Hey forumers! Me and Maroon (and, hopefully, soon, others) are planning on reviving the book club here at the WF, so the poll is for people to vote on which books they would want to read. Given the huge, huge number of possible books there are, the poll focusses on recent award winners, mostly in the literary fiction genre. If there is persistent and repeated demand for a different title, I'm sure we can accomodate that too. Also, please try to aim for more widely available titles so that the club can function internationally. And so begins WFDecision '09....go vote! (ack! messed up sorry, only one vote per person, but feel free to post your thoughts on the list and what you want from it/added to it)
I've put a two week expiration on the poll. In general, all polls should expire within an appropriate time period.
For those of you who are overwhelmed by the options, here are brief synopses for the books: (from Wikipedia) The White Tiger is the debut novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga. It was first published in 2008 and won the Man Booker Prize for the same year.[1] The novel studies the contrast between India's rise as a modern global economy and the main character, who comes from crushing rural poverty. The Gathering traces the narrator's inner journey, setting out to derive meaning from past and present events, and takes place in Ireland and England. Its title refers to the funeral of Liam Hegarty, an alcoholic who committed suicide in the sea at Brighton. His mother and eight of the nine surviving Hegarty children gather in Dublin for his wake. The novel's narrator is 39-year-old Veronica, the sibling who was closest to Liam. She looks through her family's troubled history to try to make sense of his death. She thinks that the reason for his alcoholism lies in something that happened to him in his childhood when he stayed in his grandmother's house. She uncovers uncomfortable truths about her family. The Inheritance of Loss: Set in the 1980s, the book tells the story of Jemubhai Popatlal Patel, a judge living out a disenchanted retirement in Kalimpong, a hill station in the Himalayan foothills, and his relationship with his granddaughter Sai. The novel also depicts the insurgency in the Himalayas by the Gorkhali people fighting for their own identity and its impact on the wider population. Another focus of the novel is the life of Biju, the son of Mr. Patel's cook; an illegal immigrant making his way in New York. The Sea: The story is told by Max Morden, a self-aware, retired art historian attempting to reconcile himself to the deaths of those whom he loved as a child and as an adult. The novel is written as a reflective journal; the setting always in flux, wholly dependent upon the topic or theme Max feels to write about. Despite the constant fluctuations, Max returns to three settings: his childhood memories of the Graces -- a wealthy middle class family living in a rented cottage home, the "Cedars" -- during the summer holidays; the months leading up to the death of his wife, Anna; and his present stay at the Cedars cottage home in Ballyless -- where he has retreated since Anna's death. These three settings are heavily diced and impromptly jumbled together for the novel's entire duration. The Brief Wondrous Life...: The novel is an epic story narrated by Yunior de Las Casas, the protagonist of Díaz's first book "Drown" and chronicles not just the "brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao," an overweight Dominican boy growing up in Paterson, New Jersey and obsessed with science fiction and fantasy novels, with comic books and role-playing games and with falling in love, but also the curse of the "fukú" that has plagued Oscar's family for generations and the Caribbean (and perhaps the entire world) since colonization and slavery. The Road: It is a post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed all civilization and, apparently, most life on earth. March: It is a parallel novel that retells Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women from the point of view of Alcott's protagonists' absent father. Brooks has inserted the novel into the classic tale, revealing the events surrounding March's absence during the American Civil War in 1862. Gilead: The novel is the fictional autobiography of the Reverend John Ames, an elderly congregationalist pastor in the small, secluded town of Gilead, Iowa who knows that he is dying of a heart condition. At the beginning of the book, the date is established as 1956, and Ames explains that he is writing an account of his life for his 7-year-old son, who will have few memories of him as an adult. Powers: In Powers, Gavir is a slave who develops a gift for precognition. He is trained to serve as a teacher for a noble family in the city of Etra; but personal tragedy drives him into the life of a hunted wanderer. He endures adventures, challenges, and suffering. (Part 3 of a trilogy of children's books) The Yiddish Policemen's Union: The novel is a detective story set in an alternate history version of the present day, based on the premise that during World War II, a temporary settlement for Jewish refugees was established in Sitka, Alaska in 1941, and that the fledgling State of Israel was destroyed in 1948. The novel is set in Sitka, which it depicts as a large, Yiddish-speaking metropolis. Seeker: The story is set approximately 10,000 years in the future, after civilization has expanded to the point of inhabiting countless other worlds. Alex Benedict and his partner Chase Kolpath specialize in a new active type of space-archeology, involving the examination of abandoned bases and deserted space-craft in search of valuable items. One day, however, a mysterious woman approaches Alex and asks him to ascertain the value of a strange cup riddled with archaic symbols. After some in-depth research, they discover that the cup is a 9,000 year old relic from one of the first FTL vehicles ever built, the Seeker. This Seeker was a colony ship manned by a faction known as the "Margolians" who were fleeing the then-oppressive society in hopes of establishing a free world. Records indicate that they succeeded, as the Seeker made several voyages, but kept the location of their colony world so secret that it was still unknown in the present day. The Graveyard Book: The story is about a boy named Nobody Owens, whose family is killed by a mysterious man named Jack, and who is subsequently adopted and raised by the occupants of an old, ornate graveyard, inspired by Highgate cemetery. Netherland is a critically acclaimed novel by Joseph O'Neill. It concerns the life of a Dutchman living in New York in the wake of the September 11 attacks. So those are a few of the options, but like I said, we're very open to other suggestions if none of these appeal to you!
thanks for the summaries arron~ as much as i didn't actually want to choose neil gaiman (because he's the only one i've read before, and i like to read different people) his sounded the most interesting.... though i might choose powers as a second choice...
I voted for Gaiman, too. I just hope that I can get a copy of it quickly enough. In a city of about three million, the waiting lists are long for popular books.
@ Leaka, yeah of course anyone can join! The more the merrier! Man, the two kids books are the most popular...maybe we should start a book club purely devoted to children's lit
No purely devoted to children lit. That one sounded more interesting. I don't like life stories. I like ones that may allow me to escape a little or give me some heebies.
From what I understand about Neil Gaiman, he doesn't see his children's books as just for children. And I'm with him. Stories are for everyone.
Just thought I'd throw out a book suggestion. Any interest in reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins? It's a dystopian novel. I'm planning to read it again this summer before the sequel comes out in the fall. It's a really engrossing story.
Since it looks like we'll be doing Gaiman's book, I just reserved it. Oy vey, the library has 119 copies! Then again, there are 99 branches.
I just reserved mine. It's got a ton of copies too, and in every format--even the little player devices. We need to get started soon before summer is up and I am swamped with school stuff. Just an idea: we do The Graveyard Book for July and then for the August book we let people give suggestions.
I'm down with that. I think we should do Lolita for August, given its relevance to a few of the issues that have come up on the site recently, and the fact that its as un-kid-friendly as possible, so it will make a nice change from the Gaiman book. But we still need lots more suggestions if we wanna make this an ongoing thing.
I plan on reading Gone-Away World (Nick Harkaway) soon enough anyway, so my vote is for that one. Dystopian novels aren't my usual taste, but I've only heard good things from fellow readers about this one. Check out a few reviews!
Sweet! I guess I'll (or someone else'll) open up a new thread so we can start discussing it from the 1st of July?
I've voted for Gaimen base on the fact that the reviews I have read online are really good and I loved the book and movie Coraline.
Did he not also have something to do with the film Stardust? I really liked that film. Plus, I think I've read some of his other books (I could be wrong, I'm terrible with remembering these things.) Did he write American Gods? Also, did he write a book about a weird second world in London? I could be havering. Please feel free to enlighten me.
He wrote Stardust, yes. And American Gods. And I think he's a terrible author. Apparently I'm outnumbered