MobileRead April 2017 Book Club Vote

[WT Sharpe]

April 2017 MobileRead Book Club Vote

Help us choose a book as the April 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 on April 20th. Select from the following Official Choices with three nominations each:

• A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow
Goodreads | Amazon US / Author's Website / Audible / Kobo US
Print Length: 173 pages

Spoiler:

A 1993 Edgar Award winner.

From Goodreads:

Somewhere in the hinterlands of Alaska, among the millions of sprawling acres that comprise “The Park,” a young National Park Ranger has gone missing. When the detective sent after him also vanishes, the Anchorage DA’s department must turn to their reluctant former investigator, Kate Shugak. Shugak knows The Park because she’s of The Park, an Aleut who left her home village of Niniltna to pursue education, a career, and the righting of wrongs. Kate’s search for the missing men will take her from self-imposed exile back to a life she’d left behind, and face-to-face with people and problems she'd hoped never to confront again.

• Three Cheers for Me by Donald Jack
Goodreads | Amazon US / Kobo US
Print Length: 256 pages

Spoiler:

Stephen Leacock Award winner.

From Goodreads:

With his disturbingly horse-like face and a pious distaste for strong drink and bad language, young Bartholomew Bandy doesn’t seem cut out for life in the armed services, as we meet him at the start of the First World War.

Yet he not only survives the dangers and squalor of the infantry trenches, he positively thrives in the Royal Flying Corps, revealing a surprising aptitude for splitarsing Sopwith Camels and shooting down the Hun. He even manages to get the girl.

Through it all he never loses his greatest ability – to open his mouth and put his foot in it.

Donald Jack’s blackly humorous Bandy memoirs are classics of their kind. Against an unshrinkingly depicted backdrop of war and its horrors, his anti-hero’s adventures are both gripping and shockingly funny.

• My Real Children by Jo Walton
Goodreads
Print Length: 320 pages

Spoiler:

My Real Children is a 2014 Tiptree Winner.

It's 2015, and Patricia Cowan is very old. "Confused today," read the notes clipped to the end of her bed. She forgets things she should know--what year it is, major events in the lives of her children. But she remembers things that don't seem possible. She remembers marrying Mark and having four children. And she remembers not marrying Mark and raising three children with Bee instead. She remembers the bomb that killed President Kennedy in 1963, and she remembers Kennedy in 1964, declining to run again after the nuclear exchange that took out Miami and Kiev.

Her childhood, her years at Oxford during the Second World War--those were solid things. But after that, did she marry Mark or not? Did her friends all call her Trish, or Pat? Had she been a housewife who escaped a terrible marriage after her children were grown, or a successful travel writer with homes in Britain and Italy? And the moon outside her window: does it host a benign research station, or a command post bristling with nuclear missiles?

Two lives, two worlds, two versions of modern history; each with their loves and losses, their sorrows and triumphs. Jo Walton's My Real Children is the tale of both of Patricia Cowan's lives... and of how every life means the entire world.

• The Light of Day by Eric Ambler
Goodreads | Amazon US / Audible
Print Length: 224 pages

Spoiler:

1964 Edgar Award winner for Best Novel

From Goodreads:

The Light of Day was the basis for Jules Dassin’s classic film, Topkapi.

When Arthur Abdel Simpson first spots Harper in the Athens airport, he recognizes him as a tourist unfamiliar with city and in need of a private driver. In other words, the perfect mark for Simpson’s brand of entrepreneurship. But Harper proves to be more the spider than the fly when he catches Simpson riffling his wallet for traveler’s checks. Soon Simpson finds himself blackmailed into driving a suspicious car across the Turkish border. Then, when he is caught again, this time by the police, he faces a choice: cooperate with the Turks and spy on his erstwhile colleagues or end up in one of Turkey’s notorious prisons. The authorities suspect an attempted coup, but Harper and his gang of international jewel thieves have planned something both less sinister and much, much more audacious.

• Still Life by Louise Penny
Goodreads
Print Length: 377 pages

Spoiler:

Awards:
1. Anthony Awards Best First Novel
2. Barry Awards Best First Novel
3. Dilys Awards Best Book
4. New Blood" Dagger award
5. Arthur Ellis award

As the early morning mist clears on Thanksgiving Sunday, the homes of Three Pines come to life - all except one…

From Goodreads:

To locals, the village is a safe haven. So they are bewildered when a well-loved member of the community is found lying dead in the maple woods. Surely it was an accident - a hunter's arrow gone astray. Who could want Jane Neal dead?

In a long and distinguished career with the Sûreté du Quebec, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache has learned to look for snakes in Eden. Gamache knows something dark is lurking behind the white picket fences, and if he watches closely enough, Three Pines will begin to give up its secrets…

Winner of the New Blood Dagger in Britain and the Arthur Ellis Award in Canada for best first crime novel. As well as the Dilys award, for the book the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association most enjoyed selling in 2006. STILL LIFE was also named one of the Kirkus Reviews Top Ten mysteries of 2006.

Runner-up for the CWA Debut Dagger Award, 2004
'The Canadian Louise Penny was Very Highly Commended for her entry STILL LIFE, which missed taking the Debut Dagger by only a whisker.'

• Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
Goodreads | Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Kobo US / Library Thing
Print Length: 322 pages

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.” —William Faulkner
*
Absalom, Absalom! is Faulkner’s epic tale of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who comes to Jefferson, Mississippi, in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. He was a man, Faulkner said, “who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him.”

• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Goodreads
Print Length: 366 pages

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

In this Newbery Medal-winning novel, Bod is an unusual boy who inhabits an unusual place—he's the only living resident of a graveyard. Raised from infancy by the ghosts, werewolves, and other cemetery denizens, Bod has learned the antiquated customs of his guardians' time as well as their ghostly teachings—such as the ability to Fade so mere mortals cannot see him.

Can a boy raised by ghosts face the wonders and terrors of the worlds of both the living and the dead? And then there are beings such as ghouls that aren't really one thing or the other.

The Graveyard Book won the Newbery Medal and the Carnegie Medal and is a Hugo Award Winner for Best Novel.

[CRussel]

I'll jump in first for a change, and vote for the four books I would actually read. Two are mysteries that start excellent series, one a thriller, and the final a book I'm willing to give a chance to based on issybird's review.

[Dazrin]

I am hoping that a couple more books get picked up by my library. The only two that are available have the lowest votes right now (and long lines anyway).

Hopefully they will act on a couple of my recommendations before the vote closes.

One book was available thru 3M Cloud Library but the status is "withdrawn", I wonder if it is from one of the publishers who put a checkout limit on their titles.

[CRussel]

Well, the Dana Stabenow book is available FREE from the author's web site. AND you get to keep it -- better than the library, even.

Spoiler:

And, I'll make an offer to anyone here who actually participates in the Book Club - I'll gift you a copy of the book in Audible format if it's selected and you would prefer to listen rather than read. Since I own the Kindle eBook, it's a $1.99 purchase for me to gift it to you.

DISCLAIMER:
1.) This is not an attempt swing or influence votes, except in the sense that I don't want costs to be the only determinant for those who are challenged right now. I've been there, and will likely be there again, but am not right now.
2.) This is not a free-for-all, but a sincere offer to those here who might be challenged to actually purchase the book but would still like to be able to participate this month.
3.) I reserve the right to say "no" to anyone that I think doesn't meet the conditions of #1 or #2 without prejudice or discussion.
4.) Use PM to request a copy, and include your Audible email address.
5.) If the Mods don't like this, they have my immediate permission to delete all relevant portions of this message and I won't complain or quibble.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Well, the Dana Stabenow book is available FREE from the author's web site. AND you get to keep it -- better than the library, even.

Having read it, it's a good book, but I don't see it making for a good discussion.

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Well, the Dana Stabenow book is available FREE from the author's web site. AND you get to keep it -- better than the library, even.

Thanks for the tip.

Here's the link:
https://stabenow.com/novels/kate-shu...ay-for-murder/

[Dazrin]

The link is in the first post too.

I read this and the other books at her site a few years ago so I doubt I will vote for it. I may re-read it though (it was very good) and will certainly at least stop by the discussion if this does win.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

The link is in the first post too.

I read this and the other books at her site a few years ago so I doubt I will vote for it. I may re-read it though (it was very good) and will certainly at least stop by the discussion if this does win.

Worth a re-read, IMHO. (Having just done so.) I was pleased at how much of even this very early work I enjoyed. And you have the option of switching formats to audio -- the narrator, Marguerite Gavin is quite good.

[Dazrin]

Audio books only work on road trips for me. I can listen to them while driving and not be distracted. I can't work while listening to them though.

[JSWolf]

Not all enjoyable books make for good discussion.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Audio books only work on road trips for me. I can listen to them while driving and not be distracted. I can't work while listening to them though.

At home, I play jigsaw puzzles on My iPad while listening to audiobooks. The two activities seem to occupy different parts of the brain without conflicting. It doesn't work for me with crossword puzzles or word games like Jumble.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

At home, I play jigsaw puzzles on My iPad while listening to audiobooks. The two activities seem to occupy different parts of the brain without conflicting. It doesn't work for me with crossword puzzles or word games like Jumble.

Interesting. I hadn't thought of that particular use, but I can see how it would work. I find I can knit, even a fairly complicated pattern, while listening to a book. I only have to stop the book if I have to dig in to the pattern to try to understand a change (or figure out where I made a mistake.) Once I'm back to just knitting, the book gets restarted.

[WT Sharpe]

Little love for Neil Gaiman, I see.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Little love for Neil Gaiman, I see.

Not that there's little love. It's just the wrong book. I've read it and it's not as good as some.

[JSWolf]

Still Life just needs two more votes to take the win. Let's do this. It's the book that best fits for April as it has the most awards of any book in the list. And some who have read the series and posted about it on MR says it's very good.