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May 2014: Vote!
- Thread starter Polly Parrot
- Start date
True, but the discussion for it then wasn't very active.
Thanks for organizing, Polly! I've voted!
I wonder if it might be a good idea to include a brief summary here from the people who have recommended the books?
And I don't see a problem w/voting for your own suggestion, Roxbrough!
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Here are (really brief) summaries for the ones I suggested:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (First published in 1943)
"...a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience." (taken from goodreads)
Miss Spitfire by Sarah Miller
Helen Keller's story told from the viewpoint of her teacher, Annie Sullivan. I really liked this, having always wondered what it must have been like for her.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - One of the strangest, yet most beautiful stories I have ever read. A story about a German girl in Nazi Germany told from the viewpoint of Death. Sweet, moving, hearbreaking. I'm nervous to watch the movie, yet looking forward to it.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford - Historical fiction centering on a Chinese boy who becomes friends with a Japanese girl. It was a very eye-opening book for me, as I hadn't realized everything that Japanese Americans had to go through around the time of the bombing on Pearl Harbor. This is definitely a bitter sweet story, but I enjoyed it.
(I didn't vote for one of my own, btw)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (First published in 1943)
"...a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience." (taken from goodreads)
Miss Spitfire by Sarah Miller
Helen Keller's story told from the viewpoint of her teacher, Annie Sullivan. I really liked this, having always wondered what it must have been like for her.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - One of the strangest, yet most beautiful stories I have ever read. A story about a German girl in Nazi Germany told from the viewpoint of Death. Sweet, moving, hearbreaking. I'm nervous to watch the movie, yet looking forward to it.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford - Historical fiction centering on a Chinese boy who becomes friends with a Japanese girl. It was a very eye-opening book for me, as I hadn't realized everything that Japanese Americans had to go through around the time of the bombing on Pearl Harbor. This is definitely a bitter sweet story, but I enjoyed it.
(I didn't vote for one of my own, btw)
Good point. Summaries for the other suggestions:
Charles Stross: The Atrocity Archives (just noticed my mistake in the poll options but I can't edit anymore).
GoodReads: Charles Stross takes a departure from his epic science fiction to craft this cross between Len Deighton—style espionage and H.P. Lovecraftian horror.
Bob Howard is a computer-hacker desk jockey, who has more than enough trouble keeping up with the endless paperwork he has to do on a daily basis. He should never be called on to do anything remotely heroic.
But somehow, he is.
Edmund Cooper's: All Fools Day
It is about a marvelous spell of sunny weather; idyllic in is warm and mildness.
Suddenly new sun spots appear, heralding consequence that no one could possibly have imagined.
Da da Derrrh. (had to include @Roxbrough 's lovely wee summary)
James Salter: Light Years
"This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach. But even as he lingers over the surface of their marriage, Salter lets us see the fine cracks that are spreading through it, flaws that will eventually mar the lovely picture beyond repair. Seductive, witty, and elegantly nuanced, Light Years is a classic novel of an entire generation that discovered the limits of its own happiness—and then felt compelled to destroy it."
Marilynn Robins: Gilead
In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War," then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father--an ardent pacifist--and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son.
This is also the tale of another remarkable vision--not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.
Gilead is the long-hoped-for second novel by one of our finest writers, a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part".
Maria Semple: Where'd You Go, Bernadette?
Goodreads: Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.
Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle--and people in general--has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.
To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence--creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world.
Peder
Well-Known Member
Well, democracy is all about free choice. Will you be reading the winner?
Conscious Bob
Well-Known Member
Voted.
Wow! Where'd You Go, Bernadette? must be really popular right now! I requested it from my library and all 38 copies in my area are currently checked out with 77 people in front of me in the queue waiting for it! I might get it just in time for the BOTM if we select it. lol
lol
Occlith
Well-Known Member
Fixed. Also changed A Tree Grows in Boston
Peder
Well-Known Member
Still some time. Quite a few alternatives, so I'll be voting later when I see how the vote is shaping up. Have patience.
Răspunsul
Member
Still some time. Quite a few alternatives, so I'll be voting later when I see how the vote is shaping up. Have patience.
What do you mean, you can see the votes, I don't think that's fair.
Karen C
Member
I was originally going to vote for The Book Thief, however seeing as that was previously a Book of the Month I figure I can go back and post my views on that thread once I've read the book - I am allowed to do that, right? So, with that in mind I'm voting for Where'd You Go, Bernadette?
Of course you can add to the previous discussion on The Book Thief.
Everyone can view results as far as I know.
We can't see who voted for what, just the tally of results/votes for each title.