UPDATE:We will be reading and discussing byThe March by E.L. Doctorow as our very first fiction book. This discussion period will be December and January.Please continue to help us pick a fiction book for February & March. We're obviously not in a hurry, so take your time. We should have this 2nd fiction book selected by the end of December.Chris

This is very hard for me brackets.Now, I tell you that I have no new 2006 books for you. But for fiction - these are some of mine:Try: Brideshead Revisited..... Evelyn Waughand download the ITV series - so good.For a good laugh: Kingsley Amis : Lucky Jim ( maybe you have to be English?) and his son: Martin: London Fields - white lacy knickers and a man who plays darts?????I have so many - but please , I need some books to read.Love all - but also, Dan Simmons is my SF American hero. I am very English . and btw hello Marj. You lurker you.

Kurt Vonnegut was suggested in the other forum for a Fiction nomination. having read the entire vonnegut line with exception of his most recent recently released non-fiction collection, i can whole heartedly endorse vonnegut's fiction as excellent. vonnegut is also a freethinker and proclaims himself a humainist in a few of his publications. i wonder; however, how good of a discussion could be generated by his books. i would recommend those books that are most fully routed in cultural and social issues: Mother Night and Jailbird. player piano was vonnegut's first book that very much develed into social issues, but to be frank, it was long and not too great. deadeye dick was also a suggestion which i will include. all of these books are great places to start for the first time vonnegut reader as they do not incorporate some of vonnegut's regular long running jokes and humor that is best enjoyed after getting to read a few vonnegut books. i consider Mother Night to be his best work and it receives the highest ranking on amazon from the vonnegut library. i am fairly positive you won't get an interview with this author, but who knows? without further ado, here are a few selections to consider:Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegutamazon didn't have much for a review, so here is one of my own written on a no longer used book review blog i created on live journal:">www.livejournal.com/community/thebookre ... d1Jailbird by Kurt VonnegutQuote:From the Inside FlapJailbird takes us into a fractured and comic, pure Vonnegut world of high crimes and misdemeanors in government. . .and in the heart. This wry tale follows bumbling bureaucrat Walter F. Starbuck from Harvard to the Nixon White House to the penitentiary as Watergate's least known co-conspirator. But the humor turns dark when Vonnegut shines his spotlight on the cold hearts and calculated greed of the mighty, giving a razor-sharp edge to an unforgettable portait of power and politics in our times.Deadeye Dick by KurtQuote:Rudy Waltz was just a child of 12 when his life changed irrevocably. On a whim, he fired a gun into the air, not knowing that the bullet would kill a pregnant housewife. Ostracized both by this and the fact that his father was once a benefactor of a destitute painter named Adolf Hitler, Rudy seeks to make sense of the world and the town of Midland City, Ohio by writing plays.Steve Honeywell, Resident Scholar Edited by: riverc0il at: 1/3/06 10:00 pm

We should wrap this up soon. I have yet to go over the suggestions in this thread, but I assume we have enough to create a poll soon. If anyone would like to make any additional suggestions please do so now.

Ok, no additional suggestions. I'll create the poll tonight. Thank you to all that contributed in this thread. All suggestions were considered and the following are the ones that will appear on the poll. They all qualify as bestsellers, and this is an important criterion for us as we attempt to attract new members to the community.Memories of My Melancholy Whores The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Never Let Me GoThe other suggestions were great, but we have to stick with the gameplan of only selecting bestsellers for a few quarters. We're trying to build our membership base. I'll create the poll now. Edited by: Chris OConnor  at: 1/9/06 10:42 pm