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Tigerlily

JULY BOOK CHOICES - YOU DECIDE!

Which books would you like to be read from July? 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. The book with the most votes by 26th June will be chosen to be read from 1st July.

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.

1. The Essence of the Thing by Madeleine St John - 240 pages

A novel by the author of "Women in Black" and "A Pure Clear Light". It concerns things that women will do to hold on to love and things men will do to esape it. Having been told by her partner that they should separate, Nicola returns from the off-licence to find him changed from the man she knew.

2. Unless by Carol Shields - 336 pages

The dazzling novel from Carol Shields, author of The Stone Diaries, winner of the Pulitzer prize, and Larry's Party, winner of the Orange prize. 'Breathtaking...a masterpiece.' Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail Reta Winters has a loving family, good friends, and growing success as a writer of light fiction. Then her eldest daughter suddenly withdraws from the world, abandoning university to sit on a street corner, wearing a sign that reads only 'goodness'. As Reta seeks the causes of her daughter's retreat, her enquiry turns into an unflinching, often very funny meditation on society and where we find meaning and hope. Unless is a dazzling and daring novel from the undisputed master of extraordinary fictions about so-called 'ordinary' lives.

3. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer - 288 pages

A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into bizarre new forms; a 'blind' old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis Jr, Jr. What they are looking for seems elusive - a truth hidden behind veils of time, language and the horrors of war. What they find turns all their worlds upside down.

4. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey - 528 pages

Set onboard an ocean liner travelling to Australia in 1864, this novel is both a love story and an historical tour-de-force that relates the developing romance between Oscar Hopkins, an Oxford seminarian, and Lucinda Leplastrier, a Sydney heiress with a fascination for glass. Australian writer Peter Carey is the author of a selection of short stories, "The Fat Man in History" and two novels, "Bliss" and "Illywhacker".

5. Helpless by Barbara Gowdy - 320 pages

Celia is the struggling single mother of an exceptionally, angelically beautiful child: nine-year-old Rachel. All too aware of the precarious balance of the life she has built for the two of them, she worries about her daughter's longing for the father she has never met. When Rachel disappears one summer night during a blackout, Celia is stricken with guilt and terror about what her choices might now mean for her daughter's fate. The media coverage of the abduction is tremendous, running nationwide. Closely monitoring events is Ron, an appliance repairman who lives in the neighbourhood. Though Rachel is a stranger to him, he convinces himself that she is his responsibility. His feelings for her are at once tender, misguided and chillingly possessive. Tapping into the fears that lie just beneath the surface of modern urban life, HELPLESS is a haunting and provocative story of heart-stopping suspense.

7. Empress Orchid by Anchee Min - 352 pages

To rescue her family from poverty and avoid marrying her slope-shouldered cousin, seventeen-year-old Orchid competes to be one of the Emperor's wives. When she is chosen as a lower-ranking concubine she enters the erotically charged and ritualised Forbidden City. But beneath its immaculate facade lie whispers of murders and ghosts, and the thousands of concubines will stoop to any lengths to bear the Emperor's son. Orchid trains herself in the art of pleasuring a man, bribes her way into the royal bed, and seduces the monarch, drawing the attention of dangerous foes. Little does she know that China will collapse around her, and that she will be its last Empress.

8. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn - 256 pages

A story which mixes tenderness, terror, suspense and dark comedy. It is told by Olympia Binewski, a bald albino hunchback dwarf and members of the American carnival family. Al and Lil, proprietors of Binewski's Fabulon, hit upon the idea of breeding their own freak show.

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

Kilgore Trout · Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 10:22 am Post subject:

Geek Love for me. A quick peek at some of the reviews on Amazon and you will see how much people rave about this book. It is strange how such a beautiful and tender book can come out of such a bizarre premise.
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2008 '1001 Challenge' Books: 9

Tigerlily · Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 10:27 am Post subject:

I'm going to have to think about this one. So many good choices.
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Reading: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
Reading Challenge 2009: 8
2008: 4
2007: 10

blueflower · Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:22 pm Post subject:

I've got three of these books but Geek Love has taken my eye - I think.

Tigerlily · Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 3:41 pm Post subject:

Oh no, another tie! Again, will start tie breaker polls tomorrow.

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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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