Literary Open Nominations & Vote • July 2016

[sun surfer]

Help us select what the MR Literary Club will read in July 2016!

Also, this is more or less (technically, it was last month) our fifth anniversary! Thanks to everyone who's been a part of the club over the years.


The category for this month is:
Open


*Please note the changes to our process, as detailed below.*


-Nominations will run for three days.-

You may offer up to two nominations. All nominees will move forward to the vote with no need for support from others.

Once nominations are complete, voting will begin and also occur in this thread.


-Voting will then run for four days.-

I will make a post to open voting. The vote will close exactly four days from that post; even if the final tally doesn't occur immediately after voting closes, no votes made after that time will count.

Votes will be made by post. You will have a number of votes to cast equal to the number of nominees minus one, which will be specified when the vote begins. You may give each nominee one or two (or no) votes. You may vote all at once in one post or vote in separate posts at different times, so long as you have more votes remaining to cast. You may use any number of your possible votes up to the maximum. Any extraneous votes per person (past their maximum or more than two for one nominee) won't count. Votes cannot be changed once they are cast. *Since this is a new process, feel free to ask questions at any time.* If you vote for the winner it is hoped that you will read the selection with the club and join in the discussion.

Once voting is complete, the count will be tallied and a winner declared. In the event of a tie, there will be a one-day run-off vote, also in this thread. If the run-off also ends in a tie, then the tie will be resolved in favour of the selection that was nominated first.


What is literature for the purposes of this club? A superior work of lasting merit that enriches the mind. Often it is important, challenging, critically acclaimed. It may be from ancient times to today; it may be from anywhere in the world; it may be obscure or famous, short or long; it may be a story, a novel, a play, a poem, an essay or another written form. If you are unsure if a work would be considered literature, just ask!


The floor is now open!

*

Nominations and voting are now closed. Final results:

• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
  Post / Goodreads / 399 pages / Votes- 8
  
  
• Howards End by E.M. Forster
  Post / Goodreads / 339 pages / Votes- 5
  
  
• The Scarlet Plague by Jack London
  Post / Goodreads / 095 pages / Votes- 5
  
  
• Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
  Post / Goodreads / 228 pages / Votes- 4
  
  
• The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton
  Post / Goodreads / 186 pages / Votes- 5
  
  
• The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin
  Post / Goodreads / 180 pages / Votes- 3
  
  
• Rain and Other South Sea Stories by W. Somerset Maugham
  Post / Goodreads / 221 pages / Votes- 2
  
  
• Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier
  Post / Goodreads / 251 pages / Votes- 6
  
  
• The Charioteer by Mary Renault
  Post / Goodreads / 372 pages / Votes- 2
  
  
• Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
  Post / Goodreads / 194 pages / Votes- 3
  

[sun surfer]

By the way, it's a bit buried in the post so I wanted to point out that now with this new process if we have a run-off tie then first nominated wins, so it could pay to nominate early on the off chance of two ties.

[Bookpossum]

Okay, I'll take the plunge! I have two nominations, very different from each other:

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. From Kobo:

When an accident knocks mechanic Hank Morgan from nineteenth-century Connecticut back to sixth-century Camelot, he finds himself in a new position of power. Armed with his knowledge of the future, Hank sets off on a quest to transform his destiny and prevent King Arthur’s death. With his trademark dark humor, Mark Twain crafts a critique of human nature that transcends the centuries between King Arthur, Hank Morgan, and today.

Howards End by E M Forster. From Kobo:

Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster, first published in 1910, which tells a story of social and familial relations in turn-of-the-century England.

Howards End is considered by some to be Forster's masterpiece. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Howards End 38th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

The book is about three families in England at the beginning of the 20th century: the Wilcoxes, rich capitalists with a fortune made in the Colonies; the half-German Schlegel siblings (Margaret, Tibby, and Helen), who have much in common with the real-life Bloomsbury Group; and the Basts, a struggling couple in the lower-middle class. The Schlegel sisters try to help the poor Basts and try to make the Wilcoxes less prejudiced.
The Schlegels frequently encounter the Wilcoxes. The youngest, Helen, is for a short period intensely attracted to the younger Wilcox brother, Paul; each rejects the other for his or her own reasons. The eldest, Margaret, becomes friends with Paul's mother, Ruth Wilcox. Ruth's most prized personal possession is her family house at Howards End. She wishes that Margaret could live there, as she feels that it might be in good hands with her. Ruth's own husband and children do not value the house and its rich history, because such abstractions, while being very dear to Margaret, are lost to them. As Ruth is terminally ill, and Margaret and her family are about to be evicted from their London home by a developer, Ruth bequeaths the cottage to Margaret in a handwritten note delivered to her husband from the nursing home where she has died, causing great consternation among the Wilcoxes. Mrs Wilcox's widowed husband, Henry, and his children burn the note without telling Margaret about her inheritance. However, over the course of several years, Margaret becomes friends with Henry Wilcox and eventually marries him. The more free-spirited Margaret tries to get Henry to open up more, to little effect. Henry's elder son Charles and his wife try to keep Margaret from taking possession of Howards End.

[jselby]

Hi all. I'm new to mobile reads and thought I give this book club a go. I'm reading "open" to mean any genre.

Here are my nominations.

The Scarlet Plague by Jack London
Goodreads | Gutenberg

From goodreads:
An old man, James Howard Smith, walks along deserted railway tracks, long since unused and overgrown; beside him a young, feral boy helps him along. It has been 60 years since the great Red Death wiped out mankind, and the handful of survivors from all walks of life have established their own civilization and their own hierarchy in a savage world. Art, science, and all learning has been lost, and the young descendants of the healthy know nothing of the world that was—nothing but myths and make-believe. The old man is the only one who can convey the wonders of that bygone age, and the horrors of the plague that brought about its end. What future lies in store for the remnants of mankind can only be surmised—their ignorance, barbarity, and ruthlessness the only hopes they have?


Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke
Goodreads
From Goodreads:
Without warning, giant silver ships from deep space appear in the skies above every major city on Earth. Manned by the Overlords, in fifty years, they eliminate ignorance, disease, and poverty. Then this golden age ends--and then the age of Mankind begins....

[fantasyfan]

I'll nominate The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton.
Here is a selection from a review by V. G. Harwood on Amazon UK:

"I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I started reading this, but it definitely wasn't what I got! This is an extremely well-written, very witty, with endless neat turns of phrases and observations, tale of what are essentially a group of terrorists who aim to "destroy God" and reduce mankind to anarchy. The terrorists are all named after days of the week with the terrible Sunday being the avenging angel who oversees all of the other weekday's activities. There are more twists and turns than a Victorian London street and nothing is ever quite what you expect in the story. This was published in 1905 but is surprisingly still very relevant today."

[Bookpossum]

Welcome jselby!

[fantasyfan]

Hello and welcome, Jselby! I se you've entered with two great choices.

[fantasyfan]

Fo my second post I'll go for The Tombs of Atuan a Young Adult novel by Ursula LeGuin. It is the second novel in the Earthsea trilogy but can be read as a standalone. It is easily the finest of the series and arguably at least as good as anything she has written. It deals with themes such as identity and the nature of evil and makes magnificent use of symbolism. Here's a sample of LeGuin's prose:

"The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but this is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men's eyes."

[Bookpossum]

This is shaping up to be a very tough choice indeed come voting time! And I absolutely agree with you fantasyfan about Ursula LeGuin's beautiful writing and the serious themes with which she deals.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I have a personal goal to read more short stories. For my first nomination I select Rain and Other South Sea Stories (alternately known as The Trembling of a Leaf Short Stories Collection) by William Somerset Maugham.

From Goodreads:

W. Somerset Maugham led many lives, including that of a doctor in London's slums, a successful playwright and novelist, an agent for British Intelligence during World War I, and a world traveler. In 1917, he took the first of many voyages to the Pacific Islands and the Far East, where his keen sense of observation found inspiration for some of his finest writing.
Rain and Other South Sea Stories features one of Maugham's most famous tales, concerning the clash between a missionary and a prostitute. "Rain" was adapted for the stage and filmed on three separate occasions, its leading character portrayed by Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford, and Rita Hayworth. This collection also includes "Macintosh," a psychological study of the competition between two officials; "The Fall of Edward Barnard," a tale of social rebellion that foreshadows The Razor's Edge; "The Pool," a portrait of a marriage between people from different cultures; and other compelling stories of life in the tropics.

[Bookworm_Girl]

For my second nomination I select a famous French classic that I bought awhile ago and haven't read yet: The Lost Domain: Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier. It was published in 1913 shortly before the author's death fighting for France in the Great War.

From Amazon product description:

The arrival of Augustin Meaulnes at a small provincial secondary school sets in train a series of events that will have a profound effect on his life, and that of his new friend François Seurel. It is Seurel who recalls the impact of le grand Meaulnes, disruptive and charismatic, on his schoolmates, and the encounter that is to haunt them both. Lost, and alone, Meaulnes stumbles upon an isolated house, mysterious revels, and a beautiful girl. When he returns to Seurel it is with the fixed determination to find the house again, and the girl with whom he has fallen in love. But the dreamlike days in the lost domain are evanescent, and Meaulnes is torn between his love and competing claims of loyalty and friendship.

Alain-Fournier's lyrical novel captures the painful transition from adolescence to adulthood without sentimentality, and with heart-wrenching yearning. Romantic and fantastical, it is the story's ultimate truthfulness about human experience that has captivated readers for a hundred years.

[sun surfer]

My first nomination is The Charioteer by Mary Renault, first published in the 1950s and 372 pages long.

From Goodreads:

After enduring an injury at Dunkirk during World War II, Laurie Odell is sent to a rural veterans’ hospital in England to convalesce. There he befriends the young, bright Andrew, a conscientious objector serving as an orderly. As they find solace and companionship together in the idyllic surroundings of the hospital, their friendship blooms into a discreet, chaste romance. Then one day, Ralph Lanyon, a mentor from Laurie’s schoolboy days, suddenly reappears in Laurie’s life, and draws him into a tight-knit social circle of world-weary gay men. Laurie is forced to choose between the sweet ideals of innocence and the distinct pleasures of experience.


My second nomination is Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges, 194 pages long.

From Goodreads:

The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy. Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal's abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and the iconography of eternal return. To enter the worlds in Ficciones is to enter the mind of Jorge Luis Borges, wherein lies Heaven, Hell, and everything in between.

[sun surfer]

Nominations are now closed and voting is now open!

Voting will close exactly four days from this post.

Each person has NINE (9) votes to use.

Please refer to the first post for all other information.

[Bookpossum]

I will start with:

2 votes for Mark Twain.
2 votes for E M Forster.
2 votes for Alain-Fournier.

I'll hold the last three for the time being as I'm a bit torn over several items!

[sun surfer]

I'll give one vote each to-

The Charioteer
Ficciones
Rain and Other South Sea Stories
Le Grand Meaulnes
The Scarlet Plague
Howards End
The Man Who Was Thursday