Penelope wrote:

I am also about to read - The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden...
published in 1958 and is also about being on holiday, in France. A group of childrens' experiences.......

Oh! You're suggesting so many books that sound so interesting that I have heard of but haven't read, Mary Lupin, and I know I must read them... but I have read The Greengage Summer at least twice, maybe three times, and it is one of the really wonderful girl-coming-of-age stories that there is. It's like an old movie from the middle of the 20th century where the social experience is so close you can recognize evoked emotional and relational elements to the experience for which there are no words, yet different enough that it teaches you all kinds of interesting things about yourself and the generation or so just before you. I hope we all get to read most of these things and discuss them somewhere, sometime regardless of what is picked.

We need feedback on other peoples suggestions just as much as need suggestions.

This thread is for selecting the books that will appear on the next fiction poll. That poll will go up within a week or two and will be for picking our June & July 2009 fiction book.

Was that font too large?

So far, I like MaryLupin's suggestion to read a book by Leslie Marmon Silko. I will make two of my own suggestions.

1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by G. Marquez

Since college I've had people telling me to read this book.
From Amazon.com --

The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women--the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar--who struggle to remain grounded even as their menfolk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then One Hundred Years of Solitude does the trick.

2. Loot and Other Stories by Nadine Gordimer

From Booklist
Since Gordimer won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, her great novels, such as The House Gun (1998) and The Pickup (2001), have continued to open up the contemporary scene--in her native South Africa and elsewhere--with passionate insight and astonishing storytelling. But many of the short stories in this collection, her first in 12 years, are more situations than fully developed fiction. "Generation Gap" is a hilarious scenario of middle-aged kids in a flap when their elderly father leaves their mother for a young woman. In "Diamond Mine," a teen has her first sexual experience with a soldier in the backseat of the car while her parents in front drone on about the scenery. The longest story, "Mission Statement," about a dedicated woman sent to Africa by an international aid agency, is worth the book, both a brilliant lampoon of the bureaucratic empowerment babble ("projects of policy, infrastructure, communications, trade, treaties . . .") and a haunting drama of modern lovers who can't get free of a past "where violence lies shallowly buried." That's what Gordimer always does best: the sense of history in the bedroom now. Hazel Rochman

I thought I would throw one out for consideration. I am not sure if we are following a certain theme, but here goes.

What is the What, author, Dave Eggers, 2006

What is the What is the epic novel based on the life of Valentino Aschak Deng who, along with thousands of other children, the so called Lost Boys, was forced to leave his villiage in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom. When he finally is resettled in the United States, he finds a life full of promise, but also heartache and myriad new challenges. Moving, suspenseful, and unexpectedly funny, What is the What is an astonishing novel that illumantes the lives of millions through on extraordinary man.
Book jacket

"A moving, frightening, improbably beautiful book."
Lev Grossmann, Time

"A testament to the triumph of hope over experience, human resilience over tragedy and disaster."
Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"An absolute class. . . .Compelling, important, and vital to the understanding of the politics and emotional consequences of oppression"
Jonathan Durbin, People

A sweet andsometimes very funny story of one boy's coming of age. Strange, beautiful and unforgettable."
John Freeman, San Francisco Chronicle

This was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.


http://www.amazon.com/What-Vintage-Dave ... 0307385906


Suzanne

Hardscratch
Anne Cameron

Nominated by MaryLupin

Looks good, full of quirky characters, edgey. I love books that give a different representation of life than I am accustomed. I like to feel my reaction, learn a little about myself. Lesbian circus clown, love it.

I think I'll read this one no matter what.

Suzanne wrote:Hardscratch by Anne Cameron - Looks good, full of quirky characters, edgey. I love books that give a different representation of life than I am accustomed. I like to feel my reaction, learn a little about myself. Lesbian circus clown, love it.

I think I'll read this one no matter what.

I think you'll like it. I read it not long ago. It speaks to what it means to act out of love, of the very many varieties of family. The book is one of the most humane, yet down-to-earth stories I have read in a long time. And most of all, it tells how to be a person - to survive the tragedies we can inflict upon each other and come out changed, yes, but whole.

For whatever reason fiction is not exciting enough of our members to create a new poll. There are simply too many suggestions and almost no feedback on the suggestions. The whole point of this suggestion process is to suggest book and then discuss the suggestions to the point where we have a small handful of book choices for the poll.

Thrillwriter suggested her own book and nobody else commented.

Grim suggested a book and nobody commented.

MaryLupin suggested 10 or more books and only 1 other member gave positive feedback on any of the individual books. So literally only 2 people said they would read any one particular book. We cannot create a poll with these sorts of numbers.

I am going to lock this thread and we can start over. I'll create some rules to make this process a little more meaningful.