LAVA Discussion Book Candidates for 2007

This list comes from several sources, including LAVA members, other book clubs, various lists of “The Year’s Best Books,” etc.  Several were carried over from the previous voting list. There are 24 books on this list, but we will choose only 8 of them in this balloting, which means that many worthwhile books unfortunately will be excluded from the coming year’s reading schedule.  As before, the most popular runners-up will be included in the next list of candidates.

(Why do we choose only 8 books to cover 12 meetings per year?  We don’t read a book for January because that month is occupied with choosing the next list of books.  In March we read the book chosen by Writers and Books for the “If all of Rochester Read the Same Book” program.  In July and September we see a film at The Little instead of discussing a book.  Therefore we need to choose only 8 books to cover the next 12 months.)

LAVA members are invited to research these book candidates in bookstores, libraries, on the web, etc.  Bring this list and your thoughts to the special January meeting at my house at 6 PM on Friday, January 5, which will be devoted to sharing information and opinions on these books (and eating good food!)

After the January 5 meeting and prior to the voting deadline of Friday January 26, please “mark your ballots” and get them to me. First review our guidelines for choosing LAVA discussion books, which reflect some of the things we have learned about choosing books over the years.  Then, using a system similar to the one used in the Olympics, rate each book individually on a scale of 1 to 10, using 10 to indicate books that you think would generate the best Lava discussions.  If you wish, you can write your rating for each book in the margins of this list. Last year, several members simply rated each book as we discussed it during the January meeting and handed their list to me as they left, but you can use any method you prefer as long as you get the list to me by January 26.

The candidates are divided into three groups:  shorter fiction, shorter nonfiction, and longer works.  This division doesn’t affect how you cast your vote, but it does affect how the final schedule is created.  If no nonfiction book is among the top vote-getters, the most popular nonfiction book will go on the list anyway to assure that we get a little variety in our reading.  Any of the longer books that are among the top vote-getters will be assigned to the August and October meetings because we will have two months to read them (we see films during July and September instead of discussing books). 

We try to choose books with a sufficient number of copies in the Monroe County Library system, so I included the number of library copies in each case.

Candidates for Regular Meetings (fiction)

Atonement, by Ian McEwan. 368 pages, 2001. A young man is jailed for an assault at an English estate on the testimony of a 13-year-old girl, testimony that she later comes to regret. She serves as a nurse World War II while he is part of the army’s evacuation from Dunkirk. John Updike in The New Yorker: “A beautiful and majestic fictional panorama.” Publisher’s Weekly: “This haunting novel, which just failed to win the Booker this year, is at once McEwan at his most closely observed and psychologically penetrating, and his most sweeping and expansive.” The New York Times Book Review: “His most complete and passionate book to date.” This book was short-listed for the Booker Prize. LAVA read McEwan’s Enduring Love in 2003. 45 copies in the library system.

Crow Lake, by Mary Lawson. 291 pages, 2002. Publishers Weekly: “Four children living in northern Ontario struggle to stay together after their parents die in an auto accident in Lawson's fascinating debut, a compelling and lovely study of sibling rivalry and family dynamics in which the land literally becomes a character.” Kirkus Reviews: “A finely crafted debut ... conveys an astonishing intensity of emotion, almost Proustian in its sense of loss and regret." The Washington Post Book World: “Crow Lake is the kind of book that keeps you reading well past midnight; you grieve when it’s over. Then you start pressing it on friends.” Named by both the New York Times and the Washington Post as one of the best books of the year. 32 copies in the library system.

Digging to America, by Anne Tyler. 277 pages, 2006. The New Yorker: “Tyler is our consummate chronicler of the bewilderments of family life. In her seventeenth novel, an improbable friendship develops between two couples who meet by chance at an airport where they are picking up babies they have adopted from Korea. The Yazdans, an almost entirely assimilated Iranian-American couple, immediately change their daughter's name to Susan; the politically correct Donaldsons insist on calling their baby Jin-Ho and dressing her in Korean clothes.” Tyler, who married into an Iranian family herself, is in a good position to explore the inevitable cultural misunderstandings. Publishers Weekly called it, “a touching, humorous story.” Tyler’s earlier novel Breathing Lessons won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. 55 copies in the library system.

Eventide, by Kent Haruf.  300 pages, 2004.  Like Plainsong, which we read in 2001, the setting is a small town in Wyoming, and a major theme is the possibility of constructing family from friendships.  Publishers Weekly: “Haruf's follow-up to the critically acclaimed and bestselling Plainsong is as lovely and accomplished as its predecessor. . . While there is much sadness and hardship in this portrait of a community, Haruf's sympathy for his characters, no matter how flawed they are, make this an uncommonly rich novel.”  Kirkus Reviews describes it as “melancholy truths set to gorgeous melody.”  Washington Post: “A kind book in a cruel world. . . [with] honest impulses, real people and the occasional workings of grace.”  The New York Times said it has, “The lovely, measured grace of an old hymn.” 37 copies in the library system.

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. 247 pages, 2004. This Pulitzer Prize winner has received extraordinary praise. New York Times: “Gilead is a beautiful work—demanding, grave, and lucid.” Washington Post: “So serenely beautiful and written in a prose so gravely measured and thoughtful, that one feels touched with grace just to read it.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “It’s a story that captures the splendors and pitfalls of being alive, viewed through the prism of how soon it all ends.” 42 copies in the library system.

The Human Stain, by Philip Roth.  361 pages, 2000.  The main character of this PEN/Faulkner Award-winning book is an elderly professor named Silk who is forced to resign because of a remark that is misinterpreted as being racist.  Publisher’s Weekly: “Then, in a dazzling coup, Roth turns all expectations on their heads, and begins to show Silk in a new and astounding light, as someone who has lived a huge lie all his life, making the fuss over his alleged racism even more surreal.  The book continues to unfold layer after layer of meaning.  There is a tragedy, as foretold, and an exquisitely imagined ending.”  Nadine Gordimer, in The Times Literary Supplement (International Book of the Year Selection): "Philip Roth's The Human Stain is the best novel he has written." 34 copies in the library system.

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austin.  352 pages, 1813.   Jane Austen’s most popular novel was recently adapted to film yet again. “A sharp and witty comedy of manners played out in early 19th Century English society, a world in which men held virtually all the power and women were required to negotiate mine-fields of social status, respectability, wealth, love, and sex in order to marry both to their own liking and to the advantage of their family.”  A Norton Critical Edition is available with additional background material. 30 copies in the library system.

The Metamorphosis, by Frantz Kafka.  About 60 pages long, depending on the edition; 1915.  The Norton Critical Edition (218 pages) is recommended because of its additional background material.  The story is about Gregor Samsa, a young man who wakes up one morning to discover that he has changed into a giant cockroach.  His father and his employer are intolerant of his new condition, with tragic results.  This story exemplifies the term “Kafkaesque.” 34 copies in the library system.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brian. 272 pages, 1990. A finalist for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, this best-seller tells the story of the men of Alpha Company during the Vietnam War. It is a, “sly, almost hallucinatory book that is neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories but rather an artful combination of all three,” “a collection of interrelated short pieces which ultimately reads with the dramatic force and tension of a novel.” Publishers Weekly: “O'Brien's meditations--on war and memory, on darkness and light--suffuse the entire work with a kind of poetic form, making for a highly original, fully realized novel. San Francisco Examiner: “Tim O’Brian is the best writer of his generation.” Chicago Sun-Times: “As good as any piece of literature can get.” Boston Globe: “The Things They Carried leaves third-degree burns…. This prose is headed for the nerve center of what was Vietnam.” 46 copies in the library system.

Three Junes, by Julia Glass. 353 pages, 2002. The New Yorker: “This enormously accomplished début novel is a triptych that spans three summers, across a decade, in the disparate lives of the McLeod family…. Glass is interested in how risky love is for some people, and she writes so well that what might seem like farce is rich, absorbing, and full of life.” New York Times Book Review: “Three Junes brilliantly rescues, then refurbishes, the traditional plot-driven novel. . . Glass has written a generous book about family expectations, but also about happiness.” Three Junes won the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction. 50 copies in the library system.

Tracks, by Louise Erdrich. 204 pages, 1988. 500 Great Books by Women: “The time is the early twentieth century. Epidemics, harsh winters, and the greed of white men are rapidly destroying the land and its Native American people. Tracks is the story of the Chippewa Indians and in particular one woman, Fleur, told through two voices of two opposing Native American viewpoints.” (The two viewpoints are those of traditional culture and the church.) The Guardian: “It is a book of powerful poetic images, in which myth and reality elide… The novel leaves behind an indelible impression.” Times Literary Supplement: “Erdrich may soon come to be recognized as a writer possessed of greatness.” Erdrich is a member of the Chippewa nation. One of her earlier novels, Love Medicine, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. 20 copies in the library system.

Waiting, by Ha Jin. 308 pages, 1999. Winner of the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. A young Chinese doctor agrees to an arranged marriage that he soon regrets. He falls in love with another woman and asks for a divorce, but his wife refuses. Legally he can force the divorce and consummate his love only after waiting 18 years. What personal price does an individual (and, by implication, an entire society) pay for adhering too unquestioningly to the rules? Boston Globe: “A subtle beauty…. a sad, poignantly funny tale.” New York Times: “A suspenseful and bracing tough-minded love story…. We're immediately engaged by its narrative structure, by its wry humor and by the subtle, startling shifts it produces in our understanding of the characters and their situation.” The scene alternates between a major city and a small village, providing the author with many opportunities to present details of life in China. 28 copies in the library system

Candidates for Regular Meetings (non-fiction)

Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell, a staff writer for the New Yorker. 265 pages, 2005. Booklist: “Gladwell maps the ‘adaptive unconscious,’ the facet of mind that enables us to determine things in the blink of an eye. He then cites many intriguing examples, such as art experts spontaneously recognizing forgeries; sports prodigies; and psychologist John Gottman's uncanny ability to divine the future of marriages by watching videos of couples in conversation…. But there is a ‘dark side of blink,’ which Gladwell illuminates by analyzing the many ways in which our instincts can be thwarted, and by presenting fascinating, sometimes harrowing, accounts of skewed market research, surprising war-game results, and emergency-room diagnoses and police work gone tragically wrong.” The New York Times Book Review had a mixed opinion: “If you want to trust my snap judgment, buy this book: you’ll be delighted. If you want to trust my more reflective second judgment, buy it: you’ll be delighted but frustrated, troubled and left wanting more." Gladwell also wrote the best-selling The Tipping Point. 61 copies in the library system.

The Forgetting: Alzheimer's: Portrait of an Epidemic, by David Shenk.  304 pages, 2001.  The author is a journalist who describes an illness that afflicts nearly half of all persons over the age of 85.  Amazon gave it a “Best of 2001.”  Washington Post: “A fascinating meditation . . . Shenk has found something beautiful and soulful in a condition that forces people to live in the perpetual ‘now.’ . . . Deeply affecting.”  The Journal of the American Medical Association: “highly recommended.”  Washington Monthly: “As good as the science in this book is, it takes a back seat to Shenk’s eloquent reflections on the meaning of memory and aging, and their connection to our sense of self.”  18 copies in library system.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.  256 pages, 2005.  Publishers Weekly: “Recognition by fellow economists as one of the best young minds in his field led to a profile in the New York Times, written by Dubner, and that original article serves as a broad outline for an expanded look at Levitt's search for the hidden incentives behind all sorts of behavior.”  This best-seller deals with everything from “the organizational structure of drug-dealing gangs to baby-naming patterns.”  Malcolm Gladwell, author of two recent best-selling nonfiction books, says Levitt "has the most interesting mind in America." 57 copies in the library system.

Mapping Human History: Genes Race and Our Common Origins, by Steve Olson. 275 pages, 2002. Covers recent scientific discoveries that tell us where and when the first humans appeared in Africa and how we spread from there across the globe. All this happened quite recently in evolutionary terms. Genetic differences among the human “races” are amazingly small; the genetic variation among chimpanzees on one hillside is greater than among all the humans on earth. All humans are, quite literally, cousins. Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences: “Beautifully written and carefully researched.” A Discover Best Science Book of the Year. Olson has worked for the National Academy of Sciences and has been a science journalist for more than 20 years. Only 8 copies in the library system. Is this enough?

A Mind at a Time, by Mel Levine.  336 pages, 2002.  Levine is a respected professor of pediatrics and a former Rhodes Scholar.  “Some students are strong in certain areas and some are strong in others, but no one is equally capable in all.  Yet most schools still cling to a one-size-fits-all education philosophy.  As a result, many children struggle because their learning patterns don't fit the way they are being taught.  In his #1 New York Times bestseller A Mind at a Time, Dr. Levine shows parents and those who care for children how to identify these individual learning patterns. . . He questions the frequent diagnoses of attention-deficit disorder in children and, instead, offers parents and educators insights into brain development.”  Publishers Weekly: “This is a must-read for parents and educators who want to understand and improve the school lives of children. 35 copies in the library system.

The Songlines, by Bruce Chatwin.  304 pages, 1988.  Native Australians once found their way across vast distances by memorizing songs that contained clues about the landscape, enabling them literally to sing their way across the continent.  Australia is criss-crossed by hundreds of these songlines.  New York Times: “Part adventure-story, part novel-of-ideas, part satire on the follies of ‘progress,’ part spiritual autobiography, part passionate plea for a return to simplicity of being and behavior, The Songlines is a seething gallimaufry [hodgepodge] of a book.”  Chatwin quit his high-ranking job at Sotheby’s auction house in the 1960s to begin a life of travel and to develop a new kind of travel writing.  One of his earlier works, On the Black Hill, won the Whitbread Literary Award. 12 copies in library system.

This Boy’s Life: A Memoir, by Tobias Wolff, winner of the 1985 PEN/Faulkner Award. 288 pages,1989. The story of the author’s 1950s boyhood as he deals with his hostile stepfather. New York Times: “So absolutely clear and hypnotic… that a reader wants to take it apart and find some simple way to describe why it works to beautifully… It teaches us something new about the alienated world of childhood.” The Atlantic: “Some of his brattish misdeeds are funny, some are pathetic, and all are amazing, because it seems so unlikely that the bewildered juvenile nuisance was to become the excellent writer that he is.” Kirkus Reviews: “A jewel-like memoir of childhood in the 1950’s… Lucid, bitter, precise, terribly sad.” 22 copies in the library system.

The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion, a writer for the New York Times and the New Yorker. 240 pages, 2005. After Didion and her husband of 40 years returned home one day from visiting their hospitalized daughter, he abruptly died at the dinner table. Didion soon found herself in a state of magical thinking: "We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes." The review on www.wikipedia.com says: “Didion applies the iconic reportorial detachment for which she is known to her own experience of grieving; there are few expressions of raw emotion. Through observation and analysis of changes in her own behavior and abilities, she indirectly expresses the toll her grief is taking.” The Los Angeles Times called it, “achingly beautiful.” One of the most discussed books of the year, The Year of Magical Thinking won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2005. 60 copies in the library system.

Longer Books (suitable for meetings in August and October)

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond. 525 pages, 2004. Publishers Weekly: “A fascinating comparative study of societies that have, sometimes fatally, undermined their own ecological foundations.” Boston Globe: "Extremely persuasive . . . replete with fascinating stories, a treasure trove of historical anecdotes [and] haunting statistics." Seattle Times: "Diamond’s most influential gift may be his ability to write about geopolitical and environmental systems in ways that don’t just educate and provoke, but entertain." Joyce Hensel points out that those of us who don’t have time to read the entire book would be able to read at least a few of the case studies, which should be enough for participation in the discussion. Diamond, who is a professor of geography at UCLA, won the Pulitzer Prize for his earlier book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. 29 copies in the library system.

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, by Barack Obama.  453 pages, 1995.  Obama, former head of the Harvard Law Review, is the senator from Illinois who gave an electrifying speech at the 2004 Democratic convention and who seems destined to play a major political role in the future.  Publishers Weekly: “A poignant, probing memoir of an unusual life.  Born in 1961 to a white American woman and a black Kenyan student, Obama was reared in Hawaii by his mother and her parents, his father having left for further study and a return home to Africa.  Obama's not-unhappy youth is nevertheless a lonely voyage to racial identity, tensions in school, struggling with black literature--with one month-long visit when he was 10 from his commanding father.”  New York Times: “Persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither.”  32 copies in the library system.

East of Eden, by Steinbeck. 600-750 pages depending on the edition, 1952. Echoing the biblical story of Cain and Abel, this classic novel tells the story of sibling rivalry between twin brothers. Set in the Salinas Valley of California at the beginning of the 20^th century, it is also a depiction of a particular time and place; one of the proposed names for the novel was The Salinas Valley. Steinbeck considered this to be his greatest novel (even though The Grapes of Wrath is the one that most people remember). 47 copies in the library system.

Snow, by Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize in 2006. 480 pages, 2004. A Turkish poet returns from twelve years in Germany and travels to a remote town, which is torn between religious and secular forces, to find a woman he knew when he was young. A snowstorm plays a major role, as does the symbol of the symmetrical snowflake: several characters are almost mirror images of one another. The author says some people in Turkey, “hated this book because here you have a deliberate attempt by a person who was never religious in his life to understand why someone ends up being what we or the Western world calls an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist.” Village Voice: “Part political thriller, part farce, Snow is Pamuk’s most dazzling fiction yet.” The Times (London): “A novel of profound relevance to the present moment…. The debate between the forces of secularism and those of religious fanaticism… is conducted with subtle, painful insight into the human weakness that can underlie both impulses.” 22 copies in the library system.