June 2017 MobileRead Book Club Vote
Help us choose a book as the June 2017 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:
• The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin (Translator)
Goodreads |
Amazon US /
Overdrive /
WorldCat
Print Length: 607 pages
• Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
Goodreads |
Overdrive
Print Length: 321 pages
• Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
Goodreads |
Amazon UK /
Amazon US /
Audible UK /
Audible US /
Kobo US
Print Length: 373 pages
Spoiler:
From Goodreads:
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Golden Globe–winner Taraji P. Henson and Academy Award–winners Octavia Spencer and Kevin Costner
Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America’s space program—and whose contributions have been unheralded, until now.
Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as “Human Computers,” calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts by Jim Crow laws, these “colored computers,” as they were known, used slide rules, adding machines, and pencil and paper to support America’s fledgling aeronautics industry, and helped write the equations that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.
Drawing on the oral histories of scores of these “computers,” personal recollections, interviews with NASA executives and engineers, archival documents, correspondence, and reporting from the era, Hidden Figures recalls America’s greatest adventure and NASA’s groundbreaking successes through the experiences of five spunky, courageous, intelligent, determined, and patriotic women: Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, Christine Darden, and Gloria Champine.
Moving from World War II through NASA’s golden age, touching on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War, and the women’s rights movement, Hidden Figures interweaves a rich history of scientific achievement and technological innovation with the intimate stories of five women whose work forever changed the world—and whose lives show how out of one of America’s most painful histories came one of its proudest moments.
• Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body by Sara Pascoe
Goodreads
Print Length: 336 pages
• Socrates Cafe: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy by Christopher Phillips
Goodreads
Print Length: 246 pages
Spoiler:
From Goodreads:
Christopher Phillips is a man on a mission: to revive the love of questions that Socrates inspired long ago in ancient Athens. "Like a Johnny Appleseed with a master's degree, Phillips has gallivanted back and forth across America, to cafés and coffee shops, senior centers, assisted-living complexes, prisons, libraries, day-care centers, elementary and high schools, and churches, forming lasting communities of inquiry" (Utne Reader). Phillips not only presents the fundamentals of philosophical thought in this "charming, Philosophy for Dummies-type guide" (USA Today); he also recalls what led him to start his itinerant program and re-creates some of the most invigorating sessions, which come to reveal sometimes surprising, often profound reflections on the meaning of love, friendship, work, growing old, and others among Life's Big Questions.