What FICTION book would you like to read and talk about in January and February of 2012?

TIMELINE
This book suggestion thread is going up on November 28th and will be closed on or around December 8th. So there is not a lot of time for fiction book suggestions. Jump right in and help us with this fiction book selection process. Please don't wait for other people to get started.

Once we have enough suggestions a poll thread will go up on or around December 9th. This poll will stay up for 7 - 10 days. Around December 19th we should have a fiction book selected as our next fiction book for group discussion.

IMPORTANT
Please only make posts in this thread if you are an active member with 25 or more posts on the BookTalk.org forums AND you intend to actually participate in the next fiction book discussion.

AUTHORS & PUBLISHERS
If you're an author, publisher or simply a newer member eager to tell us about a book do NOT do it in this thread. You should create a NEW thread and share your book suggestion there. This thread is for selecting our next FICTION book for group discussion and not a place for advertising books. We do not consider book suggestions for our group discussion books from brand new members, authors or publishers. We welcome such suggestions in this FORUM, just not in this THREAD.

25 FORUM POSTS
If you have 25 or more forum posts AND you intend to actually read and participate in the book discussion please feel free to suggest a couple fiction books here. Give us the title and author's name and ideally either a link to where we can read reviews or just post a review or book description right here.

FEEDBACK IS VITAL
We need feedback on ALL books suggested or we'll assume books that didn't receive feedback are not liked by anyone other than the person that suggested them. Please make your book suggestion and then go through all of the other suggestions and evaluate them. Would they make for a good discussion? State your opinion openly. Please don't be shy. If you like a book say so. If you think a particular suggestion is boring, too long, or just not your cup of tea please say so. Again, feedback is extremely important. For us to have successful book discussions we have to select books that a lot of people are excited to read and discuss. Your feedback is vital to the integrity of our book selection process so please offer it.

So what would you like to read and discuss in January and February?

Saramago is timeless and brilliant, and this is his last work before his recent death. He returns to a consistent theme: wrestling with gods and loving humanity...being humane in an inhuman world...alluring tragic humor and profound philosophical insight.

Cain by Jose Saramago
http://www.amazon.com/Cain-Jose-Saramago/dp/0547419899

Amazon Best Books of the Month, October 2011: In his final slim novel, the late José Saramago gives a cheeky modernist update to a timeworn biblical tale. After killing his brother Abel in an exasperated rage, Cain makes a deal with a CEO-like God and escapes with little more than a donkey and a few snacks, doomed to nomadic immortality. As he wanders through time and space, the handsome itinerant interferes with the dealings of a familiar cast of characters--Noah, Moses, Isaac--forever altering the course of legend along the way. Deeply flawed and all too human, despite the eternal life granted him, Cain also struggles openly with the idea of faith in the face of an equally flawed God. By turns philosophical and hilarious, Cain shows off the scope of Saramago’s talent and makes a fitting coda for a superlative writing life. --Mia Lipman

Jose Saramago Goes Back to Genesis by Robert Pinsky

nytimes.com/2011/10/23/books/review/cai ... wanted=all

I nominated Cain last month! I think I might just wait & vote instead of nominating something. ;P We'll see.

wilde wrote:I think I might just wait & vote instead of nominating something.

Why not suggest a book this time?

Well, I might end up rooting for Cain. ;P But I'll nominate a book I just got in the mail the other day. I plan on starting it over winter/Christmas/whatever break, so the timing is good. It's a Stephen King book, but from what I understand it's a bit of a departure from his usual horror stories.



11/22/63 by Stephen King. Amazon Link

Description(from book): ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963, THREE SHOTSRANG OUT IN DALLAS, PRESIDENTKENNEDY DIED, AND THE WORLD CHANGED.WHAT IF YOU COULD CHANGE IT BACK?
In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King—who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer—takes readers on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.

It begins with Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away—a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than fifty years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer. Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life—like Harry’s, like America’s in 1963—turning on a dime. Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in a different world of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there’s Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading eventually, of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore. Time-travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying.

Wilde, now I see what you mean. I didn't notice that Dissident Heart had just suggested "Cain." I thought you were saying that because you suggested a book the last time we called for suggestions you didn't think you should suggest the same book this round. I'll try to pay attention more. LOL

I love Geraldine Brooks, so I will suggest "People of the Book." It's one of the best books I have read in probably the last 10 years. Another plus, it has been out for a few years and has been published in many languages, so it should be available to most of our non-US friends. It's a book about a book - how can a book-lover not be intrigued?

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, January 2008: One of the earliest Jewish religious volumes to be illuminated with images, the Sarajevo Haggadah survived centuries of purges and wars thanks to people of all faiths who risked their lives to safeguard it. Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March, has turned the intriguing but sparely detailed history of this precious volume into an emotionally rich, thrilling fictionalization that retraces its turbulent journey. In the hands of Hanna Heath, an impassioned rare-book expert restoring the manuscript in 1996 Sarajevo, it yields clues to its guardians and whereabouts: an insect wing, a wine stain, salt crystals, and a white hair. While readers experience crucial moments in the book's history through a series of fascinating, fleshed-out short stories, Hanna pursues its secrets scientifically, and finds that some interests will still risk everything in the name of protecting this treasure. A complex love story, thrilling mystery, vivid history lesson, and celebration of the enduring power of ideas, People of the Book will surely be hailed as one of the best of 2008. --Mari Malcolm

Amazon link

I've recently enjoyed The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman, but think it may be very similar to Cain, which I also think sounds interesting

This is a story. In this ingenious and spell-binding retelling of the life of Jesus, Philip Pullman revisits the most influential story ever told. Charged with mystery, compassion and enormous power, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ throws fresh light on who Jesus was and asks the reader questions that will continue to resonate long after the final page is turned. For, above all, this book is about how stories become stories.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jesus-Scoundrel ... 787&sr=8-1
I also recently read Me and Emma by Elizabeth Flock
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Me-Emma-ebook/d ... 133&sr=1-1
From critically acclaimed author Elizabeth Flock comes the unforgettable story of young Carrie Parker and her sister Emma. Narrated with the simplicity and unabashed honesty of a child s perspective, Me & Emma is a vivid portrayal of the heartbreaking loss of innocence, an indomitable spirit and incredible courage a story that will resonate with readers of all ages and experiences. Reminiscent of, and equal to, Alice Sebold s The Lovely Bones, Me & Emma is a story which will stay with readers forever. In many ways, Carrie Parker is like any other eight-year-old playing make believe, dreading school, dreaming of faraway places. But even her naively hopeful mind can t shut out the terrible realities of home or help her to protect her younger sister, Emma. As the big sister, Carrie is determined to do anything to keep Emma safe from a life of neglect and abuse at the hands of their drunken stepfather, Richard abuse their mother can t seem to see, let alone stop. After the sisters plans to run away from their impoverished North Carolina home unravel, Carrie s world soon takes a shocking turn with devastating results. In one shattering moment in the Parker sisters lives, a startling act of violence ultimately reveals a truth that leaves everyone reeling. By turns poignant, disarming and bittersweet, Me & Emma is the story of an endearingly precocious child and her determined fight to put the pieces of her fractured childhood back together.
Although it's not as 'dense' as the Allende we are currently reading, it's always nice to have a change.

We have a total of 5 books suggested but only one book received positive feedback from more than one person. And that book is Cain, suggested by Dissident Heart.

At this point we have 3 members expressing an interest in Cain:

• Dissident Heart
• Wilde
• heledd

Shall we just announce Cain as our January & February 2012 fiction book? I'd really love to get a fiction book announced so I have time to advertise the book and people have time to order and receive it before the book discussion period starts in January.

Dissident Heart, would you be so kind as to lead this discussion?

I think I have a solution that will make everyone happy and will result in everyone being able to vote and participate in the book selection process no matter how new or how few of forum posts. I'll say more soon.