Thread: BotM: Book of the Moment
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Old 04-17-2021, 01:56 PM   #34 (permalink)
natekka
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Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Wales
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Hogwarts RPG Name:
Jade Archer de Leon
Slytherin
First Year

Hogwarts RPG Name:
Olive Gracae-Ryans
Hufflepuff
Fifth Year

Ministry RPG Name:
Clara Rider (née Wilde)
International Cooperation

Ministry RPG Name:
Riley Archer de Leon
Mysteries
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Little Fox | ½ of Lauralie | Ravenclaw with a Hufflepuff heart and a Gryffindor soul | #HouseNATARIANA


ROUND 2!

Voting for our May/June BotM and July/August BotM is now OPEN!

We had a six-way tie in the last vote so we need to do a second round of voting. The two books with the most votes will be selected as our next two Books of the Moment. You can cast your vote using the poll in this thread. Below you will find our rules for voting and all the nominations you can choose from. We have included the descriptions from Goodreads as well as any content warnings that we're aware of. If you have any questions, feel free to PM one of the book club mods.

Rules:
  • You can vote for a maximum of TWO books from the list of nominations.
  • You ARE allowed to vote for books that you nominated.
  • Voting closes on April 24th.

Nominations

Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi
Genre: Fantasy | Rating: Sa9+
SPOILER!!: Description and CWs
Twelve-year-old Aru Shah has a tendency to stretch the truth in order to fit in at school. While her classmates are jetting off to family vacations in exotic locales, she'll be spending her autumn break at home, in the Museum of Ancient Indian Art and Culture, waiting for her mom to return from her latest archeological trip. Is it any wonder that Aru makes up stories about being royalty, traveling to Paris, and having a chauffeur?

One day, three schoolmates show up at Aru's doorstep to catch her in a lie. They don't believe her claim that the museum's Lamp of Bharata is cursed, and they dare Aru to prove it. Just a quick light, Aru thinks. Then she can get herself out of this mess and never ever fib again.

But lighting the lamp has dire consequences. She unwittingly frees the Sleeper, an ancient demon whose duty it is to awaken the God of Destruction. Her classmates and beloved mother are frozen in time, and it's up to Aru to save them.

The only way to stop the demon is to find the reincarnations of the five legendary Pandava brothers, protagonists of the Hindu epic poem, the Mahabharata, and journey through the Kingdom of Death. But how is one girl in Spider-Man pajamas supposed to do all that?

SPOILER!!: CONTENT WARNINGS!
None.

The Gender Game by Bella Forrest
Genre: Science Fiction | Rating: Sa16+
SPOILER!!: Description and CWs
A toxic river divides nineteen-year-old Violet Bates's world by gender.

Women rule the East. Men rule the West.

Welcome to the lands of Matrus and Patrus.

Ever since the disappearance of her beloved younger brother, Violet's life has been consumed by an anger she struggles to control. Already a prisoner to her own nation, now she has been sentenced to death for her crimes.

But one decision could save her life.

To enter the kingdom of Patrus, where men rule and women submit.

Everything about the patriarchy is dangerous for a rebellious girl like Violet. She cannot break the rules if she wishes to stay alive.

But abiding by rules has never been Violet's strong suit.

When she's thrust into more danger than she could have ever predicted, Violet is forced to sacrifice many things in the forbidden kingdom ... including forbidden love.

In a world divided by gender, only the strongest survive...

SPOILER!!: CONTENT WARNINGS!
Mentions of blood and gore.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Genre: Science Fiction | Rating: Sa13+
SPOILER!!: Description and CWs
Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.

Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker's Guide ("A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have") and a galaxy-full of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox—the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod's girlfriend (formally Tricia McMillan), whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student who is obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he bought over the years.

SPOILER!!: CONTENT WARNINGS!
None.

Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder
Genre: Fantasy | Rating: Sa16+
SPOILER!!: Description and CWs
Choose: A quick death… or slow poison...

About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. She'll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace—and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia.

And so Yelena chooses to become a food taster. But the chief of security, leaving nothing to chance, deliberately feeds her Butterfly's Dust—and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonizing death from the poison.

As Yelena tries to escape her new dilemma, disasters keep mounting. Rebels plot to seize Ixia and Yelena develops magical powers she can't control. Her life is threatened again and choices must be made. But this time the outcomes aren't so clear...

SPOILER!!: CONTENT WARNINGS!
Rape in the past, attempted rape, mentioning of sexual assault, captivity, torture, violence, kidnapping, thoughts of suicide, and the misgendering of a trans character.

The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf
Genre: Historical Fiction | Rating: Sa16+
SPOILER!!: Description and CWs
A music-loving teen with OCD does everything she can to find her way back to her mother during the historic race riots in 1969 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in this heart-pounding literary debut.

Melati Ahmad looks like your typical moviegoing, Beatles-obsessed sixteen-year-old. Unlike most other sixteen-year-olds though, Mel also believes that she harbors a djinn inside her, one who threatens her with horrific images of her mother’s death unless she adheres to an elaborate ritual of counting and tapping to keep him satisfied.

But there are things that Melati can't protect her mother from. On the evening of May 13th, 1969, racial tensions in her home city of Kuala Lumpur boil over. The Chinese and Malays are at war, and Mel and her mother become separated by a city in flames.

With a 24-hour curfew in place and all lines of communication down, it will take the help of a Chinese boy named Vincent and all of the courage and grit in Melati’s arsenal to overcome the violence on the streets, her own prejudices, and her djinn’s surging power to make it back to the one person she can’t risk losing.

SPOILER!!: CONTENT WARNINGS!
As written by the author herself: "it's contents include graphic violence, an on-page death, racism, OCD, and anxiety triggers."

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Genre: Non-Fiction | Rating: Sa13+
SPOILER!!: Description and CWs
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

SPOILER!!: CONTENT WARNINGS!
Death (natural causes), cancer, descriptions of medical procedures.


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