Literary The MobileRead Literary Book Club June 2011 Nominations

[sun surfer]

Welcome to the inaugural month of the MobileRead Literary Book Club!

I want to thank pilotbob for allowing this, and I hope he is flattered (and not mad) that I am borrowing liberally from the general book club's structure and also the wording of his introductory posts for each thread.

Help us select the first book that the MobileRead Literary Book Club will read, for June 2011.

The nominations will run through May 28 or until FIVE works have made the list.

Final voting (in a new poll thread) will begin by May 28, where the month's selection will be decided.

The category for this month is:

Open (anything considered literature)

In order for a work to be included in the poll it needs FIVE NOMINATIONS (original nomination plus four others).

Each participant has three nominations. You can nominate a new work for consideration or you can nominate a work that has already been nominated by another person.

To nominate a work please just post a message with your nomination. If you are the FIRST to nominate a work, please try to provide an abstract to the work so others may consider their level of interest.

Please keep in mind the differences in nominations between the general book club and this one - only five works will make the final list here, and a work needs five nominations to make the final list here.

Unlike pilotbob, I would like the opportunity to participate in this process so I may nominate works and vote.

If anyone feels uncomfortable posting an original nomination to a work, one may PM it to me and I will post it for you anonymously. However, it may take longer for me to post it.

Also unlike pilotbob and dreams, I may not keep an updated list of the nominees and links and such as we're nominating. I trust we can do that as a group. If anyone else wants to make and update such a list as we're nominating, I will try to edit and post a link to that particular post in my initial post for easy reference.

What is literature for the purposes of this book club? A well-regarded work. Often (but not always) it is important, challenging, critically acclaimed, has a deeper meaning, makes one think. It may be from ancient times to today; it may be from anywhere in the world; it may be obscure or famous, short or long; it may be a story, a novel, a play, a poem, an essay or another written form. If you are unsure if a work would be considered literature, post it and ask. This is an educational (and enjoyable) process for us all.


The floor is now open to nominations!

[GA Russell]

Sun Surfer, does it have to be an eBook?

[sun surfer]

It does not have to be an e-book. Since there is so much literature in the public domain, I would expect many of our selections to be available as an e-book and free anyway, but there are no availability or price requirements here. We can grin and bear a pbook and/or borrowing from the library some months if we must.

[AnemicOak]

I'll nominate...

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s masterful portrait of desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people “dreaded scandal more than disease.”

This is Newland Archer’s world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life—or mercilessly destroy it.

[ficbot]

I nominate On the Beach by Nevil Shute. This author recently became public domain and the book is available in this forum. I have always wanted to read this book! Summary:

After the war is over, a radioactive cloud begins to sweep southwards on the winds, gradually poisoning everything in its path. An American submarine captain is among the survivors left sheltering in Australia, preparing with the locals for the inevitable. Despite his memories of his wife, he becomes close to a young woman struggling to accept the harsh realities of their situation. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from the United States and the submarine must set sail through the bleak ocean to search for signs of life.

Link to the mobi.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I nominate On the Beach by Nevil Shute. This author recently became public domain and the book is available in this forum.

Just for clarification, it's PD in Canada only, not the UK, US, Australia, etc. Not saying that it being PD is a requirement, just thought it worth mentioning. It actually sounds quite interesting although it amazes me that the US publisher is selling it for $12.

[fantasyfan]

I nominate:

1. The Time Machine by H.G.Wells This short novel explores remarkable social and philosophical implications.

2, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Austen develops a number of significant themes--particularly the relationship between manners and morals-- which go far beyond any of the attempts to create cinematic versions of the book.

3. Persuasion by Jane Austen If members feel that the above nomination is overly familiar this wonderful autumnal book--the final complete novel Austen wrote--is a magnificent study of inner suffering which also develops her favourite morals/manners theme.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I nominate On the Beach by Nevil Shute. This author recently became public domain and the book is available in this forum. I have always wanted to read this book!

Oh wow! I would love to read that. I saw the Australian-made mini-series/film and it affected me greatly. It's astronomically expensive in Amazon for something that should rightly be in PD. $11.99 can you believe it?!

EDIT: I tell a lie. I found it for $9.69. Still outrageous considering its age, but at least it comes under the $10 mark.

So I will jump in with a couple of nominations.

Seven Japanese Tales by Junchiro Tanizaki. Since this is supposedly an open category I assume that, as the title implies, a collection of shorter stories can be considered.

Tanizaki is one of my favorite authors, and this is a great book to be introduced to his writing.

Spoiler:

Seven Japanese Tales represents aspects of Tanizaki's prose art between 1910 and 1959. The four short stories have a strong concern with abnormal psychology. He tells of a tattoo artist who is obsessed with the desire to decorate the body of a supremely beautiful woman; a city man who is struck with terror when obliged to ride trolley cars. There is a study of the emotions of a schoolboy thief, and an account of a young man exhausted by months of passion for his mistress. The three longer tales, written in his maturity, tell the story of a famous blind woman who teaches the samisen and the koto, and of a pupil who becomes her lover. When she is disfigured by some unknown enemy, her lover blinds himself. There is an account of a young man's erotic confusions between his dead mother, his stepmother and his wife. Finally, a blind man tells of the ambitions and stratagems, loves and cruelties during the feudal wars of sixteenth-century Japan. (from Cyber read)

Available as an ebook.

I would also like to nominate Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice.

I am cheating a little here, I read this in April as the book of the month for the evening book club at my local library. With the sesquicentennial of the Civil War this year it is a timely read.

Spoiler:

Before the Civil War, there lived in Louisiana, people unique in Southern history. For though they were descended from African slaves, they were also descended from the French and Spanish who enslaved them. In this dazzling historical novel, Anne Rice chronicles four of these so-called Free People of Color--men and women caught perilously between the worlds of master and slave, privilege and oppression, passion and pain.

Available as ebook.

[obs20]

I'll second On The Beach I just used Calibre to convert the mobi to epub.

[DiapDealer]

I'm not sure if Caleb was seconding the Nevil Shute suggestion, but it sure sounded like it. So, I'm going to consider obs20 the third recommendation for On the Beach and myself the fourth. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

[jbcohen]

That was a great book when I first read it many years ago ficbot, it will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up straight. However I am going to nominate a member of a series of books that no one here has ever talked about or most likely ever heard of its a part of the Super Bolan series:

Age of War by David Robbins:

Considered one of the most dangerous anti-West terrorist groups, the Al-Jabbar ply their lethal trade quietly and efficiently.

The hunt has just begun. On a bloody chase spanning the Middle East, the Aegean and East Africa, they remain one step ahead of Bolan, leading the warrior on a race to circumvent their most monumental act of savagery. They've got a dirty nuke and the means to get it to American soil...striaght to the nation's capital.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm not sure if Caleb was seconding the Nevil Shute suggestion, but it sure sounded like it. So, I'm going to consider obs20 the third recommendation for On the Beach and myself the fourth. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

Was definitely seconding it.

[issybird]

I would like to nominate A Question of Upbringing, the first novel in Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time sequence. I read these novels about 20 years ago and have always wanted to revisit them. Powell was a contemporary of Evelyn Waugh's and his books have a similar perspective. People might have grabbed this when it was free on the release of the entire series in ebook format; if not, it's $6.29 at Amazon and $6.40 at B&N. It also should be easily gettable at the public library.

Here's the blurb from B&N:

A Question of Upbringing (1951) introduces us to the young Nick Jenkins and his housemates at boarding school in the years just after World War I. Boyhood pranks and visits from relatives bring to life the amusements and longueurs of schooldays even as they reveal characters and traits that will follow Jenkins and his friends through adolescence and beyond: Peter Templer, a rich, passionate womanizer; Charles Stringham, aristocratic and louche; and Kenneth Widmerpool, awkward and unhappy, yet strikingly ambitious. By the end of the novel, Jenkins has finished university and is setting out on a life in London; old ties are fraying, new ones are forming, and the first steps of the dance are well underway.

"Anthony Powell is the best living English novelist by far. His admirers are addicts, let us face it, held in thrall by a magician."—Chicago Tribune

"A book which creates a world and explores it in depth, which ponders changing relationships and values, which creates brilliantly living and diverse characters and then watches them grow and change in their milieu. . . . Powell's world is as large and as complex as Proust's."—Elizabeth Janeway, New York Times


I also want to second Persuasion. I know P&P and Emma stone cold, but haven't reread this in decades. Am I the only person old enough here to remember when no one liked or read Austen? 'Cept me, of course!

[sun surfer]

There are so many good nominations so far that I'm having a hard time deciding which I'd like to second.

I will start by seconding A Question Of Upbringing.