Nov17 Avaland looks for a special kind of NUDGE

That's right, you create the box and I immediately want to think outside of it!

This is NOT YOUR USUAL NUDGE, so, you must read the rules first:-)



14 books presented from TBR piles and shelves all over the house (I know you want to start nudging, but please breathe into a paper bag for a while longer). Clearly, a spectacular pile of interesting books. I have read some other titles by a few of these authors but that shouldn't matter in the nudge

HERE are the RULES:
1. You can't have read the book!!!!!!!
2. You can only nudge based on the book blurb/review which I will produce below. Do not use the phrase, "Based on other books by that author..." I want you to imagine these authors are all new to you. I want you to nudge the book that most intrigues you. I apologize that not all the blurbs are "equal'.

MOVING UPWARD FROM THE BOTTOM:

City of Glass by Paul Auster (graphic novel)
From Publishers Weekly
Karasik and Mazzucchelli's 1994 comics adaptation of Auster's existentialist mystery novel, reprinted here with an introduction by Art Spiegelman, has been a cult classic for years. The Comics Journal named it one of the 100 best comics of the century. Miraculously, it deepens the darkness and power of its source. Auster's novel (about a novelist named Quinn who's mistaken for a detective named Paul Auster and loses his mind and identity in the course of a meaningless case) zooms around in metafictional spirals, but it doesn't have a lot of visual content. In fact, it's mostly about the breakdown of the idea of representation and the widening chasm between signifier and signified. So the artists, perversely and brilliantly, play fast and loose with the text. Mazzucchelli draws everything in a bluntly sketched, bold-lined style, and having set up a suitably film noir mood at the beginning, he substitutes literal depictions of what's happening for symbolic or iconic images wherever possible. One character's monologue about the loss of meaning in his speech is drawn as a long zoom down his throat, followed by Charon arising from a void, a cave drawing, a series of holes and symbols of muteness and finally a broken marionette at the bottom of a well. This reflected, shattered Glass introduces a whole new set of resonances to Auster's story, about the things images can and can't represent when language fails.

Innocent Erendira and other stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
From HarperCollins: This collection of fiction, representing some of García Márquez's earlier work, includes eleven short stories and a novella, Innocent Eréndira, in which a young girl who dreams of freedom cannot escape the reach of her vicious and avaricious grandmother.

Ray in Reverse by Daniel Wallace
From Publishers Weekly
Wallace follows his inventive debut novel, Big Fish, with another ingenious tragicomedy about a father and son, death and life, storytelling and reality. Beginning when a dead Ray Williams arrives in Heaven, the novel unfolds as the deceased proceeds to tell his life story backwards. As dodgy and shiftless in the afterlife as he was on Earth, Ray finds himself in Heaven's popular Last Words discussion group, where, for dramatic effect, he lies about his final utterances. A series of flashbacks reveals Ray's defining moments, including his real last words and what they meant, in a funny, poignant narrative that moves with the clarity of a fable and the complexity of modern psychology. Ray spent his life hidingAfrom the demands of marriage and fatherhood; from his fears of sexual ambiguityAand each chapter riffs on his signature confusion about reality. Ray builds a tree house for his 10-year-old son, James, then usurps it, using it as a getaway from his wife and life, drinking and dreaming about his girlfriend. Elsewhere, Ray walks through his life like a ghost, although it is 1982 and he's alive. Often in the wrong place at the wrong time, Ray can be a meddler, as when he chases bluebirds in the yard of the attractive widow next door or finds himself accidentally in the middle of another couple's messy divorce. Consistently, scenes of Ray's everyday life turn both farcical and insightful. When Ray writes a letter to an ex-girlfriend, he's honest, then heartfelt, then confused, then ridiculous, and then he starts over again. Wallace's stylistic tour-de-force, bolstered by the richness of his family portraits, humor and appreciation of ordinary people, demonstrates again extraordinary originality, craftsmanship and charm.

STANDBY FOR ALL THE BOOK BLURBS BEFORE NUDGING...

Enchanted Night by Steven Millhauser
From Publishers Weekly
Compared to his ambitious, Pulitzer Prize-winning Martin Dressler, Millhauser's new novella may seem slight, but it has a resonance and fairy tale allure that belie its slim page count. Set on a sultry summer night when an almost-full moon hovers over Southern Connecticut, the book follows a handful of small-town characters who yearn for anonymity, recognition, love or escape. Laura Engstrom, 14, seeks a solitary release from the deep restlessness that makes "her bones itch." Haverstraw, 39, lives with his mother while he works on a novel and despairs of ever achieving anything with his life. Janet Manning, 20, longs for the appearance of a "heartbreaker" she met on the beach that afternoon. A drunken romantic, William Cooper, 28, gazes into storefront displays, hoping for love and a lucky break. An old woman who lives alone yearns for company. He gracefully intertwines these lives and others with magical elementsAa mannequin that comes alive, a chorus of "night voices," a silent visit from a moon goddessAto create a trance world suffused with luminescence and longing, where each character verges on the brink of fulfillment or collapse. Millhauser sketches each person's plight in a few skillful lines and repeats gestures and thoughts so their variations resound on many levels. A set of abandoned dolls, for example, awaken and pantomime a sorrowful romance that echoes Janet's desire for her young lover, Haverstraw's long-standing friendship with a friend's mother and Coop's abstracted love for the mannequin. Only a scattering of facile nursery-rhyme type of songs echo hollowly in Millhauser's elegant, penetrating tale.

The Coquette by Hannah W. Foster
From Amazon.com
Review
Of the many cautionary novels written at the end of the eighteenth century which describe the seduction and betrayal of a beautiful young woman, The Coquette is one of the most interesting for twentieth-century readers. Eliza Wharton is based on an actual person, and her story is told through a series of letters which gives the book stylistic complexity. But it is the character of Eliza Wharton herself that distinguishes this book. Eliza is no ingenuous sixteen-year-old; she is past adolescence, has opinions, and wants more from her life than the narrow path that has been allotted to her. She agrees to an engagement she does not want because "both nature and education had instilled into my mind an implicit obedience to the will and desires of my parents," but also because "I saw, from our first acquaintance, his declining health; and expected, that the event should prove as it has." After her fiance's death, she rejects a second potential husband because he bores her, and becomes caught up in the flattery of the dashing Major Sanford as much for the sense of adventure as in hopes of matrimony. Her death was the required literary ending of her time, but Eliza Wharton's dynamic, frustrated personality and the questions she raises about women's place in society make this both a cautionary tale and a critique of the world that made them necessary.

Now That You're Back by A. L. Kennedy
From rbooks.com.uk
Tender, precise, comic and chilling by turn, the stories in A L Kennedy's new collection confirm her reputation as one of the most exciting new writers to have appeared in the past decade. Exposing and exploring the sinuous undercurrents of violence, anguish and love, she examines the nature of the individual, both in isolation and society, as characters define and deny their chosen identities. While showing us the unlikeliness of intimacy and the impossibility of communication, Kennedy also reveals the subversive liberation of impotence, the humour of discomfort as human beings chafe together, the crazed claustrophobia of the family and the wildly funny results of an eccentricity unleashed.

Murambi, The Book of Bones by Boubacar Boris Diop
From the back of the book:
In April of 1994, nearly a million Rwandans were killed in what would prove to be one of the swiftest, most terrifying killing sprees of the 20th century. In "Murambi, The Book of Bones", Boubacar Boris Diop comes face to face with the chilling horror and overwhelming sadness of the tragedy. Now, the power of Diop's acclaimed novel is available to English-speaking readers through Fiona Mc Laughlin's crisp translation. This novel recounts the story of a Rwandan history teacher, Cornelius Uvimana, who was living and working in Djibouti at the time of the massacre. He returns to Rwanda to try to comprehend the death of his family and to write a play about the events that took place there. As the novel unfolds, Cornelius begins to understand that it is only our humanity that will save us, and that as a writer, he must bear witness to the atrocities of the genocide. From the novel: 'If only by the way people are walking, you can see that tension is mounting by the minute. I can feel it almost physically. Everyone is running or at least hurrying about. I meet more and more passersby who seem to be walking around in circles. There seems to be another light in their eyes. I think of the fathers who have to face the anguished eyes of their children and who can't tell them anything. For them, the country has become an immense trap in the space of just a few hours. Death is on the prowl. They can't even dream of defending themselves. Everything has been meticulously prepared for a long time: the administration, the army, and the militia are going to combine forces to kill, if possible, every last one of them'.

STILL MORE COMING . . .

The Well by Elizabeth Jolley
From Publishers Weekly
The suspense in this chilling novel by the awesomely talented Australian writer ( Miss Peabody's Inheritance is ignited in the very first line, when Hester Harper's ancient father asks her what she has brought him from the store. She has in fact brought the pale orphan Kathy, for herself, to cherish and teach, to add a grace note to the dirge of life on their South Australian farm. Rigid Hester wears a special boot on her congenitally twisted foot, and Kathy stirs in her the forbidden feelings roused long ago by her German governess. Now she expresses them in lavish gifts to Kathy, in days of wrenching closeness while the two bake, preserve and sew together. When her father dies, Hester's prodigality forces her to sell her property and rent a cottage in a remote corner of the vast acreage that had once been hers. She agrees reluctantly to take Kathy to a dance, lets her drive home and is panic-stricken when their pickup truck strikes something large and human, which they prod with the truck's fender into the well. Events then take an even more surprisingand grislyturn, and the ending is left deliberately ambiguous. The lump never leaves the reader's throat; suspicion and horror multiply; here is a book that will not let you go.

On the Overgrown Path by David Herter
From the Publisher
En route from Bratislava to Prague in the deceptive spring of the 1920s, Leos Janacek, famed opera composer, ethnographer, and amateur psychologist, is stranded in an obscure and enigmatic mountain village, lured from his train by a song of blood.

Here, Janacek must become a detective far from home. Attempting to solve a bizarre murder in which he himself is suspect - and whose perpetrator might be a wild animal, a jealous lover, or Nature unhinged - he brings to bear his singular skills of observation and poetic insight, and most importantly, his belief in the truthfulness of the "little melodies" heard in everyday life: the cry of a bird, the plash of snow from the eaves, the horrendous lie voiced with a smile.

What he uncovers is a many-stranded aria of ravenous Nature and mischievous Time, threatening to consume his world.

The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart by Alice Walker
From Publishers Weekly
In 13 affectionate stories, Walker (The Color Purple; By the Light of My Father's Smile) reflects on the nature of passion and friendship, pondering the emotional trajectories of lives and loves. Some of the pieces are directly autobiographical, as Walker explains in her preface. "To My Young Husband" is about her marriage as a young woman to a Jewish civil rights lawyer and their difficult but mostly happy decade in Mississippi and Brooklyn. Many years later, telling her daughter the story of the marriage, Walker wonders how she and her ex-husband, once so close, could have become such strangers. Other stories are "mostly fiction, but with a definite thread of having come out of a singular life." Old hurts are soothed in "Olive Oil," in which Orelia learns to trust her husband, John, and not visit the sins of the past upon him. In "The Brotherhood of the Saved," Hannah, the lesbian narrator, confronts the bigotry of religion and attempts to save her relationship with her mother, whose fundamentalist church is urging her to ostracize her daughter. A trip to a screening of Deep Throat gets the older woman and two of her friends talking about sex, but true acceptance proves more elusive. Infusing her intimate tales with grace and humor, Walker probes hidden corners of the human experience, at once questioning and acknowledging sexual, racial and cultural rifts. Though a few stories tip into self-indulgence and read less like fiction than personal testimony, this is nonetheless a strong, moving collection. A common theme runs throughoutDwe are all obliged to love and be loved, no matter how blind, inexpert or troublesome we may be.

the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Goss' contribution to the exciting showcase of the new weirdness, Feeling Very Strange (2006), is a version of Sleeping Beauty that unfolds in history as well as time: when the prince arrives for the great awakening, he's a bulldozer driver clearing the forest. That story opens this collection of others that are frequently as incidentally funny. Comedy is here a seasoning, however, of the richly astringent flavor of fine literary fantasy, in which happy endings are tentative, temporary, or even repugnant. In "Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold," possible paradise is spurned because it requires death in the here and now. In "Sleeping with Bears," the narrator's best friend weds a bear, and how can that turn out? (Still, at the end, the narrator is dating the groom's brother.) In "Letters from Budapest," their recipient, a dealer of objets d'art, learns that his aspiring artist brother has found the ideal teacher but may never paint again; meanwhile, that Old Master--actually a mistress--wants the dealer to be hers. More conventionally but oh-so-satisfyingly developed are the stories in which the witch Miss Emily Gray and the turn-of-the-century North Carolina girl Rose appear. Both are in the volume closer, "Lessons with Miss Gray," about learning how to obtain one's heart's desire--and it doesn't seem too hasty to exclaim, "Classic!" Ray Olson

STILL MORE COMING!

A Visit from the Footbinder by Emily Prager
From the Philadelphia Inquirer
Here, from a keen-eyed observer of the female condition, are five funny, sometimes painfully funny, stories about women's plight. Prager's is a sure and original voice that blends black humor with a tough feminist sensibility. . . rauncy and clever. Her stories tickle while they sting

Chronicles of Carlingford/The Rector and the Doctor's Family by Mrs. Oliphant
From the back of the book:
These two short novels raise the curtain on an entrancing new world for all who love Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Trollope's "Barsetshire Chronicles". The setting is Carlingford, a small town not far from London in the mid-1800s. The cast ranges from tradesmen to aristocracy and clergy.

One Day the Ice Will Reveal All Its Dead by Clare Dudman
From The New Yorker
In 1930, the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener disappeared on an expedition to Greenland; six months later, his body was found, perfectly preserved, beneath the ice. Dudman takes this as the starting point of her novel, a fictional autobiography in which Wegener embodies the scientist as man of action, launching hydrogen-balloon flights, spelunking down frozen crevasses, and racing across glaciers as the ice cracks. Between exploits, he investigates the origins of rain and the craters of the moon, and fends off attacks on his theory of continental drift—dismissed at the time as far-fetched but now widely accepted. As a narrator, Wegener is firmly rooted in his time, almost to a fault; occasionally, one wishes that the prose were less restrained and that the author had given her subject's life more of an arc. Still, Dudman artfully channels Wegener's voice—prim and fastidious, but filled with longing—so convincingly that her book reads like an artifact of Old World exploration.

MANY THANKS to those willing to read through all this (terribly painful, wasn't it?) to get to the nudging part. Remember the rules:
1. You can't have read the book!!!!!!!
2. You can only nudge based on the book blurb/review which I will produce below. Do not use the phrase, "Based on other books by that author..." I want you to imagine these authors are all new to you. I want you to nudge the book that most intrigues you.

NOW NUDGE AWAY.

(Never mind!)

Interesting spin on nudging.

I haven't read any of the books on your list, so this is an equal-opportunity nudge.

an entrancing new world for all who love Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Trollope's "Barsetshire Chronicles".

Okay, I'm sold. My blurb-based nudge goes to The Rector and the Doctor's Family by Mrs. Oliphant

Well, I love Trollope, so I would probably go with that one, too.

>7 Cariola: It's there in message 4. I chose not to transcribe the entire back of the book.

Right then, Lois (avaland), I’m always up for a challenge. Let’s read these blurbs one at a time.

Let's start by ignoring City of Glass and Innocent Erendira both of which I have read. And although I haven’t read the graphic novel version of Auster’s book I wouldn’t want to anyway. I’ve got a very conservative view about graphic novels. They’re comics aren’t they, really. I mean really, they are just comics.

So Ray in Reverse nope, it sounds like the story of a really awful Hollywood movie.

Enchanted Night sounds quite a possibility, one summer night, different characters, magical realism all sound good ingredients to me. Unless this is sweetly saccharin stuffed!

The Coquette end of the Eighteenth century (!) – written as letters. It would have to be very good to interest me so no - I wouldn’t pick it.

I’ll have to be honest with Now That You’re Back I have read AL Kennedy. So, to be fair, I think I should lay this one to one side.

Murambi, The Book of Bones is not going to be a comfortable read, but would be an important one. It is a matter of shame that we can find millions of pounds to bail out failing banks because it affects us directly but continually give a nominal shrug to the suffering that occurs in the Third World.

The Well horror not my bag – synonymous with poor writing. I’d be very unlikely to pick this I have got a liking for an atmospheric ghost story.

On the Overgrown Path – sounds interesting but is the author capable of dealing with this well? Certainly a possibility.

Alice Walker, like AL Kennedy, I’ll lay aside. I think it would be too difficult to pretend that I’d no knowledge of her writing.

Fantasy and comedy? Eeuch! Definite no for The Forest of Forgetting

Comedy? Eeuch! No for A Visit form the Footbinder. I don’t like comedy as a means of delivering a story or message. I love Woody Allen and James Thurber because the comedy is the reason for the writing.

One Day the Ice Will Reveal All Its Dead could be good if I knew it was going to be particularly scathing about explorers whom, as a group of people, I despise. Mountaineers, Antartic adventurers, Pacific Ocean crossers on a pedalo or whatever – not heroes - all just exhibitionists with too much money and time on their hands. Rant, rant... There done.

So it looks like I’ll nudge Murambi, The Book of Bones (trust me to pick the most depressing one) followed by Enchanted Night and On the Overgrown Path.

Interesting thinking there, Kevin. I'm betting there will be those who will see the pile differently:-)

The book on your list that intrigued me was One Day the Ice Will Reveal All its Dead. I have never heard of this book, but I like the premise.
--BJ
Edited to try to fix the touchstone.

I'm too busy laughing about your "breathe into a paper bag" comment! I'll be back soon.

Depending on what mood I was in, I'd choose either the Chronicles of Carlingford or Murambi, The Book of Bones. I've never heard of Mrs Oliphant but if she writes anything like Jane Austen it'd be a good read.

Murambi is the kind of book that I'd buy and let sit on my shelf for ages, because it'll be so gut-wrenching to read.

The others didn't really grab me based on the blurbs.

Well, as a classical musician, I have to nudge the book where Janacek is the main character, On the Overgrown Path. My secondary nudges go to The Forest of Forgetting (Unlike Dylanwolf, I am a big fan of fantasy and comedy, and these sound like truly twisted fairytale retellings), Enchanted Night for its magical realism, and The Rector and the Doctor's Family for reasons similar to those stated by others. I have to admit The Well looks intriguing, too,although I'm not generally fond of horror.

I have read A Visit from the Footbinder, and have to say that this blurb doesn't really do it justice.

I think that Enchanted Night by Steven Millhauser looks very interesting. I would also nudge Murambi, The Book of Bones by Boubacar Boris Diop.

I'd choose On the Overgrown Path as I enjoy Detection and love Music (but I'd begin reading wondering if I might be disappointed). Now I have to read it.

Based on the blurbs, those that interested me were: Enchanted Night; The Coquette; Murambi, The Book of Bones; and Chronicles of Carlingford.

As to a nudge: I thought there was something familiar about the blurb for Enchanted Night. I own that book. Picked it up at a library sale about a year ago, so (with dylanwolfe's caveat in mind, "Unless this is sweetly saccharin stuffed!"), I think I'll nudge myself.

So, completely ignoring the authors, I would say Murambi, The Book of Bones and The Coquette appear the most interesting from the blurbs.

Not a nudge, but Chronicles of Carlingford looked interesting. However, taken without the author, I would have to know more about the book before I considered reading it. (Knowing the author, I would!)

>14 aviddiva: yeah, I'm sure there are better ones somewhere. It's hard to find stuff on a book from the 80s. That's one of the reviewer blurbs on the first couple of pages. That book is actually my husband's and comes with his recommendation.

I'm really enjoying your thought processes here. I have a book or two to read before I can read the nudged (singular or plural), so I can leave this nudge open, perhaps, until after the holidays (or before).

I was instantly taken with the graphic novel The City of Glass, got to the end of reading a bunch of great sounding blurbs and still thinking about Paul Auster as reinterpreted by Karasik and Mazzucchelli. Looks like fun.

Huh. Of that stack of books, I guess I'd be another vote for One Day the Ice Will Reveal All Its Dead. Scientists are interesting; I had professors who were old-school, guys whose habits of mind were formed before WWII (NOT contemporaries of Wegener, but they looked like they could have been...), and it's an interesting mindset.

Runner-up: The Oliphant, because, hey, there are only six Austens.

2nd runner-up: The Coquette.

I know that I should nudge Murambi, The Book of Bones, but, well, it sounds so horrific and I do know of the suffering there, and I am not in the mood for it at all, so I will nudge One Day the Ice Will Reveal All its Dead which is the most likely one for me to pick up with enthusiasm.

Not keen on short stories and quite a few authors there that I have read, and the graphic novel of Auster is known to me. Other than On the Overgrown Path, and the Oliphant non of the others really appeal.

Now exhausted with all the reading I had to do for this thread!!!!

I rather like the sound of Enchanted Night so I'm nudging that one.

I am nudging the Oliphant because I have read some of her other books and enjoyed them a lot, and The Coquette because it is right up my alley.

P.S. Wrong touchstone for Oliphant, but I can't manage to fix it!

>21 AsYouKnow_Bob: I know. I'm married to one:-) Although he's not that old school!

>24 aluvalibri: Broken rule alert! wheep! wheep! (that's the alarm). You alluded to having read others by the author which violates statute 634, section B of the avaland literary penal code. Luckily, it's only a misdemeanor offense and we'll let you off lightly...this time.

>This really is fascinating.

WHAT THE Flipping H********!!!!????? No stoning for aluvalibri?!!!!! I'm not playing any more!!*stalks off in a huff*

HEY! I have not read The Rector and the Doctor's Family!!!!!!!!!!!!
I thought you were not supposed to have read the book but you could know the author......oh! I guess my brain was lethargic then.....sorry!
;-)

oh! I guess my brain was lethargic then.....sorry!

Paola, you can stop breathing into that paper bag now, and Lois, please stop trying to kill us all. ;-)

"Breathing into a paper bag restricts the fresh air you are able to get. Without fresh air, too little oxygen is in the air you're inhaling. So, breathing into a paper bag dangerously lowers the amount of oxygen in your bloodstream. There have been several documented cases of heart attack patients incorrectly thinking they had hyperventilation syndrome and fatally worsening their heart attacks by breathing into a paper bag."

>29 izzybee: Hmm. yes, that could explain lethargic brain. Probably not a good idea. However, we do need a remedy for hypernudgilation. OK, BREATHE into an open book!

Ohhh - hypernudgilation = another vocab word to expanding the "Nuances of Nudging"!!!

Three nudgoids here:

I love the sound of Enchanted Night. Particularly I like the little word "novella" that the touchstone puts in the title.

(An aside: it does intrigue me the way books in the US all seem to scream, "A NOVEL" on their covers. I mean, like you couldn't tell if it didn't say so? What's that all about, eh? I'm serious - if someone here actually knows or has a sound theory I'd love to hear it. I just find it a bit weird.)

Murambi sounds very powerful but I would definitely find it too much right now. Rwanda is for another time, another year, for me, so I wouldn't nudge it for someone else.

On the Overgrown Path sounds fantastic - I love the idea of Janacek as a detective.

But if I had to go for just one I'd pick the Millhauser.

avaland, I'd really like to know how you found these books.

>32 FlossieT: since you asked...

One Day the Ice Will Reveal All It's Dead. - Dudman's novels were recommended to me by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer (author, editors)

The Rector and the Doctor's Family - One may have recognized the green cover that indicates a Virago Classic. I was picking up books for some of my Virago-crazy friends and took a shine to this one.

A Visit from the Footbinder was recently unearthed from my husband's pre-me storage unit. He recommended it to me.

In the Forest of Forgetting, I believe, was from a review

The Way Forward is with a Broken Heart was from a library sale (surely I have not read enough Alice Walker)

On the Overgrown Path is from a UK publisher. I read and enjoyed this author's first novel, which happened to be SF.

The Well was a gift from an LT friend. I always pay attention to her recommendations.

Not sure about the Murambi, but I think I came across it while buying other African novels.

Now that You're Back - I decided I need to read some A. L .Kennedy, so I mooched this on BM

The Coquette is another novel by an early American woman writer. I have been reading others of this era.

Enchanted Night. The author is familiar because he won one of the big US literary awards for his Martin Dressler, but he is a professor at Skidmore College and while out there I was shopping in the bookstore and... (you know how the rest goes)

Ray in Reverse - I've read Wallace's Big Fish and The Watermelon King and find he has a great imagination.

Innocent Erendira was found at a library sale, as was the Auster graphic novel, City of Glass.

And, yes, you notice they are all relatively short novels or novellas:-) I did that on purpose.

I can't believe I just read all those blurbs! Lois, you are despicable.
I'll go for the last one:One Day the Ice will Reveal All its Dead.
On the Overgrown Path also sounds interesting.

(It was very difficult to ignore the authors I already know but I did it!)

Lois, I read Martin Dressler years ago and, to date, I still cannot understand how it won the Pulitzer. Not an impressive book, imo. Perhaps Enchanted Night is better......

I have been intentionally postponing this difficult nudge till the right moment.

Very little comment on my process of elimination: no to graphic novels, no to short story collections at the moment, cannot handle genocide just now, thanks just the same.

I have been listening to opera recently, know some works of Janacek, was born in Bratislava which is the starting point of his journey here, and the choice is obvious: On the Overgrown Path. I must pick up a copy myself.

Thank you nudgers for your patience and kind attentions. Basically, six books were in contention. This was fascinating and way more fun than, imo, than the usual nudge process. So, thank you.

In a totally unscientific way, I have jotted down the nudges for each book as follows - a first nudge rates 3 points, a 2nd nudge rates 2 points, a third nudge 1 point. After adding up the number of points, I divided by the number of nudges. Thus, for example, The Coquette received 7 points from 4 mentions for a point average of 1.75 (highest point average wins). This may not actually be the proper way to do this but I wanted the

On the Overgrown Path - 2.29
One Day the Ice Will Reveal it's Dead - 3.00
Enchanted Night - 2.6
Murambi - 2.8
The Rector... - 2.43
The Coquette - 1.75

So, the winner is One Day the Ice Will Reveal It's Dead, followed by Murambi, Enchanted Night, and the Rector. Essentially, this formula indicates the intensity - One Day the Ice... got only 4 mentions but every one of them was a first nudge.

By total points (therefore total mentions but giving weight to placement) the winners would be The Rector, the Overgrown Path, Murambi, Enchanted Night.

By most 'first' nudges the winners would be a tie between the Rector and One Day the Ice, and a three-way tie for 2nd between The Overgrown, Enchanted Night, and Murambi.

and finally, with the most nudgish mentions of any kind 1. The Rector 2. On the Overgrown Path.

*THREAD STILL OPEN FOR COMMENTS BUT NO LONGER TAKING NUDGES

Lois,

revealing clearly why I am an English major and not a mathematician, although your method sounds wonderful, I must confess I am clearly lost. Taking my choice On the Overgrown Path as an example, I counted 6 nudges for it. Then you award 3 points for the first time it is mentioned, and 2 points for the second and 1 point for each subsequent mention? And then it is divided by the number of mentions? That cannot be right. Because following my obvious misunderstanding, the total would be 1.5 and more importantly I think this muddles rather than clarifies. I am confused.

This process had been pretty interesting from beginning to end. :) I never really thought of weighing multiple nudges from one person in that way, but it is a clever idea. So list that top nudge first! Happy Reading!
--BJ

I think one needs a PHD in maths, logic and philosophy to decipher this thread - but it has been a very enjoyable process. Thanks Lois!

Yes, this was a very interesting thread, thank you Lois (avaland).

Without the rules I would have most likely chosen from the books I had read. After all that is the essence of nudging on LT, the satisfaction that you get from passing on your enthusiasm for a book to a new reader - without the concomitant anxiety or embarrassment that one might get when recommending a read to a friend or relative.

In LT we are all book readers and understand whilst those strange beings who inhabit the world without the ever attendant crutch of reading can sometimes leave us gasping with their casual rejections and unemotional responses. We, too, have our cultural blind spots no doubt but a life lead without the aching urge to read seems to us as strange as one without the need to eat or sleep.

Nudging brings us an opportunity to examine the legion vectors that influence our choice of reading. We can not read everything anymore than pick up every grain of sand from a beach. For some the next book is a glorious celebration of welcoming a new experience (or perhaps reliving an old one to see what changes time has wrought) but for others it is the sombre rejection of a multitude of other possibilities.

Lois has provided us here an interesting exercise in assessing how the blurb accompanying a book affects us. We know it is immoderate and brings us only the empty soul of commerce - but we are, deep down, truly moved by this hyperbolic pap. Like all advertising it panders to our desires and self-image - we have a visceral response to this dross that sometimes we lack the energy to discount.

P.S. The Well IS NOT a horror story. The blurb is misleading. I would actually recommend this book to everyone.

>38 polutropos: In the case of your nudge, you nudged just one book so I awarded On the Overgrown Path, one mention and three points. Others may have mentioned it as a primary nudge or secondary and I would award a 'mention' and points accordingly. I said it was very unscientific (hey, I'm an English major also!)

>41 dylanwolf: why thank you for that lovely wrap-up, Kevin.

>42 amandameale: you know I'm going to read that anyway based on your recommendation.

Great summary of our motivations for choice and our commercial (and often social) gullibility, Kevin.

God knows how many good books I have missed by reading the blurb and getting a totally wrong sense of the book - and visa versa. Thank god for nudging and reviews!

>42 amandameale: A case in point about the blurb then; I have misconstrued it. The Well sounded to me like a rerun of The Ring in the style of Stephen King. Thanks, Amanda for the correction.

I must admit, now that I'm a grumpy late middle-aged man, advertising in general is just not aimed at me and leaves me cold, bewildered and unengaged. Or so I like to think. But the marketing experts know that and subliminally...

p.s. I noticed, Amanda, that our touchstones for The Well (I fixed mine... except that now I've added Titus Andronicus it's unfixed again) link off to All's Well That Ends Well not Shakey's most convincing effort at schlock horror, that was clearly Titus Andronicus!

Momentary thread hijack here. "All's Well That Ends Well" wasn't Shakespeare's most convincing effort--period. What a difficult play to make work. In another life I was production manager for a production of the play in L.A. By the end of the run all of us, including the director, had renamed the play, "All's Well That Ends." End of thread hijack. I thank you for your patience.

Read nudge The Rector and the Doctor's Family and it was good.
Read nudge On the Overgrown Path and enjoyed it.
more notes on my book log HERE. Scroll down towards the end. Comments are also in this group on a thread called "Books Nudged in November".

I have three more nudges (the Millhauser, the Dudman and the Diop) in the more immediate TBR pile but probably won't get to them until after the first of the year, but one never knows.

avaland--I realized at the beginning of your nudge that I had the Millhauser (got it for a dollar at the local library sale) so I read it. Would love to know what you think of it when you get around to it. By the way, Millhouser's latest short story collection was just named as one of the ten best books of 2008 in the New York Times.

theaelizabeth, did you like it?
As I said somewhere above, I read Martin Dressler a few years ago and, to be quite honest, I was not impressed and always wondered how it got to win the Pulitzer. Would be interested in hearing your opinion on Millhauser.

Paolo, short answer: No. Some of it was evocative and some of it silly. And some of the writing was clunky. I'm curious enough to grab the latest short story collection Dangerous Laughter, off the library shelf and read one or two. The Times Book Review editors claim he is "a master fabulist in the tradition of Poe and Nabokov." Hmph. I must be missing something.

If you are missing something, then so do I.
I am not interested in reading anything else he wrote.

>48 theaelizabet: I'll keep that in mind. I saw that Louis Branning listed the new Millhauser as one of his best books for the year over on the What are Your Reading Now group. Hm. We'll see. we'll see.