No vetoes! People in my other book club seem to like Kobo Abe a lot, so I am curious about Woman in the Dunes.
I’ve already read To Kill a Mockingbird and 100 Years of Solitude twice, so maybe something else would be better, but they are both wonderful books.
^ No vetoes?! Who are you and what have you done with NJTheatreMOM?!
No! NJTM, you always shorten the list. What’s up with you? Well, since someone has to veto, I guess I’ll start:
Woman in the Dunes
To Kill a Mockingbird
100 Years of Solitude
I’m always happy to read Anne Tyler since I’m in Baltimore.
The Penelope Lively duet should be the recent memoir and a novel, not t*Moon Tiger. * It’s fine, but the whole point is to be introduced to her novels!
Maybe Making it Up, which I think I might have missed. It’s described like this on her website: " MAKING IT UP, was published in July 2005. This work of fiction is a form of anti-memoir, in which she imagines some of the alternative outcomes, had she gone down a different road at crucial points in her life. A ship travelling to Cape Town during the second world war, an archeological dig in the nineteen seventies, Cairo in the early fifties - these are some of the roads not taken, through which winds the thread of what really happened."
Either that or Family Album or The Photograph both of which I liked.
I’ve tried to read 100 Years of Solitude multiple times, but have never gotten past page 50. I’m not sure even you guys could get me further! (Not quite a veto but close.)
I do sorta veto The Scarlet Pimpernel which I think is delightful, but far too light to have anything to say about. Maybe you need to read it with Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety. (Which I haven’t read - did read Wolf Hall and was greatly annoyed by the lack of quotation marks.)
LOL, sorry about the lack of vetoes, but I honestly had no objection to any of the books. Well, I did sort of veto The Mists of Avalon!
I’m going to remove The Buried Giant because I went ahead and read The New Yorker review… (sorry ignatius 
)
mathmom, I like your idea of pairing The Scarlet Pimpernel with something else—you’re right, it’s too thin as a standalone—but A Place of Greater Safety is 912 pages. (However, it does have quotation marks!) I’ll remove it, unless others have ideas about another potential pair-up, such as from this list: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/10/top-10-french-revolution-novels-jonathan-grimwood (We’d have quite a swashbuckling duet with Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche.)
Duet: Dancing Fish and Ammonites: A Memoir and a novel TBD by Penelope Lively (maybe Making It Up, Family Album or The Photograph)
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
True Grit by Charles Portis
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
^ Anything else that should come off (or go on?)
Here are my top 3 choices from the list. I’m good with any of them.
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Penelope Lively Duet
That’s an interesting French Revolution list, Mary. I would suggest either the Du Maurier (it sounds good!) or the Conrad.
I wasn’t necessarily going to mention this otherwise, but I recently rediscovered Joseph Conrad. Six weeks or so ago, I read his his short novel The Secret Agent for my challenge for my other book club (I had not read any Conrad since high school and wanted to revisit him). I was surprised by how much I liked it. In fact, I liked it so much so that I turned right around and plunged into the long, acclaimed Nostromo, which turned out to be an utterly amazing book. Then I re-read Heart of Darkness.
Conrad writes so vividly, and he tells such good stories, with such great psychological insights. His book The Duel is only 100 pages, and even if we don’t read it for the book club, I think I am going to seek it out and read it anyway.
To compensate for adding another couple of books to the list, I suggest vetoing the following:
Wuthering Heights. I read it as a teen and didn’t like it very much.
Love in the Time of Cholera. Since a lot of people don’t like *100 Years of Solitude/i, maybe folks would have trouble with this one too?
The only South American magical realism type book that I’ve read is Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits - can’t remember anything about it except that I liked it.
I actually could get into reading Conrad sometime. We paired Heart of Darknesswith Moby Dick when I was in high school. I’m pretty sure I never got around to reading the last chapter and have spent the last forty+ years feeling guilty about it! I didn’t dislike the book, just didn’t feel invested in it at the time.
I was fascinated by the French Revolution in high school and read a bunch of novels set in that time period.
This is fun. 
Revised list below (doesn’t affect Caraid’s choices–all of which I’d be happy with):
Duet: Dancing Fish and Ammonites: A Memoir and a novel TBD by Penelope Lively (maybe Making It Up, Family Album or The Photograph)
Duet: The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy and The Duel by Joseph Conrad
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
True Grit by Charles Portis
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
I planned to remove The Buried Giant today. Talk about mixed reviews: ones that extol its every word and ones that walk the path of The New Yorker. Anyway … too iffy to chance it.
Re my choices: For what it’s worth, I think A Spool of Blue Thread would draw in the most lurkers. Reminder: non-linear. For what it’s worth again, True Grit is a short quick read and would work well paired with another book. I dropped it low on the list for that reason alone.
So not much of a narrowing down here:
For me:
I’ve read Love in the Time of Cholera and 100 Years of Solitude, so I’d probably not choose to read them again. I’ve already listened to A Spool of Blue Thread, but I’d be willing to discuss if that was the selection. From what’s presented, my preferences would be ordered:
I have a few books in progress, as usual, lol. I’m reading North and South. Although parts seem overwritten, I find myself falling in love with Elizabeth Gaskell I’m also reading * The Forever Marriage* by Ann Bauer, and listening to * Hausfrau * byJill Alexander Essbaum . Neither of these would I recommend for anything but guilty pleasure. The latter is not fit for most ears, imo! My stack of library books is surprising lean on the fiction side right now. I have a number of poetry collections by Philip Levine and Billy Collins, and some volumes of Thomas Merton and Kathleen Norris. I was feeling contemplative, with Lent and all, I guess. I wouldn’t mind reading a classic, and I have the Steinbeck here, waiting for an excuse to plunge into
I’m reading Ha’penny - I think thanks to Ignatius on the other book thread. Thanks for the heads up!
Next up will be C.S. Harris’s latest book in her Sebastian St. Cyr series. Regency era mysteries with romance (now ten books in mostly resolved romance!). Great fun. I’m looking forward to something less depressing than the followup to Ha’penny.
mathmom: I haven’t read Ha’penny, though it sounds of interest. I got burned on Jo Walton with her Among Others which I really didn’t like. Maybe I should give her another shot.
I’ve wanted to read C.S. Harris for a long while now but just haven’t picked up the first one. Other books keep jumping in front.
I just started the first book (The Game of Kings) in The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett. I read the first chapter and then reread it, realizing I needed to work a bit at the reading of it but totally not minding. And since we’ve been speaking of duels: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/02/a-breathtaking-duel-in-dorothy-dunnetts-the-game-of-kings
Other things I’ve read lately:
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler wins by a nose.
The Penelope Lively duet was a very close second, with East of Eden third, followed by an honorable mention for the French Revolution duet. I would like to re-visit all of those possibilities for our August read!
In the meantime, I’ll start a New Thread for Blue Thread.
Many thanks to Mary et al.
Looking forward to discussing A Spool of Blue Thread.