Books marked with a highlight have since been book club selections.
See also Finding a Good Book to Read, by Slow Reader
Initial suggestions . . .
Suite Francaise
by Irene Nemirovsky. It's been out for a few years. The author died in Auschwitz and her daugther published the manuscript she left behind. Read more about it here ~ suggested by Slow Reader.Additional suggestions will be listed in alphabetical order by title or grouped by when they were mentioned at a discussion meeting:
The Blue Star: A Novel
by Tony Earley - a sequel to Jim the Boy the inaugural selection of Captive Thoughts Book Club ~ suggested by Wordsmith.Cranford
by Elizabeth Gaskell. A gently comic picture of life in an English country town in the mid-nineteenth century...Rich with humor and filled with vividly memorable characters...Cranford is a portrait of kindness, compassion, and hope ~ suggested by Page Turner.Girl Meets God: A Memoir
by Lauren F. Winner. “A charming, humorous, and sometimes abrasive recollection of a religious coming-of-age . . . a compelling journey from Judaism to Christianity.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ~ suggested by Page Turner.The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Mary Ann Shaffer. A story told through letters, this novel tells the story of how the inhabitants of the Isle of Guernsey made the most of life under German occupation in WWII ~ suggested by Page Turner.In This House of Brede
by Rumer Godden. Set in Britain, this novel tells the story of the life of nuns in a Benedictine Abbey ~ suggested by Page Turner.Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
by Mary Roach. Fascinating and surprisingly humorous book about dead bodies - what you never knew! ~ suggested by Curious Reader.The Yiddish Policeman's Union
by Michael Chabon. It asks what if, as Franklin Roosevelt proposed on the eve of World War II, a temporary Jewish settlement had been established on the Alaska panhandle? ~ suggested by Slow Reader.--------------------------------------------------------
Book suggestions from November 2008 meeting:
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
by Elizabeth Gilbert - after a nasty divorce, the author records her year in search of self, exploring Italy, India, and Indonesia (it's no coincidence that they all begin with "I").The Glass Castle: A Memoir
by Jeannette Walls - "I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a dumpster."The House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton - taking its name from Ecclesiastes 7:4, this literary classic describes the fall of Lily Bart in turn-of-the-century New York and exposes the failures of the Gilded Age.Lilith
by George MacDonald - Lilith, along with Phantastes, is the fantasy that changed the thinking of C.S. Lewis and influenced him toward Christianity.The Man Who Was Thursday
by G.K. Chesterton - intellectually challenging, worth discussing. Also any of the Father Brown mysteries.The Mill on the Floss
by George Eliot - another example of why classics are enduring, this early 19th century novel is rich in character development and moral consequence.The Once and Future King
by T.H. White - based on Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, this is a must-read for any Arthurian enthusiast.The Red Tent
by Anita Diamant - told by Dinah, daughter of the biblical patriarch Jacob, this book delves into the lives and intrigues of women in ancient Mesopotamia.Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution
by Ji-li Jiang - an autobiolgraphy of the author's teenage years during China's cultural revolution. Done! We can check this one off.Tess of the d'Urbervilles
by Thomas Hardy - Hardy, in beautiful if somewhat fatalistic prose, describes the desperate conflict between the classes of 19th century England epitomized in the life of a young woman trying to frame her own destiny.A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
by Betty Smith - this novel about a girl coming of age in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn was considered alarming by the genteel society of the 1940's but endures as a story of humor and pathos.--------------------------------------------------------
Wordsmith added in December '08:
The 19th Wife: A Novel by David Ebershoff. From The New Yorker: "Ebershoff demonstrates abundant virtuosity, as he convincingly inhabits the voices of both a nineteenth-century Mormon wife and a contemporary gay youth excommunicated from the church, while also managing to say something about the mysterious power of faith."
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Jotted on a napkin during book club meeting 8/20/09:
The Book Thief, by Zusak
Woman in White, by Wilky Collins
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel - discussion questions
Home, by Marilynn Robinson
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver
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Added by Slow Reader 8/29/09:
Dancing to the Precipice, a biography by Caroline Moorehead based on the memoir of Lucie-Henriette Dillon, lady in waiting to Marie Antoinette. "Lucie survived the French Revolution and three periods of exile in Switerland, America, and England. She served as ambassadress to Holland under Louis XVI and to Brussels under Napolean. She lived to see the restoration of three French kings and, as if all this wasn't enough, the workers' revolt of 1848 that ended so bloodily." As a USA Today review sums up, "a remarkable life by any standard." At 480 pages, it's doubtful this would be a good book club selection, but it sounds like one worthy of aspiration.
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More recent additions (8/17/11) by Slow Reader:
The Spirit of Food, by Leslie Leyland Fields. This is an author I've "met" online, after she wrote Baptists for Life to recommend her earlier book, Surprise Child. This work is reminiscent of Stealing Buddha's Dinner for a food theme, but goes along more in the vein of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, which we read a while ago. It also contains an essay by one of our favorite authors -- Wendell Berry. "You are invited to a feast for the senses and the spirit! Thirty-four renowned and adventurous writers open their fields, their kitchens, their tables, and their recipe files to illustrate the many unexpected ways that food draws us closer to beauty, to justice, to Christian community, and to God."
These below don't necessarily qualify as "must read," but they were in the GR Public Library summer reading list and sound interesting:
The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, by Ben Mezrich. Could be interesting because we're all on Facebook, but the description also made it sound a little racy.
Eden Springs, by Laura Kasischke. This one has a Michigan connection. "In 1903, a preacher named Benjamin Purnell and five followers founded a colony called the House of David in Benton Harbor, Michigan, where they prepared for eternal life by creating a heaven on earth. . . . Eden Springs lets readers inside the enchanting and eerie House of David, with an intimate look at its hedonistic highs and eventual collapse. This novella will appeal to all readers of fiction, as well as those with an interest in Michigan history.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. "Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. Henrietta’s cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can’t afford health insurance."
The Michigan Murders, by Edward Keyes. Another "local" connection. "Southeastern Michigan was rocked in the late 1960s by the terrifying serial murders of young women, whose bodies were dumped in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. In each case, few clues were left at the scene, and six separate police agencies were unable to end the horror. Then, almost by accident, a break came. The suspect: John Norman Collins, a young, quiet, all-American boy."
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Suggested by Darcie: That Woman by Anne Sebba about Wallis Simpson and Edward the VIII
