2010-2011 ~ Season 2

Uberlist of Book Club Suggestions

A complete annotated list of suggestions from Season 2 of the First Monday Morning of the Month Book Club

FICTION:

Geraldine Brooks: People of the Book, Year of Wonders, and March BRO Geraldine was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2006 for her novel March. Her first novel, Year of Wonders, is an international bestseller, and People of the Book is a New York Times bestseller translated into 20 languages.

Olive Ann Burns: Cold Sassy Tree BUR Not since To Kill a Mockingbird has a novel so deftly captured the subtle crosscurrents of small-town Southern life. Olive Ann Burns’ classic bestseller brings to vivid life an era that will never exist again, exploring timeless issues of love, death, coming of age, and the ties that bind families and generations.

Tracy Chevalier: Burning Bright CHE Burning Bright follows the Kellaway family as they leave behind tragedy in rural Dorset and come to late 18th-century London.

Evan S. Connell: Mrs. Bridge, and, Mr. Bridge CON Connell’s two-novel masterpiece tells the story of a traditional family living in the Country Club District of Kansas City, Missouri, during the 1930s and 1940s from two points of view, his and hers. In the novels the Bridges grapple with changing mores and expectations of the time period.

Peter Carey: Parrot and Olivier in America CAR From the two-time Booker Prize-winning author comes an irrepressibly funny new novel set in early nineteenth-century America. Olivier is an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville, the traumatized child of aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant English printer. They are born on different sides of history, but their lives will be connected by an enigmatic one-armed marquis.

Michael Cunningham: The Hours CUN A daring, deeply affecting third novel by the author of A Home at the End of the World and Flesh and Blood. In The Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair.

Roald Dahl: Danny, the Champion of the World J DAH Danny’s dad had a secret, but now the secret is out and its going to lead Danny on the adventure of a lifetime.

Charles Dickens: David Copperfield DIC One of Dickens’ comic/tragic masterpieces for all ages, this bildungsroman is written from the point of view of the mature adult who recounts how dealing with his youthful troubles shaped his life and beliefs.

Zoë Ferraris: Finding Nouf and City of Veils FER Two stellar novels set in Saudi Arabia featuring the desert guide Nayir Sharqi and forensic scientist Katya Hijazi as an unusual investigative pair. In the context of these novels, the author, who lived for a time in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s with her then husband, presents a searing portrait of the religious and cultural veils that separate Muslim women from the modern world.

Fannie Flagg: Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven; Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man; Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café; I Still Dream about You; Standing in the Rainbow and Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! FLA Fannie Flagg uses her unique storytelling voice to submerge readers in the atmosphere of the rural small town, spinning tales that are both heart-warming and heart-breaking. As a keen observer of human nature, Flagg illustrates the vast complexity of humanity in her strong and true-to-life characterizations. Her stories have a strong sense of place and are often nostalgic, giving them a regional and historical flavor. These factors, along with Flagg's strong heroines and her humorous storytelling style, appeal to readers across many genres. Start with Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary FLA Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered his masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Quote from the novel: “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.”

Giles Foden: The Last King of Scotland FOD The protagonist is a fictional character named Nicholas Garrigan, a young Scottish doctor who goes to work in Uganda out of a sense of idealism and adventure. He becomes the personal physician and confidant of Amin, the president of Uganda from his coup d’état in 1971 until his deposition in 1979. The novel focuses on Garrigan’s fascination with the dictator, leading to a gradual corruption of the young doctor’s idealistic spirit.

Jonathan Franzen: Freedom and The Corrections FRA Jonathan Franzen’s fiction peoples the modern American landscape with complex and nuanced characters, whom he reveals in elegant prose combining quirky comedy and believable drama. His work is filled with contemplation of the challenges of living in America today.

Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano (GAL, Available in the OSL System) Throughout his career, Eduardo Galeano has turned our understanding of history and reality on its head. Isabelle Allende said his works "invade the reader's mind, to persuade him or her to surrender to the charm of his writing and power of his idealism". Mirrors, Galeano's most ambitious project since Memory of Fire, is an unofficial history of the world seen through history's unseen, unheard, and forgotten. As Galeano notes: "Official history has it that Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the first man to see, from a summit in Panama, the two oceans at once. Were the people who lived there blind?" Recalling the lives of artists, writers, gods, and visionaries, from the Garden of Eden to twenty-first-century New York, of the black slaves who built the White House and the women erased by men's fears, and told in hundreds of kaleidoscopic vignettes, Mirrors is a magic mosaic of our humanity.

Elizabeth Gaskell: Cranford, North and South, Ruth, and Wives and Daughters GAS Mid-nineteenth century British author whose brilliant writing acts as a literary critique of contemporary attitudes: her early works focused on factory work in the Midlands. She always emphasized the role of women, with complex narratives and dynamic female characters. Start with Cranford, the fictionalized novel of her own young life, first published as a serial by Charles Dickens in his magazine Household Words.

Lisa Genova: Still Alice and Left Neglected GEN Two novels about brilliant, accomplished women whose lives are disrupted by brain disfunction.

Allegra Goodman: The Cookbook Collector, Kaaterskill Falls, and, Intuition GOO Allegra Goodman's engaging stories about modern life convey a richness of character that goes well beyond the everyday settings. The worlds she creates are carefully crafted, full of closely observed detail and subtle events - events that provoke consideration of the important moral issues that arise in business, academics and romance. Readers are drawn in to the lives of Goodman's realistic and complex characters, and care about how they sort out the tangles they weave themselves into. Start with: Kaaterskill Falls.

Sally Gunning: The Widow’s War and Bound GUN These novels by Gunning, set in Colonial America, explore the fates of two different women caught between the irresistible currents of their inner truths and the equally powerful strictures of their times. Brilliant and devastating.

Thomas Hardy: Under the Greenwood Tree and Far from the Madding Crowd HAR Under the Greenwood Tree concerns the activities of a group of church musicians, the Mellstock parish choir, one of whom, Dick Dewy, becomes romantically entangled with a comely new school mistress, Fancy Day. The novel opens with the fiddlers and singers of the choir—including Dick, his father Reuben Dewy, and grandfather William Dewy—making the rounds in Mellstock village on Christmas Eve. When the little band plays at the schoolhouse, young Dick falls for Fancy at first sight. Dick, smitten, seeks to insinuate himself into her life and affections, but Fancy's beauty has gained her other suitors, including a rich farmer and the new vicar at the parish church. Far From the Madding Crowd is a perfect rural romance complete with side-splitting humor, serious drama and glorious language.

Amanda Hodgkinson: 22 Britainia Road HOD A tour de force that echoes modern classics like Suite Francaise and The Postmistress. "Housekeeper or housewife?" the soldier asks Silvana as she and eight- year-old Aurek board the ship that will take them from Poland to England at the end of World War II. There her husband, Janusz, is already waiting for them at the little house at 22 Britannia Road. But the war has changed them all so utterly that they'll barely recognize one another when they are reunited. "Survivor," she answers. Silvana and Aurek spent the war hiding in the forests of Poland. Wild, almost feral Aurek doesn't know how to tie his own shoes or sleep in a bed. Janusz is an Englishman now-determined to forget Poland, forget his own ghosts, and begin a new life as a proper English family. But for Silvana, who cannot escape the painful memory of a shattering wartime act, forgetting is not a possibility. One of the most searing debuts to come along in years.

Khaled Hosseini: A Thousand Splendid Suns HOS Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a classic, Hosseini’s second novel is at once an incredible chronicle of 30 years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation found in love.

Paulette Jiles: Enemy Women JIL For the Colleys of southeastern Missouri the War Between the States is a plague that threatens devastation despite the family's avowed neutrality. For eighteen-year-old Adair Colley it is a nightmare seen at its most terrible on the day the Union Militia arrives to set her house on fire, driving her brother into hiding and dragging her widowed father away, beaten and bloodied. The novel follows her story as she copes with this wholesale devastation.

Lars Kepler: The Hypnotist KEP In the frigid clime of Tumba, Sweden, a triple homicide attracts the interest of Detective Inspector Joona Linna, who demands to investigate the murders. The killer is still at large, and there's only one surviving witness--the boy whose family was killed before his eyes. Combining the addictive power of the Stieg Larsson trilogy with the storytelling drive of The Silence of the Lambs, this adrenaline-drenched thriller is spellbinding from its very first page.

Stephen King: Novels - The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Insomnia, The Stand, Duma Key, The Green Mile, Bag of Bones, Lisey’s Story, Needful Things and Rose Madder KIN Short Stories - “The Body” and “Shawshank Redemption” (to list a few of the titles that came up by this author.) KIN King tells fast-paced stories in conversational language. His appealing heroes and terrible villains arise from our innermost nightmares into the everyday world, which becomes an increasingly challenging landscape. Protagonists are usually sympathetic, often from among society's outcasts. Whether focused on the real-world horrors of abuse or on supernatural terrors, good-vs.-evil is King's most common theme: The protagonist's growing power must rise to meet the challenge of the horrific. Start with: The Shining.

Jhumpa Lahiri: Unaccustomed Earth LAH From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories-longer and more emotionally complex than any she has yet written-that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers. In the stunning title story, “Ruma”, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he's harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he's keeping all to himself.

Stieg Larsson: The Millennium Trilogy: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest LAR Dark, intricate, unstoppable thrillers that tilt at the windmill of societal inequities in modern Sweden. The primary characters in the series are Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. Lisbeth is an intelligent, eccentric woman in her twenties with a photographic memory and poor social skills. Blomkvist is an investigative journalist with a history similar to Larsson's.

Chang-Rae Lee: The Surrendered LEE The bestselling, award-winning writer of Native Speaker, A Gesture Life, and Aloft returns with his biggest, most ambitious novel yet: a spellbinding story of how love and war echo through an entire lifetime.

Doris Lessing’s Children of Violence Series: volume 1- Martha Quest, volume 2- A Proper Marriage, volume 3- A Ripple from the Storm, volume 4- Landlocked LES This multi-part literary masterpiece by Nobel Prize Winner Doris Lessing concerns itself with the generation that grew up between the World Wars. The protagonist, Martha Quest, comes of age before our eyes in this series-starting as an innocent farm child-ending the beginning of her journey with her embarkation to England to start her adult life.

Naguib Mahfūz: The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street MAH This trilogy by Nobel Prize Winner Mahfūz follows the life of Cairene patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad and his family across three generations, from 1919- the Egyptian Revolution against the British colonizers-to the end of the Second World War in 1944. The three novels represent the three phases of the Cairene socio-political life, a panorama of Egypt, through the life of Abd al-Jawad and his children and grandchildren.

Henning Mankell: The Kurt Wallander Series features police inspector Wallender who lives and works in Ystad, Sweden. In the series of novels in which he is the protagonist, he solves shocking murders with his colleagues. The novels have an underlying question: "What went wrong with Swedish society?” Start with Faceless Killers. MYSTERY/MAN

Alexander McCall Smith: Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency Novels in order: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Tears Of The Giraffe, Morality for Beautiful Girls, The Kalahari Typing School for Men, The Full Cupboard of Life, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies, Blue Shoes and Happiness, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, The Miracle at Speedy Motors, Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, The Double Comfort Safari Club, The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party.

The Sunday Philosophy Club Series, in order: The Sunday Philosophy Club; Friends, Lovers, Chocolate; The Right Attitude to Rain; The Careful Use of Compliments; The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday; The Lost Art of Gratitude; The Charming Quirks of Others. MYSTERY/MCC McCall as a person, as an author, is obviously “off the scale” in intelligence both literary and emotional. His gentle, wise mysteries (The #1 Ladies Dective Agency novels set in Botswana - the Sunday Philosopy Club Series set in Edinbourgh) leave the reader feeling elevated, serene, at home, and highly entertained.

Colum McCann: Let the Great World Spin MCC McCann's most ambitious work to date offers a dazzling and hauntingly rich vision of the loveliness, pain, and mystery of life in New York City in the 1970s.

Lorrie Moore: Anagrams: a novel; Birds of America: Stories; A Gate at the Stairs: a Novel, Like Life: Stories; Self-help: Stories, and, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?: a Novel MOO This talented author writes frequently about failing relationships and terminal illness and is known for her mordant wit and pithy one-liners. Her stories often take place in the Midwest.

Kate Morton: The House at Riverton and The Distant Hours MOR In her cinematic debut novel The House at Riverton, Kate Morton immerses readers in the dramas of the Ashbury family at their crumbling English country estate in the years surrounding World War I, an age when Edwardian civility, shaken by war, unravels into the roaring Twenties. The Distant Hours features a rundown castle, tightly held family secrets and a literary mystery. Throw in a long lost letter, forbidden romance, family madness and ghostly whispers in the dark and you get a gothic style mystery which would be the perfect book to read by the fire on a stormy night.

Kate Mosse: The Winter Ghosts and Labyrinth MOS In The Winter Ghosts a young man almost plunges off the French Pyrenees in his car. Once free of the accident, he walks into a village where he meets a beautiful young woman named Fabrissa who has a passionate and startling effect on him. In her epic adventure Labyrinth, Mosse weaves together the present and the past in an entertaining Grail-quest tale.

Edith Nesbit: The Railway Children J NES When their father is unfairly jailed as a political prisoner, three London children move to the country where they keep busy preventing accidents on the nearby railway, making many new friends, and generally learning a good deal about themselves and their mother.

Jo Nesbø: Detective Harry Hole Series: The main protagonist in Jo Nesbø’s crime novels is fascinated by evil. Harry Hole has the magnetism of a loner, a hard-boiled sensitivity and an intuition that borders on the supernatural. Hole is a genuine anti-hero; an impossible character, yet impossible not to like. According to his superiors, Harry is both the most competent detective of the Oslo Police and the worst civil servant. Harry is his own man, the kind who pores over things with generous measures of whisky and beer. All Jo Nesbø’s novels draw heavily on the noir tradition with black humor, quick-fire dialogues and terse prose. They are also complex, ambitious constructions whose suspenseful and fast-paced crime plots reflect our globalized modern world. They employ brilliant characterization and profound ethical discussions, often using updated biblical narratives to mirror contemporary society. These crime novels are challenging investigations into questions of betrayal, faith and revenge, while providing first-rate entertainment for the crime fiction lover. Jo Nesbø has so far written nine books featuring Harry Hole; the first two books; The Bat Man (earmarked 2012) and The Cockroaches are not translated for UK or US readers at this time. In order to read the series now in print in the US, you must start with the third book in the series, and go forward from there. In order: The Redbreast, Nemesis, The Devil’s Star, The Redeemer, The Snowman, and, The Leopard. MYSTERY/NES

Joseph O’Connor: Ghost Light OCO Vivid and beautifully written, this novel tells a story of great sadness and joy--the tale of a young woman whose narrative moves from Dublin to London via New York in language of luminous beauty and raw feeling that celebrates love and art.

Michael Ondaatje: The English Patient OND A novel by Sri Lankan-Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje. The novel deals with the gradually revealed histories of a critically burned English-accented Hungarian man, his Canadian nurse, a Canadian-Italian thief, and an Indian sapper in the British Army as they live out the end of World War II in an Italian villa.

Arto Paasilinna: The Year of the Hare: a Novel PAA In this internationally bestselling comic novel, a man, suddenly realizing what's important in life (with the help of a bunny), quits his job and heads to the countryside.

Louise Penny’s Three Pine Mystery Series: Still Life, A Fatal Grace, The Cruelest Month, A Rule Against Murder, The Brutal Telling, and, Bury Your Dead (Mystery/Fiction) MYSTERY/PEN Louise Penny writes a mystery series featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. Gamache is a man of moral integrity. He is intelligent, loves to eat, and has the loyalty of his colleagues. While Gamache is the main attraction here, Penny's fans also enjoy her cast of secondary characters, especially the residents of Three Pines. Penny's settings have a timeless feel, and the tone of her novels is that of hope and resilience despite adversity. The mysteries themselves are intricate and quirky, while their pacing reflects the thoughtful pace of Gamache himself. Start with Still Life.

Reynolds Price: Kate Vaiden PRI This bestselling chronicle of a lifetime of joy and sadness-narrated by the feisty, irrepressible woman who lived it-is a wise and wonderful story told by an artist at the peak of his powers.

Barbara Pym: An Academic Question, Crampton Hodnet, Excellent Women, A Few Green Leaves, A Glass of Blessings, Jane and Prudence, Less than Angels, No Fond Return of Love, Quartet in Autumn, Some Tame Gazelle, The Sweet Dove Died, An Unsuitable Attachment PYM Richly comic novels of manners by an absolute master of the form who wrote from the 1940’s through the 1980’s. Pym is often called referred to as the modern Jane Austen. Start with Excellent Women.

Jed Rubenfeld: The Death Instinct RUB A spellbinding literary thriller about terror, war, greed, and the darkest secrets of the human soul, The Death Instinct takes readers back to 1920 to the first terrorist attack on Wall Street.

Brian Selznick: The Invention of Hugo Cabret J SEL A marvelous novel in pictures. When twelve-year-old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in 1931, meets a mysterious toy seller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized.

Carol Shields: Happenstance, and, Stone Diaries SHE In Happenstance Shields delivers a tour de force with two companion novels bound in one volume that, together, examine the two halves of one 20-year marriage. Stone Diaries is the story of one woman's life; a truly sensuous novel that reflects and illuminates the unsettled decades of the 20th century.

Kyung-sook Shin: Please Look after Mom SHI A million-plus-copy best seller in South Korea and poised to become an international sensation. Please Look after Mom is the stunning, deeply moving story of a family's search for their mother, and of the desires, heartaches, and secrets they discover she harbored within.

Lee Smith: Oral History SMI When Jennifer, a college student, returns to her childhood home of Hoot Owl Holler with a tape recorder, the tales of murder and suicide, incest and blood ties, bring to life a vibrant story of a doomed family that still refuses to give up. Deft and assured, Lee Smith is nothing less than masterly.

Lauraine Snelling: One Perfect Day SNE Snelling presents the story of two mothers, strangers to one another, who are brought together by tragedy, and, eventually, a miracle.

Nicholas Sparks: At First Sight; A Bend in the Road, The Choice, Dear John, The Guardian, The Last Song, The Lucky One, Message in a Bottle, Nights in Rodanthe, The Notebook and The Rescue SPA Nicholas Sparks is a master of poignant love stories. In his novels there is no great love without some loss and his characters frequently are faced with a difficult challenge before proving they are worthy of true love. Sparks' characters are honorable and loyal, and they place a lot of importance on family and sometimes religious faith. The pace of his stories is leisurely, quickening for rapid action and dialogue. Sparks' writing is not dense and he aims for easy-to-read prose with a romantic tone. Start with: The Notebook.

William Styron: Sophie's Choice STY Three stories are told: a young Southerner wants to become a writer; a turbulent love-hate affair between a brilliant Jew and a beautiful Polish woman; and of an awful wound in that woman's past--one that impels both Sophie and Nathan toward destruction.

Sheri Tepper: The Gate to Woman's Country TEP A captivating novel set in a frightening future. Human civilization has evolved into a dual society where walls enclose the peaceful women and keep the warrior men out, and yet there is a gate between them for those who dream.

Josephine Tey: The Daughter of Time MYSTERY/TEY Josephine Tey recreates one of history's most famous-and vicious-crimes in her classic bestselling novel, a must read for connoisseurs of fiction. Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world's most heinous villains-a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother's children to make his crown secure? Or could Richard have been the victim, turned into a monster by the usurpers of England's throne? Grant determines to find out once and for all, with the help of the British Museum and an American scholar, what kind of man Richard Plantagenet really was and who killed the Little Princes in the Tower. The Daughter of Time is an ingeniously plotted, beautifully written, and suspenseful tale, a supreme achievement from one of mystery writing's most gifted masters.

Charles Todd: Mysteries featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge include, in order: A Test of Wills, Wings of Fire, Search the Dark, Legacy of the Dead, Watchers of Time, A Fearsome Doubt, A Cold Treachery, A Long Shadow, A False Mirror, A Pale Horse, A Matter of Justice, The Red Door, and, A Lonely Death. MYSTERY/TOD Charles Todd, pen name for an American mother-son team, began with a post-World War I mystery series featuring shell-shocked Ian Rutledge, an upper-class Scotland Yard detective whose envious superior keeps trying to get rid of him. The vividly described settings around Britain, interesting secondary characters, and slowly-revealed solutions enhance the fascinating character of Rutledge, whose mind is tormented by the voice of Hamish, a sergeant he was forced to execute during the war. Their more recent series featuring World War I nurse Bess Crawford, and their standalones, are equally well plotted and elegantly written. Start with: A Test of Wills.

Colm Tóibín: Brooklyn: a Novel, The Backwater Lightship; The Empty Family: Stories; The Heather Blazing; The Master: a Novel, Mothers and Sons: Stories; The Story of the Night: a Novel TOI This gifted writer’s work explores several main lines: the depiction of Irish society, living abroad, the process of creativity and the preservation of a personal identity.

Valerie Tripp: Meet Felicity, an American Girl J TRI Exciting coming of age story set during the American Revolution-Felicity has to decide where her loyalties lie-with the Loyalists or the Revolutionaries.

Anthony Trollope: The Chronicles of Barsetshire is a series of six novels-The Warden, Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, The Small House at Allington, and, The Last Chronicle of Barset. TRO These delicious comedies of manners, classics of Victorian literature, are set in the fictitious cathedral town of Barchester. They concern the dealings of the clergy and the gentry, and the political, amatory, and social maneuverings that go on among and between them.

Margaret Truman: First 3 books (of 25) in the Capital Crime Series: Murder in the White House, Murder on Capitol Hill, and, Murder in the Supreme Court MYSTERY/TRU Margaret Truman turned her first-hand knowledge of Washington's backroom and bedroom deals into a veritable insider's guide to murder in all the best places. She makes liberal use of red herrings to distract the reader, while providing few solid clues as the stories progress. While not strictly cozies, her stories involve minimal on-stage violence, though there is plenty of suspense. Continuing characters appear in her later books, but reading order is not especially important. Start with: Murder on Capitol Hill.

Harry Turtledove: Crosstime Traffic Series: Gunpowder Empire, Curious Notions, In High Places, The Disunited States of America, The Gladiator, The Valley-Westside War TUR The books are young adult novels with teenage protagonists, who frequently who become stranded in dangerous alternate worlds and must adapt to survive.

Joseph Wallace: Diamond Ruby: a Novel WAL In early twentieth century Brooklyn, Ruby endures many hardships including the flu epidemic, the death of family members, and even starvation, until her pitching talents open new opportunities in the changing world of sports for women.

Jill Paton Walsh: Goldengrove Unleaving (Fiction, in the OSL SYSTEM) Beautifully written modern English classic. Once a year cousins Madge and Paul visit Goldengrove, their grandmother's idyllic Cornish home. One year, as summer turns to autumn and as they are drawn from childhood to maturity, their seemingly indomitable grandmother turns to winter, and the precious moments of innocence are swept away.

Fruitlands: Louisa May Alcott Made Perfect by Gloria Whelan (J WHE, Available in the OSL System) The National Book Award winner presents a fascinating chapter in the childhood of author Louisa May Alcott. This deeply affecting account of the tumultuous eight months the Alcott family spent at a farm, at which they hoped to create a perfect life, reveals a headstrong young writer who is finding her voice.

Jincy Willett: The Writing Class JIL Amy Gallup is gifted, perhaps too gifted for her own good. Published at only twenty-two, she peaked early and found critical but not commercial success. Now her former life is gone, along with her writing career and beloved husband. Her only bright spot each week is the writing class that she teaches at the university extension. This semester's class is full of the usual suspects. But something is very different about this class-and the clues begin with a scary phone call in the middle of the night and obscene threats instead of peer evaluations on student writing assignments. Amy soon realizes that one of her students is a very sick puppy, and when a member of the class is murdered, everyone becomes a suspect.

Jacqueline Winspear: Maisie Dobbs Series, in order: Maisie Dobbs, Birds of a Feather, Pardonable Lies, Message of Truth, An Incomplete Revenge, Among the Mad, The Mapping of Love and Death, and, A Lesson in Secrets MYSTERY/WIN This excellent historical mystery series is an eye-opener on World War I and its aftermath in England. Sometimes it is almost unbearably sad. And as the time advances through the early 1930s, and events discussed by the characters foreshadow World War II, it's almost impossible to figure out how Britain recovered from the double blow, regardless of who won and who lost. These are solid and enjoyable mysteries with a somber tone and a fascinating heroine.

Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway WOO Mrs. Dalloway chronicles a June day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway-a day that is taken up with running minor errands in preparation for a party and that is punctuated, toward the end, by the suicide of a young man she has never met. In giving an apparently ordinary day such immense resonance and significance-infusing it with the elemental conflict between death and life-Virginia Woolf triumphantly discovers her distinctive style as a novelist. Originally published in 1925, Mrs. Dalloway is Woolf's first complete rendering of what she described as the "luminous envelope" of consciousness: a dazzling display of the mind's inside as it plays over the brilliant surface and darker depths of reality.

INDIVIDUAL SHORT STORY RECOMMENDATIONS:

The Blue Hotel by Stephen Crane, The Jolly Corner by Henry James, I’m a Fool by Sherwood Anderson, Bernice Bobs Her Hair by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway, The Displaced Person by Flannery O’Connor, and, The Music School by John Updike. All can be found in The American Short Story, Vol. 1, ed. by Calvin Skaggs. AME

On the Golden Porch by Tatyana Tolstaya, and, In Amalfi by Ann Beattie. Both can be found in The Art of the Story, ed. by Daniel Halpern. ART

The Bound Man by Ilse Aichinger, This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski, A Distant Episode by Paul Bowles, Seven Floors by Dino Buzzati, The Doll Queen by Carlos Fuentes, One Arm by Yasunari Kawabata, Let the Old Dead Make Room for the Young Dead by Milan Kindera, Gogol’s Wife by Tommaso Landolfi, Spring in Fialta by Valdimir Nabokov, The Artificial Nigger by Flannery O’Connor, Nomad and Viper by Amos Oz, Children Are Bored on Sunday by Jean Stafford, Beyond the Pale by William Trevor, No Place for You my Love by Eudora Welty. All can be found in The Art of the Tale, ed. by Daniel Halpern. ART

A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell, The Golden Honeymoon by Ring Lardner, Defender of the Faith by Philip Roth, The Rotifer by Mary Ladd Gavell, and, In the Gloaming by Alice Elliott Dark. All can be found in The Best American Short Stories of the Century, ed. by John Updike. BES

The Language of Men by Norman Mailer. In Esquires’ Big Book of Fiction, ed. by Adrienne Miller. ESQ

The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield, Only the Dead Know Brooklyn by Thomas Wolfe, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and The Minister’s Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne. All in 50 Great Short Stories, ed. by Milton Crane. FIF

The Good Doctor by Susan Onthank Mates can be found in her short story collection The Good Doctor. MAT

The Dead by James Joyce, and, The Weaver's Grave by Seumas O'Kelly. Both can be found in The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories, ed. by William Trevor. OXF

Holiday by Katherine Anne Porter; to be found in The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter. POR

Moon Gems by Ishikawa Jun, and, The Magic Chalk by Abe Kobo. Both can be found in The Showa Anthology: Modern Japanese Short Stories Vol. 1, 1929-1961, ed. by Van C. Gessel. SHO

The Sheriff's Children by Charles W. Chesnutt, The Sky is Gray by Ernest J. Gaines, and, The Angel in the Alcove by Tennessee Williams. These can be found in The Signet Classic Book of Southern Short Stories, ed. by Dorothy Abbott. SIG

Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol, Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville, The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy, The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin, The Revolt of Mother by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Open Boat by Stephen Crane, Paul’s Case by Willa Cather, To Build a Fire by Jack London, Crown of Feathers by Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Man Who Was Almost a Man by Richard Wright, The Enormous Radio, and, The Swimmer by John Cheever, Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison, To Room 19 by Doris Lessing, A Conversation with My Father by Grace Paley, The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin, I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen, and, Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth. All can be found in The Story and Its Writer, ed. by Ann Charters. 809.31 STO

The Destructors by Graham Greene can be found in 21 Stories by Graham Greene. GRE

Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, a Dying Cat, a Traded Car by John Updike can be found in Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories. UPD

Moonwalk by Susan Power, Wickedness by Ron Hansen, Rock Springs by Richard Ford, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, and, Cathedral by Raymond Carver. All can be found in The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, ed. by Tobias Wolff. VIN

The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges, The Balcony by Filisberto Hernandes, The Third Bank of the River by Joao Gimaraes Rosa, Blow-up by Julio Cortazar, Love by Clarice Lispector, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World by Gabriel Garcia Marques, The Wardrobe, the Old Man and Death by Julio Ramon Ribeyro, and, Subterranean River by Ines Arredondo. All can be found in The Vintage Book of Latin American Stories, ed. by Carlos Fuentes. VIN

The Five-Forty-Eight by John Cheever, and, the Catbird Seat by James Thurber. Both can be found in Wonderful Town: New York Stories from the New Yorker, ed. by David Remnick. WON

NONFICTION:

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl 131 FRA Frankl's classic account of his imprisonment at Auschwitz and his resulting search for ways of healing the mind and spirit. One of the most inspirational, wise books ever written.

Who Moved My Cheese: An A-mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson 155.9 JOH Dr. Spencer Johnson realizes the need for finding the language and tools to deal with change-an issue that makes all of us nervous and uncomfortable. Who Moved My Cheese? takes the fear and anxiety out of managing the future and shows people a simple way to successfully deal with the changing times, providing them with a method for moving ahead with their work and lives safely and effectively.

Islam: a Short History 297/ARM, A History of God 291.211, Through the Narrow Gate, and, The Spiral Staircase B ARMSTONG by Karen Armstrong. One of the world's foremost historians and thinkers on religious affairs writes about religion and also personal experiences from her own repertoire.

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr 303.483 CAR With references to Marshall McLuhan's "the medium is the message" and supercomputer Hal losing his 'mind' in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the author of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google joins the debate over whether the Internet is altering our thought processes. Drawing on neuroscience and computer science, Carr supports the argument that digital technology is reversing the "deepening of thought" that the printed word launched, and Kubrick's vision that human beings and computers are switching roles. The provocative book includes suggested further reading.

Princess: a True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia by Jean Sasson 305.42 SAS A Saudi princess discusses what life is like for women in her country, describing how women are sold into marriage to men five times their age, are treated as their husbands' slaves, and are often murdered for the slightest transgression.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua 305.48 CHU An awe-inspiring, often hilarious, and unerringly honest story of one mother's exercise in extreme parenting, revealing the rewards-and the costs-of raising her children the Chinese way.

Praying for Sheetrock (306, available in the OSL System), and, No Biking in the House without a Helmet (Biography, available in the OSL System) by Melissa Fay Green. Greene is the author of five books of nonfiction, a two-time National Book Award finalist, recipient of an honorary doctorate from Emory University in 2010, and a 2011 inductee into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. She writes about topics ranging from civil rights in the South to light-hearted family memories.

Hands of My Father: a Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love by Myron Uhlberg 362.42 UHL By turns heart-tugging and hilarious; Myron Uhlberg's memoir tells the story of growing up as the hearing son of deaf parents-and his life in a world that he found unaccountably beautiful, even as he longed to escape it.

The Glass Castle: a Memoir by Jeannette Walls 362.82 WAL Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms. For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots. Here, she tells her own story.

Mountains beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder 610.92 KID; other fine narrative nonfiction titles by Kidder include: Among Schoolchildren 372.1102 KID, Home Town 974.423 KID, House LP 690.837 KID, My Detachment 959.7043 KID, Old Friends 305.26/KID, The Soul of a New Machine 621.3819 KID, and, Strength in What Remains 325.2675 KID. Tracy Kidder excels at writing gripping stories of people under stress and the resources they call upon to get them through. From daily life in a nursing home to the creation of a super-computer, Kidder uses the lives of his subjects to illuminate greater problems of small towns, the United States, and the world. His sympathy for the problems of his characters, both global and local, translates into a greater sympathy for the human soul and he doesn't leave the reader without hope for the future.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot 616.02774 SKL As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family-past and present-is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of. Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

100 Simple Things You Can Do to Prevent Alzheimer's and Age-related Memory Loss by Jean Carper 616.8983 CAR Most people think there is little or nothing you can do to avoid Alzheimer's. But scientists know this is no longer true. In fact, prominent researchers now say that our best and perhaps only hope of defeating Alzheimer's is to prevent it. After best-selling author Jean Carper discovered that she had the major susceptibility gene for Alzheimer's, she was determined to find all the latest scientific evidence on how to escape it. She discovered 100 surprisingly simple scientifically tested ways to radically cut the odds of Alzheimer's, memory decline, and other forms of dementia.

The Great Bridge by David McCullough 624 MCC Celebrating the centennial of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, here is the classic account of one of the greatest engineering feats of all time.

Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans 792.8 HOM For more than four hundred years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. Homans traces the evolution of technique, choreography and performance in clean, clear prose, drawing readers into the intricacies of the art with vivid descriptions of dances and the artists who made them. Apollo’s Angels is an authoritative work, written with a grace and elegance befitting its subject.

Fifty-nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had by Edward Achorn 796.357 ACH One of the most splendid and entertaining books ever written on 19th century American Baseball. Achorn is a gifted researcher and writer, his book is like a magical time machine, taking the reader back to 1880’s Providence, RI-not just the baseball aspects of it-but the society that surrounded and supported the game as well.

Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season by Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King 796.357 ONA From two bestselling authors comes a unique chronicle of one baseball team's journey from spring training to post-season play, through which Red Sox fans can relive all the heartbreak and heroics of the 2004 season.

How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One by Stanley Fish (808, Available in the OSL System) New York Times columnist Fish presents an entertaining, erudite celebration of language and rhetoric drawing on a wide range of examples from Hobbes to Scalia to Elmore Leonard.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. 808 STR "...a marvelous and timeless little book... Here, succinctly, elegantly and without fuss are the essentials of writing clear, correct English”, John Clare, "The Telegraph".

The Master Letters of Emily Dickinson, edited by R.W. Franklin 811.4 DIC The Master Letters are three letters, actually drafts of three letters, to a person Emily addresses as “Master”. They are undated by Dickinson, but some sleuthing and careful handwriting analysis described in the introduction put them in a credible chronological order. No other version of these letters or the other side of this correspondence is known. A wonderful mystery.

Selected Poems by Emily Dickinson 811.4 DIC A selection of this brilliant poet's greatest, most popular poems. Includes "There's a certain slant of light", "Because I could not stop for death", and, "It was not death for I stood up”.

On Writing: a Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King 813.54 KIN In this important book King presents lessons for writers. His advice is friendly and to the point: acquire and hone the tools necessary for good writing, let your characters reveal the story and dare to get started. He tells the story of his colorful childhood, his collection of rejection slips in adolescence, and the struggling that led to his first major publishing success. Finally he talks about the accident that nearly killed him and the writing that helped him get his life back.

The Best of S.J. Perelman by S.J. Perelman 817.5 P437be Some of the “best of the best” of devastatingly witty Perelman, the leading figure of The New Yorker magazine's golden age of humor and one of the most popular American humorists ever. In these hilarious pieces, the charmingly cranky Perelman turns his scathing attention to books, movies, New York socialites, the newspaper business, country life, travel, Hollywood, the publishing industry, and, last but not least, himself.

A Walker in the City by Alfred Kazin 818.5 KAZ In this magnificent memoir, Alfred Kazin recalls his childhood in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn with such tactile specificity that readers, too, will smell "that good and deep odor of lox, of salami, of herrings and half-sour pickles" that emanated from the neighborhood pushcarts. His story is set in the working-class Jewish community of New York City in the decade preceding the Great Depression, but this classic memoir of the first-generation American experience resonates universally.

The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1957-1982 by Wendell Berry 811.54 BER A longtime spokesman for conservation, common sense, and sustainable agriculture, Wendell Berry writes eloquently in several styles and methods. His love of language and his care for its music are matched only by his fidelity to the subjects on which he has written during his first twenty-five years of work: land and nature, the family and community, tradition as the groundwork for life and culture.

Home Economics: Fourteen Essays by Wendell Berry 818.54 BER "My work has been motivated", Wendell Berry has written, "by a desire to make myself responsibly at home in this world and in my native and chosen place". In Home Economics, Berry explores this process and continues to discuss what it means to make oneself "responsibly at home".

Complete Plays: The Playboy of the Western World, Riders to the Sea, In the Shadow of the Glen, The Well of the Saints, The Tinker's Wedding, Deirdre of the Sorrows by John Millington Synge (822, Available in the OSL System) Lyrical, emotional, heart-breakingly wonderful in the way Irish drama at its best can be. You’ll think about the plays in this book long after reading them.

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi 854.914 LEV The Periodic Table is largely a memoir of the years before and after Primo Levi's transportation from his native Italy to Auschwitz as an anti-Facist partisan and a Jew. It recounts, in clear, precise, unfailingly beautiful prose, the story of the Piedmontese Jewish community from which Levi came, of his years as a student and young chemist at the inception of the Second World War, and of his investigations into the nature of the material world. As such, it provides crucial links and backgrounds, both personal and intellectual, in the tremendous project of remembrance that is Levi's gift to posterity. But far from being a prologue to his experience of the Holocaust, Levi's masterpiece represents his most impassioned response to the events that engulfed him. The Periodic Table celebrates the pleasures of love and friendship and the search for meaning, and stands as a monument to those things in us that are capable of resisting and enduring in the face of tyranny.

The Collected What if?: Eminent Historians Imagining What Might Have Been: Essays by Caleb Carr (909, available in the OSL System) What's great about this book is that it focuses on two main threads of time: The Actual, and the Counter-factual. In frank and easy narrative, the authors of these essays give you the facts of a particular battle, or event in time and then twist that fateful day in the opposite direction, giving you a disastrous (or beneficial) outcome. It really proposes incredible changes of the present if said past events changed as easily as the turning of a leaf in the wind.

The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon J 909 First published in 1921, The Story of Mankind has charmed generations of readers of all ages with its warmth, simplicity, and wisdom. Beginning with the origins of human life and sweeping forward to illuminate all of history, Hendrik van Loon's incomparable prose enlivens the characters and events of every age.

Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle by Dervla Murphy (910, Available in the OSL System) The diary of Murphy’s bicycle trek from Dunkirk, across Europe, through Iran and Afghanistan, over the Himalayas to Pakistan and India. Murphy's immediate rapport with the people she alights among is vibrant and appealing, and makes her travelogue unique.

Tristan Jones Trilogy: The Incredible Voyage: a Personal Odyssey 910.45 JON, Ice 910.45 JON, and, Saga of a Wayward Sailor 910.41 JON Sail along with this silver-tongued Welsh mariner as he tests the limits of his dreams in journeys to the top and bottom of the world, and many other destinations in between. You’ll not find a more entertaining, spell-casting traveling companion anywhere.

Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz 910.92 HOR James Cook's three epic 18th century journeys were among the last great voyages of discovery. When he embarked for the Pacific in 1768, a third of the globe remained blank. By the time he died in 1779, Cook had explored more of the earth's surface than anyone in history. Adventuring in the captain's wake, Tony Horwitz relives his journeys and explores their legacy. He recaptures the rum-and-lash world of eighteenth century seafaring gang members, and the king of Tonga. Accompanied by a carousing Australian mate, he meets Miss Tahiti, visits the roughest bar in Alaska, and uncovers the secret behind the red-toothed warriors of Savage Island. Throughout, Horwitz also searches for Cook the man: a restless prodigy who fled his peasant boyhood, and later the luxury of Georgian London, for the privation and peril of sailing off the edge of the map.

Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff by Rosemary Mahoney 916.2 MAH Boston native and avid rower Rosemary Mahoney has led a peripatetic life, and her writing reflects the breadth of her travels and the depth of her thinking on cultural matters. Previous efforts include The Early Arrival of Dreams: a Year in China 951.242 MAH, the author's experiences in China just before Tiananmen Square; The Singular Pilgrim:Travels on Sacred Ground 291.445 MAH, a spiritual travelogue; and Whoredom in Kimmage: Irish Women Coming of Age 941.7 MAH, a treatise on Irish gender roles. In On the Nile, the author writes beautifully of the connections between culture and history. Mahoney's voice is direct and honest, her Nile as evocative as Paul Bowles's desert, her wit a counterbalance to the unease engendered by such a profound cultural divide.

Unbroken: a World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand 940.5472 HIL Do not miss this incredible story of harrowing tragedy, hard-fought-for survival and redemptive grace in a Japanese prison camp.

Night by Elie Wiesel 940.5472 WIE Wiesel's harrowing account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps; his goal in writing it, to help ensure that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man.

The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Maria Rosa Menocal 946.02 MEN In this engaging and learned volume, Menocal recounts the remarkable, multi-cultural history of medieval Spain, when Muslims ruled much of the country and elevated standards of art and learning.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi 955 NAF An inspired blend of memoir and literary criticism, Reading Lolita in Tehran is a moving testament to the power of art and its ability to change and improve people's lives. In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels. For two years they met to talk, share, and "shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color".

The Unforgiving Minute: a Soldier’s Education by Craig Mullaney 958.1046 MUL Keenly intelligent war memoir whose central question is, “What is a man?” A philosophically ambitious account of coming to adulthood.

Horse Soldiers: the Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan by Doug Stanton 958.1047 STA In this absolutely riveting account, full of horror and raw courage, journalist Stanton (In Harm's Way) recreates the miseries and triumphs of specially trained mounted U.S. soldiers, deployed in the war-ravaged Afghanistan mountains to fight alongside the Northern Alliance-thousands of rag-tag Afghans who fought themselves to exhaustion or death-against the Taliban.

Two Souls Indivisible: the Friendship that Saved Two POWs in Vietnam by James S. Hirsch 959.704 HIR James Hirsch recounts one of the great friendships of the twentieth century, forged in one of the most horrific settings that century produced-a North Vietnamese POW camp its inmates called the Zoo. One prisoner, Fred Cherry, was a pioneering air force pilot and the first black officer captured by the North Vietnamese. The other, a young navy flier named Porter Halyburton, was a Southerner who doubted that a black man could even be a pilot. Their captors threw them into the same fetid cell, believing that their antipathy toward each other would break them both. But Cherry and Halyburton overcame their initial suspicions and saved each other's lives.

Left to Tell: Discovering God amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculée Ilibagiza 967.57 ILI Immaculee's family was brutally murdered during the genocide in Rawanda. Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in a cramped bathroom while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them. It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Immaculee discovered the power of prayer and the meaning of truly unconditional love - a love so strong she was able seek out and forgive her family's killers.

Foxfire 40th Anniversary Edition: Faith, Family, and the Land edited by Angie Cheek (970, available in the OSL System) In 1966, an English teacher and students in Northeast Georgia founded a quarterly magazine, not only as a vehicle to learn the required English curriculum, but also to teach others about the customs, crafts, traditions, and lifestyle of their Appalachian culture. Named Foxfire after a local phosphorescent lichen, the magazine became one of the most beloved publications in American culture. For four decades, Foxfire has brought the philosophy of simple living to readers, teaching creative self-sufficiency, home crafts, and the art of natural remedies, and preserving the stories of Appalachia.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown 970.5 BRO First published in 1970, this extraordinary book changed the way Americans think about the original inhabitants of their country. Beginning with the Long Walk of the Navajos in 1860 and ending 30 years later with the massacre of Sioux men, women, and children at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, it tells how the American Indians lost their land and lives to a dynamically expanding white society.

The Path between the Seas: the Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 by David McCullough 972.875 MAC Winner of the National Book Award for history, The Path between the Seas tells the story of the men and women who fought against all odds to fulfill the 400-year-old dream of constructing an aquatic passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The Path between the Seas has the sweep and vitality of a great novel.

A People's History of the United States, 1492-Present by Howard Zinn 973 ZIN A classic since its original landmark publication in 1980, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States is the first scholarly work to tell America's story from the bottom up-from the point of view of, and in the words of, America's women, factory workers, African Americans, Native Americans, working poor, and immigrant laborers. From Columbus to the Revolution to slavery and the Civil War-from World War II to the election of George W. Bush and the "War on Terror"- A People's History of the United States is an important and necessary contribution to a complete and balanced understanding of American history.

Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin 973.7 GOO Team of Rivals doesn't just tell the story of Abraham Lincoln. It is a multiple biography of the entire team of personal and political competitors that he put together to lead the country through its greatest crisis. How he did it makes for fascinating, utterly germane, reading. The ability to forge a team made up of highly competitive peers has to be one of the most extraordinary political and personal skills of all.

Manhunt: the Twelve Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James Swanson 973.7 SWA The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, led Union cavalry and detectives on a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia, while the nation, still reeling from the just-ended Civil War, watched in horror and sadness. James L. Swanson's Manhunt is a fascinating tale of murder, intrigue, and betrayal. A gripping hour-by-hour account told through the eyes of the hunted and the hunters, this is history as you've never read it before.

Abigail Adams by Woody Holton (Biography, available in the OSL System) Holton allows Abigail's voice to radiate off the page; this biography grips the reader from the beginning tale of Abigail writing her own will. A wonderful book for revolutionary history buffs, women's studies majors, and biography lovers.

The Invisible Wall: a Love Story that Broke Barriers by Harry Bernstein B BERNSTEIN The narrow street where Harry Bernstein grew up, in a small English mill town, was seemingly unremarkable. It was identical to countless other streets in countless other working-class neighborhoods of the early 1900s, except for the "invisible wall" that ran down its center, dividing Jewish families on one side from Christian families on the other. Only a few feet of cobblestones separated Jews from Gentiles, but socially, they were miles apart. When Harry unwittingly discovers his sister’s secret affair with a gentile, he must choose between the morals he's been taught all his life, his loyalty to his selfless mother, and what he knows to be true in his own heart.

And Furthermore by Judi Dench B DENCH In this warmhearted memoir, actress Dench brings such a fresh and natural reaction as she describes her roles from Mother Courage to Cleopatra, Lady Bracknell and Sally Bowles that a sense of identification occurs; Dench shows the theatrical inside plumbing of the player and how personal insights, emotional back stories, and initial responses create the character.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion B DIDION Didion's husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, died of a heart attack, just after they had returned from the hospital where their only child, Quintana, was lying in a coma. This book is a memoir of Dunne's death, Quintana's illness, and Didion's efforts to make sense of a time when nothing made sense.

Funny in Farsi: a Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas B DUMAS This lighthearted memoir chronicles the author's move from Iran to America in 1971 at age seven, the antics of her extended family and her eventual marriage to a Frenchman. It is a laugh-out-loud read.

Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country by Louise Erdrich B ERDRICH Louise Erdrich puts the reader in the passenger’s seat on a journey that is equal parts memoir, history, and mythology in Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country. She travels to Southern Ontario and Minnesota’s Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake to learn about the land, her tribe, and the stories left behind.

"Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman": Adventures of a Curious Character and What do you care what other people think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman B FEYNMAN Two impossible-to-put-down, life changing autobiographies from this truly free-thinking, Nobel Prize winning physicist.

The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt B JUDT Many of these chronological essays, written while Judt struggled with ALS, first appeared in the New York Review of Books, but, taken together, they offer an astute portrait of a life cut short-yet one also fully, richly lived.

Chasing Hepburn: a Memoir of Shanghai, Hollywood, and a Chinese Family's Fight for Freedom by Gus Lee B LEE A lively memoir that centers on the life of his family in Shanghai during the Chinese civil war. Lee's parents, T.C. Lee and Da-Tsien Tzu, broke with Chinese tradition and arranged their own marriage. In their courting years, watching first-run movies in Shanghai in the early 1930s, they were attracted to strong-willed actress Katharine Hepburn and recognized each other's determination to be independent. T.C. Lee, a hyperactive person who chose a mobile career in the Chinese military and befriended the wealthy T.A. Soong, met Hepburn and became romantically involved with other American actresses in Hollywood. In the meantime, while raising their children and still living with her in-laws and parents in China, Da-Tsien Tzu became devoted to Western Christianity and eventually "walked across China" during the Japanese occupation with three of her children to reunite with her husband in California in the 1940s.

Not Without My Daughter by Betty Mahmoody B MAHMOODY Betty met the perfect "dark stranger" in a Michigan hospital. That man, Iranian therapist, Dr. Sayyed Bozorg Mahmoody, became her husband and the father of their daughter, Mahtob. Despite the vicissitudes of the Iran-U.S. hostage crisis, their marriage flourished until their summer "vacation" in Iran in 1984. The next year and a half was a nightmare as Betty and Mahtob were held hostage by Mahmoody and his family. Intense, compelling reading.

A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates B OATES Joyce Carol Oates' heart-wrenching memoir deals with her husband Raymond Smith’s unexpected death. Admitted to the hospital with pneumonia, he died within a week from a virulent hospital-acquired infection. Part pilgrimage, part handbook, Oates illuminates the stunning reality of widowhood.

A Very Private Eye: an Autobiography in Diaries and Letters by Barbara Pym B PYM If you are a fan of Pym’s British Comedies of Manners you’ll find this book will provide much of the true back story for her delicious fictional flights of fancy.

Heart of a Patriot: How I Found the Courage to Survive Vietnam, Walter Reed and Karl Rove by Max Cleland (Biography, available in the OSL System) A searing memoir of recovery and triumph by one of America's finest patriots, detailing his remarkable journey from small town Georgia to Vietnam to a U.S. Senate seat as well as his role serving as scaffolding for a withering critique of the Bush administration's handling of September 11.

Three Weeks with My Brother by Nicholas and Micah Sparks B SPARKS Nicholas and Micah Sparks' "New York Times" bestselling memoir of their life-affirming journey around the world.

The Prizefighter and the Playwright: Gene Tunney and Bernard Shaw by Jay R. Tunney B TUNNEY The curious story of the unlikely relationship between a champion boxer and a celebrated man of letters. Gene Tunney, the world heavyweight-boxing champion from 1926 to 1928, seemed an unusual companion for George Bernard Shaw, but Shaw, a world-famous playwright, found the Irish-American athlete to be "among the very few for whom I have established a warm affection." The Prizefighter and the Playwright chronicles the legendary-but rarely documented-relationship that formed between this celebrated odd couple.

FILM/DVD:

The Last King of Scotland (2006) DVD L Starring Forest Whitaker - In 1970, the just-graduated doctor Nicholas Garrigan moves to Uganda to get rid of his conservative father. While working in a mission in the country, he meets the new President Idi Amin after the coup-d'é-tat that overthrow the former government. He is invited to become his personal physician in Kampala and along the years he sees how despotic his friend is.

Brooklyn Bridge by Ken Burns (1981) VCS 624 BRO (Also available in DVD in the OSL System) This documentary chronicles the world-famous Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. The difficult construction process is described in interesting detail; later parts of the film interview current notables who describe the effects that the Brooklyn Bridge has had upon New York society and beyond.

No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency TV series (2008) DVD N Television comedy-drama series, produced by the BBC in conjunction with HBO, and based on the novels of the same name by Alexander McCall Smith. The novels focus on the story of a detective agency opened by Mma Ramotswe and her courtship with the mechanic Mr. JLB Matekoni. The series was filmed on location in Botswana and was seen as one of the first major film or television productions to be undertaken in Botswana.

Rosemary and Thyme TV Series (2005) DVD R Rosemary Boxer and Laura Thyme, two middle-aged women, make a fresh start by opening a gardening business. Mysteries grow around these two gardening sleuths as they dig up trouble on the job and use investigative skills to get to the bottom of things.

Downton Abbey TV Series (2011) DVD D The stunningly beautiful English estate known as Downton Abbey is in danger of being lost to its "rightful" heirs because there is no male to claim the ancestral home of Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) and the money that goes with it. And so we watch the machinations of the Abbey's dowager countess (Maggie Smith) and other relatives as they try to find a way to maintain the family's claim to the estate and marry off the three daughters to appropriate suitors. (Don’t miss the Downton Abbey Parody on YouTube, it is a two part piece titled: Uptown Downstairs Abbey.)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest DVD G The Swedish film production company Yellow Bird has produced film versions of the Millennium Trilogy, co-produced with The Danish film production company Nordisk Film and television company, which were released in Scandinavia in 2009. In 2010, the films were shown in an extended version of approximately 180 minutes per film as a six-part miniseries (each film divided in two parts of 90 minutes) on Swedish television. This version was released on 14 July 2010 on DVD and Blu-ray in three separate sets and on 24 November 2010 as a Complete Millennium Trilogy boxed set with an extra disc. Originally, only the first film was meant for a theatrical release, with the following ones conceived as TV movies, but this was changed in the wake of the tremendous success of the first film. The first film was directed by Niels Arden Oplev and the next two by Daniel Alfredson, while the screenplays of the first two were adapted by Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg, and the last one by Ulf Rydberg and Jonas Frykberg. All three films feature Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomkvist and Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander.

Recent Films starring Judi Dench (All films listed are available in the Ocean State Libraries System) Dench's more recent film career has garnered six Academy Award nominations in nine years for Mrs. Brown in 1997; her Oscar-winning turn as Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love in 1998; for Chocolat in 2000; for the lead role of writer Iris Murdoch in Iris in 2001 and for 2006's Notes on a Scandal, a film for which she received critical acclaim, including Golden Globe, Academy Award, BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild nominations.

A Trip to the Moon (French: Le Voyage dans la lune) (Available in the Ocean State Libraries System) This a groundbreaking1902 French black and white silent science fiction film based loosely on two popular novels of the time: From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells. The film was written and directed by Georges Méliès.

Man on Wire (2008) (Available in the Ocean State Libraries System) Fascinating look at the high-wire walk made by Philippe Petit in 1974 between the World Trade Center's Twin Towers in New York City, and how it is still considered one of history's most artistic crimes. This British documentary film was directed by James Marsh

The Social Network (2010) DVD S Drama about the founding of the internet social networking website Facebook and the resulting lawsuits. David Fincher, director.

RECOMMENDED WEBSITES:

Fantasticfiction.co.uk - Information on over 350,000 books and bibliographies for over 30,000 authors

Stopyourekillingme.com - A website to die for . . . if you love mysteries!

OTHER READER’S ADVISORY RESOURCES RECOMMENDED BY THE GROUP:

BOOK TV

C-SPAN

New York Review of Books

Washington Independent Review of Books

*These Books, Films, Websites and Reader’s Advisory Sources were chosen by the First Monday Morning of the Month Club 2010-11. The list was compiled by the Barrington Public Library Reference Staff in June, 2011.

Please join us for our next series of meetings, each on the first Monday Morning of the month from 10-11:30, Oct. 2011-May 2012. This is a drop in program, no registration required. The idea is to bring a book along and tell the group why you like it, doing so in about three minutes. That’s all you have to do, and, if you want to just drop by and listen, you are very welcome to do that as well! Coffee and goodies provided at each meeting to prime the literary pump.