BABBLING BOOKS

Tigerlily · Last edited by Tigerlily on Tue Mar 27, 2007 10:27 am; edited 1 time in total

APRIL BOOK CHOICES - YOU DECIDE!

Which books would you like to be read in April? All you have to do is vote for one of the books below. Read the blurbs and see if there is anything that looks interesting and the book with the most votes by 21st March will be chosen to be read from 1st April.

There is also another poll running so please take a look at that one too as there may be something on that list. There will be two books chosen but you don't have to read both if you don't want to.

The polls end midnight 21st March!

1. The Time Travellers Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (529 pages)

This extraordinary, magical novel is the story of Clare and Henry who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. His disappearances are spontaneous and his experiences are alternately harrowing and amusing. The Time Traveler's Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare's passionate love for each other with grace and humour. Their struggle to lead normal lives in the face of a force they can neither prevent nor control is intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.

2. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (512 pages)

A seductive and evocative epic on an intimate scale, that tells the extraordinary story of a geisha girl. Summoning up more than twenty years of Japan's most dramatic history, it uncovers a hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation. From a small fishing village in 1929, the tale moves to the glamorous and decadent heart of Kyoto in the 1930s, where a young peasant girl is sold as servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. She tells her story many years later from the Waldorf Astoria in New York; it exquisitely evokes another culture, a different time and the details of an extraordinary way of life. It conjures up the perfection and the ugliness of life behind rice-paper screens, where young girls learn the arts of geisha - dancing and singing, how to wind the kimono, how to walk and pour tea, and how to beguile the most powerful men.

3. On Beauty - Zadie Smith (464 pages)

Set in New England mainly and London partly, "On Beauty" concerns a pair of feuding families - the Belseys and the Kipps - and a clutch of doomed affairs. It puts low morals among high ideals and asks some searching questions about what life does to love. For the Belseys and the Kipps, the confusions - both personal and political - of our uncertain age are about to be brought close to home: right to the heart of family.

4. The Tenderness Of Wolves - Stef Penney (466 pages)

It is 1867, Canada: as winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a man is brutally murdered and a 17-year old boy disappears. Tracks leaving the dead man's cabin head north towards the forest and the tundra beyond. In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the township - journalists, Hudson's Bay Company men, trappers, traders - but do they want to solve the crime or exploit it? One-by-one the assembled searchers set out from Dove River, pursuing the tracks across a desolate landscape home only to wild animals, madmen and fugitives, variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for 17 years, a Native American culture, and a fortune in stolen furs before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good. In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney deftly waves adventure, suspense, revelation and humour into a panoramic historical romance, an exhilarating thriller, a keen murder mystery and ultimately, with the sheer scope and quality of her storytelling, one of the books of the year.

5. Elizabeth - David Starkey (400 pages + illustrations)

Published to accompany a Channel 4 series, Starkey turns the paradox into a person. This new approach to the enigma of Elizabeth's character presents a retelling of her reign, her love for Robert Dudley, the tragi-comedy of her suitors, her epic struggles with Mary and Philip II and the final debacle of her relationship with Robert Devereux.

6. Mapping the Edge - Sarah Dunant (352 pages)

Anna packs her bags one day without telling anyone where and why she is going - just that she'll be back soon. Her thoughts as she boards a plane, are that this journey will give her time to think about her life - as a woman hitting forty, a journalist and a single mother. She has no premonition that she will become a statistic in a missing person file. Left at home is Anna's beloved six-year-old daughter Lily, her gay friend Paul, who is surrogate father to Lily, and her eccentric best friend Estella. When Anna doesn't return, they make uneasy excuses until, as time passes, the mind-numbing possibility that Anna might not be coming back becomes terrifyingly real. And while those closest to her battle with their imaginations, Anna is on a dark journey - in one scenario Anna is on a ravishing, sexual adventure, on the other, much darker voyage, she is the victim of a stranger's dangerous sexual fantasy. In a masterpiece of emotionally intelligent and nerve-wracking suspense, Sarah Dunant takes us to the very edge.

7. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres (434 pages)

When the Axis powers reach the Greek island of Cephallonia, a young Italian captain is billeted in the doctor's house. Captain Corelli turns out to be an accomplished musician, and for a while the war seems to suit them well. But then the brutality of the conflict catches up with them.

8. Me & Emma - Elizabeth Flock (304 pages)

The title characters in Me & Emma are very nearly photographic opposites--8-year-old Carrie, the raven-haired narrator, is timid and introverted, while her little sister Emma is a tow-headed powerhouse with no sense of fear. The girls live in a terrible situation: they depend on an unstable mother that has never recovered from her husband’s murder, their stepfather beats them regularly, and they must forage on their own for food.

Stop here and you have a story told many times before, as fiction and nonfiction in tales like Ellen Foster, or I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings --stories in which a young girl reveals the horrors of her childhood. Me & Emma differentiates itself with a spectacular finish, shocking the reader and turning the entire story on its head. Through several twists and turns the reader learns that things are not quite the way our narrator led us to believe and everything crescendos in a way that (like all good thrillers) immediately makes you want to go back and read the whole book again from the start. --Victoria Griffith

9. Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow - Peter Hoeg (416 pages)

One snowy day in Copenhagen, six-year-old Isaiah falls to his death from a city rooftop. The police pronounce it an accident. But Isaiah's neighbour, Smilla, suspects murder. She embarks on a dangerous quest to find the truth, following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow.

_________________
Reading: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
Reading Challenge 2009: 8
2008: 4
2007: 10

blueflower · Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 3:20 pm Post subject:

This is the easiest list to choose from for me. First, because of reading Ice Trap I fancy a trip back to Canada's frozen lands and also because I already have the book.

Tigerlily · Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 4:03 pm Post subject:

Tigerlily · Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 4:34 pm Post subject:

Yep, I voted for The Tenderness of Wolves even though I'd nominated Miss SMilla's Feeling for Snow

I see TTW won the 2007 Costa Book Awards - have to admit that helped me decide.

Will no doubt buy TTW if it doesn't get chosen for April.
_________________
Reading: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
Reading Challenge 2009: 8
2008: 4
2007: 10

Ruth · Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:16 am Post subject:

I've gone for The Tenderness Of Wolves. But The Time Travelers Wife, On Beauty and Memoirs Of A Geisha are all on my tbr pile as well! Some great choices this month - it's hard to decide.
_________________
My Blog

"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading."

mummymelly · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 9:49 am Post subject:

Voted for Me & Emma but wouldn't mind The Time Travellers Wife either
_________________
Swap List: http://tinyurl.com/33pg6r
Currently Reading "Switchcraft" by Lowri Turner

miranda · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 10:51 pm Post subject:

I voted for Elizabeth, but I kinda hope The Tenderness of Wolves wins now cos I just bought it and it looks really good.
_________________
Currently reading: The Human Stain by Philip Roth
'Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.'

Ruth · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 12:07 pm Post subject:

Oooh, there's a 4-way tie! What will happen if one book doesn't win overall?
_________________
My Blog

"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading."

mummymelly · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 12:12 pm Post subject:

Tigerlily · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 2:27 pm Post subject:

We'll probably have to run another poll. Will check with Debs

_________________
Reading: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
Reading Challenge 2009: 8
2008: 4
2007: 10

sirg1006 · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 2:28 pm Post subject:

I've not voted on this one yet

D

_________________
I'm an auntie! Kelvin

Tigerlily · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 2:30 pm Post subject:

oooooh!!

You might just save us from having a tie then

_________________
Reading: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
Reading Challenge 2009: 8
2008: 4
2007: 10

mummymelly · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 3:48 pm Post subject:

sirg1006 · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 4:22 pm Post subject:

Well the polls are split this way because the majority of people suggested 2 books so there should be a book on each poll... that way it was fairer on everyone.

D

_________________
I'm an auntie! Kelvin

Tigerlily · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 4:31 pm Post subject:

Have you voted yet Debbie? If you vote and there is a clear winner on that poll, why don't we just bung all the ties in this poll in a new one and choose that way?
_________________
Reading: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
Reading Challenge 2009: 8
2008: 4
2007: 10

mummymelly · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 4:34 pm Post subject:

Tigerlily · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 4:36 pm Post subject:

I get you Mel. I read your post wrong! I think we should def do it that way else we'll never know

_________________
Reading: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
Reading Challenge 2009: 8
2008: 4
2007: 10

mummymelly · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 4:39 pm Post subject:

Tigerlily · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 4:42 pm Post subject:

It's not you!

Text messages don't always travel well do they, can't always tell things such as tone, so they can be read wrong. I'm always doing it.

_________________
Reading: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
Reading Challenge 2009: 8
2008: 4
2007: 10

mummymelly · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 4:44 pm Post subject:

Welcome to Babbling Books, Guest. We Hope You Enjoy Your Stay and Wish You a Merry Christmas!