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Thursday, June 19, 2008
CONTENDERS FOR THE NEXT BIG READ
Well, here are the books that the Big Read committee are mulling over for the next communitywide reading event in the Dayton area, in the winter and early spring of 2009.
They’re asking for feedback! Have you read any of these? Does one sound good to you?
It’s a tasty-looking, thought-provoking list. These descriptions are provided by the review committee, which has come up with this list of final contenders after reading and discussing dozens of other fine books.
FYI, I haven’t read any of these yet personally, though I’ve read other books by a lot of these authors and have read reviews of most of them. Have a look and tell us what you think:
Bragg, Rick, All Over But the Shoutin’ or The Prince of Frogtown: A Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for The New York Times recounts growing up in the Alabama hills, the son of a violent veteran and a mother who tried to insulate her children from poverty and ignorance.
Brooks, Geraldine, People of the Book: Offered a coveted job to analyze and conserve a priceless Sarajevo Haggadah, Australian rare-book expert Hanna Heath discovers a series of tiny artifacts in the volume’s ancient binding that reveal its historically significant origins. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March.
Dean, Debra, Madonnas of Leningrad: In a novel that moves back and forth between the Soviet Union during World War II and modern-day America, Marina, an elderly Russian woman, recalls vivid images of her youth during the height of the siege of Leningrad when, as a tour guide at the Hermitage, she and other staff members removed the museum’s priceless artworks for safekeeping.
Hosseini, Khaled, A Thousand Splendid Suns: Two women born a generation apart witness the destruction of their home and family in war-torn Kabul, losses incurred over the course of thirty years that test the limits of their strength and courage. By the author of “Kite Runner.”
Lahiri, Jhumpa, The Namesake: A Novel: A portrait of the immigrant experience follows the Garguli family from their traditional life in India through their arrival in Massachusettes in the lat 1960s and their difficulties melding into an American way of life.
Martel, Yann, Life of Pi: Possessing encyclopedia-like intelligence, unusual zookeeper’s son Pi Patel sets sail for America, but when the ship sinks, he escapes on a life boat and is lost at sea with a dwindling number of animals until only he and a hungry Bengal tiger remain.
Mengestu, Dinaw, Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears: This year’s title for Seattle Public Library, “sounds interesting, but hard”. Seventeen years after fleeing the Ethiopian revolution to America, Sepha Stephanos runs a grocery store in a poor African-American neighborhood in Washington, D.C., where he witnesses a series of racially charged incidents and bitterly reflects on his past and the differences between his actual prospects and the life he imagined.
Mortenson, Greg, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time: Some failures lead to phenomenal successes, and this American nurse’s unsuccessful attempt to climb K2, the world’s second tallest mountain, is one of them. Dangerously ill when he finished his climb in 1993, Mortenson was sheltered for seven weeks by the small Pakistani village of Korphe; in return, he promised to build the impoverished town’s first school, a project that grew into the Central Asia Institute, which has since constructed more than 50 schools across rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. Coauthor Relin recounts Mortenson’s efforts in fascinating detail, presenting compelling portraits of the village elders, con artists, philanthropists, mujahideen, Taliban officials, ambitious school girls and upright Muslims Mortenson met along the way. As the book moves into the post-9/11 world, Mortenson and Relin argue that the United States must fight Islamic extremism in the region through collaborative efforts to alleviate poverty and improve access to education, especially for girls. Captivating and suspenseful, with engrossing accounts of both hostilities and unlikely friendships.
Picoult, Jodi, Nineteen Minutes: In the aftermath of a horrific small-town school shooting, lawyer Jordan McAfee finds himself defending a youth who desperately needs someone on his side, while intrepid detective Patrick DuCharme works with a primary witness in the daughter of the superior court judge assigned to the case.
Rhodes-Courtier, Ashley, Three Little Words: Ashley spent nine years in foster care after being taken away from her mother. She endured many caseworkers, moving from school to school, manipulative, humiliating and abusive treatment from one foster family. See how she survives and eventually thrives against the odds.
Weiner, Eric, Geography of Bliss: Part foreign affairs discourse, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide, this book takes the reader from America to Iceland to India in search of happiness, or, in the crabby author’s case, moments of “un-unhappiness.” The book uses a mixture of travel, psychology, science and humor to investigate not what happiness is, but where it is. Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most democratic country in the world? Do citizens of Singapore benefit psychologically by having their options limited by the government? Is the King of Bhutan a visionary for his initiative to calculate Gross National Happiness? Why is Asheville, North Carolina, so darn happy? NPR correspondent Weiner answers those questions and many others, offering travelers of all moods some interesting new ideas for sunnier destinations and dispositions.
Zusak, Markus, The Book Thief: Living with a foster family in Germany during World War II, a young girl struggles to survive her day-to-day trials through stealing anything she can get her hands on, but when she discovers the beauty of literature, she realizes that she has been blessed with a gift that must be shared with others, including the Jewish man hiding in the basement.
