August Nominations

[Kell]

The nominations thread will remain open till the evening of Saturday 12 July, after which a selection will be chosen for the poll.

Let the nominations begin!

A Note on Nominating and Seconding
If a book has already been mentioned here, then it has already been nominated and you need only second it (books with the most seconds get put through to the poll). To second a book, all you have to do is say, "I second {Name of book}"

Nominating is slightly different. If the book you would like to see chosen has not already been mentioned, you can nominate it. Please give the title of the book, the name of the author and a brief synopsis (usually fromthe back of the book) in this case. It can then be seconded by other members.

Please note this is not a voting thread - a poll will be set up after this one closes.

Thank you.

~~*~~
- Please only make nominations and seconds here, rather than discussing the books nominated or going off-topic.

- Bear in mind that having hundreds of nominations makes it more difficult, so please limit yourself to a maximum of two nominations per person, although you can second as many as you like.

- Please also remember to post a synopsis of the books you nominate as it helps people to know what they're seconding!

- Please make sure the books you nominate are readily available in paperback (as we don't want to make it prohibitively expensive for members to take part in the reading circle).

- If the book you're nominating is part of a series, please make sure it is either the first one or a stand-alone (or the sequel to one already read by the reading circle).
~~*~~

NOMINATIONS:
1. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (nominated by Kell)
2. Property by Valerie Martin (nominated by Kell / seconded by Lovesreading)
3. A Room With a View by E. M. Forster (nominated by Janet / seconded by Lovesreading, KBMarsh)
4. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (nominated by Inver / seconded by MadCow, Kelly2008, Lovesreading, Esiotrot)
5. Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood (nominated by TBain)
6. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edward (nominated by TBain / seconded by Kelly2008, Lovesreading, Inver, Coffeebean, Kylie)
7. Visits from the Drowned Girl by Steven Sherrill (nominated by Loopyloo / seconded by Lovesreading, Kelly2008, Spooncat, Amanda)
8. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (nominated by RadJack / seconded by TBain, Enthusiast)
9. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (Nominated by Gyre/ seconded by Lovesreading)

[Kell]

I'd like to kick things off by nominating the following two books:

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne:
Set in the harsh Puritan community of seventeenth-century Boston, this tale of an adulterous entanglement that results in an illegitimate birth reveals Nathaniel Hawthorne's concerns with the tension between the public and the private selves. Publicly disgraced and ostracized, Hester Prynne draws on her inner strength and certainty of spirit to emerge as the first true heroine of American fiction. Arthur Dimmesdale stands as a classic study of a seld divided; trapped by the rules of society, he suppresses his passion and disavows his lover, Hester, and their daughter, Pearl. As Nina Baym writes in her Introduction, "The Scarlet Letter" was not written as realistic, historical fiction, but as a "romance", a creation of the imagination that discloses the truth of the human heart.

Property by Valerie Martin:
Manon Gaudet is unhappily married to the owner of a Louisiana sugar plantation. She misses her family and longs for the vibrant lifestyle of her native New Orleans, but most of all, she longs to be free of the suffocating domestic situation. The tension revolves around Sarah, a slave girl who may have been given to Manon as a wedding present from her aunt, whose young son Walter is living proof of where Manon's husband's inclinations lie. This private drama is being played out against a brooding atmosphere of slave unrest and bloody uprisings. And if the attacks reach Manon's house, no one can be sure which way Sarah will turn ...Beautifully written, Property is an intricately told tale of both individual stories and of a country in a time of change, where ownership is at once everything and nothing, and where belonging, by contrast, is all.

[Janet]

I would like to nominate:

A Room with a View by E M Forster:

In this brilliant piece of social comedy Forster is concerned with one of his favourite themes: the 'undeveloped heart' of the English middle classes, who are here represented by a group of tourists and expatriates in Florence. The English abroad are observed with a sharply ironic eye, but one of them, the young and unaffected Lucy Honeychurch, is also drawn with great sympathy.

In her relationships with her dismal cousin Charlotte and the unconventional Emmersons and - the scene transferred to England - with her supercilious fiancé, Lucy is torn between lingering Victorian proprieties, social and sexual, and the spontaneous promptings of her heart (an 'underdeveloped heart, not a cold one). Thus there are hidden depths of meaning in this sunniest and most readable of Forster's novels.

[lovesreading06]

Its not even July yet.

I would like to second these two.

Property by Valerie Martin

A Room with a View by E M Forster

[Inver]

I would like to nominate 'Case Histories' by Kate Atkinson.

Another of these unread books that is gathering dust on my shelf.

Blurb:
The scene is set in Cambridge, with three case histories from the past: A young child who mysteriously disappeared from a tent in her back garden; An unidentified man in a yellow jumper who marched into an office and slashed a young girl through the throat; and a young woman found by the police sitting in her kitchen next to the body of her husband, an axe buried in his head. Jackson Brodie, a private investigator and former police detective, is quietly contemplating life as a divorced father when he is flung into the midst of these resurrected old crimes. Julia and Amelia Land, long having given up hope of uncovering the truth of what happened to their baby sister, Olivia, suddenly discover her lost toy mouse in the study of their recently-deceased father. Enlisting Jackson's help they embroil him in the complexities of their own jealousies, obsessions and lust. A woman named Shirley needs Jackson to help find her lost niece. Amidst the incessant demands of the Land sisters, Jackson meets solicitor Theo Wyre whose daughter, Laura, was murdered in his office and, now that the police case has been closed, is desperate for Jackson to help him lay Laura's ghost to rest. As he starts his investigations Jackson has the sinister feeling that someone is following him. As he begins to unearth secrets that have remained hidden for many years, he is assailed by his former wife's plan to take his young daughter away to live in New Zealand, and his stalker becomes increasingly malevolent and dangerous. In digging into the past Jackson seems to have unwittingly threatened his own future.

[madcow]

I'll second Case Histories sounds like a good read.

[tbain]

Cats Eye- Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood charts the psychological process of memory as compulsion and memory as a healing act through the character of Elaine Risley, an artist who returns to her home town of Toronto for a retrospective of her work. Elaine's visit triggers thoughts of her childhood with all the urgency of a bad rash. Dominating her reflections are her childhood "friends", three girls who wreak havoc on Elaine's self-esteem. Having spent her early childhood on the road with an entomologist father, a less than traditional mother and a brother more concerned with snot and snakes than the intricate behaviour codes of girls, the young Elaine is vulnerable to the indirect aggression of Cordelia, the ringleader of the group who seeks to improve her. Through Elaine's experiences, Margaret Atwood turns a keen and ironic eye on the training of females in North American culture: "All I have to do is sit on the floor and cut frying pans out of the Eaton's Catalogue with embroidery scissors, and say I've done it badly." The self-effacement of these girl-children barely masks a need for power that erupts all too often in cruel forms of play. This is a story in which the lines between victims and oppressors blur, in which forgiveness becomes an act of gaining power. Through humour, pain and insight, she makes us see, with surprise and recognition, details from childhood we may well have forgotten.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter- Kim Edward

Kim Edwards's stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold, articulating every mother's silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? In 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins, he immediately recognizes that one of them has Down Syndrome and makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and to keep her birth a secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper's Daughter is an astonishing tale of redemptive love.

[kelly2008]

Can I second 'The Memory Keeper's Daughter' byKim Edward and 'Case Histories' by Kate Atkinson.

I'm not sure whether to nominate 'The Outcast' because I haven't heard any reviews, but I looked at it in asda tonight and it looks interesting.

[lovesreading06]

I would like to third these two 'Case Histories' by Kate Atkinson.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter- Kim Edward

Kelly2008 you can nominate any book as long as it follows the rules. Its got to be available in Papperback and its isnt a seocnd series of a book.

[kb.marsh]

I would like to add my vote to A Room With a View by E. M. Forster

[Loopyloo100]

I'd like to nominate:

Visits from the Drowned Girl by Steven Sherrill

Synopsis:

Benny Poteat is, among other things, a tower jockey, his life defined by up or down.Working hundreds of feet in the air repairing tension lines and replacing burned-out lightbulbs, he observes the world from above.

Benny has seen a lot of things from this vantage point, but nothing can compare to watching a girl die. She approaches the river that snakes far below him, sets up a video camera, and walks purposefully into the rushing water, never to reappear. Startled at both what he’s witnessed and his inability to prevent it, Benny hurries down the tower to the scene of her death. What he does next will forever alter the course of his life: He does nothing. He gathers up the drowned girl’s belongings and doesn’t tell a soul what he saw.

Instead, Benny visits the address on a business card he finds in the drowned girl’s bag and slowly insinuates himself into the life she once lived. But even as he immerses himself in her world, he wonders: What does it mean to watch someone die? And what can explain his strange attraction to the drowned girl?

Through a labyrinth of rationalization and denial, Benny struggles to figure out who to tell and what to do, until it becomes not only impractical but truly impossible for him to ever reveal his secret, the burden of which soon becomes unbearable.

Visits from the Drowned Girl is a tale about the seductive but ultimately pernicious nature of secrecy. We are all voyeurs, to one degree or another. The question is, at what point do we become responsible for the things we see?

[lovesreading06]

Can i second Visits from the Drowned Girl by Steven Sherrill

[radjack]

I'd like to nominate:

The book Thief by Markus Zusak

(review by Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA)


Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife, and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesels story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative.

(slightly modified to prevent spoilers)

[Gyre]

I would like to nominate for August,'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle' by Haruki Murakami

Synopsis:

Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician.

[tbain]

Can I second The book Thief by Markus Zusak.

[lovesreading06]

There a lot of good books this time.

Can i second 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle' by Haruki Murakami

[kelly2008]

Can I second Visits from the Drowned Girl by Steven Sherrill

[Inver]

The Memory Keeper's Daughter would be my choice (if mine doesn't win:lol:)

[Spooncat]

I second Visits from a Drowned Girl:readingtwo:

[Esiotrot]

I would like to second Case Histories by Kate Atkinson as like Inver I have it on the shelf gathering dust :)

[Enthusiast]

Can you third a book. The book thief is an excellent read..

[Kell]

Yes you can - the more a book gets seconded, the more chance it has of being put into the poll of the final three for voting. :)

[Enthusiast]

My vote goes to The Book Thief then. :)

[Inver]

It's gonna be close...:D

[Enthusiast]

I can't wait. :D

[Coffeebean]

I hope that The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edward is selected.

[Kylie]

I'll second The Memory Keeper's Daughter as well.

[Amanda]

I second "Visits from a Drowned Girl."

[Kell]

Thread now closed - please cast your vote in the poll for the August Reading Circle book HERE (http://www.bookclubforum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=5920).