Fall/Winter Book Club Title Nominations

  

Book Club Members: Let us know your thoughts! Please stop by, or call or  the store with your top picks for the October through January Book Club selections.

     

Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife

  

Francine Prose

Non-Fiction

  

Francine Prose argues that the diary of Anne Frank is as much a deliberate work of art as it is an historical record, noting its literary merits and thoroughly investigating the diary's unique afterlife as one of the world's most read, and banned, books.

  

With the understanding of one writer for another, the author parses the artistry, ambition, and enduring influence of Anne Frank's beloved classic, "The Diary of a Young Girl."

  

     

  

    

  

   

To Kill A Mockingbird

  

Harper Lee

Classic

  

The 50th anniversary of this classic provides a good opportunity for some other tie-in readings, for those interested in reading further if To Kill A Mockingbird is voted as a selection. Some ideas:

  

Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of 50 Years of To Kill a Mockingbird

by Mary McDonagh Murphy

  

"In celebration of the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird (June 8, 2010), an American classic that sells almost a million copies per year, Scout, Atticus, and Boo features interview selections with prominent figures including Oprah Winfrey, Tom Brokaw, Wally Lamb, and Anna Quindlen on how the book has impacted their lives"--

  

Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields

  

Furnishes an in-depth, meticulously researched portrait of the enigmatic woman behind the creation of To Kill a Mockingbird, describing the life and literary career of Harper Lee, her struggle to create her famed novel, and her contributions to the work of her lifelong friend Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

  

 

     

The Help 

Kathryn Stockett

Fiction

  

Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, who's always taken orders quietly, but lately she's unable to hold her bitterness back. Her friend Minny has never held her tongue but now must somehow keep secrets about her employer that leave her speechless. White socialite Skeeter just graduated college. She's full of ambition, but without a husband, she's considered a failure. Together, these seemingly different women join together to write a tell-all book about work as a black maid in the South, that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town...

     

Half Broke Horses

Jeannette Walls

Fiction

  

Presents a novel based on the life of the author's grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who learned to break horses in childhood, journeyed five hundred miles as a teen to become a teacher, and ran a vast ranch in Arizona with her husband while raising two children.

 

"Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, in Jeannette Walls's magnificent, true-life novel based on her no-nonsense, resourceful, hard working, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town -- riding five hundred miles on her pony, all alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car ("I loved cars even more than I loved horses. They didn't need to be fed if they weren't working, and they didn't leave big piles of manure all over the place") and fly a plane, and, with her husband, ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette's memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in The Glass Castle.

 

  

     

Brooklyn 

Colm Toibin

Fiction

  

Leaving her home in post-World War II Ireland to work as a bookkeeper in Brooklyn, Eilis Lacey discovers a new romance in America with a charming blond Italian man before devastating news threatens her happiness.

  

  

 

  

     

Cutting for Stone

Abraham Verghese

Fiction

  

The twin sons of a secret love affair between an Indian nun and a British surgeon in Addis Ababa, Marion and Shiva Stone are orphaned by their mother's death in childbirth and father's disappearance, coming of age in an Ethiopia on the brink of revolution, bound together by a shared interest in medicine and forever divided by their love for the same woman. Reprint. A best-selling book.

 

  

     

Mudbound

Hillary Jordan

Fiction

  

In 1946, Laura McAllan tries to adjust after moving with her husband and two children to an isolated cotton farm in the Mississipi Delta.

  

  

  

  

  

     

Tinkers

Paul Harding  

  

Winner of the Pulitzer.

  

An old man lies dying. As time collapses into memory, he travels deep into his past where he is reunited with his father and relives the wonder and pain of his impoverished New England youth. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the fierce beauty of nature.

  

  

     

Last Night in Twisted River

John Irving

Fiction

  

In a story spanning five decades, a 12-year-old boy in New Hampshire mistakes the constable's girlfriend for a bear, leading to an unfortunate accident that forces the boy and his father to become fugitives pursued by the constable, with their only help coming from a fiercely libertarian logger. Reprint. A best-selling book.

  

  

  

  

  

     

Heretic's Daughter

Kathleen Kent

Historical Fiction

  

Martha Carrier was one of the first women to be accused, tried and hanged as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts. Like her mother, young Sarah Carrier is bright and willful, openly challenging the small, brutal world in which they live. Often at odds with one another, mother and daughter are forced to stand together against the escalating hysteria of the trials and the superstitious tyranny that led to the torture and imprisonment of more than 200 people accused of witchcraft. This is the story of Martha's courageous defiance and ultimate death, as told by the daughter who survived.

  

  

  

  

  

     

Ordinary Wolves

Seth Kantor

Fiction

  

In the tradition of Jack London, Seth Kantner presents an Alaska far removed from majestic clichés of exotic travelogues and picture postcards. Kantner’s vivid and poetic prose lets readers experience Cutuk Hawcly’s life on the Alaskan plains through the character’s own words — feeling the pliers pinch of cold and hunkering in an igloo in blinding blizzards. Always in Cutuk’s mind are his father Ab,; the legendary hunter Enuk Wolfglove, and the wolves — all living out lives on the unforgiving tundra. Jeered and pummeled by native children because he is white, Cutuk becomes a marginal participant in village life, caught between cultures. After an accident for which he is responsible, he faces a decision that could radically change his life. Like his young hero, Seth Kantner grew up in a sod igloo in the Alaska, and his experiences of wearing mukluks before they were fashionable, eating boiled caribou pelvis, and communing with the native tribes add depth and power to this acclaimed narrative.

  

  

  

  

  

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