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OCTOBER BOOK CHOICES - YOU DECIDE!

Which books would you like to read in October? All you have to do is vote for one of the books listed here. Read the blurbs below to see if there is anything of interest to you and place your vote. The book with the most votes by 21st September will be chosen for discussion from 1st October.

There is another poll running so please take at look at that one too. Two books will be chosen, but don't feel you have to read both if you don't want to!

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1.

The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde 384 pages

Pirouetting on the boundaries between sci-fi, the crime thriller and intertextual whimsy, Jasper Fforde's outrageous The Eyre Affairputs you on the wrong footing even on its dedication page, which proudly announces that the book conforms to Crimean War economy standard.
Fforde's heroine, Thursday Next, lives in a world where time and reality are endlessly mutable--someone has ensured that the Crimean War never ended for example--a world policed by men like her disgraced father, whose name has been edited out of existence. She herself polices text--against men like the Moriarty-like Acheron Styx, whose current scam is to hold the minor characters of Dickens' novels to ransom, entering the manuscript and abducting them for execution and extinction one by one. When that caper goes sour, Styx moves on to the nation's most beloved novel--an oddly truncated version of Jane Eyre--and kidnaps its heroine. The phlegmatic and resourceful Thursday pursues Acheron across the border into a Leninist Wales and further to Mr Rochester's Thornfield Hall, where both books find their climax on the roof amid flames.

2.

Outlander (US) / Cross Stitch - Diana Gabaldon 864 pages

Claire Randall is leading a double life. She has a husband in one century - and a lover in another...In 1945, Claire Randall is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon in Scotland. Innocently, she walks through a stone circle in the Highlands, and finds herself in a violent skirmish taking place in 1743. Suddenly, she is a Sassenach, an outlander, in a country torn by war and by clan feuds. A wartime nurse, Claire can deal with the bloody wounds that face her. But it is harder to deal with the knowledge that she is in Jacobite Scotland and the carnage of Culloden is looming. Marooned amid the passion and violence, the superstition, the shifting allegiances and the fervent loyalties, Claire is in danger from Jacobites and Redcoats - and from the shock of her own desire for James Fraser, a gallant and courageous young Scots warrior. Jamie shows her a passion so fierce and a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire, and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.

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 Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards 416 pages

Kim Edwardss stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold, articulating every mothers 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 Keepers Daughter is an astonishing tale of redemptive love. BACKCOVER: Edwards is a born novelist. . . . Rich with psychological detail and the nuances of human connection.

5.

The Lovely Bones - Alice Seabold 256 pages

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.

6.

The Queen's Fool - Philippa Gregory 400 pages

The bitter enmity between Elizabeth the First and Mary Tudor, the daughters of Henry VIII (not to mention the conflict between their mothers Anne Boleyn and Katherine of Aragon) makes the squabbles between modern-day royals seem small beer indeed. This is particularly clear after reading something as enjoyable as Philippa Gregory's The Queen's Fool, which treats the period and its turbulent sweep with an almost operatic grandeur.

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I'm an auntie! Kelvin

nicnic · Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 9:14 pm Post subject:

Voted for On Beauty because its on TBR and the 1001 list and I'm trying not to buy any more books

I wouldn't mind reading the Diana Gabaldon one tho - my friend has been recommending her for ages.

Also have The Queens Fool on TBR so that would be ok too.
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Currently reading: Man in the Dark by Paul Auster

Mazzystar · Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:09 pm Post subject:

Have voted for Memory Keeper's daughter ... have heard lots of rave reviews about this book so am interested to see if it lives up to the hype.
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My Swap List
Currently reading: Other people's children - Joanna Trollope
Challenge books read: 5

heathera · Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 8:54 pm Post subject:

Again I'm finding the decision making quite tough on this one. I read The Memory Keepers Daughter a few months ago and enjoyed it. The Lovely Bones has been on my (enormous) tbr pile for months and I do want to read that one soon. I've fancied reading On Beauty for ages, although haven't got a copy so that'll be a trip to the library. After all that, reading through the blurb for The Eyre Affair I quite fancy that one as well!!

On well, eeny, meeny, miney, mo it is... (Don't know how to spell that but you know what I mean!).
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Currently Reading:

The Moonlit Cage - Linda Holeman

1001 Book Challenge:
2009 - 4
2008 - 14
Books Available for Swapping on RISI

mummymelly · Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 6:39 pm Post subject:

Have voted for The Lovely Bones this month as I've been wanting to read it for a while and I hear they're also making a film of it.
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Swap List: http://tinyurl.com/33pg6r
Currently Reading "Switchcraft" by Lowri Turner

Amie · Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 7:20 pm Post subject:

I've voted for the Eyre Affair because I love it and I'd like to hear other people's opinions on it.
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Kill the tbr - currently 124
Currently reading:
War and Peace - Leo Tolsty
Wild Swans by Jung Chan
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing

Tigerlily · Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 8:09 pm Post subject:

Voted for The Eyre Affair as it's on the tbr pile and I'm intrigued by it.
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Reading: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
Reading Challenge 2009: 8
2008: 4
2007: 10

blueflower · Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 8:54 pm Post subject:

Voted for The Eyre Affair . Shouldn't have done because it the only book on the list that I don't have!

lovely treez · Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 8:30 am Post subject:

I voted for Cross stitch as it's the only one I haven't read and it sounds intriguing but there's a great selection of books there so you'll enjoy whatever book wins.

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Currently reading - The Italian Boy - Murder and Grave Robbery in 1830s London - Sarah Wise

eightlegs · Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 6:23 pm Post subject:

I was going to vote for The Eyre Affair as I am currently reading it but decided to go for Memory Keeper's Daughter as I have borrowed it from a friend and ought to read it and give it back! Also have two copies of The Queen's Fool so would read that too! (one came from my mum, she didn't realise I had a copy).

So any of those 3................... (then I might actually read my first one in the right month, not before or after you lot!)

nicnic · Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 8:11 pm Post subject:

Just got Memory Keeper's Daughter as a swap. Really glad I don't have to buy this one. My local library only has one copy and the waiting list is huge

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Currently reading: Man in the Dark by Paul Auster

Tigerlily · Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 8:56 am Post subject:

Looks like The Memory Keeper's Daughter has won this one. It looks good.

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

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