Stitch on 7/7/2006 at 19:19
9/1/06 update:
(
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1494329#post1494329) Discussion has begun of Raymond Chandler's <U>The Big Sleep</U>.
Original 7/7/06 post text:
Below are the nine candidates for September's TTLG Book Club selection. Please vote for the book you would like to read for discussion in September. The poll is public and will be closed in a week.
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1841157910/qid=1152298255/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_7/102-8762024-1137732?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) <U>Fermat's Last Theorem</U> by Simon SinghAmazon.com review: The story of the solving of a puzzle that has confounded mathematicians since the 17th century. The solution of Fermat's Last Theorem is the most important mathematical development of the 20th century. In 1963, a schoolboy browsing in his local library stumbled across the world's greatest mathematical problem: Fermat's Last Theorem, a puzzle that every child can understand but which has baffled mathematicians for over 300 years. Aged just ten, Andrew Wiles dreamed that he would crack it. Wiles's lifelong obsession with a seemingly simple challenge set by a long-dead Frenchman is an emotional tale of sacrifice and extraordinary determination. In the end, Wiles was forced to work in secrecy and isolation for seven years, harnessing all the power of modern maths to achieve his childhood dream. Many before him had tried and failed, including a 18-century philanderer who was killed in a duel. An 18-century Frenchwoman made a major breakthrough in solving the riddle, but she had to attend maths lectures at the Ecole Polytechnique disguised as a man since women were forbidden entry to the school.
Note: this book is currently out of print in the U.S. and may take a little tracking down.
Suggested by Para?noid.
<B>(
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393307050/qid=1152288698/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-8762024-1137732?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian</B>
Amazon.com review: The opening salvo of the Aubrey-Maturin epic, in which the surgeon introduces himself to the captain by driving an elbow into his ribs during a chamber-music recital. Fortunately for millions of readers, the two quickly make up. Then they commence one of the great literary voyages of our century, set against an immaculately-detailed backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. This is the place to start--and in all likelihood, you won't be able to stop.
Suggested by Kyloe
(
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.
Suggested by Morte
(
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394758285/qid=1152288933/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-8762024-1137732?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) <U><B>The Big Sleep</U> by Raymond Chandler</B>
Amazon.com review: "His thin, claw-like hands were folded loosely on the rug, purple-nailed. A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock." Published in 1939, when Raymond Chandler was 50, this is the first of the Philip Marlowe novels. Its bursts of sex, violence, and explosively direct prose changed detective fiction forever. "She was trouble. She was tall and rangy and strong-looking. Her hair was black and wiry and parted in the middle. She had a good mouth and a good chin. There was a sulky droop to her lips and the lower lip was full."
Suggested by OnionBob
(
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375760393/qid=1152289023/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-8762024-1137732?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) <U><B>The Botany Of Desire</U> by Michael Pollan</B>
Amazon.com review: Working in his garden one day, Michael Pollan hit pay dirt in the form of an idea: do plants, he wondered, use humans as much as we use them? While the question is not entirely original, the way Pollan examines this complex coevolution by looking at the natural world from the perspective of plants is unique. The result is a fascinating and engaging look at the true nature of domestication.
Suggested by Printer's Devil
(
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.
Suggested by Aerothorn
(
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.
Suggested by Shayde
(
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400032717/qid=1152289549/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-8762024-1137732?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) <U><B>The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time</U> by Mark Haddon</B>
Amazon.com review: Mark Haddon's bitterly funny debut novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is a murder mystery of sorts--one told by an autistic version of Adrian Mole. Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone is mathematically gifted and socially hopeless, raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with their child's quirks. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers.... Haddon's novel is a startling performance. This is the sort of book that could turn condescending, or exploitative, or overly sentimental, or grossly tasteless very easily, but Haddon navigates those dangers with a sureness of touch that is extremely rare among first-time novelists. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is original, clever, and genuinely moving: this one is a must-read.
Suggested by hopper
(
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.
Suggested by Starrfall
We initially had sixteen suggestions total, but our poll capabilities can't handle more than nine so I tried to whittle down the field a bit. A few of the later candidates didn't make the cut and multiple suggestions by any one poster were narrowed down to one.
I'm not all that comfortable being the guy who decides what makes it to the poll and what doesn't, as ultimately I'd like this to be truly democratic. I see two possible solutions:
* Skip the poll entirely and have people post their votes. This has the advantage of allowing more than nine suggestions, and this also removes the anonymous nature of voting, which will keep non-participants from trying to affect the outcome. On the other hand, this is a bit unwieldy and will result in more work for me.
* Employ a "one suggestion per member per month, first come first serve" rule. Once the nine slots are filled up it's over for that month and people who didn't get their suggestions in simply have to wait until next month. This has the advantage of being far more simple, and as far as I'm concerned I think nine selections per month is probably plenty.
I'm leaning somewhat towards the second system but I'm only one of many. What do you guys think? IS there a superior third alternative?
For the record, the following suggestions did not make it in this month:
<U>House Of Leaves</U> by Mark Z. Danielewski (2nd Noid suggestion)
<U>The Name Of The Rose</U> by Umberto Eco (3rd Noid suggestion)
<U>Hell's Angels</U> by Hunter S Thompson (2nd Morte suggestion)
<U>Never Let Me Go</U> by Ishiguro (Aerothorn's 2nd suggestion, plus he just read it)
<U>The Long Goodbye</U> by Raymond Chandler (Hopper's 2nd suggestion, plus there's already a Chandler book on the ballot)
<U>The Kite Runner</U> by Khaled Hosseini (ballot full at this point, sorry The Albaniac!)
<U>Waverley</U> by Sir Walter Scott (ballot full at this point, sorry Raven!)
Feel free to resubmit these in the future, some of them certainly sound like good reads.
For more information on what this is all about, please see (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107408) the original TTLG Book Club thread.
Edit: while creating this poll I noticed that it is possible to make the voting record public. Looks like we can ensure that non-participants can't stuff the ballot boxes.
Edit: September first, time to change the title to reflect discussion, not voting!
