Literary Retrospective Vote • October 2015

[sun surfer]

Help choose the October 2015 selection to read for the MR Literary Club!

This is a special month featuring one nomination from every previous rotating nominator this cycle. The included nominations are determined by the non-winners with the most votes and any relevant ties are resolved by the original nominator, or otherwise by first listed (this time all ties have been resolved by their original nominator).

Like every month we will only have one winner, but this is a celebration of all who contributed to the rotating months this first cycle. A big thanks of appreciation to each and every one of you!




Select from the following works:


Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx, August 2013 sun surfer

Spoiler:

Also known as "Close Range: Brokeback Mountain and Other Stories"


From Goodreads:

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of The Shipping News and Accordion Crimes comes one of the most celebrated short-story collections of our time.

Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in these breathtaking tales of loneliness, quick violence, and the wrong kinds of love. Each of the stunning portraits in Close Range reveals characters fiercely wrought with precision and grace.

These are stories of desperation and unlikely elation, set in a landscape both stark and magnificent -- by an author writing at the peak of her craft.


Some ebook availability-
Australia- Bookworld
Canada- Amazon
U.K.- Amazon
U.S.- Amazon

Remembering Babylon by David Malouf, October 2013 Bookpossum

Spoiler:

From Kobo:

In the 1840s, a ship’s boy cast ashore in northern Australia is taken in by Aborigines. Sixteen years later he steps out of the bush and inadvertently confronts the new white settlers with their unspoken terrors. A picture of Australia at the time of its foundation, focused on the hostility between early British settlers and native Aboriginals. It is essentially the story of a boy caught between both worlds – the civilised and the primitive.

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien, December 2013 fantasyfan

Spoiler:

[1939}


fantasyfan writes:

Heavily influenced by Joyce, it shares the linguistic exuberance of Flann’s mentor.

“Flann O'Brien's first novel is a brilliant impressionistic jumble of ideas, mythology and nonsense. Operating on many levels it incorporates plots within plots, giving full rein to O'Brien's dancing intellect and Celtic wit. The undergraduate narrator lives with his uncle in Dublin, drinks too much with his friends and invents stories peopled with hilarious and unlikely characters, one of whom, in a typical O'Brien conundrum, creates a means by which women can give birth to full-grown people. Flann O'Brien's blend of farce, satire and fantasy result in a remarkable, astonishingly innovative book.” - Amazon


Available at Feedbooks, Amazon UK, Amazon US, iTunes, and Kobo

Life of Black Hawk, or Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak: Dictated by Himself, Sauk, February 2014 BelleZora

Spoiler:

Upon its publication in 1833, this unflinching narrative by the vanquished Sauk leader Black Hawk was the first thoroughly adversarial account of frontier hostilities between white settlers and Native Americans. Black Hawk, a complex, contradictory figure, relates his life story and that of his people, who had been forced from western Illinois in what was known as the Black Hawk War. The first published account of a victim of the American war of extermination, this vivid portrait of Indian life stands as a tribute to the author and his extraordinary people, as well as an invaluable historical document.

Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata, April 2014 Hamlet53

Spoiler:

The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets. He returns to Kyoto to find Otoko, a young woman with whom he had a terrible affair many years before, and discovers that she is now a painter, living with a younger woman as her lover. Otoko has continued to love Oki and has never forgotten him, but his return unsettles not only her but also her young lover. This is a work of strange beauty, with a tender touch of nostalgia and a heartbreaking sensitivity to those things lost forever.—Howard Hibbett (Translator)

A Diary without Dates by Enid Bagnold, June 2014 issybird

Spoiler:

Bagnold, of National Velvet fame, published her short account of her experiences as a war nurse in 1917 and was fired as a result. Free at Project Gutenberg.

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, August 2014 desertblues

Spoiler:

The Sea of Poppies is a novel by Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh (Calcutta 1958) which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008. It is the first volume of what will be the Ibis trilogy. The story is set prior to the First Opium War (1839-1842), on the banks of the holy river Ganges and in Calcutta.
At the heart of this saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean. Its purpose is to fight China’s vicious nineteenth-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free spirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers.
http://inkmesh.com/ebooks/sea-of-pop...Sea+of+Poppies from $7,76 WHSmith, UK eBook

Burning Daylight by Jack London, October 2014 Bookworm_Girl

Spoiler:

Burning Daylight takes place in the Yukon Territory in 1893. The main character, Elam Harnish, nicknamed "Burning Daylight" was the most successful entrepreneur of the Alaskan Gold Rush. The story of the main character was partially based upon the life of Oakland entrepreneur "Borax" Smith. Bringing his fortunes to the States he is cheated out of it by a crowd of money kings, and recovers it only at the muzzle of his gun. Embarking on a new life in California, he makes another fortune by underhanded means . . . only to find his corrupt life suddenly turned around by the love of a woman.

John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone. Some of his most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life”

The Trial by Franz Kafka, December 2014 Billi

Spoiler:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ighlight=Kafka
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7849

Barney’s Version by Mordecai Richler, February 2015 HomeInMyShoes

Spoiler:

.

Three Horses (Tre cavalli) by Erri De Luca, April 2015 paola

Spoiler:

Three Horses (Tre cavalli), Erri De Luca

Justine (The Alexandria Quartet #1) by Lawrence Durrell, June 2015 caleb72

Spoiler:

The time is the eve of the World War II. The place is Alexandria, an Egyptian city that once housed the world's greatest library and whose inhabitants are dedicated to knowledge. But for the obsessed characters in this mesmerizing novel, their pursuits lead only to bedrooms in which each seeks to know—and possess—the other. Since its publication in 1957, Justine has inspired an almost religious devotion among readers and critics alike.

The Fortunate Pilgrim by Mario Puzo, August 2015 ccowie

Spoiler:

I’ve included some comments from Wikipedia here as well to support my rationale for considering a Puzo book “literary” enough to qualify.

From Wikipedia:
Until his dying day, Mario Puzo considered the novel his finest, most poetic, and literary work. In one of his last interviews he stated that he was saddened by the fact that The Godfather, a fiction he never liked, outshone the novel of his mother's honest immigrant struggle for respectability in America and her courage and filial love, as portrayed in The Fortunate Pilgrim, 1965.
The Fortunate Pilgrim, though it won much literary praise from established American novelists, never earned Puzo a living. It was only when he opted for what Hollywood sold well to America, the stereotype of Italian immigrants as mobsters, that Puzo acquired fame and fortune commensurate with his stature as a writer.
The Fortunate Pilgrim is the real birthplace of The Godfather. As Puzo says, the book's hero, Lucia Santa, is based on his own mother: "Whenever the Godfather opened his mouth, in my own mind I heard the voice of my mother. I heard her wisdom, her ruthlessness, and her unconquerable love for her family and for life itself. … The Don's courage and loyalty came from her; his humanity came from her… and so, I know now, without Lucia Santa, I could not have written The Godfather."

From Goodreads:
Before The Godfather and The Last Don, there was Puzo's classic story about the loves, crimes and struggles confronted by one family of New York City immigrants living in Hell's Kitchen. Fresh from the farms in Italy, Lucia Santa struggles to hold her family together in a strange land. At turns poignant, comic and violent, and with a new preface by the author, The Fortunate Pilgrim is Italian-American fiction at its very best.

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The poll will be open for three days and a discussion thread will begin shortly after a winner is chosen.

The vote is multiple choice. You may vote for as many or as few as you like. If you vote for the winner it is hoped that you will read the selection with the club and join in the discussion.

Bonus votes:

Spoiler:

When the poll ends, bonus votes will be manually added before determining final results. Basically, anyone who has commented in two out of the last six discussion threads is eligible for bonus votes, and everyone eligible will have any votes cast doubled.

Everyone is welcome and encouraged to vote if interested in participating in the literary club whether eligible for bonus votes or not, and anyone interested in bonus votes is encouraged to become eligible as it doesn’t take much.

Currently eligible-
BelleZora, bfisher, Bookpossum, Bookworm_Girl, caleb72, ccowie, fantasyfan, Hamlet53, HomeInMyShoes, Lynx-lynx, paola, poohbear_nc, sun surfer

This includes posts in the April to September discussion threads.
*There are a few caveats to eligibility as outlined in this post.
**If anyone feels there is any mistake in eligibility, please let me know before the poll is over. Once the poll ends and the tally with bonus votes added is announced, the results will be final.

In the event of a tie, there will be a one-day non-multiple-choice run-off poll. If the run-off also ends in a tie, then the tie will be resolved in favour of the earliest nomination, except that the first, my own, will be considered last since I proposed going as a trial to give an example of what a rotating month might be like before others had a chance to offer.

[caleb72]

What a great selection!

Originally Posted by caleb72

What a great selection!

I agree. My votes were driven by the idea that on of the primary advantages of members providing a list to choose from is to force one to read something that one would normally just not consider. With that I left out Beauty and Sadness that I will read sometime anyway and The Trial (great, great book) that I've already read. I also considered HomeInMyShoes recent comment on Barney's Version.

[issybird]

Just as an FYI, an audiobook version of The Trial is this week's Downpour Deal, for $4.95.

[Bookpossum]

What an interesting list we made! Quite a tough choice to narrow it down to just a few.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

I agree. My votes were driven by the idea that on of the primary advantages of members providing a list to choose from is to force one to read something that one would normally just not consider. With that I left out Beauty and Sadness that I will read sometime anyway and The Trial (great, great book) that I've already read. I also considered HomeInMyShoes recent comment on Barney's Version.

It may well be a great book, but it was just a total miss for me at the time I tried to read it. They can't all be hits. I'm just finishing up book number seven from my nomination list. Its been a fun year reading more from Canada.

[sun surfer]

I'm still slowly reading through all the previews before I make my selections but I'm close to finishing. It really is a great list, and so diverse.

Originally Posted by issybird

Just as an FYI, an audiobook version of The Trial is this week's Downpour Deal, for $4.95.

Thanks for the heads up, issybird.

[Bookworm_Girl]

It's a very good list. I like the idea of a retrospective break. I don't get to read as many of the past nominations as I would like to. Looking forward to it!

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

...primary advantages of members providing a list to choose from is to force one to read something that one would normally just not consider...

Couldn't agree more. Because of the club, I have read some excellent books this year that I probably would have missed.

[sun surfer]

And the result is the same with or without bonus votes - we have a three-way tie! The run-off poll will be up shortly.


ETA - The one-day run-off poll is now up!