New Leaf Nominations for February 2018 • A Rainbow of Reading

[CRussel]

FYI: Some page lengths for books that have made it through the nominations.

• Nothing But Blue Skies -- Length: 336 pages
• Fadeout -- Length: 202 pages
• The Price of Salt -- Length: 296 pages
• Passing -- Length: 226 pages
• The Rainbow Ends -- Length: 404 pages

[gmw]

Not sure we really need more, we have some great choices already, but I will nominate: The Crimson Chalice by Victor Canning.

From me:

The Crimson Chalice is the first book of a trilogy in which Victor Canning retells the legend of King Arthur. This is a tale set in the Dark Ages. The Romans are almost gone, driven out of Britain, and the tribes are warring among themselves for the spoils.

A young Roman woman, Tia, finds Baradoc with his wrists and ankles bound and left to die. The man is guarded by his dogs and also a raven. Tia cuts down the young man and hides him as he recovers. Tia is escaping from her home after the servants revolted and killed everyone else. Baradoc is the son of a chief of a distant tribe, he is returning after the death of his master (he had been a slave for a time). Obliged to Tia, Baradoc says he will escort her to her uncle's villa.

I like the dark and primitive feel to this story - particularly in this first book. It makes the experience quite different from other variations of this story.

169 pages. Around $3.

Goodreads

Amazon US

Kobo

[Bookworm_Girl]

I will third The Amber Fury. It was shortlisted for the 2014 Deanston Scottish Crime Book of the Year Award, which "provides Scottish crime writing with recognition and aims to raise the profile and prestige of the genre as a whole." The author is a UK journalist and broadcaster and has been a judge for both the Man Booker and Orange Prizes.

[latepaul]

I will second The Crimson Chalice - sounds like a good read!

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by gmw

Not sure we really need more, we have some great choices already, ...

There's always room for more, this is only the second day of nominations so we have 5 to go, might as well get as many options as we can into the vote.

Besides, I haven't come up with an alternative for my selection yet.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by CRussel

FYI: Some page lengths for books that have made it through the nominations.

• The Rainbow Ends -- Length: 404 pages

That is incorrect. That is the page number Amazon gave to the Kindle version. But if you look at the Hardcover, paperback, & MMPB versions, 404 is not any one of them and all three are less than 400. The correct page number is 384.

If any of the other listed page numbers are Kindle page numbers, then they too could be wrong. Kindle page numbers are supposed to match some pBook version at the time it was made. This is obviously not so as we see here.

And finally, when looking at the length of these eBooks, remember, we have more time to read than we did before.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by gmw

Not sure we really need more, we have some great choices already, but I will nominate: The Crimson Chalice by Victor Canning.

Just as an FYI, this doesn't seem to be available in the US.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by issybird

Just as an FYI, this doesn't seem to be available in the US.

However, as a great example of how the book club leads to new discoveries, his only available US ebook is travel essays about England in the 1930s and looks like an enjoyable read! It's called Everyman's England and was published by his estate in 2012.

[gmw]

Curious. I had a assumed that it must be available because I can see a Kindle edition on the amazon.com site. The page I see shows the edition is "Sold by: Macmillan", I wonder if that might be the cause of some sort of regional restriction.

[bfisher]

I third The Color Purple

I just had an awful feeling about misspelling after typing that

[issybird]

I'm also going to nominate The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen.

In 1973, Peter Matthiessen and field biologist George Schaller traveled high into the remote mountains of Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and possibly glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard. Matthiessen, a student of Zen Buddhism, was also on a spiritual quest to find the Lama of Shey at the ancient shrine on Crystal Mountain. As the climb proceeds, Matthiessen charts his inner path as well as his outer one, with a deepening Buddhist understanding of reality, suffering, impermanence, and beauty.

Kindle | Kobo | OverDrive

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by bfisher

I third The Color Purple

I just had an awful feeling about misspelling after typing that

Youu can juust puut youur spare U's elsewhere if youu need to uuse them. We don't mind. This is the internet, we don't expect people to spell rite anyway.

[Bookpossum]

Those extra U's are helpful if you pick up the Q when playing Scrabble!

I second The Snow Leopard - the book sounds fascinating and the creature is so rare and so beautiful, I can't resist it.

If you don't know them, here's one I photographed in Melbourne Zoo some years ago.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

If you don't know them, here's one I photographed in Melbourne Zoo some years ago.

How beautiful, Bookpossum. Thank you.

Snow Leopard's been on my TBR for years. My two Goodreads friends who have read it have rated it five stars. I thought the infographic on World Hum which purports to show "The 100 Most Celebrated Travel Books of All Time" while highlighting the top ten (Snow Leopard is ninth) was fun. And I've never even heard of Video Night in Kathmandu!

[Bookworm_Girl]

I will third The Snow Leopard. Sounds fascinating! I read the preview, and the biography blurb says he is the only author to have won the National Book Award for both fiction and nonfiction.