MobileRead November 2014 Book Club Nominations

[WT Sharpe]

MobileRead Book Club
November 2014 Nominations

Help us select the book that the MobileRead Book Club will read for November, 2014.

The nominations will run through midnight EST October 31 or until 10 books have made the list. The poll will then be posted and will remain open for five days.

Book selection category for November is:

Books Originally Written in a Language other than English

In order for a book to be included in the poll it needs THREE NOMINATIONS (original nomination, a second and a third).

How Does This Work?
The Mobile Read Book Club (MRBC) is an informal club that requires nothing of you. Each month a book is selected by polling. On the last week of that month a discussion thread is started for the book. If you want to participate feel free. There is no need to "join" or sign up. All are welcome.

How Does a Book Get Selected?
Each book that is nominated will be listed in a poll at the end of the nomination period. The book that polls the most votes will be the official selection.

How Many Nominations Can I Make?
Each participant has 3 nominations. You can nominate a new book for consideration or nominate (second, third) one that has already been nominated by another person.

How Do I Nominate a Book?
Please just post a message with your nomination. If you are the FIRST to nominate a book, please try to provide an abstract to the book so others may consider their level of interest.

How Do I Know What Has Been Nominated?
Just follow the thread. This message will be updated with the status of the nominations as often as I can. If one is missed, please just post a message with a multi-quote of the 3 nominations and it will be added to the list ASAP.

When is the Poll?
The poll thread will open at the end of the nomination period, or once there have been 10 books with 3 nominations each. At that time a link to the initial poll thread will be posted here and this thread will be closed.

The floor is open to nominations. Please comment if you discover a nomination is not available as an ebook in your area.


Official choices with three nominations each:



(1) Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
Overdrive

Spoiler:

From Amazon (some possible plot spoilers?):

They are the "Others," an ancient race of supernatural beings—magicians, shape-shifters, vampires, and healers—who live among us. Human born, they must choose a side to swear allegiance to—the Dark or the Light—when they come of age.

For a millennium, these opponents have coexisted in an uneasy peace, enforced by defenders like the Night Watch, forces of the Light who guard against the Dark. But prophecy decrees that one supreme "Other" will arise to spark a cataclysmic war. ...

(2) The Bat by Jo Nesbø
Amazon US / Google / Kobo / Overdrive

Spoiler:

Inspector Harry Hole of the Oslo Crime Squad is dispatched to Sydney to observe a murder case. Harry is free to offer assistance, but he has firm instructions to stay out of trouble. The victim is a twenty-three year old Norwegian woman who is a minor celebrity back home. Never one to sit on the sidelines, Harry befriends one of the lead detectives, and one of the witnesses, as he is drawn deeper into the case. Together, they discover that this is only the latest in a string of unsolved murders, and the pattern points toward a psychopath working his way across the country. As they circle closer and closer to the killer, Harry begins to fear that no one is safe, least of all those investigating the case.

(3) Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Amazon US / Overdrive

Spoiler:

From Amazon:

In this hyperkinetic and relentlessly inventive novel, Japan’s most popular (and controversial) fiction writer hurtles into the consciousness of the West. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World draws readers into a narrative particle accelerator in which a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect. What emerges is simultaneously cooler than zero and unaffectedly affecting, a hilariously funny and deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind.

(4) The Iron King by Maurice Druon
Amazon US / Kobo CA / Kobo US / Overdrive

Spoiler:

Goodreads blurb:

The Iron King – Philip the Fair – is as cold and silent, as handsome and unblinking as a statue. He governs his realm with an iron hand, but he cannot rule his own family: his sons are weak and their wives adulterous; while his red-blooded daughter Isabella is unhappily married to an English king who prefers the company of men.

A web of scandal, murder and intrigue is weaving itself around the Iron King; but his downfall will come from an unexpected quarter. Bent on the persecution of the rich and powerful Knights Templar, Philip sentences Grand Master Jacques de Molay to be burned at the stake, thus drawing down upon himself a curse that will destroy his entire dynasty

Originally published in 1955 in French.

(5) As Red as Blood by Salla Simukka
Amazon US / Goodreads

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

In the midst of the freezing Arctic winter, seventeen-year-old Lumikki Andersson walks into her school’s dark room and finds a stash of wet, crimson-colored money. Thousands of Euros left to dry—splattered with someone’s blood.

Lumikki lives alone in a studio apartment far from her parents and the past she left behind. She transferred into a prestigious art school, and she’s singularly focused on studying and graduating. Lumikki ignores the cliques, the gossip, and the parties held by the school’s most popular and beautiful boys and girls.

But finding the blood-stained money changes everything. Suddenly, Lumikki is swept into a whirlpool of events as she finds herself helping to trace the origins of the money. Events turn even more deadly when evidence points to dirty cops and a notorious drug kingpin best known for the brutality with which he runs his business.

As Lumikki loses control of her carefully constructed world, she discovers that she’s been blind to the forces swirling around her—and she’s running out of time to set them right. When she sees the stark red of blood on snow, it may be too late to save her friends or herself.

(6) How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired by Dany Laferriere
No links provided.

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

Racial and sexual politics collide in this cult classic that launched Laferrière as one of North America’s finest literary provocateurs.

Brilliant and tense, Dany Laferrière’s first novel, How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired, is as fresh and relevant today as when it was first published in 1985. With raunchy humor and a working-class intellectualism, Laferrière’s narrator wanders the slums of Montreal, has sex with white women, and writes a book to save his life.

With this novel, Laferrière began a series of internationally acclaimed social and political novels about the love of the world, and the world of sex, including Heading South and I Am a Japanese Writer.

(7) Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier
Amazon US Search / Goodreads

Spoiler:

AKA The Lost Estate or The Lost Domain or Big Meaulnes (the title "Le Grand Meaulnes" literally translates to "Meaulnes the Great")

This is his only novel, he having died fighting in WWI in 1914 at age 27.

From Goodreads:

When Meaulnes first arrives in Sologne, everyone is captivated by his good looks, daring, and charisma. But when he attends a strange party at a mysterious house with a beautiful girl hidden inside, he is changed forever. This evocative novel has at its center both a Peter Pan in provincial France-a kid who refuses to grow up-and a Parsifal, pursuing his love to the ends of the earth. Poised between youthful admiration and adult resignation, Alain-Fournier's narrator compellingly carries the reader through this indelible portrait of desperate friendship and vanished adolescence.

The nominations are now closed.

[WT Sharpe]

Wondering if a particular book is available in your country? The following spoiler contains a list of bookstores outside the United States you can search. If you don't see a bookstore on this list for your country, find one that is, send me the link via PM, and I'll add it to the list.

Spoiler:

Australian
Angus Robertson
Booktopia
Borders
Dymocks
Fishpond
Google

Canada
Amazon. Make sure you are logged out. Then go to the Kindle Store. Search for a book. After the search results come up, in the upper right corner of the screen, change the country to Canada and search away.
Google
Sony eBookstore (Upper right corner switch to/from US/CA)

UK
BooksOnBoard (In the upper right corner is a way to switch to the UK store)
Amazon
Foyle's
Google
Penguin
Random House
Waterstones
WH Smith

*** Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko [John F, treadlightly, Dazrin]
Overdrive

Spoiler:

From Amazon (some possible plot spoilers?):

They are the "Others," an ancient race of supernatural beings—magicians, shape-shifters, vampires, and healers—who live among us. Human born, they must choose a side to swear allegiance to—the Dark or the Light—when they come of age.

For a millennium, these opponents have coexisted in an uneasy peace, enforced by defenders like the Night Watch, forces of the Light who guard against the Dark. But prophecy decrees that one supreme "Other" will arise to spark a cataclysmic war. ...

* Le Morte D'Arthur compiled by Sir Thomas Malory [crich70]
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: Epub | Kindle

Spoiler:

Le Morte d'Arthur (originally spelled Le Morte Darthur, Middle French for "the death of Arthur") is a compilation by Sir Thomas Malory of Romance tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table. Malory interprets existing French and English stories about these figures and adds original material (the Gareth story). First published in 1485 by William Caxton, Le Morte d'Arthur is today perhaps the best-known work of Arthurian literature in English. Many modern Arthurian writers have used Malory as their principal source, including T. H. White in his popular The Once and Future King and Tennyson in The Idylls of the King.

* The German Mujahid by Boualem Sansal [HomeInMyShoes]
Amazon US

Spoiler:

From Amazon.com
Based on a true story and inspired by the work of Primo Levi, The German Mujahid is a heartfelt reflection on guilt and the harsh imperatives of history.

The two brothers Schiller, Rachel and Malrich, couldn?t be more dissimilar. They were born in a small village in Algeria to a German father and an Algerian mother, and raised by an elderly uncle in one of the toughest ghettos in France. But there the similarities end. Rachel is a model immigrant?hard working, upstanding, law-abiding. Malrich has drifted. Increasingly alienated and angry, his future seems certain: incarceration at best. Then Islamic fundamentalists murder the young men?s parents in Algeria and the event transforms the destinies of both brothers in unexpected ways. Rachel discovers the shocking truth about his family and buckles under the weight of the sins of his father, a former SS officer. Now Malrich, the outcast, will have to face that same awful truth alone.

Banned in the author?s native Algeria for of the frankness with which it confronts several explosive themes, The German Mujahid is a truly groundbreaking novel. For the first time, an Arab author directly addresses the moral implications of the Shoah. But this richly plotted novel also leaves its author room enough to address other equally controversial issues?Islamic fundamentalism and Algeria?s ?dirty war? of the early 1990s, for example; or the emergence of grim Muslim ghettos in France?s low-income housing projects. In this gripping novel, Boualem Sansal confronts these and other explosive questions with unprecedented sincerity and courage.

*** Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami [HomeInMyShoes, Dazrin, WT Sharpe]
Amazon US / Overdrive

Spoiler:

From Amazon:

In this hyperkinetic and relentlessly inventive novel, Japan’s most popular (and controversial) fiction writer hurtles into the consciousness of the West. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World draws readers into a narrative particle accelerator in which a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect. What emerges is simultaneously cooler than zero and unaffectedly affecting, a hilariously funny and deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind.

*** The Bat by Jo Nesbø [JSWolf, John F, treadlightly]
Amazon US / Google / Kobo / Overdrive

Spoiler:

Inspector Harry Hole of the Oslo Crime Squad is dispatched to Sydney to observe a murder case. Harry is free to offer assistance, but he has firm instructions to stay out of trouble. The victim is a twenty-three year old Norwegian woman who is a minor celebrity back home. Never one to sit on the sidelines, Harry befriends one of the lead detectives, and one of the witnesses, as he is drawn deeper into the case. Together, they discover that this is only the latest in a string of unsolved murders, and the pattern points toward a psychopath working his way across the country. As they circle closer and closer to the killer, Harry begins to fear that no one is safe, least of all those investigating the case.

*** The Iron King by Maurice Druon [treadlightly, caleb72, sun surfer]
Amazon US / Kobo CA / Kobo US / Overdrive

Spoiler:

Goodreads blurb:

The Iron King – Philip the Fair – is as cold and silent, as handsome and unblinking as a statue. He governs his realm with an iron hand, but he cannot rule his own family: his sons are weak and their wives adulterous; while his red-blooded daughter Isabella is unhappily married to an English king who prefers the company of men.

A web of scandal, murder and intrigue is weaving itself around the Iron King; but his downfall will come from an unexpected quarter. Bent on the persecution of the rich and powerful Knights Templar, Philip sentences Grand Master Jacques de Molay to be burned at the stake, thus drawing down upon himself a curse that will destroy his entire dynasty

Originally published in 1955 in French.

*** How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired by Dany Laferriere [ccowie, Synamon, jemc]
No links provided.

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

Racial and sexual politics collide in this cult classic that launched Laferrière as one of North America’s finest literary provocateurs.

Brilliant and tense, Dany Laferrière’s first novel, How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired, is as fresh and relevant today as when it was first published in 1985. With raunchy humor and a working-class intellectualism, Laferrière’s narrator wanders the slums of Montreal, has sex with white women, and writes a book to save his life.

With this novel, Laferrière began a series of internationally acclaimed social and political novels about the love of the world, and the world of sex, including Heading South and I Am a Japanese Writer.

*** Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier [sun surfer, Synamon, ccowie]
Amazon US Search / Goodreads

Spoiler:

AKA The Lost Estate or The Lost Domain or Big Meaulnes (the title "Le Grand Meaulnes" literally translates to "Meaulnes the Great")

This is his only novel, he having died fighting in WWI in 1914 at age 27.

From Goodreads:

When Meaulnes first arrives in Sologne, everyone is captivated by his good looks, daring, and charisma. But when he attends a strange party at a mysterious house with a beautiful girl hidden inside, he is changed forever. This evocative novel has at its center both a Peter Pan in provincial France-a kid who refuses to grow up-and a Parsifal, pursuing his love to the ends of the earth. Poised between youthful admiration and adult resignation, Alain-Fournier's narrator compellingly carries the reader through this indelible portrait of desperate friendship and vanished adolescence.

*** As Red as Blood by Salla Simukka [sun surfer, HomeInMyShoes, Synamon]
Amazon US / Goodreads

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

In the midst of the freezing Arctic winter, seventeen-year-old Lumikki Andersson walks into her school’s dark room and finds a stash of wet, crimson-colored money. Thousands of Euros left to dry—splattered with someone’s blood.

Lumikki lives alone in a studio apartment far from her parents and the past she left behind. She transferred into a prestigious art school, and she’s singularly focused on studying and graduating. Lumikki ignores the cliques, the gossip, and the parties held by the school’s most popular and beautiful boys and girls.

But finding the blood-stained money changes everything. Suddenly, Lumikki is swept into a whirlpool of events as she finds herself helping to trace the origins of the money. Events turn even more deadly when evidence points to dirty cops and a notorious drug kingpin best known for the brutality with which he runs his business.

As Lumikki loses control of her carefully constructed world, she discovers that she’s been blind to the forces swirling around her—and she’s running out of time to set them right. When she sees the stark red of blood on snow, it may be too late to save her friends or herself.

The nominations are now closed.

[John F]

I'll nominate Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko.

From Amazon (some possible plot spoilers?):

Spoiler:

They are the "Others," an ancient race of supernatural beings—magicians, shape-shifters, vampires, and healers—who live among us. Human born, they must choose a side to swear allegiance to—the Dark or the Light—when they come of age.

For a millennium, these opponents have coexisted in an uneasy peace, enforced by defenders like the Night Watch, forces of the Light who guard against the Dark. But prophecy decrees that one supreme "Other" will arise to spark a cataclysmic war. ...

Available at libraries everywhere*.

Overdrive: https://www.overdrive.com/media/250214/night-watch

Originally written/published in Russian.

[treadlightly]

I'll second Night Watch.

[JSWolf]

Remember, because we here in the US speak English, that means that a book written in the UK is eligible as that's not the same language. Australian books would be just as eligible.

I've read a book from Charles Stross that is written very much in UKisms and unless you know the words used, then you would spend a good amount of time looking them up. This is an example of a foreign book (IMHO).

P.S. There is also the opposite of UKers and Australians saying that the US doesn't speak English, so they should be able to nominate books written in the US.

[Dazrin]

I will third Night Watch. Even if the story isn't a great conversation starter, the author and his opinions might be based on the GR reviews.

[Mike L]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Remember, because we here in the US speak English, that means that a book written in the UK is eligible as that's not the same language. Australian books would be just as eligible

....

There is also the opposite of UKers and Australians saying that the US doesn't speak English, so they should be able to nominate books written in the US.

But, on that basis, you must allow any book written in English, which surely defeats the object of the nominating "Books Originally Written in a Language other than English"?

Or were you just being tongue-in-cheek?

Mike

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Mike L

But, on that basis, you must allow any book written in English, which surely defeats the object of the nominating "Books Originally Written in a Language other than English"?

Or were you just being tongue-in-cheek?

Mike

Maybe a bit of both.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Mike L

But, on that basis, you must allow any book written in English, which surely defeats the object of the nominating "Books Originally Written in a Language other than English"?

Or were you just being tongue-in-cheek?

Mike

I think he was being Jon.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I think he was being Jon.

You never did specify which version of English so I'm going with any version of English not in the English speaking country you live in (if you do live in an English speaking country) as valid to be nominated.

[crich70]

I nominate Le Morte D'Arthur which was written in the UK.

Spoiler:

Le Morte d'Arthur (originally spelled Le Morte Darthur, Middle French for "the death of Arthur") is a compilation by Sir Thomas Malory of Romance tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table. Malory interprets existing French and English stories about these figures and adds original material (the Gareth story). First published in 1485 by William Caxton, Le Morte d'Arthur is today perhaps the best-known work of Arthurian literature in English. Many modern Arthurian writers have used Malory as their principal source, including T. H. White in his popular The Once and Future King and Tennyson in The Idylls of the King.

It's here at MR as well in several formats.

Kindle
Epub

[HomeInMyShoes]

I'll nominate The German Mujahid by Boualem Sansal.

Spoiler:

From Amazon.com
Based on a true story and inspired by the work of Primo Levi, The German Mujahid is a heartfelt reflection on guilt and the harsh imperatives of history.

The two brothers Schiller, Rachel and Malrich, couldn?t be more dissimilar. They were born in a small village in Algeria to a German father and an Algerian mother, and raised by an elderly uncle in one of the toughest ghettos in France. But there the similarities end. Rachel is a model immigrant?hard working, upstanding, law-abiding. Malrich has drifted. Increasingly alienated and angry, his future seems certain: incarceration at best. Then Islamic fundamentalists murder the young men?s parents in Algeria and the event transforms the destinies of both brothers in unexpected ways. Rachel discovers the shocking truth about his family and buckles under the weight of the sins of his father, a former SS officer. Now Malrich, the outcast, will have to face that same awful truth alone.

Banned in the author?s native Algeria for of the frankness with which it confronts several explosive themes, The German Mujahid is a truly groundbreaking novel. For the first time, an Arab author directly addresses the moral implications of the Shoah. But this richly plotted novel also leaves its author room enough to address other equally controversial issues?Islamic fundamentalism and Algeria?s ?dirty war? of the early 1990s, for example; or the emergence of grim Muslim ghettos in France?s low-income housing projects. In this gripping novel, Boualem Sansal confronts these and other explosive questions with unprecedented sincerity and courage.

This would also count as a banned/challenged book as it was banned in Algeria.

[ccowie]

Well I guess I'm a little confused about this catagory. Does a Canadian book qualify or only one that was originally written in French?

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by ccowie

Well I guess I'm a little confused about this catagory. Does a Canadian book qualify or only one that was originally written in French?

French Canadian would be ok, English Canadian wouldn't meet the intent. Basically we wanted to choose something that has been translated into English.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by crich70

I nominate Le Morte D'Arthur which was written in the UK.

Spoiler:

Le Morte d'Arthur (originally spelled Le Morte Darthur, Middle French for "the death of Arthur") is a compilation by Sir Thomas Malory of Romance tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table. Malory interprets existing French and English stories about these figures and adds original material (the Gareth story). First published in 1485 by William Caxton, Le Morte d'Arthur is today perhaps the best-known work of Arthurian literature in English. Many modern Arthurian writers have used Malory as their principal source, including T. H. White in his popular The Once and Future King and Tennyson in The Idylls of the King.

It's here at MR as well in several formats.

Kindle
Epub

This is written in English despite its French title, so it's unfortunately ineligible (otherwise I would second it).