|
I've sampled them all now and, what can I say, I enjoyed them all as per usual. I thought about trying to list my votes in some kind of order but it keeps changing from minute to minute. The one constant is I think I might have a slight preference for The Hour of the Star over the others, but it's only slight as I'd enjoy any of them winning and also I wonder if it might even be a bit on the short side for a discussion. However the preview intrigued me, from the interesting dedication to the 13 or so alternate titles to the opening pages of the story.
On the other side I must leave off voting for at least one book, and in lieu of any other reason to eliminate I've gone for Lonesome Dove not because I have less interest in it but because of its formidable length. I don't think I could read an ebook of it in time to properly discuss, but I did already check Audible and there is a nice unabridged audio version and I really liked the narrator. Though it'd be one of the longest audiobooks I've ever listened to (almost 39 hours... the only one I know was longer that I've listened to was Les Miserables), I'm up for it if it wins and am fairly confident I'll finish the audio in normal time since I've been zipping through audiobooks lately. I found the audio preview quite entertaining.
For the others, I'd love to read the Tokarczuk; I love the combination of literary and mystery and it looks like some dark fun, and from a Nobel winner too. Celestial Bodies seems like a very interesting look into Oman and a culture I'm less than familiar with. I'd love to finally read a Hemingway novel; I read the short story of his My Old Man that we selected years ago for this club but still haven't read any of his novels. The Porter also is very intriguing; dark and gothic stories from an old America and Mexico, and she won the Pulitzer for her short stories. And of course the ones I nominated are very appealing to me. So it's not any bombshell to say that I'll be delighted with any of the nine winning. My votes in the order they were nominated:
-1 to The Hour of the Star
-1 to The Sun Also Rises
-1 to Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
-1 to Pale Horse, Pale Rider
-1 to Celestial Bodies
-1 to My Name Is Venus Black
-1 to The North Water
-1 to On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
|