1. Imajica
2. Gates of Fire

1. Snow Leopard (I have this guy's book on Tigers ... phenomenal pictures, excellent and unsual commentary.

2. Gates of Fire

It was actually difficult to choose between Gates and Imajica.

1) Imagjica

2) Snow Leopard

only 4 voters??? :(

Monday looks like a good day to close voting.

I just have no time. :(

A small but enthusiastic crowd has selected Clive Barker's Imajica as June's Book of the Month! I did not vote since there was a clear winner.

WoooHooo!!

Just so no one gets confused, this version of Imajica is the Part I version. The original work is almost 1,000 pages so they split it into two volumes. I bring this to everyone's attention so that if you think you want both books, you might find the 1,000± page original less expensive than Part I and Part II purchased separately. I'm taking the plunge and getting the big one.

I'm a big fan of Barker's and hope everyone enjoys the book.

July Book of the Month Chooser
 

I've just run the random number generator once more, and I have here July's Chooser of Books.

And the chooser is...

Stevedallas!


*golf clap*

Are you going to make us read some Bloom County? Or how about making everyone buy: The Complete Far Side Leather-Bound Set [Signed Limited Edition]

I'm not worthy... I'm not worthy....


When am I supposed to post my three choices?

Heh heh heh..... I'm still narrowing it down... However cartoons are doubtful. ("The Complete Cherry Poptart" might still make the cut, but I'd be afraid to be responsible for giving blue a coronary.)

This was such a tough choice--not only did I want to find interesting books, I also wanted to make sure they would be relatively easy to acquire and would be readable by most people within the month. In the end I will nominate the following three books, which I have lettered A, B, and C for your voting pleasure.

Since we have had two straight fiction nominees, I have decided to take us back on a nonfiction tack.

1. Witsec: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program
   by Pete Earley and Gerald Shur
   
   This book is co-authored by Gerald Shur, one of the driving forces behind the creating of the Witness Protection Program. It gives an inside (though obviously biased) account of the creation of the program up to the present day, and tells of the many problems and turf issues Shur faced in getting the program up and running.
   
   
2. Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
   by Jame Gleick
   
   A biography of nobel laureate Feynman. This book gives a fascinating counterpoint to Feynman's own memoirs "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman" and "What Do You Care What People Think?" As the title indicates, the book discusses Feynman's scientific work along with his personal life, including his time at the Manhattan Project, the Challenger inquiry panel, and the nobel-winning quantum physics work in between. However the level of technical detail is not excessive for a general audience.
   
3. Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping
   by Paco Underhill
   
   Underhill is the proprietor of a company that specializes in doing research for retail stores on how to maximize their sales by optimizing the design of their stores. For example, if a drugstore wants to sell more hair coloring products, what part of the store is the best place to put them? This does not sound like a very promising subject for casual reading, but Underhill's wit and liberal use of anecdotes and examples from his past research makes it very readable and thought-provoking for anybody who has ever been frustrated by their shopping experience.

Now, as a special added attraction, because I know many of you will have laid awake at night thinking, "Gee, I wish I could have more than three books picked out for me by SteveDallas," I have listed some favorites (along with typical quotes) that did not make the cut, primarily because they were too much fun, and I wanted to keep things serious. You may wish to check them out on your own time!

• The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs
  
  Quote:

  Misfortune lay outside the province of social action, and only this latter was connected by the link between doing and faring, the connective justice of ma'at."

• A New Firebolt Sweeps Clean: Reflections on Textuality and Intertextuality in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series
  
  Quote:

  Although the romantic[?] "triangle" of Harry, Ron, and Hermione is obvious, the more compelling relationship is that between Harry and Draco Malfoy, with its subtle but omnipresent homoerotic overtones.

• I Was A Teenage Dominatrix: A Memoir
  
  Quote:

  I'd always hated my muscular legs but I was grateful to them for the first time.

• pr0n: A History of Dirty Pictures on the Internet
  
  Quote:

  As these sample images show (see Figure 1a, "cheerleader" and Figure 1b, "cucumber"), even the most common and innocent search terms can result in image hits of breathtaking audacity and disgust.

• Techniques for Drawing Female Manga Characters"
  
  Quote:

  Female [bicycle] riders normally sit on their skirts, so a skirt that flutters behind in the wind is a fictitious manga effect.

If you like that kind of thing look up a wonderful little tome called the Philosophy of Pooh, fantastic little volume that walks an incredibly tight line between poking fun at itself and being perfectly serious.

Bit of *ahem* late night reading eh?

I'll go with b.

They all look good. B is my first choice, but I can't make up my mind for choice two. I'll have to think about it some more.

A
B
C

It was actually choosing number 1 ... the Shopping book, while interesting (and marketing was something I was once fascinated with as an expression of human behavior and manipulation) I don't know if I could sustain interest through an entire book, no matter how many amusing and witty anecdotes it contains.

I love Feynman and have read The Pleasure of Finding Things Out as well as Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman which is why it ended up as my second choice ... it represents ground already covered, thus Witsec is #1.

I think I read that a long time ago! I had two or three chapters as optional reading for a history class. The book itself is technical but it's not too dry or academic. I would call it a must read for all Ancient Egypt addicts!

It looks like Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by Jame Gleick
has won with only three votes cast.

To be fair, let's allow two more days of voting, but I think everyone that is going to vote has voted.

I can't tell if people are participating and not voting, or if we only have three or four people participating at all :(

I for one don't want to stop because we have yet to have a bad book, they've all been really good! Even most of the runner-ups look good to me.

I'd like to day that i'm participating, but even though i've voted, i have yet to read one of these books. i've been busy reading a decology that perth would frown upon, and i'm a very slow reader.......up to book 6 i think.......jinx has made me buy a couple of the selections, but i dont know that she's read them yet......

i still like having three strongly recommended books reviewed, though, so keep it up.....i'll get thru this series eventually.

I didn't vote because I don't think I will have the time to really read a book this coming month. I don't think its fair for me to vote for a book I have not intention of reading.

I admit I fell down on reading Ghost Soldiers and Imajica... in both cases I just couldn't connect with the books and ended up reading other stuff. I'm not sure why. But let's keep it going for a bit.. even if it's just reading suggestions.

BTW wolf and others who have read stuff by Feynman himself, I did not find there was a lot of duplication between that and the Gleick biography.

(PS... some of my "extra suggestions" are bogus... I was waiting to see if anybody went out to try to find them)

I'm definitely still in, just not this month. I got so excited about reading Lamb that even though it wasn't voted in whatever month that was, it got put in line and read anyway. I'm still gonna bust out with Imagica eventually here, but I wanted to take a month off to catch up.

For those that are into Feynman, there are two comic books that touch on his life, one of them, Fallout, centers more on the Manhattan Project, and the other one, Two Fisted Science, is short pieces on many different scientists. You can find info on them at:

http://www.gt-labs.com/

I'm glad you're all still interested, let's keep the ball rolling!

So we're doing the Feynman biography, right?

Damn! I never look at this thread at the right time. Maybe I need to set up something to remind me.

Steve, I was so sure that I Was A Teenage Dominatrix was one of your fake books -- especially when I tried to search for it on Amazon and didn't find it.

Praise Google!

It looks that way! I'm putting my order in today.

That author, James Gleick, also wrote Chaos, which is a really good science book, though a bit dated by now.

I also ordered today. And I got the Fallout comic.

Just because I could :)

I'm very much enjoying Genius, but I doubt that I'll finish before the end of the month ... Do we have a comments thread for it yet?

(THIS IS NOT REALLY A COMPLAINT: Is it me, or are the books getting longer?)

I haven't started one, but I will. I'm planning on re-reading it while I'm on vacation.

Actually I eliminated one choice, Girls Lean Back Everywhere by Edward Degrazia (which I still recommend highly for anybody who is interested in the history of censorship in the US) because I decided it was just unrealisitically long. (Though it probably does have more naughty bits than any selection to date, so maybe that would encourage closer reading? :doit: )

I am STILL waiting for my book from eBay/half.com. Its nearing the outer edges of the expected delivery timeframe.

Wolf, did you get Fallout? Tell me what you think when you get a chance to look at it.

I just noticed its about time for announcing next month's chooser.

so without further delay, I've run the number generator, and my result is

Headsplice!

While I haven't spotted this person around, he has posted as of 7-8-04, so he's around. I've pm'ed him, so let's see if he responds quickly.

I have Fallout, but really want to finish Genius before I get distracted by something else.

I also have a copy of Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas beckoning seductively from the bedside. As well as a large pile of DVDs and a pile of assorted books I got on sale from the Townhall.com Conservative Book Club.

Zell Miller's A National Party No More is my current bathroom book. (does anyone else do that? Leave some reading more interesting than People Magazine in the temple of comfort for those moments described in the sit or stand thread? Usually the potty book is something that is a bit more "sectional" than this. One that I had MUCH enjoyment with was an encyclopedia of mystical places, so I whiled away my time reading about Stonehenge and Atlantis and the Piri Reis Map.)

Okay, I'll admit it. I started to read Fallout. It's very cool. The artwork and layout is very nicely done! I've only gotten about 10 or 15 pages into it, but I got a real case of the giggles over seeing Leo Szillard in the bathtub ...

I've got Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus in mine--no, wait! Now I remember-that's what I flushed. Sorry. Just sleepy.

That's on my "to read" pile.

I have read "Mars and Venus on a Date," which is really quite useful.

Really? How so? Do you feel like you can communicate more effectively after reading the booK? Or just know what is typical weirded-out behavior of the dating game?

Headsplice hasn't responded. My next pick was JoZ, but this person has been inactive since March, so I pick again and I get

Torrere

So let's see if we get august going now.

I don't think I'm going to get Genius finished before the end of July!

(I'm doing my best too ... it's just been too busy to read at work. Also, now that I'm past the Manhattan Project the story is bogging and my interest is waning)

If we can't get someone to choose for August ... rather than taking a month off, what about having each person interested in continuing to participate choose one book, then after a bit of time, we vote ... however you can't vote for your own book for choice #1, but it can be ordered as either #2 or #3? (I was thinking three votes per person, no matter how many books are in the pool ... )

That sounds like a good idea, wolf. What say the masses? I am itching to start...

Sounds good to me. My suggestion is "Lamb," before anyone else picks it. :)

need more info--"Lamb" by who???? (m)??????

Am practically illiterate!

Sorry, it was suggested a few months earlier but barely lost the vote.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...682727-4086318

I totally vote for that one! What say we all?

So we have something else to vote on ... Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, by Tom Robbins

Yeah, I'm totally up for Lamb too ...

Ok, so we've got three votes for "Lamb" and one vote for "Frog Pajamas" (with Wolf voting once in each category :)). Unless someone speaks up in the next 24 hours or so, I'm going to start a thread on "Lamb."

I was wondering if this was still open to join?

Most definitely. Anyone is welcome to read the book and talk about it. And as for selecting books, enough people have dropped out that we seem to be playing it by ear for now anyway.

I will watch for the next go around. Unless there is still time on the current book?

There's definitely still time. Only just started the thread for it yesterday. The book is "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" by Christopher Moore.