Literary X • February 2020

[sun surfer]

Just in case anyone notices and wonders, let me point out that I generally don't list subtitles after a colon in the first post nominations list; however, if there is a reason for it I will such as the case of The Decameron: Selected Tales which subtitle differentiates it from the complete The Decameron.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Wow! You weren’t joking that you had a long list of possibilities. Thanks for sharing! There are some other interesting books on there to add to my TBR.

[sun surfer]

Glad to share! I was going to last month as well but closed without saving the longlist accidentally and lost them myself.

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Again all these look good to me. I think I've definitely become more evenly interested in most nominations each month than I was many years ago, but also it just seems to me like everyone always nominates interesting books here. I'm going to save a couple of votes to decide on for once I've read the rest of the previews, but to start:

1 vote to Doctor Zhivago
1 vote to Desert Solitaire
1 vote to Treasure Island
1 vote to The Decameron: Selected Tales
1 vote to The Moor's Account
1 vote to Crusoe's Daughter

[AnotherCat]

Always interesting nominations to pick from.

My choices this time are:

2 - Desert Solitaire
2 - Doctor Zhivago
2 - Treasure Island
1 - Hard Times
1 - The Decameron: Selected Tales

For some time now I have the full Decameron already loaded for reading, I just have not gathered up the courage to get into it. If the ...Selected Tales happens to end up being the month's choice it will maybe give me a convenient shortcut to read just some of the Tales .

The Moor's Account is now on my ever lengthening reading list.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Here are my votes. Great choices again!

2 - Doctor Zhivago
2 - Desert Solitaire
1 - Treasure Island
1 - The Moor's Account
1 - Crusoe's Daughter

[sun surfer]

I'll use my last two votes on:

1 vote to The Tenth Muse
1 vote to 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

[sun surfer]

A little over five hours left to vote.

Anyone interested in reading and discussing this month's book with us can vote!

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Sorry I'm a little late to announcing the results but I just got back from a little Oscars party, which I wouldn't have mentioned except that I want to say how excited I was that Parasite won so many awards including Best Picture. I even won a bet on it, heh. It's such a great film but it's foreign language, from South Korea, so it had an uphill battle and is the first foreign language film to win Best Picture at the Oscars. Most were predicting 1917 to win as it had won Best Picture at all the other major award ceremonies including the Baftas. While 1917 is a good and uniquely shot film (it's filmed as if one long take) it's definitely very much a violent war story which it almost need not be said anymore that I'm not so keen on violent war stories lol, but still it's very well done and I enjoyed it. Anyway, I'd highly recommend Parasite, and the same director Bong Joon-Ho has another film from a decade or so ago called Mother that's one of my favourite films and which I also highly recommend (although I feel like I might've mentioned that one here before), and Mother didn't get nearly as much attention so I'm glad to see the director's work being so recognised now.

[sun surfer]

Initial voting is complete and we have a tie between:

-Doctor Zhivago
-Desert Solitaire


Run-off voting is now open!

Voting will close exactly TWO DAYS from this post.

Each person has ONE vote to use.

If the run-off ends in a tie, the selection that received all its votes first will win.

[AnotherCat]

I might have to toss a coin to make the choice as I assume voting for Doctor Solitaire won't work .

[Bookworm_Girl]

I’m going to vote for Doctor Zhivago.

[AnotherCat]

Both are on my reading list so I am happy to go with Doctor Zhivago too.

It will keep me out of mischief for a while.

[sun surfer]

Run-off voting is complete and the winner is Doctor Zhivago!

This is our first Russian selection in a long time. In our first two years we selected four Russian authors- Bulgakov, Dostoevsky, Zamyatin, and Nabokov. Then, we didn't have another one for exactly seven years... until now!

I'll have the discussion thread up soon.

[sun surfer]

And... argh, I just missed voting as it ended about 30 minutes before I got on, saw and posted the results (to clarify, per the post time of when the run-off started, of which the voting ended exactly two days after that). Anyway, it wouldn't have changed anything as I was going to go with the direction of the wind and so vote for Doctor Zhivago too.

I had recently read Into the Wild which I loved (I had an inkling I would after also loving the film), so I thought Desert Solitaire could be a very good complementary book to read too since they're both non-fiction books about a philosophical nature-loving man alone in the American wilderness.

On the other hand, I've wanted to read Doctor Zhivago for forever. I am surprised neither of you AnotherCat or Bookworm_Girl have seen the film. I saw it so long ago though, when I was a child. So I'm sure a lot of it went well over my head at the time. But I remember the gist of the story, and certain random scenes, including a major later one I won't spoil. The book is one of the longer ones we've chosen recently so I'm going to get cracking on it soon, and I'm excited to finally get to it.

On a side note, Julie Christie starred in the film Doctor Zhivago, and I have two main images of her- in Doctor Zhivago, and in a very good film from about a decade ago called Away From Her in which her character develops Alzheimer's.