MobileRead July 2017 Book Club Nominations

[jeromuhi]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Hi, jeromuhi. Welcome to the MobileRead Book Club. It would be good to get a bit more information about the book you're nominating. A brief description, and link to at least GoodReads would be the basic minimum, though links to Amazon, Kobo, Audible and/or Overdrive are all useful additions. This makes it easier on Tom who manages the voting, and on the rest of us who have to decide what we want to read and vote for.

Thanks!

Added a description with links to Goodreads, Amazon, WorldCat, and Overdrive.

[CRussel]

Thanks, Jeromuhi. It's an interesting book, but a bit expensive. Not yet in my British Columbia provincial eBook library, though I've recommended it. We'll see.

However, I'll go ahead and give it a third.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

In that case, I'll nominate Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach....

That one's definitely allowable. It hasn't been nominated since July, 2013, and made a right respectable showing then. I'll second it, as well.

[Dazrin]

I will nominate The Gunslinger by Stephen King in anticipation of the Dark Tower movie coming out in August.

Goodreads

Beginning with a short story appearing in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1978, the publication of Stephen King's epic work of fantasy -- what he considers to be a single long novel and his magnum opus -- has spanned a quarter of a century.

Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, The Dark Tower series is King's most visionary feat of storytelling, a magical mix of science fiction, fantasy, and horror that may well be his crowning achievement.

Book I
In The Gunslinger (originally published in 1982), King introduces his most enigmatic hero, Roland Deschain of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting, solitary figure at first, on a mysterious quest through a desolate world that eerily mirrors our own. Pursuing the man in black, an evil being who can bring the dead back to life, Roland is a good man who seems to leave nothing but death in his wake.

[WT Sharpe]

I nominate Socrates Cafe by Christopher Phillips.

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.

"How to Start Your Own Socrates Café" guide included.

Surely a book about discussions should engender some discussion!

[JSWolf]

Come on people! Bonk just needs one more nod and it's in the vote. It's going to be an awesome read.

[WT Sharpe]

My last nomination (you have until midnight EST to second and third it) is Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body by the comedian Sara Pascoe.

Spoiler:

From Amazon:

Sara is a comedian who has talked and joked about female sexuality, psychology and the media's portrayal of women on stage and screen. While researching her most recent live show, Sara realised that she had a lot more to say.

In her first book Sara combines autobiography and evolutionary history to entertain and inform about the female body. Why we have boobs and how they have become so fetishised. How the kidnap of a 13-year old-chimney sweep's daughter created our present age of consent. The discovery and subsequent forgetting of the clitoris, the many eras of misunderstanding the female orgasm. Did you know that clitorectomys were once performed on British and American women to cure masturbation and hysteria? And that we learned so much about female sexuality from the behaviour of sperm?

ANIMAL: HOW A WOMAN IS MADE aims to be entertaining and informative and personal and universal and silly about lots of things and serious about some.

[WT Sharpe]

And for those of you in the U.K., the Audible audiobook is on sale today only for £1.99!

http://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Non-fict...ook/B01DMFA3P6

[issybird]

I'll second Hidden Figures and Socrates Cafe

[issybird]

I'll third Bonk.

[bfisher]

I'll third Hidden Figures.

[bfisher]

I second Animal.

[JSWolf]

I'll nominate Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch.

I was my dad's vinyl-wallah: I changed his records while he lounged around drinking tea, and that's how I know my Argo from my Tempo. And it's why, when Dr Walid called me to the morgue to listen to a corpse, I recognised the tune it was playing. Something violently supernatural had happened to the victim, strong enough to leave its imprint like a wax cylinder recording. Cyrus Wilkinson, part-time jazz saxophonist and full-time accountant, had apparently dropped dead of a heart attack just after finishing a gig in a Soho jazz club. He wasn't the first.

No one was going to let me exhume corpses to see if they were playing my tune, so it was back to old-fashioned legwork, starting in Soho, the heart of the scene. I didn't trust the lovely Simone, Cyrus' ex-lover, professional jazz kitten and as inviting as a Rubens' portrait, but I needed her help: there were monsters stalking Soho, creatures feeding off that special gift that separates the great musician from someone who can raise a decent tune. What they take is beauty. What they leave behind is sickness, failure and broken lives.

And as I hunted them, my investigation got tangled up in another story: a brilliant trumpet player, Richard 'Lord' Grant - my father - who managed to destroy his own career, twice. That's the thing about policing: most of the time you're doing it to maintain public order. Occasionally you're doing it for justice. And maybe once in a career, you're doing it for revenge.

Overdrive: https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=m...en+Aaronovitch

[crich70]

I'll nominate Animal Farm (assuming it hasn't been nominated for long enough of course).
Amazon US

[Dazrin]

I will second and third The Gunslinger...



Um. I mean third Animal and Socrates.