MobileRead June 2014 Book Club Vote

[WT Sharpe]

June 2014 MobileRead Book Club Vote

Help us choose a book as the June 2014 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 You may cast a vote for each book that appeals to you.

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

• The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha-Mukherjee
Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Kobo / Scribd

Spoiler:

In 2010, Simon & Schuster published his book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer,[7] detailing the evolution of diagnosis and treatment of human cancers from ancient Egypt to the latest developments in chemotherapy and targeted therapy.[8] The Oprah magazine listed it in its "Top 10 Books of 2010".[9] It was also listed in "The 10 Best Books of 2010" by The New York Times[10] and the "Top 10 Nonfiction Books" by Time.[11]

In 2011 The Emperor of All Maladies: A History of Cancer was nominated as a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. On April 18 it won the annual Pulitzer

The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist.

• Hyperion by Dan Simmons
No links provided.

Spoiler:

Winner of the Hugo award in 1990 for best novel.

On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion ...

• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
No links provided.

Spoiler:

Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review

• Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
No links provided.

Spoiler:

The Giller winner in 2008.

• Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
Amazon US

Spoiler:

In one of Robert Heinlein's most controversial bestsellers, a recruit of the future goes through the toughest boot camp in the Universe--and into battle with the Terran Mobile Infantry against mankind's most frightening enemy.

• The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
Amazon UK / Amazon US / Kobo

Spoiler:

The Black Count won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

It is the biography of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the mixed-race son of a French marquis and a Haitian slave, who became a swashbuckling swordsman in Paris and then a military hero of the French Revolutionary Wars, remaining the highest-ranking black military figure in a Western army until Gen. Colin Powell 200 years later. --Wikipedia

In the 1790s, the son of an aristocratic white father and a black slave woman became a charismatic French general who for a time rivaled Napoleon himself, and afterward languished in an Italian dungeon. His story inspired the novel “The Count of Monte Cristo,” written by his son, Alexandre Dumas, who also drew upon his father’s adventures in “The Three Musketeers.” Posterity remembers this son as Dumas père, to distinguish him from Alexandre Dumas fils, also a writer, whose novel “La Dame aux Camélias” was the source for Verdi’s “La Traviata.” But the general was the first of the three Alexandres (he preferred to be known as Alex), and in “The Black Count,” Tom *Reiss, the author of “The Orientalist,” has recovered this fascinating story with a richly imaginative biography. --NYT, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/bo...pagewanted=all

• The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Google Play (Aus)

Spoiler:

Won the Man Booker prize in 2008.

Balram Halwai is the White Tiger - the smartest boy in his village. His family is too poor for him to afford for him to finish school and he has to work in a teashop, breaking coals and wiping tables. But Balram gets his break when a rich man hires him as a chauffeur, and takes him to live in Delhi. The city is a revelation. As he drives his master to shopping malls and call centres, Balram becomes increasingly aware of immense wealth and opportunity all around him, while knowing that he will never be able to gain access to that world. As Balram broods over his situation, he realizes that there is only one way he can become part of this glamorous new India - by murdering his master.

The White Tiger presents a raw and unromanticised India, both thrilling and shocking - from the desperate, almost lawless villages along the Ganges, to the booming Wild South of Bangalore and its technology and outsourcing centres. The first-person confession of a murderer, The White Tiger is as compelling for its subject matter as for the voice of its narrator - amoral, cynical, unrepentant, yet deeply endearing.

• The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Amazon Australia / Amazon Canada / Amazon UK / Amazon US / Kobo

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life.

Now Tony is in middle age. He’s had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove.

• The Manual of Detection by Jedidiah Berry
Amazon UK / Amazon US / Kobo / Penguin

Spoiler:

It won the 2009 Hammett Prize and the 2010 Crawford Award.

The Hammett Prize is awarded annually by the International Association of Crime Writers, North American Branch (IACW/NA).

The Crawford award is a literary award given to a writer whose first fantasy book was published during the preceding 18 months. It's one of several awards presented by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA).

You can read the first chapter here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=104310258

Spoiler:

In a giant and rigidly bureaucratic agency, Charles Unwin is the personal clerk for legendary detective Travis Sivart. The detail-minded Unwin loves his job, but when Sivart suddenly goes missing, Unwin is unwillingly promoted to fill the vacancy. He only wants to solve one case: he wants to find Sivart so he can go back to being a clerk. In his first novel, Berry has created a wonderful and fantastic world, a vintage mystery seen through a hall of fun-house mirrors. Sivart’s cases have names like The Man Who Stole November Twelfth; a villain is the nefarious biloquist Enoch Hoffmann; chapters begin with koan-like excerpts from the Manual of Detection. Unwin’s adventures take him through rain-slicked city streets, to a dilapidated carnival run by criminals, and into the dreams of Sivart’s murdered supervisor. There are false starts and false identities, double crosses and doppelgängers—and there’s far more at stake than Unwin can imagine. Occasionally the story gets a little bit lost inside its own puzzle boxes, but this is a remarkably auspicious debut. --Keir Graff

Spoiler:

Review
Imaginative, fantastical, sometimes inexplicable, labyrinthine and ingenious...Great fun and very clever. My comparison? Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman - which is about as good as it gets --Observer

A wryly cerebral take on noir fiction...Separated conjoined twin gangsters, a duplicitous femme fatale and a nightmarish carnival owner inhabit the nocturnal, rain-soaked city where this clever, postmodern detective story is set --Financial Times

It is an elegant and stunningly imaginative fusion of detective and speculative fiction --Guardian

The plot's bursting with as many twists and surprises as you could hope for...It steams along the smooth rails of Berry's neatly constructed sentences, barrelling round each well-cambered turn with barely a judder --London Review of Books

Like Sin City, this is a noir fairytale, with the grey-scale, drizzly streets and shabby cafes contrasted by fluorescent, primary colour characters...Berry's work is reminiscent of the coolest young American novelists - Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Glen David Gold - in its sheer delight at how genre writing can be re-invigorated and re-imagined. The Manual of Detection makes the weird, fantastical world of the unconsciousness seem comically logical - like its subject, it is a dream. -- Scotland on Sunday

• Saville by David Storey
Amazon Au / Amazon Ca / Amazon UK / Amazon US / B&N

Spoiler:

Winner of the Booker Prize.

From Goodreads:

Colin Saville grows up in a mining village in South Yorkshire, against the background of war, of an industrialised countryside, of town and coalmine and village.

"If you haven't read David Storey's 1976 winner Saville read it at once, it is the best of all the Bookers." - The Observer

And since any abstracts about the book I could find were all as short as the one I used above, I'll also include the first review from Goodreads:

"This novel epitomizes one of my favorite quotes:

'Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.' - Boris Pasternak

Reading this book really is an extraordinary experience! I found much of it to be very comforting, very homey. I found other parts to be quite disturbing. This novel affected me in ways that I'm still trying to sort out. I suspect this is a story that I'll continue to think about, to try to come to terms with it, for a long time." - John

[AJ Starr]

FYI, you've copied the text from month to month but you've missed the first line and not changed from (December 2013) to (June 2014).

Just friendly FYI.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by AJ Starr

FYI, you've copied the text from month to month but you've missed the first line and not changed from (December 2013) to (June 2014).

Just friendly FYI.

[WT Sharpe]

The nominator of Through Black Spruce Did not supply a synopsis, but this write up at Amazon erned it one of my votes:

A haunting novel of love, identity, and loss-from the internationally acclaimed author of Three Day Road

Beautifully written and startlingly original, Through Black Spruce takes the considerable talents of Canadian novelist Joseph Boyden to new and exciting heights. This is the story of two immensely compelling characters: Will Bird, a legendary Cree bush pilot who lies comatose in a remote Ontario hospital; and Annie Bird, Will's niece, a beautiful loner and trapper who has come to sit beside her uncle's bed. Broken in different ways, the two take silent communion in their unspoken kinship, revealing a story rife with heartbreak, fierce love, ancient feuds, mysterious disappearances, murders, and the bonds that hold a family, and a people, together. From the rugged Canadian wilderness to the drug-fueled glamour of the Manhattan club scene, this is thrilling, atmospheric storytelling at its finest.

[BelleZora]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

The nominator of Through Black Spruce Did not supply a synopsis, but this write up at Amazon erned it one of my votes:

Joseph Boyden is a wonderful writer, but it looks like we are losing on that one.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by BelleZora

Joseph Boyden is a wonderful writer, but it looks like we are losing on that one.

Yes, BelleZora, that's true, and how much of that loss is due to the fact that a synopsis of the story and links to where it can be found were not supplied we'll never know.

Folks, if you want the book you nominate to have a chance, it really helps to let the rest of us know what the book is about.

[ccowie]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

The nominator of Through Black Spruce Did not supply a synopsis, but this write up at Amazon erned it one of my votes:

Actually I just checked back and I did supply a description from Goodreads, but perhaps I didn't do it correctly. I'm still learning my way through the club etiquette a bit.

[volpo]

I hope the winner is Hyperion. I have never read a more entertaining and (in places) profound Sci-fi book. It is simply brilliant (imho).

No matter what, (the collective) you must try it.

V
(Kobo user)

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by ccowie

Actually I just checked back and I did supply a description from Goodreads, but perhaps I didn't do it correctly....

So you did. Sorry. That was my fault; I didn't put it in the list. Here is what you supplied:

From Goodreads:
Will Bird is a legendary Cree bush pilot, now lying in a coma in a hospital in his hometown of Moose Factory, Ontario. His niece Annie Bird, beautiful and self-reliant, has returned from her own perilous journey to sit beside his bed. Broken in different ways, the two take silent communion in their unspoken kinship, and the story that unfolds is rife with heartbreak, fierce love, ancient blood feuds, mysterious disappearances, fires, plane crashes, murders, and the bonds that hold a family, and a people, together. As Will and Annie reveal their secrets-the tragic betrayal that cost Will his family, Annie's desperate search for her missing sister, the famous model Suzanne-a remarkable saga of resilience and destiny takes shape. From the dangerous bush country of upper Canada to the drug-fueled glamour of the Manhattan club scene, Joseph Boyden tracks his characters with a keen eye for the telling detail and a rare empathy for the empty places concealed within the heart. Sure to appeal to readers of Louise Erdrich and Jim Harrison, Through Black Spruce establishes Boyden as a writer of startling originality and uncommon power.

Originally Posted by ccowie

...I'm still learning my way through the club etiquette a bit.

One of the first things you need to learn, as any of the old timers will tell you, is that you need to keep a careful eye on the Grand PooBah. He's always screwing up.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Through Black Spruce has been on my radar to read as more Canadian content. The White Tiger is a great book. It's worth reading just for the opening chapter which had me in stitches.

@ccowie: you'll also learn that the best way to get a book attention is to shamelessly plug it. It does seem to work in both directions though, so consider yourself warned.

[ccowie]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

Through Black Spruce has been on my radar to read as more Canadian content. The White Tiger is a great book. It's worth reading just for the opening chapter which had me in stitches.

@ccowie: you'll also learn that the best way to get a book attention is to shamelessly plug it. It does seem to work in both directions though, so consider yourself warned.

Well in that case Through Black Spruce is a brilliant book that should be read by all, not just those in the great white North! Boyden's latest, The Orenda, has been nominated before or I would have enthusiastically nominated it. It's even more brilliant.

I've seen some recent MR discussion about this book club leaning a little toward the "literary" side. Boyden is easy to read, the stories are compelling and there is a lot of depth, but it's not stuffy, cryptic, poetic or preachy. Fear not!

[caleb72]

Hyperion it is. I was secretly leaning towards Starship Troopers as it was already on my list for this year. However, I own the Hyperion Cantos and have never read it, so I am not upset at all.

[ccowie]

I knew there was high probability that a book I've already read would be selected. I've read 5 of nominees. My favourite of the ones I've read was The Sense of and Ending, but I really think it appeals much more to male readers.

I just finished Hyperion a couple of weeks ago having wanted to read it for years. It was great and I look forward to the discussion.

[crich70]

At least Starship Troopers was the clear runner up.

[Dazrin]

Added the selection and runner-up to the selections list. Will add a link to the discussion thread on the 20th (or so).