Nomination Clues

In case you, dear reader, have been wondering about the silence around here, let it be known that LBC members are doing a lot of reading right now.  They're doing their best to carry on with their lives while Mr. Sarvas cracks the whip.  They can be found beneath wispy bowers, their pasty flesh unvarnished by the sun, their figues perched in coffeehouses at the break of sunrise.  They're all wondering how 1,200 pages or so can be perused in such a brief time.  And yet they're doing it.  With day jobs, with commitments, with families and friends. 

They're getting by on gruel.

By some miracle, I managed to finish all five books before the deadline.  But then I was also lucky enough to have a few days of vacation.  Now if I were a particularly sick or spiteful man (say, the narrator of Notes from Underground), I could scoff and stick my tongue out of my fellow LBC members. But I remember a particularly traumatic moment in kindergarten where this exact tactic failed.  So instead allow me to flash some leg and wave my pom-poms, congratulating my fellow LBC readers on a read well done.  I'm almost certain a few of them are procrastinating.

Since voting is being done through an honor system, I'm precluded from discussing these books with my colleagues.  I can't urge them to vote for Book A or reconsider Book D.  And frankly the fact that I can't be a literary booster is driving me bananas. 

But I'm willing to abide by these rules, however torturous it may be.

What I'll do instead is give you a few statistics to whet your appetite and hopefully get this millstone off my chest in the process.

• In my view:  Two of the five books were great.  Two of the five books were pretty good.  One of them left a lot to be desired.
• Remarkably, all five of these books can be held in one hand.
• Two of the books are told in one go, without chapter breaks.
• The plotting in one kicked some serious butt.
• Sex figued prominently (and interestingly) in two books and was alluded to during sections of two others.
• The longest book is between 290-320 pages long.  The shortest book is between 110-140 pages long.  (Yes, you clever whipper-snappers, you won't get an exact page count from me!  I know you'll head to Amazon and start writing down various page counts!)
• Only one of the covers features a detailed face.  The rest contain objects or shadows.
• Number of syllables in each author's name:  One book has an author with two syllables, three books have authors with four syllables, one bok has an author with five syllables.
• Three titles end with the letter S.
• The last word in each book: "comes," "vie," "movie," "too," and "balls."

So LBC readers: care to venture what the five nominations are?

Comments

[genevieve]

Nope, just bring on the prominent sex, that sounds invigorating. I'm too lazy to go into the bookshop with five words on a piece of paper just now.

[Ellen]

C'est La Vie by Gershman?