, is found viciously murdered. Suspicion falls on the son of the local doctor, but Bruno isn't so certain. He believes it to be an act of vengeance, with its motive hidden deep in France's divisive war-time past. As rumour and mistrust grow, Bruno must look beneath the surface of this normally calm community to find a brutal killer.