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This month I've decided to try limiting my votes to about 2/3 of the nominees. It was hard because I liked all the nominations just as much as other months, and would equally be happy with any of the ones I'm not voting for winning. I read previews of all nine and think I'd enjoy any of them.
Some random thoughts on a few (and this doesn't imply a greater interest in these than the others, they're only some extra things I've thought of to say)-
Of ones I haven't mentioned yet, The Caliph's House looks very interesting. I do love nonfiction travel writing and Morocco holds a special allure. I know a little about the country but haven't ever really read much on it, though I've seen some films set there from Casablanca (which doesn't focus on the culture but still is famously set there) to Only Lovers Left Alive (another non-Moroccan film, but it does feature some very culturally relevant scenes set and filmed in Morocco). I'm intimidated by the length of Shantaram, but I love the description and so the chips can fall where they may; if it wins I'm up for the challenge. It also has an extremely high Goodreads rating for a highly reviewed non-sequel fiction book. It's 4.27; over half of the reviewers gave it 5 stars, and over 80% gave it either 4 or 5 stars.
It could be interesting with 2001 to see how it compares to the film and especially how it differs, and I've never read any Clarke so this would give me an opportunity to do so.
The hardest one to not vote for was Waugh since I loved Brideshead Revisited so much, but I stuck to my 2/3 goal.
I'll list my votes in reverse nomination order:
-1 to Beyond the Black Stump
-1 to 2001: A Space Odyssey
-1 to The Caliph's House
-1 to Shantaram
-1 to Goodbye to Berlin
-1 to Moonfleet
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