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Official Poll - June & July 2006 FICTION book POLL!
- Chris OConnor
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Official Poll - June & July 2006 FICTION book POLL!
Official Poll June & July 2006 FICTION book POLL!Please read these directions BEFORE you vote! How long will the poll stay open?This poll is opening on Wednesday, May 17th, 2006, and will remain open until Thursday, May 25th, 2006. This is a total of 7 full days. Order your book right after the poll closes and you should have it before the reading period begins on June 1st, 2006.Who can vote?All active members are invited and encouraged to vote and participate in our book selection process, but please follow these rules:Only vote if you have 10 or more posts on our forums. If you don't have at least 10 you should have no problem jumping into some discussion threads and meeting this rather relaxed criterion.Don't vote if you don't plan on reading and discussing the winning book. And please understand that only one fiction book can win, but we are "hoping" you will actively participate independent of which book wins the poll. You matter and we need every member to participate. How long is the June & July Fiction discussion period?Well, June is one month and July is another, so 1 + 1 = 2. So the answer is two months long. How do I vote?If you are an active member with 10 or more total posts AND you plan on participating in the discussion THEN you are permitted to cast a total of 3 votes. You can use your three votes however you see fit, which could mean assigning all three votes to just one of the book choices, or distributing the three points over the book choices according to your own interest level for each book. You should make a brief post to this thread telling everyone how you wish to distribute your three votes. Nothing further needs to be said, but you're welcome to be as verbose as you like. Just make it crystal clear how you are voting.It is inevitable that some people will either forget to cast all three votes or will not have read this entire post. They will simply vote on one book. If this happens I will be assigning all three of their votes to the one book they selected. You are permitted to change your vote during the voting period, but not after I close the poll. The poll is closed on the last day of the polling period as stated above.This thread can be used as an open discussion of the books on the poll. You're welcome to try to sell people on a particular book, or dissuade them from another. This is ENCOURAGED, so speak your mind and really sell us on your book choice.NOTE:As always, we will need a discussion leader that is willing to be very active in the reading and discussion of the winning book. If you are up to the task please let us all know in this thread.Please don't nominate yourself if you will not be active. Being active means checking the forum regularly and making posts quite often. It doesn't mean living in the forum and posting daily.Being a discussion leader does not entail being an authority on the subject matter or defending the author's position. You simply need to attempt to stimulate discussion. And here are our FICTION book choices for our June & July 2006 reading period. Please read about all three before casting your votes. Think hard about which book will be the most probable to stimulate quality discussion. May the best book win!Drum roll please... Edited by: Chris OConnor at: 5/17/06 11:01 pm
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Re: Official Poll - June & July 2006 FICTION book POLL!
The Pyramid by Ismail Kadare From Publishers WeeklyAlbanian 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. As the narrative closes, it leaps ahead centuries to display Timur the Lame (Tamerlane) erecting in central Asia a pyramid made of 70,000 skulls. Through this closing image, and the horrors that precede it, Kadare again proves himself a master of the political parable.From Library JournalIn ancient Egypt, Pharaoh Cheops declares that he does not want a pyramid built to house him after death, but when the terrified priests argue that building the pyramids is an important task that has always kept the populace occupied and hence compliant, he relents. Soon the construction of the grandest pyramid of them all obssesses the people, who are at first elated but soon crushed by the reign of terror that results, as suspected saboteurs are tortured and men die daily while putting in place the huge stones. In a refreshingly clear, bold style, Kadare (The Concert, LJ 10/1/94) ably depicts the misuse of power and the hollow results for all involved. An effective political fable from one of Albania's few novelists, now living in France.Suite Francaise by Irene NemirovskyFrom Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Celebrated in pre-WWII France for her bestselling fiction, the Jewish Russian-born Nemirovsky was shipped to Auschwitz in the summer of 1942, months after this long-lost masterwork was composed. Nemirovsky, a convert to Catholicism, began a planned five-novel cycle as Nazi forces overran northern France in 1940. This gripping "suite," collecting the first two unpolished but wondrously literary sections of a work cut short, have surfaced more than six decades after her death. The first, "Storm in June," chronicles the connecting lives of a disparate clutch of Parisians, among them a snobbish author, a venal banker, a noble priest shepherding churlish orphans, a foppish aesthete and a loving lower-class couple, all fleeing city comforts for the chaotic countryside, mere hours ahead of the advancing Germans. The second, "Dolce," set in 1941 in a farming village under German occupation, tells how peasant farmers, their pretty daughters and petit bourgeois collaborationists coexisted with their Nazi rulers. In a workbook entry penned just weeks before her arrest, Nemirovsky noted that her goal was to describe "daily life, the emotional life and especially the comedy it provides." This heroic work does just that, by focusing
- Chris OConnor
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Re: Official Poll - June & July 2006 FICTION book POLL!
We have 3 book choices as shown above. Again, please read the first post completely and then cast your votes.
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Re: Official Poll - June & July 2006 FICTION book POLL!
2 for "The Pyramid" and 1 for "The Time Traveller's Wife"."Suite Franchaise" looks like a good read, but I have a couple of reasons for avoiding it. One is that it's an incomplete work, and I think that could lead to discussion problems. The other is that I'm already reading a number of Holocaust-themed works, and I'd like to take a break before picking up another.
- Chris OConnor
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Re: Official Poll - June & July 2006 FICTION book POLL!
3 votes for the Time Traveller's WifeThis book just sounds like a fun read and one that will get us talking. An incomplete book will indeed lead to discussion problems, but maybe that isn't a bad thing.
Re: Official Poll - June & July 2006 FICTION book POLL!
pyramid all the way "But Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government."- Aldous Huxley
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Re: Official Poll - June & July 2006 FICTION book POLL!
I will read "Time Traveler" if it's selected but probably not either of the other two, so I have to put myself down as an "abstain". Also I'm not sure what my "active" status is these days, about half way through "ender".You buggers fart in your spacesuits! If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything. Daniel Dennett, 1984
- Chris OConnor
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Re: Official Poll - June & July 2006 FICTION book POLL!
Jeremy, if you'll read The Time Travellers's Wife is it wins, but not the other two, then you should be casting your 3 votes for that book.