Suggestions for 2007 Book Club Reading
Discover the best book club picks of 2007 with our curated reading list, featuring acclaimed fiction, history, and biographies from authors like Joan Didion, Neil Gaiman, and Bill Bryson. From the gripping narrative of *The Devil in the White City* to the poignant *Night* by Elie Wiesel, find your group's next great discussion starter across genres like literary fiction, graphic novels, and timeless mysteries.
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On Beauty
by Zadie Smith
Struggling with a stale marriage and the misguided passions of his three adult children, long-suffering art professor Howard Belsey finds his family life thrown into turmoil by his son's engagement to the socially prominent daughter of a right-wing icon. By the author of White Teeth. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 250,000 first printing.
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Eat the Document
by Dana Spiotta
An ambitious and powerful story about idealism, passion, and sacrifice, Eat the Document shifts between the underground movement of the 1970s and the echoes and consequences of that movement in the 1990s. A National Book Award finalist, Eat the Document is a riveting portrait of two eras and one of the most provocative and compelling novels of recent years.
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Persepolis
by Marjane Satrapi
BEST SELLER ⢠A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK ⢠Wise, funny, and heartbreaking, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapiâs acclaimed graphic memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. âA wholly original achievement.... Satrapi evokes herself and her schoolmates coming of age in a world of protests and disappearances.... A stark, shocking impact.â âThe New York Times: "The 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years" In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the coming-of-age story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shahâs regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iranâs last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Marjaneâs childâs-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. It shows how we carry on, with laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love.
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Mountains Beyond Mountains
by Tracy Kidder
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠20th Anniversary Edition, with a new foreword by the author ⢠â[A] masterpiece . . . an astonishing book that will leave you questioning your own life and political views.ââUSA Today âIf any one person can be given credit for transforming the medical establishmentâs thinking about health care for the destitute, it is Paul Farmer. . . . [Mountains Beyond Mountains] inspires, discomforts, and provokes.ââThe New York Times (Best Books of the Year) In medical school, Paul Farmer found his lifeâs calling: to cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. Tracy Kidderâs magnificent account shows how one person can make a difference in solving global health problems through a clear-eyed understanding of the interaction of politics, wealth, social systems, and disease. Profound and powerful, Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes peopleâs minds through his dedication to the philosophy that âthe only real nation is humanity.â WINNER OF THE LETTRE ULYSSES AWARD FOR THE ART OF REPORTAGE
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The Places in Between
by Rory Stewart
Rory Stewart recounts the experiences he had walking across Afghanistan in 2002, describing how the country and its people have been impacted by the Taliban and the American military's involvement in the region.
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Rashi's Daughters: Joheved
by Maggie Anton
In 1068 the scholar Salomon ben Isaac returns home to Troyes, France to take over the family winemaking business and embark on a path that will indelibly influence the Jewish world, writing the first Talmud commentary and secretly teaching Talmud to his daughters.
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The Year of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER ⢠From one of Americaâs iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion that explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriageâand a life, in good times and badâthat will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. One of The New York Timesâs 100 Best Books of the 21st Century Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days laterâthe night before New Yearâs Eveâthe Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma. This powerful book is Didionâ s attempt to make sense of the âweeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.
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Flags of Our Fathers
by James Bradley
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠The perfect gift for Fatherâs Day, this is the true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jimaâand into history. Through a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire that left the beaches strewn with comrades, they battled to the islandâs highest peak. And after climbing through a landscape of hell itself, they raised a flag. Now the son of one of the flagraisers has written a powerful account of six very different young men who came together in a moment that will live forever. To his family, John Bradley never spoke of the photograph or the war. But after his death at age seventy, his family discovered closed boxes of letters and photos. In Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley draws on those documents to retrace the lives of his father and the men of Easy Company. Following these menâs paths to Iwo Jima, James Bradley has written a classic story of the heroic battle for the Pacificâs most crucial islandâan island riddled with Japanese tunnels and 22,000 fanatic defenders who would fight to the last man. But perhaps the most interesting part of the story is what happened after the victory. The men in the photoâthree were killed during the battleâwere proclaimed heroes and flown home, to become reluctant symbols. For two of them, the adulation was shattering. Only James Bradleyâs father truly survived, displaying no copy of the famous photograph in his home, telling his son only: âThe real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didnât come back.â Few books ever have captured the complexity and furor of war and its aftermath as well as Flags of Our Fathers. A penetrating, epic look at a generation at war, this is history told with keen insight, enormous honesty, and the passion of a son paying homage to his father. It is the story of the difference between truth and myth, the meaning of being a hero, and the essence of the human experience of war.
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Suite Française
by IrnĚe NmĚirovsky
In 1940, several families and individuals are thrown together as they flee Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion and struggle to stay alive and grieve for the life they once knew.
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Dream of Scipio
by Iain Pears
In national bestseller The Dream of Scipio, acclaimed author Iain Pears intertwines three intellectual mysteries, three love stories, and three of the darkest moments in human history. United by a classical text called "The Dream of Scipio," three men struggle to find refuge for their hearts and minds from the madness that surrounds them in the final days of the Roman Empire, in the grim years of the Black Death, and in the direst hours of World War II. An ALA Booklist Editors' Choice. Iain Pears's An Instance of the Fingerpost and The Portrait are also available from Riverhead Books.
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Anansi Boys
by Neil Gaiman
Fat Charlie Nancy's normal life ended the moment his father dropped dead on a Florida karaoke stage. Charlie didn't know his dad was a god. And he never knew he had a brother. Now brother Spider's on his doorstepâabout to make Fat Charlie's life more interesting . . . and a lot more dangerous.
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The Glass Palace
by Amitav Ghosh
NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND LOS ANGELES TIMES âA rich, layered epic that probes the meaning of identity and homelandâ a literary territory that is as resonant now, in our globalized culture, as it was when the sun never set on the British Empire.ââLos Angeles Times Book Review Set in Burma during the British invasion of 1885, this masterly novel tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her. The struggles that have made Burma, India, and Malaya the places they are today are illuminated in this wonderful novel by the writer Chitra Divakaruni calls âa master storyteller.â Praise for The Glass Palace âAn absorbing story of a world in transition, brought to life through characters who love and suffer with equal intensity.ââJ. M. Coetzee âThere is no denying Ghoshâs command of culture and history. . . . [He] proves a writer of supreme skill and intelligence.ââThe Atlantic Monthly âI will never forget the young and old Rajkumar, Dolly, the Princesses, the forests of teak, the wealth that made families and wars. A wonderful novel. An incredible story.ââGrace Paley âA novelist of dazzling ingenuity.ââSan Francisco Chronicle
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Last Evenings on Earth
by Roberto BolaĂąo
Stories of the "failed generation" set in the Chilean exile diaspora of Latin America and Europe.
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Coyote Blue
by Christopher Moore
From Christopher Moore, author of Fluke, comes a quirky, irreverent novel of love, myth, metaphysics, outlaw biking, angst, and outrageous redemption. As a boy growing up in Montana, he was Samson Hunts Alone -- until a deadly misunderstanding with the law forced him to flee the Crow reservation at age fifteen. Today he is Samuel Hunter, a successful Santa Barbara insurance salesman with a Mercedes, a condo, and a hollow, invented life. Then one day, shortly after his thirty-fifth birthday, destiny offers him the dangerous gift of love -- in the exquisite form of Calliope Kincaid -- and a curse in the unheralded appearance of an ancient Indian god by the name of Coyote. Coyote, the trickster, has arrived to transform tranquillity into chaos, to reawaken the mystical storyteller within Sam ... and to seriously screw up his existence in the process.
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A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson
One of the worldâs most beloved writers and New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body takes his ultimate journeyâinto the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer. In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trailâwell, most of it. In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understandâand, if possible, answerâthe oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the worldâs most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.
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Night
by Elie Wiesel
Presents a true account of the author's experiences as a Jewish boy in a Nazi concentration camp.
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1491 (Second Edition)
by Charles C. Mann
NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠A groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492âfrom âa remarkably engaging writerâ (The New York Times Book Review). Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called manâs first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.
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Thank You for Smoking
by Christopher Buckley
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE ⢠NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PEOPLE AND USA TODAY ⢠A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK Nobody blows smoke like Nick Naylor. Heâs a spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studiesâin other words, a flack for cigarette companies, paid to promote their product on talk and news shows. The problem? Heâs so good at his job, so effortlessly unethical, that heâs become a target for both anti-tobacco terrorists and for the FBI. In a country where half the people want to outlaw pleasure and the other want to sell you a disease, what will become of Nick Naylor?
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The Falls
by Joyce Carol Oates
It is 1950 and, after a disastrous honeymoon night, Ariah Erskine's young husband throws himself into the roaring waters of Niagara Falls. Ariah, "the Widow Bride of the Falls," begins a relentless seven-day vigil in the mist, waiting for his body to be found. At her side is confirmed bachelor and pillar of the community Dirk Burnaby, who is unexpectedly drawn to her. What follows is a passionate love affair, marriage, and family -- a seemingly perfect existence. But tragedy soon takes over their lives, poisoning their halcyon years with distrust, greed, and murder. Set against the mythic-historic backdrop of Niagara Falls in the mid-twentieth century, this haunting exploration of the American family in crisis is a stunning achievement from "one of the great artistic forces of our time" (The Nation). This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
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The Devil in the White City
by Erik Larson
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST ⢠From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile comes the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the cunning serial killer who used the magic and majesty of the fair to lure his victims to their death. âAs absorbing a piece of popular history as one will ever hope to find.â âSan Francisco Chronicle Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction. Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized Americaâs rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fairâs brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the countryâs most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his âWorldâs Fair Hotelâ just west of the fairgroundsâa torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake. The Devil in the White City draws the reader into the enchantment of the Guilded Age, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. Erik Larsonâs gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.
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The Inheritance of Loss
by Kiran Desai
In a crumbling house in the remote northeastern Himalayas, an embittered, elderly judge finds his peaceful retirement turned upside down by the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, but their world--and Sai's romance with her handsome Nepali tutor--is threatened by a Nepalese insurgency. By the author of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.
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The Ghost Map
by Steven Johnson
"It is the summer of 1854. Cholera has seized London with unprecedented intensity. A metropolis of more than 2 million people, London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure necessary to support its dense population - garbage removal, clean water, sewers - the city has become the perfect breeding ground for a terrifying disease that no one knows how to cure." "As their neighbors begin dying, two men are spurred to action: the Reverend Henry Whitehead, whose faith in a benevolent God is shaken by the seemingly random nature of the victims, and Dr. John Snow, whose ideas about contagion have been dismissed by the scientific community, but who is convinced that he knows how the disease is being transmitted. The Ghost Map chronicles the outbreak's spread and the desperate efforts to put an end to the epidemic - and solve the most pressing medical riddle of the age."--BOOK JACKET.
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Thirteen Moons
by Charles Frazier
Brilliantly imagined and written with great power and beauty by the author of "Cold Mountain, Thirteen Moons" is a stunning novel about a mans passion for a woman, and how loss, longing, and love can shape a mans destiny over the many moons of a life.