College Students! discussion

For August we are going to have a category 1 anything goes book and our category 2 is "Non-Fiction".

-Only one nomination per person and you must choose one category. If all 12 spots in one category are not filled by July 15th, you can nominate a book for the other category. ***Since I am way late, you can nominate for both categories now.***

-Please specify which category you are nominating for. (Cat 1 or Cat 2) Your post should look something like this:

Category 1: "This Book" by An Author

- Please make sure you have the book and author in your nomination

- Add a blurb of some sort to let us know what the book will be like.

-We will be taking the first 12 nominations for each category or we will close nominations on July 20th if not all categories are filled. ***Nomination will close August 1st.***

-Voting will begin soon after nominations are done and will be open for a week or so.

- If your book wins, please let us know whether or not you would like to lead the book discussion. It is not required by any means that you lead it.

I lost the month of July somewhere. Sorry folks! Nominations for August through the 1st, and then voting for a week. I just posted the July read threads, so they will stay as active through the month of August too. Will try to be better, promise!

Category 1:

The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon

Category 1:

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon.

If you haven't heard of this book, or recognize the cover, I'd be very surprised. I had heard about this book and series forever, always good things, but was intimidated by it's length on its own, and then the length of the series. It was a lot to get into, but, in my opinion, so worth it! I highly recommend audio book format but I'm sure an format would do.

My short synopsis: A woman from the 1940s gets transported back in time to the late 1700s in the Scottish highlands. Love and tons of adventures follow. It's surprising and it has a FANTASTIC villain!

Category 2:

The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine by Somaly Mam

You'd probably expect from the title this is going to be a powerful book, and you'd be right. This story is told vibrantly and emotionally. Somaly Mam has a life I doubt few of us could imagine, and she's lived to do great things and tell about it. Very worthwhile!

Category 2:

How Music Works by David Byrne

"How Music Works is David Byrne’s remarkable and buoyant celebration of a subject he has spent a lifetime thinking about. In it he explores how profoundly music is shaped by its time and place, and he explains how the advent of recording technology in the twentieth century forever changed our relationship to playing, performing, and listening to music.

Touching on the joy, the physics, and even the business of making music, How Music Works is a brainy, irresistible adventure and an impassioned argument about music’s liberating, life-affirming power."

Category 1:

Body Surfing by Anita Shreve

At the age of 29, Sydney has already been once divorced and once widowed. Trying to regain her footing, she has answered an ad to tutor the teenage daughter of a well-to-do couple as they spend a sultry summer in their oceanfront New Hampshire cottage. But when the Edwards's two grown sons, Ben and Jeff, arrive at the beach house, Sydney finds herself caught up in a destructive web of old tensions and bitter divisions. As the brothers vie for her affections, the fragile existence Sydney has rebuilt is threatened. With the subtle wit, lyrical language, and brilliant insight into the human heart that has led her to be called "an author at one with her metier" (Miami Herald), Shreve weaves a novel about marriage, family, and the supreme courage it takes to love.

Category 2:

The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science by Douglas Starr

A riveting true crime story that vividly recounts the birth of modern forensics.

At the end of the nineteenth century, serial murderer Joseph Vacher, known and feared as “The Killer of Little Shepherds,” terrorized the French countryside. He eluded authorities for years—until he ran up against prosecutor Emile Fourquet and Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne, the era’s most renowned criminologist. The two men—intelligent and bold—typified the Belle Époque, a period of immense scientific achievement and fascination with science’s promise to reveal the secrets of the human condition.

With high drama and stunning detail, Douglas Starr revisits Vacher’s infamous crime wave, interweaving the story of how Lacassagne and his colleagues were developing forensic science as we know it. We see one of the earliest uses of criminal profiling, as Fourquet painstakingly collects eyewitness accounts and constructs a map of Vacher’s crimes. We follow the tense and exciting events leading to the murderer’s arrest. And we witness the twists and turns of the trial, celebrated in its day. In an attempt to disprove Vacher’s defense by reason of insanity, Fourquet recruits Lacassagne, who in the previous decades had revolutionized criminal science by refining the use of blood-spatter evidence, systematizing the autopsy, and doing groundbreaking research in psychology. Lacassagne’s efforts lead to a gripping courtroom denouement.

The Killer of Little Shepherds is an important contribution to the history of criminal justice, impressively researched and thrillingly told.

Category 1 - Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

According to The Nice and
Accurate Prophecies of Agnes
Nutter, Witch (the world's
only completely accurate
book of prophecies, written in
1655, before she exploded),
the world will end on a
Saturday. Next Saturday, in
fact. Just before dinner.
So the armies of Good and
Evil are amassing, Atlantis is
rising, frogs are falling,
tempers are flaring.
Everything appears to be
going according to Divine
Plan. Except a somewhat
fussy angel and a fast-living
demon—both of whom have
lived amongst Earth's mortals
since The Beginning and have
grown rather fond of the
lifestyle—are not actually
looking forward to the
coming Rapture.
And someone seems to have
misplaced the Antichrist . . .

Category 2 - The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

The Polysyllabic Spree is the
first title in the Believer Book
series, which collects essays
by and interviews with some
of our favorite authors—
George Saunders, Zadie
Smith, Michel Houellebecq,
Janet Malcolm, Jim Shepard,
and Haruki Murakami, to
name a few. In his monthly
column "Stuff I've Been
Reading", Nick Hornby lists
the books he's purchased and
the books he's read that
month - they almost never
overlap - and briefly discusses
the books he's actually read.
The Polysyllabic Spree
includes selected passages
from the novels, biographies,
collections of poetry, and
comics discussed in the
column.

Category 2:

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

I heard about this book after listening to an episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class and was very intrigued.

The Professor and the Madman, masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary -- and literary history. The compilation of the OED began in 1857, it was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.

Category 1:
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan's last thirty years, from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding, that puts the violence, fear, hope and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives, the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness, are inextricable from the history playing out around them.
Propelled by the same storytelling instinct that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once a remarkable chronicle of three decades of Afghan history and a deeply moving account of family and friendship. It is a striking, heartwrenching novel of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love, a stunning accomplishment.

Category 1: "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov

Probably doesn't need to be explained, and maybe a lot of you have already read it, but...

Awe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love—love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

Michelle wrote: "Category 2:

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

I heard about this book after listening to an episode of S..."

I've been wanting to read this too, Michelle. Good choice.

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman is a great book. I read it years ago when it first came out, but every now and then, I re-read it. Combining the substantial talents of both these authors, it's amusing, entertaining, and deep. Beautiful work.

Tami wrote: "I lost the month of July somewhere. Sorry folks! Nominations for August through the 1st, and then voting for a week. I just posted the July read threads, so they will stay as active through the mon..."

Tami, where are you?

Sorry, I was kidnapped by my sister and friend and was in Vegas Friday until last night. Polls will be up shortly!

Polls are up!

Tami wrote: "Sorry, I was kidnapped by my sister and friend and was in Vegas Friday until last night. Polls will be up shortly!"

Vegas, huh? Had fun?

Michelle wrote: "Category 2:

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

I heard about this book after listening to an episode of S..."

I want to read both The Polysyllabic Spree and The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. I hope one of these get the winning vote. Currently, I'm shipping the one I nominated, but I'll back yours if it is in a tie with another book at the final stage.

Awaiting the results. ;D

Silver wrote: "Tami wrote: "Sorry, I was kidnapped by my sister and friend and was in Vegas Friday until last night. Polls will be up shortly!"

Vegas, huh? Had fun?"

Yes, it was fun. A bit different from our normal Vegas fare. My friend Jen wanted to see some hot naked men, so my gay guy friends took us to a gay bar. There were hot mostly naked men but the whole experience was quite eye opening. :)

Okay. ;)

Have you nominated books for September yet?

Silver wrote: "Michelle wrote: "Category 2:

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

I heard about this book after listening t..."

Agreed! :)

Silver wrote: "Okay. ;)

Have you nominated books for September yet?"

September nominations are at this thread: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

I will post results for August Polls soon.