pick TWO books you would like to read and/or talk about This poll is closed. |
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The Fate of Rome by Harper, Kyle | 7 | 13.73% | |
Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. | 5 | 9.80% | |
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry | 5 | 9.80% | |
he Road Back by Erich Maria Remarque | 3 | 5.88% | |
Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell | 2 | 3.92% | |
Clausewitz, On War | 7 | 13.73% | |
The Fragile Empire by Ben Judah | 2 | 3.92% | |
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño | 5 | 9.80% | |
The Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz | 4 | 7.84% | |
Kalpa Imperial by Angélica Gorodischer (Trans. Le Guin) | 11 | 21.57% | |
Total: | 21 votes |
Come one come all and VOTE for your choice for the Book of the Month for the next two months. You can vote for more than one choice, so pick all the ones you feel you might want to read. We're doing things a little different this month; the two top vote getters will be the books for the next two months. After this I'll try to start picking books a month out to give people time to get the book before the month starts. If there's a book not listed you think would be a good pick, make a post at the bottom of the thread! 1) The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (The Princeton History of the Ancient World) Harper, Kyle A Festivus Miracle posted:I've been reading The Fate of Rome and I have to say, hearing the Fall of Rome narrative from the point of view of climate and disease is quite interesting, even if the author I think does kinda make some weird leaps of logic at times. I do particularly like the Fall of the Western Roman Empire framed more in the context of "The Romans could not have stemmed the tide of humanity fleeing the megadrought on the Eurasian steppe, and also sincerely hosed everything up at the Battle of Adrianople" than the more common context of a Roman system that was completely unresponsive and teetering at the end of the 4th century. 2) Night Flight, published as Vol de Nuit in 1931, was the second novel by French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. quote:The novel is set in Argentina at the outset of commercial aviation. Rivière is the station chief of an airline that is the first to pioneer night flights, disciplining his employees to focus all they do on ensuring that the mail gets through punctually each night. The novel's episodic structure is built about his work at the Buenos Aires office and the final hours of the pilot Fabien on the Patagonia run. Fabien's plane is caught in a cyclone, runs out of fuel and loses radio contact, while Rivière tries all he can to locate the aircraft. At stake is the future of the night mail-run to Europe. Once the two other flights from Chile and Paraguay get through, Rivière has to allow the trans-Atlantic flight to Paris to depart without the missing mail, resigning himself to Fabien's loss. 3) Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry quote:Under the Volcano is a novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry (1909–1957) published in 1947. The novel tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac, on the Day of the Dead in November 1939. The book takes its name from the two volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, that overshadow Quauhnahuac and the characters. Under the Volcano was Lowry's second and last complete novel. 4) The Road Back (German: Der Weg zurück) is a novel by German author Erich Maria Remarque, commonly regarded as a sequel to his 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front. quote:It was first serialized in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung between December 1930 and January 1931, and published in book form in April 1931. 5) Ring of Bright Water quote:Ring of Bright Water is a book by Gavin Maxwell about his life in a remote house in coastal Scotland where he kept several wild otters as pets.[1][2] First published in 1960, it became a best seller and is considered a literary masterpiece,[3] eventually selling over two million copies.[4] A fictionalised film of the same name was made from it[4] and released in 1969.[3] 6) clausewitz on war quote:Vom Kriege (German pronunciation: [fɔm ˈkʁiːɡə]) is a book on war and military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830, and published posthumously by his wife Marie von Brühl in 1832.[1] It has been translated into English several times as On War. On War is an unfinished work. Clausewitz had set about revising his accumulated manuscripts in 1827, but did not live to finish the task. His wife edited his collected works and published them between 1832 and 1835.[2] 7) the fragile empire by ben judah quote:From Kaliningrad on the Baltic to the Russian Far East, journalist Ben Judah has traveled throughout Russia and the former Soviet republics, conducting extensive interviews with President Vladimir Putin’s friends, foes, and colleagues, government officials, business tycoons, mobsters, and ordinary Russian citizens. Fragile Empire is the fruit of Judah’s thorough research: A probing assessment of Putin’s rise to power and what it has meant for Russia and her people. 8) The Savage Detectives quote:Amazon Significant Seven, May 2007: The late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño has been called the García Marquez of his generation, but his novel The Savage Detectives is a lot closer to Y Tu Mamá También than it is to One Hundred Years of Solitude. Hilarious and sexy, meandering and melancholy, full of inside jokes about Latin American literati that you don't have to understand to enjoy, The Savage Detectives is a companionable and complicated road trip through Mexico City, Barcelona, Israel, Liberia, and finally the desert of northern Mexico. It's the first of Bolaño's two giant masterpieces to be translated into English (the second, 2666, is due out next year), and you can see how he's influenced an era. --Tom Nissley 9) Magpie Murders quote:Susan Ryeland is the editor of the mystery author Alan Conway, who is known for his well-received series of novels centring upon the detective Atticus Pünd and for being very difficult to work with. Fans are eagerly awaiting Conway's latest novel, rumoured to be the last in the series, but when Susan reads through the manuscript she discovers that it is unfinished. When she travels to Conway's home to retrieve the final chapters, she discovers that he is dead. In order to discover the whereabouts of the final chapters Susan begins an investigation of her own and finds that the novel may have been based on true events, causing someone to murder Conway. 10) Kalpa Imperial quote:Ursula K. Le Guin chose to translate this novel which was on the New York Times Summer Reading list and winner of the Prix Imaginales, Más Allá, Poblet and Sigfrido Radaelli awards. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Mar 24, 2022 |
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# ? Mar 24, 2022 01:57 |
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# ? May 5, 2024 05:01 |
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I've been meaning to read Kalpa Imperial and this is a great excuse to do so. Anything Le Guin thought was worth that much time and effort to translate and promote has to be remarkable.
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# ? Mar 25, 2022 01:32 |
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Under the Volcano
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# ? Mar 26, 2022 21:32 |
It'll be Kalpa Imperial for April. Since nothing else cracked 10 votes I'll do another poll for May.
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# ? Apr 1, 2022 07:06 |
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Awesome, that gives me an excuse to re-read it! Looking forward to picking up more on the second read.
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# ? Apr 1, 2022 13:57 |