Here are the nominees:
THE MEMORY OF SKY (Robert Reed) Paperback, 624 pages.
Diamond is an odd little boy, a seemingly fragile child—who proves to be anything but. An epic story begins when he steps into the world his parents have so carefully kept him from, a world where gigantic trees each house thousands of humans and another human species, the papio, rule its far edges. Does Diamond hold the promise to remake one species and, perhaps, change all of the Creation?
THE INTERESTINGS (Meg Wolitzer) Paperback, 400 pages.
The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge.
The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, eventually resigns herself to a more practical occupation and lifestyle. Her friend Jonah, a gifted musician, stops playing the guitar and becomes an engineer. But Ethan and Ash, Jules’s now-married best friends, become shockingly successful—true to their initial artistic dreams, with the wealth and access that allow those dreams to keep expanding. The friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their talents have become and the shapes their lives have taken.
THE WEIRDNESS (Jeremy P. Bushnell) Paperback, 288 pages.
Along the way, Billy learns about courage, friendship, and love, while considering some important questions: Why do people have pets? Who would store seafood in a warehouse in Chelsea? And where do those bananas in bodegas come from, anyway?
THE RICH AND THE DEAD (Liv Spector) Paperback, 320 pages.
Welcome to Star Island, where Miami’s wealthiest residents lead private lives behind the tall gates of their sprawling mansions. It’s a blissful escape from the hot and dirty city—or it was, until New Year’s Day 2015, when twelve of the most powerful people in the world were found murdered in the basement of a Star Island mansion.
The massacre shocked the nation and destroyed the life of investigator Lila Day. Her hunt for the Star Island killer consumed her. But the case went unsolved, resulting in her dismissal from the Miami PD.
Now, three years later, life hands Lila an unexpected second chance: reclusive billionaire Teddy Hawkins approaches Lila and asks her to solve the case. But how do you investigate a crime when all the leads have long ago gone cold? The answer, Teddy tells her, is to solve the case before it happens. He’s going to send Lila back in time.
With nothing left to lose, an incredulous Lila travels back to 2014, determined to find the Star Island killer once and for all. But as she goes undercover among the members of Miami’s high society, she finds herself caring for—and falling for—people who are destined to die that fateful night. Now she must either say good-bye or risk altering the future forever.
BLACK MOON (Kenneth Calhoun) Paperback, 290 pages.
Insomnia has claimed everyone Biggs knows. Even his beloved wife, Carolyn, has succumbed to the telltale red-rimmed eyes, slurred speech and cloudy mind before disappearing into the quickly collapsing world. Yet Biggs can still sleep, and dream, so he sets out to find her.
He ventures out into a world ransacked by mass confusion and desperation, where he meets others struggling against the tide of sleeplessness. Chase and his buddy Jordan are devising a scheme to live off their drug-store lootings; Lila is a high school student wandering the streets in an owl mask, no longer safe with her insomniac parents; Felicia abandons the sanctuary of a sleep research center to try to protect her family and perhaps reunite with Chase, an ex-boyfriend. All around, sleep has become an infinitely precious commodity. Money can’t buy it, no drug can touch it, and there are those who would kill to have it. However, Biggs persists in his quest for Carolyn, finding a resolve and inner strength that he never knew he had.
Cast your vote! The poll closes next Saturday.
I voted for The Weridness because I’m a massive fan of Robert Rankin and this sounds like the sort of book he’d write.
Hopefully it’s not the first book of a series. After the last two BOTM selections I’ve got series coming out my ears!
@Food off topic for Joe
http://www.alimentaria-bcn.com/en/alimentaria-2014
50 Michelin Stars in Master Classes & showcookings
Special Japan Year to conmemorate de 400 years of continuos relations between Japan-Spain (1613-2013)
http://www.alimentaria-bcn.com/en/programa-especial-japon
Not a lot there that sounds like “hard” sci-fi, but some interesting choices. Went for the weirdness simply because anything that has Satan as a character has to have some potential.
I vote for The Rich and the Dead even though I know houses in Florida don’t have basements. I suppose one *could* but it’s virtually unheard of since the water table is so stinkin’ high.
A close second is The Memory of Sky.
Although they all sound interesting.
February though? Is that your subtle way of saying to pick the time travel story? 😀
~~Trish
I’ll think about those books and vote later.
whovian: I’m almost finished with your parents book. Very good twist with the 3D printer (and scary).
I liked Annihilation a lot. It has a “foggy” quality to the story. The fog lifts slowly and reveals more of the mystery. Unfortunately, this is another book that doesn’t end and the sequel is not out yet!! Arg!
Meanwhile, hubby is 😆 reading “Old Man’s War”. It must be a good book!
Huh, to be honest, none of those are books I would express much interest in based on summaries, so I guess I’ll be having a new experience with whichever wins!
to whovian:
I vote for The Rich and the Dead even though I know houses in Florida don’t have basements. I suppose one *could* but it’s virtually unheard of since the water table is so stinkin’ high.
i guess that’s one of the reasons it’s sci-fi.
unless it being a man-made island has something to do with it.
Ugh, Memory of Sky is winning. That’s the one that sounded the worst to me. The description started off sounding like a bad NBC mid season replacement show. (“Believe” or some sort of gag-worthy title like that.) And then the wacko thousands of humans living in trees, plus throwing in some other humanish species, just be extra-special weird, completely lost me.
None of them really floated my boat, but I could at least crack open The Rich and the Dead or The Weirdness without feeling like I was about to put a plastic bag over my head and try to breathe, which is more than I can say for the other choices.
@whovian: Yeah, California doesn’t really have basements either — at least not Southern California. Everyone just uses their garage like a basement: for laundry machines, the extra fridge/freezer, racks and racks of stuff in boxes along the walls…. I have one friend whose parents entirely filled their garage with all the old, out-of-style clothes from the 70s and 80s that they never threw out or donated. There were just thin little aisles to navigate through all the crap, and no way could you even remotely considering parking a car in there.
Don’t know why no one has a basement there, though. I suppose it could have to do with earthquake risk, but that doesn’t really make sense, since the foundation is in the ground regardless of whether there’s a basement. And they drilled through the Santa Monica Mtns to put in the subway tunnel, so there goes that theory.