Suggest fiction books for October & November

What would you like to read and discuss for our next fiction book? Please make quality suggestions here in this thread AND give feedback on the suggestions other people make. Feedback is essential and extremely valuable. If nobody other than the person that suggests a book seems interested in it we won't put it on a poll. So please review ALL suggestions and leave comments on books you would probably enjoy or not enjoy. Thank you!

I would like to suggest two books that I recently found to be interesting

The Namesake
www.amazon.com/Namesake-Novel-Jhumpa-Lahiri/dp/0618485228/ref=tag_dpp_lp_edpp_ttl_in

Amazon.com Review
Any talk of The Namesake--Jhumpa Lahiri's follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, Interpreter of Maladies--must begin with a name: Gogol Ganguli. Born to an Indian academic and his wife, Gogol is afflicted from birth with a name that is neither Indian nor American nor even really a first name at all. He is given the name by his father who, before he came to America to study at MIT, was almost killed in a train wreck in India. Rescuers caught sight of the volume of Nikolai Gogol's short stories that he held, and hauled him from the train. Ashoke gives his American-born son the name as a kind of placeholder, and the awkward thing sticks.



and my second choice is:

Tender Morsels
www.amazon.com/Tender-Morsels-Margo-Lanagan/dp/0375848118/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250428375&sr=1-1

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In her extraordinary and often dark first novel, award-winning story writer Lanagan (Red Spikes) creates two worlds: the first a preindustrial village that might have sprung from a Brueghel canvas, a place of victims and victimizers; the second a personal heaven granted to Liga Longfield, who has survived her father's molestations and a gang rape but, with one baby and pregnant again, cannot risk any further pain. As she raises her two daughters, placid Branza and fiery Urdda, she discovers that her universe is permeable: a dwarf or littlee man, in Lanagan's characteristically knotted parlance, slips in and out of her world in search of treasure; and a good-hearted youth also enters, magically transformed into a bear in the process. A less kind man-bear follows, and then a teenage Urdda, avid for a richer life with the vivid people, figures out how to pass through the border, too. Writing in thick, clotted prose that holds the reader to a slow pace, Lanagan explores the savage and the gentlest sides of human nature, and how they coexist. With suggestions of bestiality and sodomy, the novel demands maturity—but the challenging text will attract only an ambitious audience anyway. Ages 14–up. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

"Tender Morsels" sounds really good, if not for the faint of heart. I think it's something I would be interested in reading though the fact that it seems only available in hardback puts me off a little bit. However, overall, I think it's a sound suggestion.

On the otherhad, "The Namesake" doesn't really do anything for me. I'm just not really that interested in it.

My suggestion is:

Haroun and the Sea of Stories

This book is a fun, fast read with a lot of meaning behind it. It comes off like a fairytale, but there are many questions about language and its usage left to be answered by the characters of the book.

Publishers Weekly
Following the unprecedented controversy generated by The Satanic Verses , Rushdie offers as eloquent a defense of art as any Renaissance treatise. Supposedly begun as a bedtime story for Rushdie's son, Haroun concerns a supremely talented storyteller named Rashid whose wife is lured away by the same saturnine neighbor who poisons Rashid's son Haroun's thoughts. ``What's the use of stories that aren't even true?'' Haroun demands, parroting the neighbor and thus unintentionally paralyzing Rashid's imagination. The clocks freeze: time literally stops when the ability to narrate its passing is lost. Repentant, Haroun quests through a fantastic realm in order to restore his father's gift for storytelling. Saturated with the hyperreal color of such classic fantasies as the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland , Rushdie's fabulous landscape operates by P2C2Es (Processes Too Complicated To Explain), features a court where all the attendant Pages are numbered, and unfurls a riotous display of verbal pranks (one defiant character chants ``You can chop suey, but / You can't chop me!''; elsewhere, from another character: `` `Gogogol,' he gurgled. `` `Kafkafka,' he coughed''). But although the pyrotechnics here are entertaining in and of themselves, the irresistible force of the novel rests in Rushdie's wholehearted embrace of the fable--its form as well as its significance. It's almost as if Rushdie has invented a new form, the meta-fable. Rather than retreating under the famous death threats, Rushdie reiterates the importance of literature, stressing not just the good of stories ``that aren't even true'' but persuading us that these stories convey the truth. As Haroun realizes, ``He knew what he knew: that the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could easily be real.'' (Jan.)

I agree with Kysondra. Tender Morsels sounds interesting but The Namesake doesn't seem that interesting to me. Haroun and the Sea of Stories also sounds interesting.

I personally like Fever 1793 by Laurie Anderson.
http://www.amazon.com/Fever-1793-Laurie ... 0689848919

Description:

During the summer of 1793, Mattie Cook lives above the family coffee shop with her widowed mother and grandfather. Mattie spends her days avoiding chores and making plans to turn the family business into the finest Philadelphia has ever seen. But then the fever breaks out.

Disease sweeps the streets, destroying everything in its path and turning Mattie's world upside down. At her feverish mother's insistence, Mattie flees the city with her grandfather. But she soon discovers that the sickness is everywhere, and Mattie must learn quickly how to survive in a city turned frantic with disease. (http://books.simonandschuster.com/9780689848919)

Thank you for helping with picking our next fiction book. I'm not sure how we can get more people involved in this process. I guess it's summer and people are busy, but we sure need more suggestions and participation in the book selection process.

Just a thought... There's been a lot of discussion going on in the short stories section lately. Maybe we should pick a collection, and then people could discuss the ones that interested them... That might get us more voters and entries for the book for next period.

Haroun and the sea of stories looks interesting. I very much enjoyed the 1001 Arabian Nights as a child and this story seems reminiscent of that. I would certainly participate in a book discussion about it.

I like the short story collection idea. Geo mentioned a good one. Also there is a thread about this with a few suggesstions.

I too like the short story idea so let's quickly select a book of short stories. A poll isn't necessary if we can all have an open discussion right here.

Please provide the title of the book of short stories you suggest and also give us a link to where we can read more about the book on Amazon.com. Ideally we should pick our next fiction book in the next week, but this doesn't have to happen.

"Wild Nights"
Joyce Carol Oats

http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Nights-Joyce ... 0912348135


New York Times review

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/books ... .html?_r=1

I just bought this on Amazon, but I don't know if I'll participate in a discussion so my input should be ignored!

The book I mentioned on another thread is Haunted Women: The Best Supernatural Tales by American Women, edited by Alfred Bendixen. It would be cool to discuss this book. The book is out of print, but can be found on abebooks.com for a couple of bucks. Probably many of these stories can be found online as well and we can just select a few and discuss any time.

http://www.amazon.com/Haunted-Women-Sup ... 0804461015

1. The Amber Gods by Harriet Prescott Spofford

2. The True Story of Guenever by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

3. The Ghost in the Cap'n Brown House by Harriet Beecher Stowe

4. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

5. The Story of the Day by Grace King

6. The Little Room by Madelene Yale Wynne

7. Her Letters by Kate Chopin

8. The Foreigner by Sarah Orne Jewett

9. Luella Miller by Mary Wilkins Freeman

10. The Lost Ghost by Mary Wilkins Freeman

11. The Bell in the Fog by Gertrude Atherton

12. The Fullness of Life by Edith Wharton

13. Pomegranite Seed by Edith Wharton

"The Best Supernatural Tales by American Women"

Love this one. Thanks Geo!

I just checked Amazon, there are many for sale. I just bought one for $6.39 including shipping. My kinda deal! I'm going to read it no matter what.

I think this is a great idea. We've been having a lot of fun discussing creepers on another thread. We could set the thread up story by story. People can pop in where ever they happen to be in the book.

I like this one because of the diversity of the authors. A book of short stories by one author can get tiresome. I also like the supernatural genre, perfect for the fall.

Only problem, it is an out of print book. Chris will have to chime in with his comments on this one.

Smoke and Mirrors - Neil Gaiman

SF Site Review

I found this book to be amazing and wide-ranging. However, I'm also interested in geo's suggestion if everyone can get a copy. I looked up Wild Nights, and it seemed like it might be a long read. Is it?

The stories in "Wild Nights" are longer. There are only five of them. About 40 pages per story.

I vote for "Smoke and Mirrors", but then I'm partial to Gaiman. I haven't read that anthology yet and it looks like a good read from the reviews. I wasn't able to find the out of print book through my library so I will go with the one I can order for free.