Stitch on 7/8/2006 at 22:55
10/1/06 update:
(
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1508488#post1508488) Discussion has begun of Iain Bank's <U>The Wasp Factory</U>.
9/7/6:
Candidates for November's book of the month have been selected.
9/1/06 update:
Voting has closed, with <U>The Wasp Factory</U> by Iain Banks winning by a comfortable margin. The floor is open for candidates for November's book of the month, however!
Original 8/7/06 post text:
Below are the twelve candidates for October's TTLG Book Club selection. Please vote for the book you would like to read for discussion in October. The poll is public and will be closed in a week.
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http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679723161/ref=ed_oe_p/102-8762024-1137732?ie=UTF8) <U><B>Lolita</U> by Vladimir Nabakov</B>
Amazon.com review excerpt: Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.
Resubmitted by Stitch
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http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375713271/qid=1152288801/sr=1-12/ref=sr_1_12/102-8762024-1137732?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) <B><U>After The Quake: Stories</U> by Haruki Murakami</B>
Amazon.com review: Haruki Murakami, a writer both mystical and hip, is the West's favorite Japanese novelist. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Murakami lived abroad until 1995. That year, two disasters struck Japan: the lethal earthquake in Kobe and the deadly poison gas attacks in the Tokyo subway. Spurred by these tragic events, Murakami returned home. The stories in After the Quake are set in the months that fell between the earthquake and the subway attack, presenting a world marked by despair, hope, and a kind of human instinct for transformation. A teenage girl and a middle-aged man share a hobby of making beach bonfires; a businesswoman travels to Thailand and, quietly, confronts her own death; three friends act out a modern-day Tokyo version of Jules and Jim. There's a surreal element running through the collection in the form of unlikely frogs turning up in unlikely places. News of the earthquake hums throughout. The book opens with the dull buzz of disaster-watching: "Five straight days she spent in front of the television, staring at the crumbled banks and hospitals, whole blocks of stores in flames, severed rail lines and expressways." With language that's never self-consciously lyrical or show-offy, Murakami constructs stories as tight and beautiful as poems. There's no turning back for his people; there's only before and after the quake.
Resubmitted by ignatios
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375724834/sr=8-4/qid=1153423485/ref=pd_bbs_4/103-0986735-4367055?redirect=true&ie=UTF8) <U>Motherless Brooklyn</U> by Jonathan LethemThe short and shady life of Frank Minna ends in murder, shocking the four young men employed by his dysfunctional Brooklyn detective agency/limo service. The "Minna Men" have centered their lives around Frank, ever since he selected them as errand boys from the orphaned teen population at St. Vincent's Home. Most grateful is narrator Lionel. While not exactly well treatedAhis nickname is "Freakshow"ATourette's-afflicted Lionel has found security as a Minna Man and is shattered by Frank's death. Lionel determines to become a genuine sleuth and find the killer. The ensuing plot twists are marked by clever wordplay, fast-paced dialog, and nonstop irony. The novel pays amusing homage to, and plays with the conventions of, classic hard-boiled detective tales and movies while standing on its own as a convincing whole. The author has applied his trademark genre-bending style to fine effect. Already well known among critics for his literary gifts, Lethem should gain a wider readership with this appealing book's debut. Recommended for most fiction collections.
Suggested by RBJ, who said this might be an excellent modern followup to Chandler.
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143034901/sr=1-1/qid=1154990255/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-0986735-4367055?ie=UTF8&s=books) <U>The Shadow of the Wind</U> by Carlos Ruiz ZafónRuiz Zafón's novel, a bestseller in his native Spain, takes the satanic touches from Angel Heart and stirs them into a bookish intrigue à la Foucault's Pendulum. The time is the 1950s; the place, Barcelona. Daniel Sempere, the son of a widowed bookstore owner, is 10 when he discovers a novel, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax. The novel is rare, the author obscure, and rumors tell of a horribly disfigured man who has been burning every copy he can find of Carax's novels. The man calls himself Laín Coubert-the name of the devil in one of Carax's novels. As he grows up, Daniel's fascination with the mysterious Carax links him to a blind femme fatale with a "porcelain gaze," Clara Barceló; another fan, a leftist jack-of-all-trades, Fermín Romero de Torres; his best friend's sister, the delectable Beatriz Aguilar; and, as he begins investigating the life and death of Carax, a cast of characters with secrets to hide. Ruiz Zafón strives for a literary tone, and no scene goes by without its complement of florid, cute and inexact similes and metaphors (snow is "God's dandruff"; servants obey orders with "the efficiency and submissiveness of a body of well-trained insects"). Yet the colorful cast of characters, the gothic turns and the straining for effect only give the book the feel of para-literature or the Hollywood version of a great 19th-century novel.
Suggested by Paz.
(
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312308922/qid=1152289224/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-8762024-1137732?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) <U><B>The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break</U> by Steven Sherrill</B>
Library Journal review: The Minotaur, having endured 5000 years of immortality, is currently living in a trailer park in the Deep South, working as a line cook in a restaurant. His appearance is more monstrous than his behavior, which is more humane than that of most of his co-workers. Coping within the limitations imposed on his existence--horns that are deadly, inarticulateness, a disproportionate body ill-adapted for clothes--the Minotaur has learned to sew and become an expert auto mechanic and a superb cook. It is dealing with people that poses the greatest difficulties. When love becomes a possibility, he must negotiate a path, threatened by the malevolence of the restaurant waiters and supported by the kindness of his landlord and friends. First novelist Sherrill skillfully creates a world in which the reader is more than willing to suspend disbelief to see the man in the monster and the monstrous in all of us.
Resubmitted by Aerothorn
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684853159/sr=1-1/qid=1154990328/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-0986735-4367055?ie=UTF8&s=books) <U>The Wasp Factory</U> by Iain BanksFew novelists have ever burst onto the literary scene with as much controversy as Iain Banks in 1984. The Wasp Factory was reviled by many reviewers on account of its violence and sadism, but applauded by others as a new and Scottish voice--that is, a departure from the English literary tradition. The controversy is a bit puzzling in retrospect, because there is little to object to in this novel, if you're familiar with genre horror.
The Wasp Factory is distinguished by an authentically felt and deftly written first-person style, delicious dark humor, a sense of the surreal, and a serious examination of the psyche of a childhood psychopath. Most readers will find that they sympathize with and even like Frank, despite his three murders (each of which is hilarious in an Edward Gorey fashion). It's a classic of contemporary horror.
Suggested by Para?noid.
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345371135/sr=1-1/qid=1154990417/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-0986735-4367055?ie=UTF8&s=books) <U>The Quincunx</U> by Charles PalliserThe epic length of this first novel--nearly 800 densely typeset pages--should not put off readers, for its immediacy is equal to its heft. Palliser, an English professor in Scotland, where this strange yet magnetic work was first published, has modeled his extravagantly plotted narrative on 19th-century forms--Dickens's Bleak House is its most obvious antecedent--but its graceful writing and unerring sense of timing revivifies a kind of novel once avidly read and surely now to be again in demand. The protagonist, a young man naive enough to be blind to all clues about his own hidden history (and to the fact that his very existence is troubling to all manner of evildoers) narrates a story of uncommon beauty which not only brings readers face-to-face with dozens of piquantly drawn characters at all levels of 19th-century English society but re-creates with precision the tempestuous weather and gnarly landscape that has been a motif of the English novel since Wuthering Heights . The suspension of disbelief happens easily, as the reader is led through twisted family trees and plot lines. The quincunx of the title is a heraldic figure of five parts that appears at crucial points within the text (the number five recurs throughout the novel, which itself is divided into five parts, one for each of the family galaxies whose orbits the narrator is pulled into). Quintuple the length of the ordinary novel, this extraordinary tour de force also has five times the ordinary allotment of adventure, action and aplomb. Literary Guild dual main selection.
Warning: This book is unusually long and dense and may not fit nicely into one month.
Suggested by quinch.
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452280621/sr=1-1/qid=1154990496/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-0986735-4367055?ie=UTF8&s=books) <U>Beloved</U> by Toni MorrisonPowerful is too tame a word to describe Toni Morrison's searing new novel of post-Civil War Ohio. Morrison, whose myth-laden storytelling shone in Song of Solomon and other novels, has created an unforgettable world in this novel about ex-slaves haunted by violent memories. Before the war, Sethe, pregnant, sent her children away to their grandmother in Ohio, whose freedom had been paid for by their father. Sethe runs too, but when her "owners" come to recapture her, she attempts to murder the children, succeeding with one, named Beloved. This murder will (literally) haunt Sethe for the rest of her life and affect everyone around her. A fascinating, grim, relentless story, this important book by a major writer belongs in most libraries.
Suggested by Onionbob.
(
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060516283/qid=1152289661/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-8762024-1137732?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) <U><B>Gallow's Thief</U> by Bernard Cornwell</B>
Publishers Weekly Review: Fans of Cornwell's gallant up-from-the-ranks rifleman, Richard Sharpe, will welcome the upright Captain Rider Sandman, a veteran, like Sharpe, of Waterloo and the Peninsula campaign, in a mystery that highlights the horrors of capital punishment in Regency England. Compelled as a civilian to play cricket to earn a bare living in the wake of his disgraced father's financial ruin and suicide, Sandman can hardly refuse the Home Secretary's job offer of looking into the case of Charles Corday, a portrait painter convicted of murdering the Countess of Avebury. Since Corday's mother has the ear of Queen Charlotte, someone has to go through the motions of confirming Corday's guilt before he goes to the scaffold. Sandman, though, soon realizes that the man is innocent, and to prove it he has to locate a servant girl who was a likely witness to the countess's murder and has now disappeared. Sandman's investigation leads him to confront the corrupt and decadent members of London's Seraphim Club, but fortunately his reputation as a brave battlefield officer turns into allies any number of ex-soldier ruffians who might otherwise have given him trouble. The suspense mounts as Sandman must race the clock to prevent a miscarriage of justice at the nail-biting climax.... Traditional historical mystery readers should cheer.
Resubmitted by Kyloe
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1844082687/sr=1-1/qid=1154990579/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-0986735-4367055?ie=UTF8&s=books) <U>I Choose to Live</U> by Sabine DardenneOn May 28, 1996, Sabine Dardenne was kidnapped by one of Europe's most infamous pedophiles, Marc Dutroux. She was twelve years old. This international best-seller is her courageous and uplifting testimony.
Suggested by dh124289.
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385720955/sr=1-1/qid=1154990625/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-0986735-4367055?ie=UTF8&s=books) <U>The Blind Assassin</U> by Margaret AtwoodAtwood does not mess around in her riveting new tale: by the end of the first sentence, we know that the narrator's sister is dead, and after just 18 pages we learn that the narrator's husband died on a boat, that her daughter died in a fall, and that her dead husband's sister raised her granddaughter. Dying octogenarian Iris Chasen's narration of the past carefully unravels a haunting story of tragedy, corruption, and cruel manipulation. Iris and her younger sister, Laura, are born into the privileged Canadian world of Port Ticonderoga in the early part of the 20th century. At 18, Iris is the marital pawn in a business deal between her financially desperate father and the ruthless, much-older industrialist Richard Griffen. When the father dies, the rebellious Laura is forced to move into Richard's controlling household, accelerating the tangled mess of relentless tragedy. At this point, Atwood brilliantly overlays a second story, an sf novel-within-a-novel, credited to Laura Chasen, that features nameless lovers trysting in squalor. Some readers may figure out Atwood's wrap-up before book's end. Worry not, nothing will dampen the pleasure of getting there. Highly recommended.
Suggested by Scots Taffer.
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312282990/sr=1-1/qid=1154990717/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-0986735-4367055?ie=UTF8&s=books) <U>Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay</U> by Michael ChabonVirtuoso Chabon takes intense delight in the practice of his art, and never has his joy been more palpable than in this funny and profound tale of exile, love, and magic. In his last novel, The Wonder Boys (1995), Chabon explored the shadow side of literary aspirations. Here he revels in the crass yet inventive and comforting world of comic-book superheroes, those masked men with mysterious powers who were born in the wake of the Great Depression and who carried their fans through the horrors of war with the guarantee that good always triumphs over evil. In a luxuriant narrative that is jubilant and purposeful, graceful and complex, hilarious and enrapturing, Chabon chronicles the fantastic adventures of two Jewish cousins, one American, one Czech. It's 1939 and Brooklynite Sammy Klayman dreams of making it big in the nascent world of comic books. Joseph Kavalier has never seen a comic book, but he is an accomplished artist versed in the "autoliberation" techniques of his hero, Harry Houdini. He effects a great (and surreal) escape from the Nazis, arrives in New York, and joins forces with Sammy. They rapidly create the Escapist, the first of many superheroes emblematic of their temperaments and predicaments, and attain phenomenal success. But Joe, tormented by guilt and grief for his lost family, abruptly joins the navy, abandoning Sammy, their work, and his lover, the marvelous artist and free spirit Rosa, who, unbeknownst to him, is carrying his child. As Chabon--equally adept at atmosphere, action, dialogue, and cultural commentary--whips up wildly imaginative escapades punctuated by schtick that rivals the best of Jewish comedians, he plumbs the depths of the human heart and celebrates the healing properties of escapism and the "genuine magic of art" with exuberance and wisdom.
Suggested by Jonesy.
I decided to only take one suggestion per person again as twelve options were already enough of a pain in my ass. Still, we've got another poll full of mostly excellent suggestions that look like great and thought provoking reads. The vote is on!
