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Suggestions: August 2006 Book of the Month

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mehastings

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Thread will close June 15.

A maximum of ten books will be put to the vote.

If more than 10 books are suggested, then books which have more than one nomination will take priority (books with three nominations get priority over books with two etc).

The remainder will be put forward in the order they are suggested (with only one book per member) until the 10 voting slots are filled.

** Please post descriptions of the books you suggest!!
 
Patricia Nell Warren
The Front Runner


Originally published in the '70s, it was an extremely controversial yet extremely popular book about a gay love story. The book stayed on the bestsellers list forever and has since sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. After the success of the movie Brokeback Mountain a movie version that was suppose to have been made decades ago is now being produced and is expected to receive high praise.

From Amazon.com:

First published in 1974, The Front Runner raced to international acclaim - the first novel about gay love to become popular with mainstream.
In 1975, coach Harlan Brown is hiding from his past at an obscure New York college, after he was fired from Penn State University on suspicion of being gay. A tough, lonely ex-Marine of 39, Harlan has never allowed himself to love another man.

Then Billy Sive, a brilliant young runner, shows up on his doorstep. He and his two comrades, Vince Matti and Jacques LaFont, were just thrown off a major team for admitting they are gay. Harlan knows that, with proper training, Billy could go to the '76 Olympics in Montreal. He agrees to coach the three boys under strict conditions that thwart Billy's growing attraction for his mature but compelling mentor. The lean, graceful frontrunner with gold-rim glasses sees directly into Harlan's heart. Billy's gentle and open acceptance of his sexuality makes Harlan afraid to confront either the pain of his past, or the challenges which lay in wait if their intimacy is exposed.

But when Coach Brown finds himself falling in love with his most gifted athlete, he must combat his true feelings for Billy or risk the outrage of the entire sports world - and their only chance at Olympic gold.
 
'Kaitlyn' by Kevin Lewis

Fiction ..............

The Wilson family was torn apart the night little Christopher was almost killed. Though the two year-old survives the brutal attack by his drunken father, his older sister Kaitlyn is convinced it's all her fault. Christopher is taken into care and never returns to the family home on the notorious Roxford estate in South London. But the bond between the siblings remains strong, and as Kaitlyn gets older she dreams of a new life away from the violence of the estate and her mother's dangerous addictions. But most of all, she dreams of being reunited with her little brother. Will Kaitlyn's dreams ever come true? And if they do, could they really turn into a nightmare? :eek:
"Kaitlyn" is the heart-rending story of a family ripped apart by tragedy and reunited by a twist of fate that threatens to destroy all their lives and of a girl who has to choose between everything she has worked for, and the only family she has every known.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...41700/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_3_4/202-9206313-0323053
 
Kevin Lewis's Kaitlyn, eh? Well, at least we've got a thread all ready for it! (And no, mehastings, that wasn't me seconding the nomination!)

My suggestion is Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. Link. It's a novel set in an alternate present, where the Germans and Japanese won the second world war. People trade in pre-war American collectibles and Mickey Mouse watches are highly sought after. Significant decisions are made by reference to the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes. The Germans and Japanese control the respective coasts of the USA and resentment between the two victors simmers and threatens to spill over into assassination attempts. Simultaneously, people all over the country are passing from hand to hand an underground book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which is set in an alternate present where the Germans and Japanese lost the second world war. The book is all about what we believe in and how we value things. It's widely regarded as Dick's best novel, and that - referring to the mind that inspired Bladerunner, Total Recall, Minority Report and many others - is saying something.
 
The Time in Between by David Bergen

In search of love, absolution, or forgiveness, Charles Boatman leaves the Fraser Valley of British Columbia and returns mysteriously to Vietnam, the country where he fought twenty-nine years earlier as a young, reluctant soldier. But his new encounters seem irreconcilable with his memories.

When he disappears, his daughter Ada, and her brother, Jon, travel to Vietnam, to the streets of Danang and beyond, to search for him. Their quest takes them into the heart of a country that is at once incomprehensible, impassive, and beautiful. Chasing her father’s shadow for weeks, following slim leads, Ada feels increasingly hopeless. Yet while Jon slips into the urban nightlife to avoid what he most fears, Ada finds herself growing closer to her missing father — and strong enough to forgive him and bear the heartbreaking truth of his long-kept secret.

Bergen’s marvellously drawn characters include Lieutenant Dat, the police officer who tries to seduce Ada by withholding information; the boy Yen, an orphan, who follows Ada and claims to be her guide; Jack Gouds, an American expatriate and self-styled missionary; his strong-willed and unhappy wife, Elaine, whose desperate encounters with Charles in the days before his disappearance will always haunt her; and Hoang Vu, the artist and philosopher who will teach Ada about the complexity of love and betrayal. We also come to learn about the reclusive author Dang Tho, whose famous wartime novel pulls at Charles in ways he can’t explain.

Moving between father and daughter, the present and the past, The Time in Between is a luminous, unforgettable novel about one family, two cultures, and a profound emotional journey in search of elusive answers.
 
I'd like to suggest Haruki Murakami's 'Norwegian Wood'

Synopsis
When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.
 
I'll third Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. Just bought it the other day on the spur of the moment, so will be nice to actually read a purchase sometime in the same year.
 
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

It'll give me a reason to get it off my TBR pile.

---When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious Witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability, and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly, and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil. ---


http://www.gregorymaguire.com/books/wicked.html

By the way - this is my first post :eek:
How did I do?

That was fun - I think I'll go list the books I read in May now :D
 
Concetta said:
It'll give me a reason to get it off my TBR pile.

---When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious Witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability, and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly, and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil. ---


http://www.gregorymaguire.com/books/wicked.html

By the way - this is my first post :eek:
How did I do?

That was fun - I think I'll go list the books I read in May now :D

Hello & welcome :)

I'll second Wicked as it has been on my shelf waiting for me too long now :)
 
Fascinating! I have not heard of a single one of these books you have listed. clearly i am out of touch with something. I'm not sure what but i know I will learn lots from this site.
 
All The Names Jose Saramago

"As soon as you cross the threshold, you notice the smell of old paper." The Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths is the setting for All the Names, Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese author José Saramago's seventh novel to be translated into English. The names in question are those of every man, woman, and child ever born, married, or buried in the unnamed city where the Registry is located, and are the special province of Senhor José who is employed there as a clerk. Over the centuries, the paper trail in this hopelessly arcane bureaucracy has grown so monumental, so disorganized that
one poor researcher became lost in the labyrinthine catacombs of the archive of the dead, having come to the Central Registry in order to carry out some genealogical research he had been commissioned to undertake. He was discovered, almost miraculously, after a week, starving, thirsty, exhausted, delirious, having survived thanks to the desperate measure of ingesting enormous quantities of old documents that neither lingered in the stomach nor nourished, since they melted in the mouth without requiring any chewing.​
The nondescript Senhor José labors long and thanklessly among the archives; his is a tepid, lonely life with only one small hobby to leaven his leisure hours: he collects "news items about those people in his country who, for good reasons and bad, had become famous." One night, it occurs to him that "something fundamental was missing from his collection, that is, the origin, the root, the source, in other words, the actual birth certificate of these famous people"--and that the information is within easy reach on the other side of a connecting door that separates his meager lodgings from the Registry itself. And so begins Senhor José's midnight raids on the stacks as he shuttles between the Registry and his own room bearing precious records that he carefully copies before returning them to their rightful places. Still, this minor aberration might have remained the clerk's only transgression if not for a simple act of fate: one night, along with his celebrity records, he accidentally picks up a birth certificate belonging to an ordinary, unknown woman--a woman who becomes suddenly more important than all the others precisely because she is unknown. Celebrity is cast aside as Senhor José begins a search for this mysterious quarry--a quest that will lead him into conflict with his superior, the Registrar, and ensnare him in the kind of messy personal histories and tangled relationships he has thus far avoided in his own life.
 
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