March '10 Reading Poll

[motherhubbard]

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

http://www.amazon.com/Lovely-Bones-D...2698968&sr=1-1

What a good list of books! I think we should just read all of them

[Scheherazade]

We now have the 10 nominations we need:

1. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

2. The Lost Girl by D.H. Lawrence

3. Dubliners by James Joyce

4. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon.

5. One of Ours by Willa Cather

6. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

7. Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse

8. Three Kingdoms attributed to Luo Guanzhong volume 1 tr. Moss Roberts

9. The Reader[/B] by Bernhard Schlink

10. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

MotherH> I agree with you; I won't mind reading whatever comes up in March. I read The Lovely Bones a few months ago, by the way. While it kept me going, I was a little disappointed.

Don't forget to vote in February poll!

[Virgil]

Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse

Oh good!

[NickAdams]

Man, it feels like we read Dubliners last year. I'll probably join if it's chosen, but where has the time gone.

I'm in for The Three Kingdoms, but I'm not voting this year (self-imposed punishment for not completing multiple books that I committed myself to: Kim and there were others) until I read at least one book with the forum.

Oh good!

I read "Oh God!"

[Virgil]

I read "Oh God!"

No, no. I intend to vote for Steppenwolf. Is it possible to pursuade you to as well, my friend?

[NickAdams]

No, no. I intend to vote for Steppenwolf. Is it possible to pursuade you to as well, my friend?

If I did, I wouldn't respect myself in the morning.

[JBI]

If I did, I wouldn't respect myself in the morning.

It's a shame though - no time for rereading that one, as it was good, but not worthy of pushing in front of the line as a reread .

[AuntShecky]

I'm not voting this year (self-imposed punishment for not completing multiple books that I committed myself to: Kim and there were others) until I read at least one book with the forum.

Hey, I hear ya, Nick dear. Don't tell anybody but I'm still reading Frankenstein. (But that didn't keep me from voting!)

By the bye, I went through a few pages of threads on this forum, and the LitNutters DID read Dubliners last year! I don't know how I missed it, as I've been here since mid '07! Anyway, I should've did the thread-search before I nominated it! Man, is my face red!

[NickAdams]

Hey, I hear ya, Nick dear. Don't tell anybody but I'm still reading Frankenstein. (But that didn't keep me from voting!)

I've become very interested in reading Steppenwolf and I think I can finish Kim in time for voting.

[Virgil]

I've become very interested in reading Steppenwolf and I think I can finish Kim in time for voting.

Alright! (The best news I've had all day, after watching the Cowboys get eliminated from the playoffs. )

[papayahed]

Hey, I hear ya, Nick dear. Don't tell anybody but I'm still reading Frankenstein. (But that didn't keep me from voting!)

phhhwwwww. I'm glad I'm not the only one!!

[NickAdams]

... The best news I've had all day ...

That's because you're stuck with Staten Island's local paper.

[caspian]

Hoping someone would nominate One of Ours again as well!

I'm reading it right now - So far I'm stuck in a boring farm, with kind of boring characters.
I always read my pick along with forum's pick, or I just go with my pick alone. it's going to be hard to choose this time. Most likely I'll go with forum's pick.

[Scheherazade]

Some information on the books:

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: A young man falls victim to his own obsession with an amorous farm girl in this classic novel of fate and unrequited love. Published anonymously and first attributed, erroneously, to George Eliot, this Signet Classic version is set from Hardy's revised final draft-the authoritative Wessex edition of 1912.

The Lost Girl by DH Lawrence: The Lost Girl, D. H. Lawrence s forgotten novel, is a passionate tale of longing and sexual defiance, of devastation and destitution. Alvina Houghton, the daughter of a widowed Midlands draper, comes of age just as her father s business is failing. In a desperate attempt to regain his fortune and secure his daughter s proper upbringing, James Houghton buys a theater. Among the traveling performers he employs is Ciccio, a sensual Italian who immediately captures Alvina s attention. Fleeing with him to Naples, she leaves her safe world behind and enters one of sexual awakening, desire, and fleeting freedom.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lost-Girl-Mo...4974502&sr=8-1

Dubliners by James Joyce: Joyce’s first major work, written when he was only twenty-five, brought his city to the world for the first time. His stories are rooted in the rich detail of Dublin life, portraying ordinary, often defeated lives with unflinching realism. He writes of social decline, sexual desire and exploitation, corruption and personal failure, yet creates a brilliantly compelling, unique vision of the world and of human experience.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dubliners-Pe...4974570&sr=1-1

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon: Like the comic books that animate and inspire it, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is both larger than life and of it too. Complete with golems and magic and miraculous escapes and evil nemeses, even hand-to-hand Antarctic battle, it pursues the most important questions of love and war, dreams and art, across pages lurid with longing and hope. Samuel Klayman--self-described little man, city boy and Jew--first meets Josef Kavalier when his mother shoves him aside in his own bed, telling him to make room for their cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague. It's the beginning, however unlikely, of a beautiful friendship. In short order, Sam's talent for pulp plotting meets Joe's faultless, academy-trained line, and a comic-book superhero is born. A sort of lantern-jawed equaliser clad in dark blue long underwear, the Escapist "roams the globe, performing amazing feats and coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny's chains". Before they know it, Kavalier and Clay (as Sam Klayman has come to be known) find themselves at the epicentre of comics' golden age.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Amazing-Adve...4974660&sr=1-1

One of Ours by Willa Cather: This stirring novel about World War I won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922. In the lucid, unadorned prose that were her hallmark, Cather brings to life the simple Nebraska farm folk and their tranquil rural lifestyle, showing how the Great War, seemingly so far away on the Old Continent, eventually touches them all.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ours-Literar...4974796&sr=1-5

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison: In an effort to hide his southern, working class roots, Macon Dead, an upper-class northern black businessman, tries to insulate his family from the danger and despair of the rank and file blacks with whom he shares the neighbourhood. The plan leads his son, "Milkman"--a named he earned after his mother nursed him well past the proper age--onto a path exactly opposite the one his father had hoped. Milkman is driven into the arms of a violent, lower-class woman, into a clandestine circle of blacks who repay white violence in kind and into an awareness that he can fulfil his own potential by understanding the mistakes of his ancestors as they relate to his own.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Song-Solomon...4974901&sr=1-1

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse: Harry Haller is the Steppenwolf: wild, strange, shy and alienated from society. His despair and desire for death draw him into a dark, enchanted underworld. Through a series of shadowy encounters – romantic, freakish and savage by turn – the misanthropic Haller gradually begins to rediscover the lost dreams of his youth. This blistering portrayal of a man who feels himself to be half-human and half-wolf was the bible of the 1960s counterculture, capturing the mood of a disaffected generation, and remains a haunting story of estrangement and redemption.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Steppenwolf-...4974994&sr=1-1

Three Kingdoms attributed to Luo Guanzhong volume 1 tr. Moss Roberts:

The Reader by Schlink: Originally published in Switzerland and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading and shame in post-war Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: what should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? "We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable... Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?"

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reader-Bernh...4975125&sr=1-1

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold: On her way home from school on a snowy December day, 14-year-old Susie Salmon is lured into a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lovely-Bones...4975243&sr=1-1

[The Comedian]

I put in my vote: If The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay wins, then I'm all over this month's selection like flies on used food.