Vote for AllAlias.com Book Club Book #2!

Which book would you like to be our second book club book?

  • The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown

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  • Full Speed, by Janet Evanovich and Charlotte Hughs

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  • One for the Money, by Jane Evanovich

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  • Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

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  • The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan.

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  • The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood.

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  • My suggestion: Juniper, by Monica Furlong

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  • Total voters
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Here is a summary of each choice, kindly contributed by the member who suggested it.

The Da Vinci Code

Robert Langdon is a Harvard professor of symbology who can't stay out of trouble. Last seen in Angels and Demons (2000), this mild-mannered academic finds himself entangled in a deadly conspiracy that stretches back centuries. Visiting Paris on business, he is awakened at 2:00 a.m. by a call from the police: An elderly curator has been murdered inside the Louvre, and a baffling cipher has been found near the body. Aided by the victim's cryptologist granddaughter, Langdon begins a danger-filled quest for the culprit; but the deeper he searches, the more he becomes convinced that long-festering conspiracies hold the answer to the art lover's death.

Full Speed
Newspaper editor Jamie Swift likes a little predictability in her life. When she suddenly finds herself minus a fiancé and with a major case of the hots for her silent partner, millionaire Maximillian Holt, any bit of predictability goes right out the window. Max is like a tornado, turning her well-ordered world upside down. Now someone's unhappy with Max's recent business deal--dangerously unhappy. Before she knows it, Jamie's hotfooting across state lines to help Max and land a story. But Sweet Pea, Tennessee harbors some smelly secrets, many of which reside under the big tent of revivalist Harlan Rawlins, whose link to the Almighty rides shotgun with his Mob connections.

Posing as husband and wife, with computer genius Muffin and a mutt named Fleas along for the ride, Max and Jamie are in the middle of another crazy case, closer than ever to each other--and too close for comfort to the kind of people who will do anything to stop them.

One for the Money
Trenton native Stephanie Plum is out of work, out of money, and her car's in repo-hell. So who does a hardly working girl turn to when the going gets tough? Meet cousin Vinnie, a bail bondsman.

Pride and Prejudice

One of the first novels written in the English language, and one of the wittiest, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice has delighted readers for nearly two hundred years. First published in 1813, during a time when England still faced the grave threat posed by Napoleonic France, Pride and Prejudice offers an intensely personal story in which the drawing rooms of upper-middle class society are the setting for the extended courtship of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. In a society in which women scramble to find husbands amid the stumbling blocks of financial snobbery and class prejudice, Austen's novel celebrates the ultimate triumph of romantic love over all impediments.

The novel is written in light, airy, sparkling prose, and its pages are filled with quick-witted, immensely entertaining dialogue. Darcy and Elizabeth move through a landscape dotted with brilliantly-drawn characters, from Elizabeth's parents—the idiotic, marriage- obsessed Mrs. Bennet and detached, droll Mr. Bennet—to the pretentious and sanctimonious clergyman, Mr. Collins, and the rakish, gold-digging militia officer Wickham.

Pride and Prejudice is a comedy of manners, comparable to Shakespeare's comedies in the delight it takes in conversation and wordplay. Austen's prose expertly skewers the wellborn and the lower classes alike. Even in its most biting moments, the novel never loses its sense of good cheer, and never ceases carrying its readers toward the destination they desire: the final triumph of true love over all obstacles.

The Joy Luck Club

Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.

With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.

The Handmaid's Tale

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable.

Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now....

In the Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, far-right Schlafly/Falwell-type ideals have been carried to extremes in the monotheocratic government. The resulting society is a feminist's nightmare: women are strictly controlled, unable to have jobs or money and assigned to various classes: the chaste, childless Wives; the housekeeping Marthas; and the reproductive Handmaids, who turn their offspring over to the "morally fit" Wives. The tale is told by Offred (read: "of Fred"), a Handmaid who recalls the past and tells how the chilling society came to be. This powerful, memorable novel is highly recommended for most libraries.

Juniper

Juniper lives a charmed life as a princess before the day when a strange old woman comes to the castle where she lives. She tells Juniper that in one year, Juniper will come to live with her and discover the great magical powers that she is blessed with. While at the time Juniper knows she will never want to go and live with the poor old woman, in a year's time she suddenly feels that this is what she is destined to do. She sets out for the woman's house, and begins the greatest, and most dangerous adventure of her life.

This book may sound like a simple children's story but it's actually a very sophisticated tale of good versus evil. I've read it several times and highly recommend it.
 
urgh i voted for the wrong one :lol: i voted for joy luck when i really want to vote for One for The Money :lol:
 
i voted for Da Vinci Code because i just bought that the other day and am going to read it when im finished with the book im reading now! :lol: what perfect timing if it should win!
 
oh the da vinci code really is great! i read it like 2 books ago but i wouldn't mind reading it again b/c it was so good!

we have a ton of books that sound really good on this list!(aside p&p) i really think i'm going to stick around and read one of these this time.
 
okay even though it says that Joy Luck Club has 2, it really only has one because i acidentally pressed that :lol:

i really meant to vote for One for the Money. :lol:
 
voted for The Handmaid's Tale. ^_^ at first I was going to vote for The Joy Luck Club, because I've been meaning to read it forever, but then I read the blurb for The Handmaid's Tale, and it sank it's hooks into me. :lol: ^_^
 
i also voted for the handmaid's tale. although now i'm thinking i should've voted for juniper. oh well. too late. if it's not chosen, i'll just go check it out myself later. :smiley:
 
I voted for Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
When are we going to decide which one we need to read?
 
Hey all! I know it's been a week, but we have a tie! I'm going to wait until one book is the clear winner. Thanks for your patience!
 
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