MobileRead September 2017 Book Club Vote

[WT Sharpe]

September 2014 MobileRead Book Club Vote

Help us choose a book as the September 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 immediately after a winner is chosen. You may join the discussion at any time. Select from the following Official Choices with three nominations each:


• She by H. Rider Haggard
Goodreads | Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Kobo US | Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub / Kindle
Print Length: 317 pages

Spoiler:

From Wikipedia:

She is the story of Cambridge professor Horace Holly and his ward Leo Vincey, and their journey to a lost kingdom in the African interior. The journey is triggered by a mysterious package left to Leo by his father, to be opened on his 25th birthday; the package contains an ancient shard of pottery and several documents, suggesting an ancient mystery about the Vincey family. Holly and Leo eventually arrive in eastern Africa where they encounter a primitive race of natives and a mysterious white queen, Ayesha, who reigns as the all-powerful "She" or "She-who-must-be-obeyed" and who has a mysterious connection to young Leo.

The story expresses numerous racial and evolutionary conceptions of the late Victorians, especially notions of degeneration and racial decline prominent during the fin de siècle. In the figure of She, the novel notably explored themes of female authority and feminine behaviour. It has received praise and criticism alike for its representation of womanhood.

• The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
Goodreads | Overdrive
Print Length: 146 pages

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

This classic work of science fiction is widely considered to be the ultimate time-travel novel. When Daniel Eakins inherits a time machine, he soon realizes that he has enormous power to shape the course of history. He can foil terrorists, prevent assassinations, or just make some fast money at the racetrack. And if he doesn't like the results of the change, he can simply go back in time and talk himself out of making it! But Dan soon finds that there are limits to his powers and forces beyond his control.

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.
Goodreads | Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub / Kindle / Librivox
Print Length: 490 pages

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

Jane Eyre is a nineteenth century proto feminist novel by Charlotte Bronte. It is a radical story of Jane Eyre, an unwanted orphan girl who is sent to live in a charity school by her aunt. Here she overcomes oppression to emerge a mature woman and lead life on her own terms. As an independent woman, she goes to Thornfield Hall as a governess, where she falls in love with the owner. However, it is on her most important day in life that she must take a difficult decision, which would change her life forever and of people around her.

• Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey Series Book 1) by Dorothy L. Sayers
Goodreads | Amazon US / Amazon UK / Audible US / Audible UK / Public Domain (Life+50 countries ONLY!)
Print Length: 208 pages

Spoiler:

From Amazon:

Wimseys mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver, rings her son with news of such a quaint thing. She has heard through a friend that Mr. Thipps, a respectable Battersea architect, found a dead man in his bathwearing nothing but a gold pince-nez. Lord Wimsey makes his way straight over to Mr. Thipps, and a good look at the body raises a number of interesting questions. Why would such an apparently well groomed man have filthy black toenails, flea bites and the scent of carbolic soap lingering on his corpse? Then comes the disappearance of oil millionaire Sir Reuben Levy, last seen on the Battersea Park Road. With his beard shaved he would look very similar to the man found in the bath, but is Sir Levy really dead?

From FadedPage:

"Whose Body" is something of an apprentice work. Lord Peter is here more a bundle of characteristics than a character: a collector of rare books and incunabula, facile with quotations, fluent in French and probably in Latin, a skillful and sensitive pianist who never needs to practise, slightly built but possessed of "curious" strength and speed which he maintains without exercise. Over subsequent books, this caricature smooths and deepens into one of the most interesting and attractive detectives in fiction.
In spite of its awkwardness, Whose Body is worth reading. The plot is clever, the villain is believable and sadistic, and most of the supporting characters are a delight. Some of these characters are further developed in later novels: Bunter, Parker, the Dowager Duchess, Freddy Arbuthnot. Others fortunately are not. Sayers is much better with people she might recognise as "like us" then with people from other social groups.

From Goodreads:

The stark naked body was lying in the tub. Not unusual for a proper bath, but highly irregular for murder -- especially with a pair of gold pince-nez deliberately perched before the sightless eyes. What's more, the face appeared to have been shaved after death. The police assumed that the victim was a prominent financier, but Lord Peter Wimsey, who dabbled in mystery detection as a hobby, knew better. In this, his first murder case, Lord Peter untangles the ghastly mystery of the corpse in the bath.

• Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
Goodreads | Librivox / Manybooks
Print Length: 176 pages

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

Denis Stone, a naive young poet, is invited to stay at Crome, a country house renowned for its gatherings of 'bright young things'. His hosts, Henry Wimbush and his exotic wife Priscilla, are joined by a party of colourful guests whose intrigues and opinions ensure Denis's stay is a memorable one. First published in 1921, Crome Yellow was Aldous Huxley's much-acclaimed debut novel.

First published in 1921, Crome Yellow was Aldous Huxley's much-acclaimed debut novel. With the evident relish of the true satirist, he mocked the fads, foibles and spirit of his time with an unsurpassed wit and brilliance.

• A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
Goodreads
Print Length: 298 pages

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

A High Wind in Jamaica is not so much a book as a curious object, like a piece of driftwood torqued into an alarming shape from years at sea. And like driftwood, it seems not to have been made, exactly, but simply to have come into being, so perfectly is its form married to its content. The five Bas-Thornton children must leave their parents in Jamaica after a terrible hurricane blows down their family home. Accompanied by their Creole friends, the Fernandez children, they board a ship that is almost immediately set upon by pirates. The children take to corsair life coolly and matter-of-factly; just as coolly do they commit horrible deeds, and have horrible deeds visited upon them. First published in 1929, A High Wind in Jamaica has been compared to Lord of the Flies in its unflinching portrayal of innocence corrupted, but Richard Hughes is the supreme ironist William Golding never was. He possesses the ability to be one moment thoroughly inside a character's head, and the next outside of it altogether, hilariously commenting.
Irony finds a happy home indeed in the book's mixture of the macabre and the adorable. The baby girl, Rachel, "could even sum up maternal feelings for a marline-spike, and would sit up aloft rocking it in her arms and crooning. The sailors avoided walking underneath: for such an infant, if dropped from a height, will find its way through the thickest skull (an accident which sometimes befalls unpopular captains)." In that "such an infant" lies a world of mordant wit. In fact, throughout, Hughes's wildly eccentric punctuation and startling syntax make just the right verbal vehicle for this dark-hearted pirate story for grownups.

Hughes enjoys some coy riffing on the child mind, as with this description of the way Emily handles an uncomfortable social situation: "Much the best way of escaping from an embarrassing rencontre, when to walk away would be an impossible strain on the nerves, is to retire in a series of somersaults. Emily immediately started turning head over heels up the deck." Even so, Hughes never sentimentalizes his subject: "Babies of course are not human--they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes." Children, as a race, are given rough treatment: "their minds are not just more ignorant and stupider than ours, but differ in kind of thinking (are mad, in fact)." That madness is here isolated, prodded, and poked to chilling effect. But Hughes never loses sight of his ultimate objective: A High Wind in Jamaica is, above all, a cracking good yarn.

~ Claire Dederer

• The Toll-Gate by Georgette Heyer
Goodreads | / Amazon US / Audible US
Print Length: 321 pages

Spoiler:

From Amazon:

His exploits were legendary...

Captain John Staple, back from the battlefront, is already bored with his quiet civilian life in the country. When he stumbles upon a mystery involving a disappearing toll-gate keeper, nothing could keep the adventure-loving captain from investigating.

But winning her will be his greatest yet...

The plot thickens when John encounters the enigmatic Lady Nell Stornaway and soon learns that rescuing her from her unsavory relatives makes even the most ferocious cavalry charge look like a particularly tame hand of loo. Between hiding his true identity from Nell and the arrival in the neighborhood of some distinctly shady characters, Captain Staple finds himself embarked on the adventure-and romance-of a lifetime.

From Goodreads:

Captain John Staple's exploits in the Peninsula had earned him the sobriquet 'Crazy' Jack amongst his fellows in the Dragoon Guards. Now home from Waterloo, life in peacetime is rather dull for the boisterous, adventure-loving Captain. But when he finds himself lost and benighted at an unmanned toll-house in the Pennines, his soldiering days suddenly pale away besides an adventure - and romance - of a lifetime.

Yet again Georgette Heyer shows the qualities that made her one of the most successful and best-loved romantic novelists of her age, and why her popularity endures to this day.

[issybird]

I've decided to start listening to the Nadia May narration of Jane Eyre and hope that the votes follow suit.

[WT Sharpe]

I didn't vote for it, but I plan to read David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself. It's $9.99 at Amazon, though, and not available in my local library, so it may be a while.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by issybird

I've decided to start listening to the Nadia May narration of Jane Eyre and hope that the votes follow suit.

I'll be doing the same, but still hoping for another result.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by issybird

I've decided to start listening to the Nadia May narration of Jane Eyre and hope that the votes follow suit.

I've started reading The Man Who Folded Himself in hopes that it wins.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I didn't vote for it, but I plan to read David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself. It's $9.99 at Amazon, though, and not available in my local library, so it may be a while.

There's always the travel to Taiwan and use the 40% off voucher code at Kobo for getting it cheaper.

[JSWolf]

One of the problems with Jane Eyre is that it's too large. I don't have time to read it. So please don't vote for it. Help me out with a shorter book.

The man Who Folded Himself is the perfect size book.

[John F]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One of the problems with Jane Eyre is that it's too large. I don't have time to read it. So please don't vote for it. Help me out with a shorter book.

The man Who Folded Himself is the perfect size book.

Looking on Amazon, the paperbacks of She and The Man Who Folded Himself are both 144 pages, so a vote for She would also help Jon out.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by John F

Looking on Amazon, the paperbacks of She and The Man Who Folded Himself are both 144 pages, so a vote for She would also help Jon out.

Sorry, but She is 178 pages. So that makes it longer and that doesn't help at all. Plus, I won't read She because of the racism in Haggard's books.

https://www.amazon.com/SHE-New-H-Rid...dp/1507757220/

[John F]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sorry, but She is 178 pages. So that makes it longer and that doesn't help at all. ...

https://www.amazon.com/SHE-New-H-Rid...dp/1507757220/

Nope. 144:

https://www.amazon.com/She-H-Rider-H...ds=She+Haggard

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by John F

Nope. 144:

https://www.amazon.com/She-H-Rider-H...ds=She+Haggard

And the publisher of the eBook says it's 330 pages. So really, there is no definitive page number.

So get me the ePub page number and then we'll talk since that's like for like.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One of the problems with Jane Eyre is that it's too large. I don't have time to read it.

I agree, it's a longish book. Definitely longer than we usually try to go with here, for just that reason. But if you start now, you should be able to get it in. And the discussion doesn't stop, so you can add your comments at any point. And there are excellent audio versions, both free and paid, along with plenty of free eBook versions. So that's not a problem.

For those wanting to vote for something shorter, also available free or very cheaply, and with excellent audio versions, I suggest Whose Body, which is within reaching distance of Jane Eyre in the voting.

[BenG]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One of the problems with Jane Eyre is that it's too large. I don't have time to read it. So please don't vote for it. Help me out with a shorter book.

I read it in a week, even with driving down to South Carolina for the eclipse.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by BenG

I read it in a week, even with driving down to South Carolina for the eclipse.

But it does help to like that type of book and usually I don't.

[issybird]

The current Audible end-of-summer sale has the Thandie Newton narration of Jane Eyre on sale for $4.95 to members; however, anyone can get the Kindle edition for 99¢ and the audiobook for $1.99. But the sale drew my attention to what seems a very spiffy version, with a rating of 4.8 stars from over 2,600 reviews. Well worth $2.98 in toto with the added advantage of being able to Whispersync.