Help us select the book that the New Leaf Book Club will read for October 2018. The theme is
Out of This World: Otherwhence
Everyone is welcome to join the nomination process even if they'd rather lurk during the voting and discussion; if that is still a little too much commitment, please feel free to suggest titles without making a formal nomination.
The nominations will run through 7 AM EDT, September 7, 2018. Each nomination requires a second and a third to make it to the poll, which will remain open for four days. The discussion of the selection will start on October 15, 2018. Don't forget to show up for the discussion of the September selection,
Never Let Me Go, on September 15.
Any questions? See below, or just ask!
FAQs for the Nomination, Selection and Discussion process
General Guidelines for the New Leaf Book Club
Official choices with three nominations:
The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier [Bookpossum, bfisher, CRussel]
$US6.99, $C9.99, $A12.99, £5.99
336 pages
Stargazing by Peter Hill [gmw, Bookpossum, issybird]
Amazon UK - £6.17 |
Amazon AU $12.99 |
Kobo UK - £6.83 |
Kobo AU $12.99
Spoiler:
Quote:
In this sublime reminiscence of the pleasures of solitude, the wonders of the sea, and the odd courses life takes, Peter Hill writes, "In 1973 I worked as a lighthouse keeper on three islands off the west coast of Scotland. Before taking the job I didn't really think through what a lighthouse keeper actually did. I was attracted by the romantic notion of sitting on a rock, writing haikus and dashing off the occasional watercolor. The light itself didn't seem important: it might have been some weird coastal decoration, like candles on a Christmas tree, intended to bring cheer to those living in the more remote parts of the country."
Hill learned quickly, though, of the centuries-old mechanics of the lighthouse, of the life-and-death necessity of its luminescence to seafarers, and of the great and unlikely friendships formed out of routine. With his head filled with Hendrix, Kerouac, and the war in Vietnam, Hill shared cups of tea and close quarters with salty lighthouse keepers of an entirely different generation. The stories they told and idiosyncrasies they exhibited came to define a summer Hill has memorialized with great wit and a disarmingly affectionate style.
|
292 pages
Mary Rose by Geoffrey Girard, based on J. M. Barrie's play of the same name [Catlady, gmw, orlok]
Amazon U.S. $7.34 |
Amazon CA $9.99 |
Kobo U.S., $8.69 |
Kobo CA $9.89 | Hoopla, Scribd, Overdrive, RB Digital
272 pages
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino [issybird, Bookpossum, astrangerhere]
Amazon US $9.99 |
Amazon UK £4.99 |
Amazon AU $12.99 | OverDrive, Audible
Spoiler:
Quote:
The book explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by an explorer, Marco Polo. The book is framed as a conversation between the aging and busy emperor Kublai Khan, who constantly has merchants coming to describe the state of his expanding and vast empire, and Polo. The majority of the book consists of brief prose poems describing 55 fictitious cities that are narrated by Polo, many of which can be read as parables or meditations on culture, language, time, memory, death, or the general nature of human experience.
Short dialogues between Kublai and Polo are interspersed every five to ten cities discussing these topics. These interludes between the two characters are no less poetically constructed than the cities, and form a framing device that plays with the natural complexity of language and stories. In one key exchange in the middle of the book, Kublai prods Polo to tell him of the one city he has never mentioned directly—his hometown. Polo's response: "Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice."
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182 pages
The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde [Bookworm_Girl, astrangerhere, CRussel]
Public Domain
126 pages
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Clair North [Dngrsone, darryl, CRussel]
Amazon US $2.99
417 pages
Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke [gmw, darryl, bfisher]
Amazon US $7.75 |
Amazon CA $7.99 |
Amazon AU $10.55 |
Kobo US $8.09 |
Kobo CA $8.69 |
Kobo AU $10.88
120 pages
The Big Over Easy (Nursery Crime #1) by Jasper Fforde [issybird, bfisher, BelleZora]
Amazon US $4.99 |
Amazon UK £0.99 |
Amazon AU $12.99 | Amazon CA $4.99
Spoiler:
Quote:
It's Easter in Reading—a bad time for eggs—and no one can remember the last sunny day. Ovoid D-class nursery celebrity Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III, minor baronet, ex-convict, and former millionaire philanthropist, is found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. All the evidence points to his ex-wife, who has conveniently shot herself.
But Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his assistant Mary Mary remain unconvinced, a sentiment not shared with their superiors at the Reading Police Department, who are still smarting over their failure to convict the Three Pigs of murdering Mr. Wolff. Before long Jack and Mary find themselves grappling with a sinister plot involving cross-border money laundering, bullion smuggling, problems with beanstalks, titans seeking asylum, and the cut and thrust world of international chiropody.
And on top of all that, the JellyMan is coming to town . . .
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383 pages