MobileRead February 2013 Book Club Vote

[WT Sharpe]

February 2013 MobileRead Book Club Vote

Help us choose a book as the February 2013 eBook for the MobileRead Book Club. The poll will be open for 5 days. There will be no runoff vote unless the voting results a tie, in which case there will be a 3 day run-off poll. This is a visible poll: others can see how you voted. It is multiple-choice: you may cast a vote for each book that appeals to you.

We will start the discussion thread for this book on February 20th. Select from the following Official Choices with three nominations each:

Portrait of Jennie by Robert Nathan
Amazon US

Spoiler:

In this gentle novel, Nathan uses the device of "time-slip" to create one of the most haunting, moving and beautiful romances ever written. Many are familiar with the love of two people separated in time from the wonderful film of the same name. In fact, the book is even better. Where the film did make changes, they were usually inferior to the original conception of the author.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Inkmesh / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble

Spoiler:

Awe and exhiliration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love--love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy
Inkmesh / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble

Spoiler:

It began with Benny Hogan and Eve Malone, growing up, inseparable, in the village of Knockglen. Benny—the only child, yearning to break free from her adoring parents...Eve—the orphaned offspring of a convent handyman and a rebellious blueblood, abandoned by her mother's wealthy family to be raised by nuns. Eve and Benny—they knew the sins and secrets behind every villager's lace curtains...except their own.

It widened at Dublin, at the university where Benny and Eve met beautiful Nan Mahlon and Jack Foley, a doctor's handsome son. But heartbreak and betrayal would bring the worlds of Knockglen and Dublin into explosive collision. Long-hidden lies would emerge to test the meaning of love and the strength of ties held within the fragile gold bands of a...Circle Of Friends.

The Greatest Knight by Elizabeth Chadwick
Inkmesh / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble

Spoiler:

A penniless young knight with few prospects, William Marshal is plucked from obscurity when he saves the life of Henry II's formidable queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. In gratitude, she appoints him tutor to the heir to the throne, the volatile and fickle Prince Henry. But being a royal favorite brings its share of danger and jealousy as well as fame and reward.

Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold
Inkmesh / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble

Spoiler:

Cordelia Naismith, Betan Survey Captain, was expecting the unexpected: hexapods, floating creatures, odd parasites... She was not, however, expecting to find hostile humans on an uninhabited planet. And she wasn't really expecting to fall in love with a 40-plus barbarian known to cosmopolitan galactics as the Butcher of Komarr. Will Mother ever understand? And can such an odd beast as love survive an interplanetary war?

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Inkmesh / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble

Spoiler:

The year is 1945. Claire Randall is traveling with her husband when she touches a boulder in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is hurled back in time to a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of our Lord 1743. Catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, she soon realizes that an alliance with James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, might be the only way to survive. Thus begins a work of unrivaled storytelling that has become a modern classic.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Amazon US / Amazon UK / Barnes & Noble / Google / Sony

Spoiler:

Though he may not speak of them, the memories still dwell inside Jacob Jankowski's ninety-something-year-old mind. Memories of himself as a young man, tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Memories of a world filled with freaks and clowns, with wonder and pain and anger and passion; a world with its own narrow, irrational rules, its own way of life, and its own way of death. The world of the circus: to Jacob it was both salvation and a living hell.

Jacob was there because his luck had run out—orphaned and penniless, he had no direction until he landed on this locomotive "ship of fools." It was the early part of the Great Depression, and everyone in this third-rate circus was lucky to have any job at all. Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, was there because she fell in love with the wrong man, a handsome circus boss with a wide mean streak. And Rosie the elephant was there because she was the great gray hope, the new act that was going to be the salvation of the circus; the only problem was, Rosie didn't have an act—in fact, she couldn't even follow instructions. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.

Surprising, poignant, and funny, Water for Elephants is that rare novel with a story so engrossing, one is reluctant to put it down; with characters so engaging, they continue to live long after the last page has been turned; with a world built of wonder, a world so real, one starts to breathe its air.

A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Sony

Spoiler:

Nevil Shute’s most beloved novel, a tale of love and war, follows its enterprising heroine from the Malayan jungle during World War II to the rugged Australian outback.

Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman living in Malaya, is captured by the invading Japanese and forced on a brutal seven-month death march with dozens of other women and children. A few years after the war, Jean is back in England, the nightmare behind her. However, an unexpected inheritance inspires her to return to Malaya to give something back to the villagers who saved her life. But it turns out that they have a gift for her as well: the news that the young Australian soldier, Joe Harmon, who had risked his life to help the women, had miraculously survived. Jean’s search for Joe leads her to a desolate Australian outpost called Willstown, where she finds a challenge that will draw on all the resourcefulness and spirit that carried her through her war-time ordeals.

Love Story by Erich Segal
Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Sony

Spoiler:

This is the wonderful, tumultuous, heartfelt story of Oliver Barrett IV and Jenny Cavilleri--the story of a rich Harvard jock and a wisecracking Radcliffe music major who have nothing in common but love . . . and everything else to share but time. Funny and flip, sad and poignant, Erich Segal's magnificent novel will grab you, hold you, and stay with you forever. You, like more than twenty million others, will fall in love with Love Story.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Sony

Spoiler:

Hopelessly crossed in love, a boy of half-fairy parentage leaves his mundane Victorian-English village on a quest for a fallen star in the magical realm. The star proves to be an attractive woman with a hot temper, who plunges with our hero into adventures featuring witches, the lion and the unicorn, plotting elf-lords, ships that sail the sky, magical transformations, curses whose effects rebound, binding conditions with hidden loopholes and all the rest.

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Library Availability for many of the above books can be found here.

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[Nyssa]

As one who doesn't really read "Romance" specifically, this looks like a really good selection of books. I like the variety.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

As one who doesn't really read "Romance" specifically, this looks like a really good selection of books. I like the variety.

It's certainly a varied group, but looking at the list for the most part it's hard to call any of these Romance. At least not primarily Romance (although they may have romantic elements).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

It's certainly a varied group, but looking at the list for the most part it's hard to call any of these Romance. At least not primarily Romance (although they may have romantic elements).

Romance is one of those topics that won't get read if the book is primarily romance

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Romance is one of those topics that won't get read if the book is primarily romance

Then it shouldn't be a category

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Then it shouldn't be a category

I agree 100%.

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

It's certainly a varied group, but looking at the list for the most part it's hard to call any of these Romance. At least not primarily Romance (although they may have romantic elements).

True. Of the whole list I think maybe 2 or 3 at the most are true "Romance".

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Romance is one of those topics that won't get read if the book is primarily romance

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Then it shouldn't be a category

And yet the majority of us, myself included (as a way to broaden my horizons genre wise), voted it in as a category for 2013.

[caleb72]

In that month, I think it was the only category I didn't vote for.

I have to confess, although Water for Elephants had the tag "Romance" when I looked at it, I don't think it's primarily a romance.

I think the main reason romance was voted in was as a tie-in to Valentine's Day - which is quite a nice thought really.

Now I'm off to research these books a bit more. I don't know much about quite a few and I don't want to exclude them from my voting based on complete ignorance.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

True. Of the whole list I think maybe 2 or 3 at the most are true "Romance".

I'd say that's pushing it.

And yet the majority of us, myself included (as a way to broaden my horizons genre wise), voted it in as a category for 2013.

But if folks weren't willing to try an actual Romance, maybe something outside there regular comfort zone then why vote for it, makes no sense. You can only broaden your horizons if there's something there for you to broaden them on.

I suppose I shouldn't be complaining as I didn't nominate any books this time around as I was unsure if I'd have time to participate.

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by caleb72

I have to confess, although Water for Elephants had the tag "Romance" when I looked at it, I don't think it's primarily a romance.

It isn't. Its primarily listed as Historical Fiction.

I'll most likely read it anyway if it wins.

Originally Posted by caleb72

I think the main reason romance was voted in was as a tie-in to Valentine's Day - which is quite a nice thought really.

Thats true too. It was a part of my motivation as well.

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

But if folks weren't willing to try an actual Romance, maybe something outside there regular comfort zone then why vote for it, makes no sense. You can only broaden your horizons if there's something there for you to broaden them on.

I suppose I shouldn't be complaining as I didn't nominate any books this time around as I was unsure if I'd have time to participate.

Oh I never said I wasn't willing. Since I don't usually read pure romance, having it as a genre in the book club is a great way to motivate myself to do so.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

Since I don't usually read pure romance, having it as a genre in the book club is a great way to motivate myself to do so.

I agree with you. I see the club as a great way to try different genre's that I might not normally try. I'd think others would feel the same way, that's why it's too bad that almost nothing that made the poll really fits the category very well. That's not to say the nominated books aren't good books.

[caleb72]

OK - having a look Love Story definitely appears to be a romance. And given comments like "...this is the book that defined a generation..." I think it's probably a really good choice.

Some others there look like monster books which I might have voted for if they were more closely aligned with my current reading plans. I just can't devote that much time to Binchy or Gabaldon. Even Chadwick is pushing it - although the content looks quite a bit more interesting to me so I could possibly make an exception. I'm noting that author down as a TBR for historical fiction.

Strangely enough, although I had a strong aversion to Shards of Honour initially because I thought it was an excuse to nominate Science Fiction, I'm reconsidering after reading a few descriptions of the book. It seems the romance is very central to the storyline and quite a few write-ups refer to it as a sci-fi romance. Given that I'm curious about Bujold anyway, I think that will get a vote from me.

So I think I've ended up with a nice list:
Portrait of Jenny, Lolita, Shards of Honour, Water for Elephants, A Town Like Alice, and Love Story.

I think I'd be quite happy to find room in my reading schedule for any of those. In fact, thanks to these nominations I'm adding a couple of these to my TBR anyway.

[Dee Q]

Oh guys, I'm sooo excited. This is the first time ever I've joined such a wonderful haven for book lovers and you guys are doing a really great job. I can't wait to see which book will be the book of February. The eagerness to read the book and then discuss with you guys is burning in my veins. It feels so good!!!

P/S: Sorry if this sounds too dramatic...

[caleb72]

Welcome Dee Q. Hope you enjoy the book club. There's some really smart people here. I learn something with every discussion.