<p>I searched most of the suggested books. My list includes</p>
<p>Shine, Shine, Shine</p>
<p>The Blind Assassin</p>
<p>The Language of Flowers</p>
<p>The Art of Hearing Heartbeats</p>
<p>But, I’ll be flexible. One of the things I like about this book club is that it gets me reading books I might not have picked up on my own.</p>
<p>I think we need lots of input from others this time. We selected Cloud Atlas almost too easily - for us.</p>
<p>So far I lean toward Shine Shine Shine and I see BUandBC82 mentions The Language of Flowers. We’ve discussed reading that one before and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. I still haven’t read them and am interested.</p>
<p>It would be nice to find a book not already read by many but on their “I want to read that list.” That’s why I keep leaning toward finding a newer release this time around.</p>
<p>On Elaine Newton’s list:</p>
<p>The Chemistry of Tears
How It All Began</p>
<p>I’m just throwing out titles - though the two mentioned above from the Newton list sound good. I’m usually not a picky reader. (I do think more input would help this time. So far I think only four of us have chimed in re suggestions.)</p>
<p>I would have no objection at all to Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, but I seem to recall that when it was being considered before one of our regulars was opposed to it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree that the above titles look pretty good. Sometimes I wish I were not so picky…arrgh! Okay, now other people need to chime in.</p>
<p>BUBC has a book I’ve read on her list- The Language of Flowers, a sweet book, one I recommended to several people, who also enjoyed it, but there isn’t enough for discussion.</p>
<p>It’s nice to select a book that is conducive to discussion.</p>
<p>I would be happy to join this group. I have read Olive Kitteridge and liked it very much. A book I would recommend is Once Upon a River, by Bonnie Jo Campbell (2011):</p>
<p>“Bonnie Jo Campbell has created an unforgettable heroine in sixteen-year-old Margo Crane, a beauty whose unflinching gaze and uncanny ability with a rifle have not made her life any easier. After the violent death of her father, in which she is complicit, Margo takes to the Stark River in her boat, with only a few supplies and a biography of Annie Oakley, in search of her vanished mother. But the river, Margo’s childhood paradise, is a dangerous place for a young woman traveling alone, and she must be strong to survive, using her knowledge of the natural world and her ability to look unsparingly into the hearts of those around her. Her river odyssey through rural Michigan becomes a defining journey, one that leads her beyond self-preservation and to the decision of what price she is willing to pay for her choices.”</p>
<p>It is available on Kindle and in hardback and paperback. I didn’t see it on any of your past lists. Excuse me if you all have discussed it already.</p>
<p>^ Welcome, EmmyBet! Thank you for joining us and thanks, too, for the book suggestion.</p>
<p>I am compiling/editing a master list of possibilities for our next discussion (in December–we “meet” every other month). I’ll post it this evening.</p>
<p>I have A. S. Byatt’s Possession on my “to read” shelf, but I’m good with whatever people want to pick up. </p>
<p>Maybe we could add Possession to a list of <em>Love stories/Romances</em> for the month of love in February ;).</p>
<p>Okay, before the list, a little explanation:</p>
<p>I’ve removed The Round House from contention because, as both NJTheatreMOM and ignatius pointed out, the fact that the story revolves around a brutal rape might limit its appeal to CC book club members, particularly for a December read.</p>
<p>Also, in our longstanding tradition of eliminating choices that one or more readers really aren’t in the mood for, I’m removing London Train, Among Others, Gold, The Shoemaker’s Wife and *No Time Like the Present<a href=“that%20last%20was%20me—the%20only%208%20lukewarm%20reviews%20on%20Amazon%20scared%20me%20off”>/i</a>. I always appreciate our rejected suggestions, though—they often become great reads for me on our “off” month, so thank you for bringing them up.</p>
<p>EmmyBet and I have read Olive Kitteridge and I probably couldn’t work up enough enthusiasm to do it again (although it was a good book). So that’s out, too. And I’m eliminating The Language of Flowers and The Yellow Birds because of members’ opinions that they might not be the best books for discussion.</p>
<p>I’ve read Possession, but would read that again with you all in a heartbeat. I Ioved it, and it would be a rich book for discussion. But at 20 years old and widely read, Possession falls into the “modern classic” category, rather than the new release we were thinking about this time around. Also, it’s 576 pages and I think the general consensus was to choose something a little slimmer for the busy holiday season. So I’m going to reluctantly remove it, but let’s keep it on the back burner for another time, ala sylvan8798’s suggestion.</p>
<p>And on behalf of the “let’s-keep-it-under-500-pages” as well as the “let’s-read-something-recent” categories, Sea of Poppies and The Blind Assassin are out, too (for December, anyway).</p>
<p>So…here is the pared down list (still a whopping 11 choices):</p>
<p>The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (406 pp)
Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer (320 pp)
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philllip Sendker (336 pp)
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday (352 pp)
The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey (240 pp)
How it All Began by Penelope Lively (240 pp)
Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell (352 pp)
Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (352 pp)
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon (480 pp)
*Where’d You Go, Bernadette<a href=“336%20pp”>/i</a>
The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan (288 pp) </p>
<p>Can you each rank your top three?</p>
<p>With so many choices, that still might not give us a winner, but it would at least allow me to cut down the list a bit more. Or who knows? Maybe we’ll all be surprisingly in agreement on a single choice.</p>
<p>Not ready to pick a top three but have to say that I like sylvan’s idea: strongly consider Possession for February.</p>
<p>It’s so nice to see a new person posting! Waving at Emmybet… :)</p>
<p>After much consideration, I’d say my top three are:</p>
<ol>
<li>Shine Shine Shine</li>
<li>The Chemistry of Tears</li>
<li>The Glass Room</li>
</ol>
<p>Although I don’t have strong objections to any of the books, the lowest on my list would be *The Art of Hearing Heartbeats<a href=“its%20story%20sounds%20improbable%20and%20romantic;%20one%20description%20calls%20it” title=“lush” {eek!}, another reviewer describes the story as “sad”>/i</a>; *Beautiful Ruins<a href=“I’m%20not%20strongly%20allergic%20to%20beach%20reads%20or%20chick%20lit,%20but%20I%20might%20need%20an%20antihistamine%20to%20get%20through%20this%20one”>/i</a>; *Where’d You Go, Bernadette<a href=“sounds%20like%20it%20has%20its%20attractions,%20but%20I’m%20not%20too%20big%20on%20comic%20novels,%20and%20I%20didn’t%20find%20the%20sample%20pages%20on%20Amazon%20very%20appealing”>/i</a>; *Telegraph Avenue<a href=“I%20might%20be%20too%20much%20of%20an%20old%20fuddy-duddy%20to%20relate%20to%20the%20material,%20plus%20the%20New%20York%20Times%20reviewer%20states%20that%20this%20long%20novel%20is%20overly%20dense,%20and%20larded%20with%20digressions%20and%20pileups%20of%20pop%20references…all%20of%20which%20makes%20me%20leery”>/i</a>.</p>
<p>Ordinarily I wouldn’t spell everything out regarding the titles I find the least attractive, but with so many choices I wanted to present my reasoning about some of them, after looking over the choices pretty carefully.</p>
<p>^ was holding back because I am new to this thread.
But given the level of sophisticated analysis of CA on this thread, I have a hard time visualizing this group enjoying Heartbeats. I read it in the original German and then in English with my RL book club, it’s pretty schmaltzy.</p>
<p>Glad you didn’t hold back, CJaneRead! That was very helpful. Tell us more…what would be your top three picks? What would be yours, Emmybet? Other people?</p>
<p>Mine would be:
<p>I’m a huge Penelope Lively and Peter Carey fan (Oscar & Lucinda, his first book to make it big, is a particularly marvelous story), so I’ll be reading the first two anyway.</p>
<p>I agree with NJTheatreMOM about Telegraph Avenue. Chabon is a terrific writer (I loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay), but his prose is very dense and I don’t think I’ll be reading this one, which is probably best suited to younger people or those who know San Francisco well.</p>
<p>Thanks Booklady.</p>
<p>CJaneRead (love your name, by the way), “holding back” is not a characteristic of this group, so chime in at any time. 
With two strikes against Heartbeats and Telegraph Avenue, I’m taking them off the list. Also removing Beautiful Ruins ‘cause I don’t want NJTheatreMOM to O.D. on Claritin. Additional editing may follow—just waiting for some more feedback. Down to 8:</p>
<p>The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (406 pp)
Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer (320 pp)
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday (352 pp)
The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey (240 pp)
How it All Began by Penelope Lively (240 pp)
Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell (352 pp)
Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (336 pp)
The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan (288 pp)</p>
<p>I figure we’ll cull more titles so these are in alphabetical order for now. I’ll rank later but I would pretty much be content with any of these:</p>
<p>*The Chemistry of Tears</p>
<p>How It All Began</p>
<p>Salmon Fishing in the Yemen</p>
<p>Shine Shine Shine</p>
<p>Where’d You Go, Bernadette*</p>
<p>I’m less enthused about The Glass Room and have reservations about Once Upon a River, though I would read either if chosen. </p>
<p>I have no interest in The Lifeboat whatsoever.</p>
<p>Down goes The Lifeboat ;), now we have 7:</p>
<p>The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (406 pp)
Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer (320 pp)
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday (352 pp)
The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey (240 pp)
How it All Began by Penelope Lively (240 pp)
Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell (352 pp)
Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (336 pp)</p>
<p>I would put:</p>
<p>How it All Began
Shine Shine Shine
The Glass Room</p>
<p>as my top three.</p>
<p>Mary13, you are doing such a great job, even after all these years, with this online book club. Great job whittling down these possibilties.
Thanks to all of you for suggesting such gems, I’m excitedly filling up my kindle with samples. </p>
<p>I’m totally flexible, but I know you need a ranking. </p>
<p>leaning towards
<p>“A stirring new novel that almost won this year’s Booker Prize"</p>
<p>2) How It All Began </p>
<p>“An elegant, witty work of fiction, deceptively simple, emotionally and intellectually penetrating, the kind of novel that brings a plot to satisfying closure but whose questions linger long afterward in the reader’s mind.”</p>
<p>(The New York Times Book Review )</p>
<p>3)Shine, shine, shine
4 star Amazon Goodread 3.65 </p>
<p>But, really looking forward to Bernadette, and Possession for Feb looks great. </p>
<p>FYI- NY Times today :
**Bending Time, Bending Minds **</p>
<p>‘Cloud Atlas,’ as Rendered by Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/movies/cloud-atlas-as-rendered-by-tom-tykwer-and-the-wachowskis.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/movies/cloud-atlas-as-rendered-by-tom-tykwer-and-the-wachowskis.html</a>
<p>^That’s quite an article about the Cloud Atlas film, SJCM.</p>
<p>Hugh Grant as a slobbering cannibal…part of the action taking place on another planet (!)…David Mitchell having a cameo where he witnesses the execution of one of his characters (must be poor Sonmi, I guess; other characters in the book were murdered, whereas it’s implied that she was executed – but it’s maybe kinda tasteless to show it…)…Tom Hanks’ first comment on the script was “bodacious”…</p>
<p>It’s interesting how much they had to struggle for funding. I hope the movie pays off for everybody involved. Kudos to Natalie Portman for having read the book and telling Lana Wachowski about it in the first place.</p>
<p>Some percentage of the people who see this movie are going to read the book and appreciate it properly; to my mind, that is the greatest potential value of the film.</p>
<p>I like </p>
<p>The Chemistry of Tears
The Glass Room
Shine, Shine, Shine</p>