MobileRead November 2017 Book Club Nominations

[BenG]

I think the next discussion we have on the monthly book categories we should make it clearer whether we intend the categories to be fiction or nonfiction.

[Dazrin]

How about some more recent history? I nominate The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...nger_Beside_Me

This is a fascinating book about Ted Bundy from someone who knew him and was the book that made her one of the best known true-crime writers of all time.

Description from Amazon:

Utterly unique in its astonishing intimacy, as jarringly frightening as when it first appeared, Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me defies our expectation that we would surely know if a monster lived among us, worked alongside of us, appeared as one of us. With a slow chill that intensifies with each heart-pounding page, Rule describes her dawning awareness that Ted Bundy, her sensitive coworker on a crisis hotline, was one of the most prolific serial killers in America. He would confess to killing at least thirty-six young women from coast to coast, and was eventually executed for three of those cases. Drawing from their correspondence that endured until shortly before Bundy's death, and striking a seamless balance between her deeply personal perspective and her role as a crime reporter on the hunt for a savage serial killer -- the brilliant and charismatic Bundy, the man she thought she knew -- Rule changed the course of true-crime literature with this unforgettable chronicle.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by BenG

I think the next discussion we have on the monthly book categories we should make it clearer whether we intend the categories to be fiction or nonfiction.

Honestly, I think "History" is perfectly clear and that to claim that it encompasses historical fiction is willful misrepresentation. But that's me. Tom takes an elastic view toward nominations figuring it gets sorted in the voting as I think it mostly does. But I'm calling bs in this situation when I see it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by John F

IMO, fiction nominations are welcome.

This is not a fiction category.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

How about some more recent history? I nominate The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...nger_Beside_Me

This is a fascinating book about Ted Bundy from someone who knew him and was the book that made her one of the best known true-crime writers of all time.

LOL, I just finished a book about Jack the Ripper. I can take only so much serial killing at one time!

[JSWolf]

If any of the books nominated sound good to you and you would read if they win and you have them available at Overdrive, get in line now unless the line is too long.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by John F

And for what it is worth, The Devil ... previously won.

When did it win? It was in the November vote last year, but ended in 3rd place.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

When did it win? It was in the November vote last year, but ended in 3rd place.

March 2010.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by issybird

March 2010.

So it did. A tie with no runoff in those days. When I saw in in the voting last year I looked no further back. Of course, Jon's right, and by our current rules I'll have to void that nomination. More's the pity as that one looked very interesting and I haven't read it.

Jon, you have that nomination back.

[WT Sharpe]

I nominate Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government by Larry P. Arnn.

From Goodreads:

No statesman shaped the twentieth century more than Winston Churchill. To know the full Churchill is to understand the combination of boldness and caution, of assertiveness and humility, that defines statesmanship at its best. With fresh perspective and insights based on decades of studying and teaching Churchill, Larry P. Arnn explores the greatest challenges faced by Churchill over the course of his extraordinary career, both in war and peace—and always in the context of Churchill’s abiding dedication to constitutionalism.

Churchill’s Trial is organized around the three great challenges to liberty that Churchill faced: Nazism, Soviet communism, and his own nation’s slide toward socialism. Churchill knew that stable free government, long enduring, is rare, and hangs upon the balance of many factors ever at risk. Combining meticulous scholarship with an engrossing narrative arc, this book holds timely lessons for today. Arnn says, “Churchill’s trial is also our trial. We have a better chance to meet it because we had in him a true statesman.”

In a scholarly, timely, and highly erudite way, Larry Arnn puts the case for Winston Churchill continuing to be seen as statesman from whom the modern world can learn important lessons. In an age when social and political morality seems all too often to be in a state of flux, Churchill’s Trial reminds us of the enduring power of the concepts of courage, duty, and honor.

-- Andrew Roberts, New York Times bestselling author of Napoleon: A Life and The Storm of War

Churchill’s Trial, a masterpiece of political philosophy and practical statesmanship, is the one book on Winston Churchill that every undergraduate, every graduate student, every professional historian, and every member of the literate general public should read on this greatest statesman of the twentieth century. The book is beautifully written, divided into three parts–war, empire, peace–and thus covers the extraordinary life of Winston Churchill and the topics which define the era of his statesmanship.

-- Lewis E.

[sufue]

I'd like to nominate The Great Siege: Malta 1565 by Ernle Bradford. This book is about one of those incredibly consequential moments in history that you've likely barely heard of:

The indispensable account of the Ottoman Empire’s Siege of Malta from the author of Hannibal and Gibraltar.

In the first half of the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was thought to be invincible. Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman sultan, had expanded his empire from western Asia to southeastern Europe and North Africa. To secure control of the Mediterranean between these territories and launch an offensive into western Europe, Suleiman needed the small but strategically crucial island of Malta. But Suleiman’s attempt to take the island from the Holy Roman Empire’s Knights of St. John would emerge as one of the most famous and brutal military defeats in history.

Forty-two years earlier, Suleiman had been victorious against the Knights of St. John when he drove them out of their island fortress at Rhodes. Believing he would repeat this victory, the sultan sent an armada to Malta. When they captured Fort St. Elmo, the Ottoman forces ruthlessly took no prisoners. The Roman grand master La Vallette responded by having his Ottoman captives beheaded. Then the battle for Malta began in earnest: no quarter asked, none given.

Ernle Bradford’s compelling and thoroughly researched account of the Great Siege of Malta recalls not just an epic battle, but a clash of civilizations unlike anything since the time of Alexander the Great. It is “a superior, readable treatment of an important but little-discussed epic from the Renaissance past . . . An astonishing tale” (Kirkus Reviews).

Our entire family has read and enjoyed this, and I've also read and enjoyed Gibraltar, Thermopylae and a couple of others by the same author. It has a 4.35 rating at Goodreads, and looks like about the same at Kindle US.

It's not super cheap, but at $8.79 US (coupon/VIPable at Kobo) and £6.99 UK, it's a little less than the $11.99 to $14.99 range that caused @issybird concern. And, it's an Open Road title, which means it has been on sale a lot, although not for very long, usually for $1.99, so some folks may already have it in their TBR pile. (Can't remember if it was part of Open Road's freebie-thon last December, since I already had it.)

Oh, and I forgot some links:

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Siege...dp/B00J48FFMM/
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Siege-M...dp/B00J48FFMM/
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-great-siege-1
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...he_Great_Siege

[sufue]

And here's a second nomination, although Jon may object since it's a non-fiction history book about a historical fiction book ...

Mitigating that, perhaps, is the price, which is $1.99 in the US and £1.99 in the UK, at least at the moment - of course we don't know how long those prices will last.

EDIT: I looked at eRiq, and in the US, at least, Quest has been $1.99 since mid-May, so not a short-term sale price, at least...

The Quest for Kim is a title by Peter Hopkirk in which the author traces (as best he can) the real people, places and events that provide the background for Kipling's classic Kim. I've always enjoyed reading about the "Great Game", both fiction and non-fiction, and Hopkirk also has a number of excellent (IMO) "pure" non-fiction history titles about the period/region. But Quest is particularly fun (again IMO) due to its ties to Kim - it's almost like getting two reads in one.

One downside is that you probably would want to have read Kim before reading this, even if a very long time ago. I had read Kim many many years ago, before picking up Quest; found that even with the many years, I remembered enough about Kim to enjoy Quest; but then found myself wanting to (and did) go back and re-read Kim later. Kim is available for free in our own MR Patricia Clark Mem Library, though, so the issue here would be of time, rather than money.

Here's the blurb about Quest, which (once more IMO) doesn't really do it justice:

This book is for all those who love Kim, that masterpiece of Indian life in which Kipling immortalized the Great Game. Fascinated since childhood by this strange tale of an orphan boy's recruitment into the Indian secret service, Peter Hopkirk here retraces Kim's footsteps across Kipling's India to see how much of it remains.

To attempt this with a fictional hero would normally be pointless. But Kim is different. For much of this Great Game classic was inspired by actual people and places, thus blurring the line between the real and the imaginary. Less a travel book than a literary detective story, this is the intriguing story of Peter Hopkirk's quest for Kim and a host of other shadowy figures.

It has 3.86 stars at Goodreads and 4.0 stars at Kindle US.

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Quest-Kim-S...dp/B00713DMTU/
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Kim-Pet...dp/B00GW4L0HK/
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/quest-for-kim-1
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...om_search=true

[sufue]

And for my third, I third The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945

Whew!

[JSWolf]

This is going to be a tough month. The books nominated are rather long.

[issybird]

I'm nominating Wounded: A New History of the Western Front in World War I by Emily Mayhew, a history of casualty treatment from the battlefield to the hospital back in Britain. 4.24 stars at Goodreads.

The best description, although paragraphs would help:

Spoiler:

The number of soldiers wounded in World War I is, in itself, devastating: over 21 million military wounded, and nearly 10 million killed. On the battlefield, the injuries were shocking, unlike anything those in the medical field had ever witnessed. The bullets hit fast and hard, went deep and took bits of dirty uniform and airborne soil particles in with them. Soldier after soldier came in with the most dreaded kinds of casualty: awful, deep, ragged wounds to their heads, faces and abdomens. And yet the medical personnel faced with these unimaginable injuries adapted with amazing aptitude, thinking and reacting on their feet to save millions of lives. In Wounded, Emily Mayhew tells the history of the Western Front from a new perspective: the medical network that arose seemingly overnight to help sick and injured soldiers. These men and women pulled injured troops from the hellscape of trench, shell crater, and no man's land, transported them to the rear, and treated them for everything from foot rot to poison gas, venereal disease to traumatic amputation from exploding shells. Drawing on hundreds of letters and diary entries, Mayhew allows readers to peer over the shoulder of the stretcher bearer who jumped into a trench and tried unsuccessfully to get a tightly packed line of soldiers out of the way, only to find that they were all dead. She takes us into dugouts where rescue teams awoke to dirt thrown on their faces by scores of terrified moles, digging frantically to escape the earth-shaking shellfire. Mayhew moves her account along the route followed by wounded men, from stretcher to aid station, from jolting ambulance to crowded operating tent, from railway station to the ship home, exploring actual cases of casualties who recorded their experiences. Both comprehensive and intimate, this groundbreaking book captures an often neglected aspect of the soldier's world and a transformative moment in military and medical history.

The price is admittedly on the high end of what I think is acceptable, $8.79 at Kindle and $10.49 at Kobo, where it's couponable (or can be price-matched; a good coupon could make it cheaper). ETA: It's also $8.79 at Google and promotional credit would knock that down.

Kindle Kobo