Below you will see the four fiction nominations for our next fiction discussion.
The rules to cast votes are simple. Each member, who has made at least 25 posts in the forums of BookTalk is eligible to vote. Each eligible member has three votes that can be applied to the nominated books. All three votes can be casted for one particular book, or, the three votes can be split between books.
Please take a look at the four nominated novels of fiction, and cast your votes. The novel with the most votes, will be our next fiction selection for discussion during the months of September and October.
Blindness
Jose Saramago
http://www.amazon.com/Blindness-Harvest ... 0156007754
Blindness is in many ways a horrific novel, detailing as it does the total breakdown in society that follows upon this most unnatural disaster. Saramago takes his characters to the very edge of humanity and then pushes them over the precipice. His people learn to live in inexpressible filth, they commit acts of both unspeakable violence and amazing generosity that would have been unimaginable to them before the tragedy. The very structure of society itself alters to suit the circumstances as once-civilized, urban dwellers become ragged nomads traveling by touch from building to building in search of food. The devil is in the details, and Saramago has imagined for us in all its devastation a hell where those who went blind in the streets can never find their homes again, where people are reduced to eating chickens raw and packs of dogs roam the excrement-covered sidewalks scavenging from corpses.
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
Philip Pullman
http://www.amazon.com/Good-Jesus-Scound ... 1847678254
Quote:
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is the remarkable new piece of fiction from best-selling and famously atheistic author Philip Pullman. By challenging the events of the gospels, Pullman puts forward his own compelling and plausible version of the life of Jesus, and in so doing, does what all great books do: makes the reader ask questions.
In Pullman’s own words, “The story I tell comes out of the tension within the dual nature of Jesus Christ, but what I do with it is my responsibility alone. Parts of it read like a novel, parts like history, and parts like a fairy tale; I wanted it to be like that because it is, among other things, a story about how stories become stories.”
Written with unstinting authority, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is a pithy, erudite, subtle, and powerful book by a controversial and beloved author. It is a text to be read and reread, studied and unpacked, much like the Good Book itself.
The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood
http://www.amazon.com/Handmaids-Tale-Ev ... 471&sr=1-1
"In a startling departure from her previous novels ( Lady Oracle , Surfacing ), respected Canadian poet and novelist Atwood presents here a fable of the near future. In the Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, far-right Schlafly/Falwell-type ideals have been carried to extremes in the monotheocratic government. The resulting society is a feminist's nightmare: women are strictly controlled, unable to have jobs or money and assigned to various classes: the chaste, childless Wives; the housekeeping Marthas; and the reproductive Handmaids, who turn their offspring over to the "morally fit" Wives. The tale is told by Offred (read: "of Fred"), a Handmaid who recalls the past and tells how the chilling society came to be. "
The Tin Drum
Gunter Grass
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/produc ... 55&s=books
"When Günter Grass published The Tin Drum in 1959, it was as if German literature had been granted a new beginning after decades of linguistic and moral destruction. Within the pages of this, his first novel, Grass re-created the lost world from which his creativity sprang: Danzig, his home town, as he remembered it from the years of his infancy before the catastrophe of war. Here he comes to grips with the enormous task of reviewing contemporary history by recalling the disavowed and the forgotten: the victims, losers, and lies that people wanted to forget because they had once believed in them. The unforgettable Oskar Matzerath is an intellectual whose critical approach is childishness, a one-man carnival, dadaism in action in everyday German provincial life just when this small world becomes involved in the sanity of the great world surrounding it. It is not too audacious to assume that The Tin Drum will become one of the enduring literary works of the twentieth century."-- The Swedish Academy, awarding Günter Grass the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1999
The Tin Drum uses savage comedy and a stiff dose of magical realism to capture not only the madness of war, but also the black cancer at the heart of humanity that allows such degradations to occur. Grass wields his humor like a knife--yes, he'll make you laugh, but he'll make you bleed, as well. There have been many novels written about World War II, but only a handful can truly be called great; The Tin Drum, without a doubt, is one. --Alix Wilber
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Sep./Oct. fiction discussion poll now open for votes
- wilde
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- froglipz
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Re: Sep./Oct. fiction discussion poll now open for votes
my three votes are 1 each for Blindness, Handmaid and Tin Drum
~froglipz~
"I'm not insane, my mother had me tested"
Si vis pacem, para bellum: If you wish for peace, prepare for war.
"I'm not insane, my mother had me tested"
Si vis pacem, para bellum: If you wish for peace, prepare for war.
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- oblivion
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- Likes the book better than the movie
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Re: Sep./Oct. fiction discussion poll now open for votes
2 votes for the Good Man Jesus and 1 for Blindness
Gods and spirits are parasitic--Pascal Boyer
Religion is the only force in the world that lets a person have his prejudice or hatred and feel good about it --S C Hitchcock
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. --André Gide
Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. --Julian Barnes
Religion is the only force in the world that lets a person have his prejudice or hatred and feel good about it --S C Hitchcock
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. --André Gide
Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. --Julian Barnes
- NY152
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Re: Sep./Oct. fiction discussion poll now open for votes
I think I'm going to have to go with The Handmaid's Tale. It does look interesting, and my library has it! LOL! The Tin Drum looks like it's going to be a while to read and to try and understand it fully. The Handmaid's Tale has all three votes from me!
- Chris OConnor
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Re: Sep./Oct. fiction discussion poll now open for votes
Wow, 11 people in a row on our Facebook page made positive comments about The Handmaid's Tale. http://www.facebook.com/booktalkfans
- froglipz
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Re: Sep./Oct. fiction discussion poll now open for votes
Wow! They sure did, and by my count they are leading right now...
~froglipz~
"I'm not insane, my mother had me tested"
Si vis pacem, para bellum: If you wish for peace, prepare for war.
"I'm not insane, my mother had me tested"
Si vis pacem, para bellum: If you wish for peace, prepare for war.