New Leaf Nominations for October 2018 • Out of This World: Otherwhence

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I interpret the 6 months to be that it becomes eligible next month.

I was thinking it has been 6 months since the April vote (which took place in March), so the October vote (now) would be eligible.

Sounds like we need a tie-breaker. Issybird?

[Bookpossum]

While we wait for issybird’s decision, I think your interpretation is right Dazrin - it’s six months since the nomination. And it’s a good book!

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

While we wait for issybird’s decision, I think your interpretation is right Dazrin - it’s six months since the nomination. And it’s a good book!

Honestly, I'm fine either way it goes (and can interpret it either way). Good to have it clarified though so next time we know.

[issybird]

I'd say that since the vote is for October which is six months since April, it's good.

I'm sorry I'm running behind, folks. I'll get caught up tomorrow AM (EDT). I'll include Harry August unless I hear to the contrary from Dngrsone.

[Bookpossum]

I shall second Stargazing by Peter Hill. It sounds delightful.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I nominate The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde in the spirit of Halloween. It's a light and not too spooky Victorian ghost story available in the public domain (and also here in Mobileread's library thanks to pdurrant).

From Goodreads:

This is Oscar Wilde's tale of the American family moved into a British mansion, Canterville Chase, much to the annoyance its tired ghost. The family -- which refuses to believe in him -- is in Wilde's way a commentary on the British nobility of the day -- and on the Americans, too. The tale, like many of Wilde's, is rich with allusion, but ends as sentimental romance. . .

[issybird]

Originally Posted by gmw

Why I cannot find this on the UK sites is a mystery to me - I mean this is Arthur C. Clarke for crying out loud!

I hear that cry and second it. I thought of the perfect book by a major living British writer, a CBE at that, and it's available as an ebook only in the US and in none of the other three countries I checked.

[issybird]

I'm going to nominate Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.

From Wikipedia:

The book explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by an explorer, Marco Polo. The book is framed as a conversation between the aging and busy emperor Kublai Khan, who constantly has merchants coming to describe the state of his expanding and vast empire, and Polo. The majority of the book consists of brief prose poems describing 55 fictitious cities that are narrated by Polo, many of which can be read as parables or meditations on culture, language, time, memory, death, or the general nature of human experience.

Short dialogues between Kublai and Polo are interspersed every five to ten cities discussing these topics. These interludes between the two characters are no less poetically constructed than the cities, and form a framing device that plays with the natural complexity of language and stories. In one key exchange in the middle of the book, Kublai prods Polo to tell him of the one city he has never mentioned directly—his hometown. Polo's response: "Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice."

Amazon US $9.99 | Amazon UK £4.99 | Amazon AU $12.99 | OverDrive, Audible

Not available as an ebook in Canada! I give up. I'm sure our Canadians can come up with a copy. The Audible version is available. As Browning almost said, "Oh, to be in England now that October's there."

182 pages.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by issybird

I hear that cry and second it. I thought of the perfect book by a major living British writer, a CBE at that, and it's available as an ebook only in the US and in none of the other three countries I checked.

What's the book?

[Catlady]

My second nomination is Mary Rose by Geoffrey Girard, based on J. M. Barrie's play of the same name.

I hesitated over this nomination because it's apparently not available in e-book form in Australia or the UK (but is available in those areas as an audiobook). But with other nominations this time around also having similar availability issues, I figured why not.

Mary Rose Moreland and Simon Blake are the perfect couple: successful young professionals in Philadelphia, attractive, madly in love, and ready to start a life together. When they travel to England for Simon to ask her parents’ permission to marry Mary Rose, he learns an unsettling secret: Mary Rose disappeared when she was a little girl while the family was vacationing on a remote Scottish island. She reappeared mysteriously thirty-three days later in the exact same spot without a scratch on her and no memory of what had happened.

After Simon hears about this disturbing episode in Mary Rose’s childhood, he becomes obsessed with finding out what happened. He proceeds to launch his own investigation and arranges during their honeymoon for them to visit the island where she disappeared. But as Mary Rose’s behavior gets stranger after their engagement, the need for Simon to unlock the truth about her past grows even more urgent. What he uncovers is beyond his most terrifying fears.

Mary Rose is author Geoffrey Girard’s chilling and modern take on a classic ghost story originally written by J. M. Barrie. And for years, master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock attempted to adapt Mary Rose into a film but was never successful. With this novel, Girard taps into the nightmarish fears that inspired both Barrie and Hitchcock, while also bringing the story to the present day with his own unique voice.

Amazon U.S., $7.34
Amazon Canada, $9.99 CA

Kobo U.S., $8.69
Kobo Canada, $9.89 CA

E-book and audiobook at Hoopla and Scribd; audiobook at Overdrive and RB Digital. 272 pp.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Catlady

What's the book?

I was thinking of Last Letters from Hav by Jan Morris, shortlisted for the Booker in 1985. In the US, there's an ebook available combining it and a sequel called Hav of the Myrmidons in a volume entitled simply Hav, but as far as I can tell, it's not available any place else.

[issybird]

I'm going to third Stargazing. Not available here but I think I'd like it and I imagine I can come up with copy.

[Bookpossum]

I shall use my third vote to second invisible Cities, which sounds fascinating.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by issybird

I was thinking of Last Letters from Hav by Jan Morris, shortlisted for the Booker in 1985. In the US, there's an ebook available combining it and a sequel called Hav of the Myrmidons in a volume entitled simply Hav, but as far as I can tell, it's not available any place else.

Thanks.

[Catlady]

A third nomination: Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated from Spanish by Lucia Graves.

"We all have a secret buried under lock and key in the attic of our soul. This is mine."

When Fifteen-year-old Oscar Drai suddenly vanishes from his boarding school in Barcelona, no one knows his whereabouts for seven days and seven nights.

His story begins when he meets the strange Marina while he's exploring an old quarter of the city. She leads Oscar to a cemetery, where they watch a macabre ritual that occurs on the last Sunday of each month. At exactly ten o'clock in the morning, a woman shrouded in a black velvet cloak descends from her carriage to place a single rose on an unmarked grave.

When Oscar and Marina decide to follow her, they begin a journey that transports them to a forgotten postwar Barcelona--a world of aristocrats and actresses, inventors and tycoons--an reveals a dark secret that lies waiting in the mysterious labyrinth beneath the city streets.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon's haunting Marina has long been a cult classic in Spain and is now an international bestseller.

Amazon U.S., $9.99
Amazon Canada, $12.99 CA
Amazon Australia, $15.28 AU
Amazon UK, £3.99

Kobo U.S., $9.99
Kobo Canada, $12.99 CA
Kobo Australia, $25.51 AU
Kobo UK, £3.99

E-book and audiobook at Overdrive; e-book at Axis360; audiobook at Scribd, Hoopla, and RB Digital. 234 pp.