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2nd Quarter 2006 ~ FICTION Book Suggestions!

Assist us in selecting our upcoming FICTION book for group discussion in this forum. A minimum of 5 posts is required to participate here!
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Chris OConnor

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2nd Quarter 2006 ~ FICTION Book Suggestions!

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2nd Quarter 2006 ~ FICTION Book Suggestions!Please use this thread for suggesting FICTION books for 2nd quarter of 2006 (April, May, & June)All fiction suggestions need to be RECENT BESTSELLERS of some sort.We're trying to make our fiction selections appealing to a broad audience to help pull in new members, so please stick with the game plan and put some effort into your suggestions.Try using the Pulitzer Prize list for good book ideas. You'll see a timeline across the top. Scroll to the right and click on recent years. Scroll through the list of winners and look for fiction books you think would be great to read and discuss.Or try the Amazon.com Bestsellers page. On the left you'll see a list of links. Since we're picking a FICTION book, you'll want to stick with either "Literature & Fiction" or "Science Fiction and Fantasy." If you can locate some bestselling fiction on some of those other links please do.And then there is the New York Times Bestsellers list. Just make sure you're looking in the fiction and not nonfiction section. Important1. Provide the title, author, and a copied and pasted review. Also provide a link to Amazon where we can read more. 2. Do not just suggest books that are already on your shelf. We are looking for books that will help BookTalk pull in more members and result in incredible discussions. So think about what will help our community.3. And PLEASE comment on other people's suggestions. This is probably the most important thing you can do. Don't make a suggestion and then vanish. Be ACTIVE in this thread.Let's hear some good suggestions! Edited by: Chris OConnor  at: 12/19/05 7:17 pm
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Re: 2nd Quarter 2006 ~ FICTION Book Suggestions!

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I have no suggestions for 2006! I am about to become famous for zilch! However, these are a few of my favourites:How about: Evelyn Waugh : Brideshead Revisited. Also, down load the ITV drama - it was so well done. (And, yes lets talk about the religious stuff shall we??) plzz.Next: Kingsley Amis: read anything/ David Lodge/ anything - such fun - but maybe, very English.OK - lets go for son of Kingsley - Martin Amis - London Fields - white knickers and darts????wonderful stuff. and hello Marj - I dared it.
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suescrafts
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Re: 2nd Quarter 2006 ~ FICTION Book Suggestions!

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A suggestion that I have is The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. The link to Amazon and a review are below:www.amazon.com/gp/product...s&v=glanceFrom Publishers WeeklyDuring his long career, Roth has shown himself a master at creating fictional doppelg
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Re: 2nd Quarter 2006 ~ FICTION Book Suggestions!

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Spent some time idly browsing in a book store today -- it's a mood I get into sometimes -- and I came across a few titles that may be worth considering for next quarter's reading.Liquidation, by Irme KerteszHere is an excerpt from the Washington Post Review given on Amazon:Kertesz's novel begins after the fall of communism with the introduction of Kingbitter, an editor at a failing Hungarian publishing house. He is wrestling with the last manuscript of his friend B., who killed himself 10 years earlier, in 1990. Oddly, B.'s manuscript, a play with the same title as the book in which it appears, recreates the dialogue among his friends that follows his suicide. Immediately a reader is thrown into a vortex where reality and imagination intermingle. The vortex gets denser as Kingbitter searches for a lost novel that he is certain B. must have been working on.Reviewed by Melvin Jules BukietKertesz won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2002, so he's something of a contemporary literatti. It's a short novel, but it promises to be dense and to offer a great deal to discuss.Next up...The Pyramid, by Ismail KadareAnother short novel by an author that many North American readers probably don't know all that intimately. I've run across this book in several bookstores, and I'm intrigued by its concept. There's an analysis of modern themes implied, from what I understand, but at the same time we could use it as a jumping off point for discussing ancient Egypt.From Publishers Weekly:Albanian novelist Kadare (The Concert), living in political exile in France since 1991, spins cogent tales about the temptations and evils of totalitarian bureaucracy. His latest carries a universal message. Set in ancient Egypt-where Pharaoh Cheops oversees the construction of his tomb, the highest, most majestic pyramid ever, to be built by tens of thousands of his brainwashed subjects-the novel's hypnotically Kafkaesque narrative exposes the alienating, destructive effects of investing unquestioned power in a ruler, a state or a religion. The massive pyramid devours Egypt's resources and energies. Thousands die as it rises ever higher, and Cheops, depicted as a power-mad lunatic who craves adulation, periodically unleashes waves of arrests and torture of those falsely accused of sabotaging the project. Analogies to Stalin's paranoia, bloody purges and other terrors spring to mind, but the story takes on a broader meaning, demonstrating how a state or a ruling elite can mold public opinion so that its citizens willingly act against their own best interests.
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Another possibility, Dana Spinotti's new book "Eat the Document" received a stellar review in this N.Y. Times review. Here's a clip from the review.The prospect of reinventing oneself tabula rasa has always been one of America's foundation myths. Whether it was the earliest colonists leaving Europe to begin new lives in the New World or F. Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby trying to inhabit his own platonic conception of himself, Americans have long embraced the possibility of remaking their lives: moving West with the frontier to start over or moving East to the big city to erase their provincial roots; shucking off familial legacies and changing their names, their looks, their histories.In her stunning new novel, Dana Spiotta tackles this perennial theme with ingenuity, inventiveness and elan. Her heroine is a Vietnam-era radical who has gone underground after a bombing plot that's gone awry
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Re: 2nd Quarter 2006 ~ FICTION Book Suggestions!

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These look like great suggestions Mad. Thanks.
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Re: 2nd Quarter 2006 ~ FICTION Book Suggestions!

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John Shors, the author of "Beneath a Marble Sky," has again offered to do a live chat with us.This book is quickly rising up on the ranking list and currently sits at #61,026.
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Re: 2nd Quarter 2006 ~ FICTION Book Suggestions!

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Ender's Game by Orson Scott CardThere isn't much discussion to be had from this one, though it's my favoritest book of all time. The true gem for discussion is Ender's Shadow, which is written from the perspective of another character and follows the same plot as Ender's Game. To get there though, you must read Ender's Game first. If this book doesn't get any votes, read it anyway on your own time, it's worth itNew York TimesIntense is the word for Ender's Game. Aliens have attacked Earth twice and almost destroyed the human species. To make sure humans win the next encounter, the world government has taken to breeding military geniuses -- and then training them in the arts of war... The early training, not surprisingly, takes the form of 'games'... Ender Wiggin is a genius among geniuses; he wins all the games... He is smart enough to know that time is running out. But is he smart enough to save the planet?
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Excellent choice Interbane! So many people have now suggested this book to me that I would really be excited if it were chosen as one of our selections.
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Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

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Reminds me of a charming little book titled "Third", which I bought at a book sale. It was obviously a vanity publication, and could have used a little editing; but it made me think about the whole vanity press idea... So many books that nobody will ever read; just by the strangest of chance I happened to read this one.Due to overpopulation, having more than two children was extremely rare, and a third child was scorned. This one overcomes the adversity of anti-third prejudice to become earth's greatest military leader, who finally vanquishes the alien hordes... only to realize too late that he has destroyed a beautiful civilization, with whom peace could easily have been made if it weren't in the political interests of Earth's rulers to have an enemy. If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything. Daniel Dennett, 1984
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