LAVA Discussion Book Candidates for 2019
These candidate books come from several sources, including suggestions from LAVA members, lists of award-winning books, favorites of other book clubs, the Harvard Bookstore’s best-seller list, Bookmarks magazine, literary blogs, etc. Several were carried over from the previous voting list. There are 21 books on this list, but we will choose only 8 of them in this balloting, which unfortunately means that many worthwhile books will be excluded from next year’s reading schedule. As before, the most popular runners-up will be included in the next list of candidates.
Why do we need to choose only 8 books to cover 12 meetings? 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 their "Rochester Reads" program. In July and September, we see a film at The Little Theater instead of discussing a book. That leaves us 8 books to choose for the year from this list.
LAVA members are encouraged to research these book candidates in bookstores, libraries, on the web, etc. Bring this list and your thoughts to the special January meeting at Bill and Andi's house on Saturday, January 12, which will be devoted to sharing information and opinions on these books (and sharing good food).
After the January meeting and prior to the voting deadline of Sunday February 3, please "mark your ballots" and return them to Bill. First review the 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 aren't familiar with the system used by the Olympics, think of the traditional way of grading classroom papers: you would grade each one individually based on its own merits, not on how it compares with others.
The system works best if you provide a rating for every book on the list. If you wish, you can write your rating for each book in the margins of this document. Members often rate each book as we discuss it during the January meeting and then hand in their marked list before they leave, but you can use any method you prefer as long as you get your ratings to Bill by the voting deadline.
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 among the top vote-getters will be assigned to the August and October meetings because that will give us two months to read them.
Candidates for Regular Meetings (fiction)
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff. 390 pages, 2015. According to a review in the Guardian named "Why Fates and Furies Was This Year’s Most Talked-about Novel," this book is "about a marriage in which each partner has a radically disparate view, not just of their union, but of the type of narrative constituted by their lives. It’s as if husband and wife each inhabit a different novel, in a different genre – one sunnily domestic, the other gothic." New York Times Book Review (cover review): "Fates and Furies is an unabashedly ambitious novel that delivers – with comedy, tragedy, well-deployed erudition and unmistakable glimmers of brilliance throughout." Washington Post: "Lauren Groff just keeps getting better and better. Fates and Furies is a clear-the-ground triumph." This novel was a finalist for the National Book Award. Reviews. Held over from last year. More than 40 copies in the library system.
Less by Andrew Sean Greer. 261 pages, 2017. Amazon describes this novel as "A scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, a bittersweet romance of chances lost." Washington Post: "Greer's narration, so elegantly laced with wit, cradles the story of a man who loses everything: his lover, his suitcase, his beard, his dignity." San Francisco Chronicle: "Greer's novel is philosophical, poignant, funny and wise, filled with unexpected turns... His protagonist grapples with aging, loneliness, creativity, grief, self-pity and more." Booklist: "Less is perhaps Greer's finest yet.... A comic yet moving picture of an American abroad." This novel won the Pulitzer Prize. LAVA read Greer's "The Story of a Marriage" in 2012. Reviews. 33 copies in the library system.
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. 343 pages, 2017. The bardo, in Tibetan Buddhism is a transitional space occupied by the souls of the dead. In this Booker-Prize-winning novel, President Lincoln, plagued by uncertainty about his leadership skills, visits the grave of his recently deceased son during the early part of the Civil War. His visit is narrated by a number of graveyard ghosts, many of whose backstories are presented. Los Angeles Times: "A book of singular grace and beauty, an inquiry into all the most important things: life and death, family and loss and loving, duty and perseverance in the face of excruciating circumstances." Pittsburg Post Gazette: "This is an original and devastating novel about the difficulty of rising to life's toughest challenges." USA Today: "Saunders's rapid-fire dialogue makes the pages zip by. And yet, for all its divine comedy, Lincoln in the Bardo is also deep and moving." Reviews. Held over from last year. More than 40 copies in the library system.
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. 2017, 336 pages. A single mother and her teenage daughter rent a house in a wealthy suburb of Cleveland, where their lives begin to intersect with an established family. Boston Globe: "What Ng has written, in this thoroughly entertaining novel, is a pointed and persuasive social critique... But there is a heartening optimism, too. This is a book that believes in the transformative powers of art and genuine kindness — and in the promise of new growth, even after devastation, even after everything has turned to ash." New York Times: "She offers a nuanced and sympathetic portrait of those terrified of losing power... the magic of this novel lies in its power to implicate all of its characters — and likely many of its readers — in that innocent delusion. Who set the little fires everywhere? We keep reading to find out, even as we suspect that it could be us with ash on our hands." Reviews. This novel was on several lists of the best books of the year. More than 50 copies in the library system.
A Man Called Ove by Frederick Backman. 337 pages, 2014. A grouchy, retired man who feels that he is no longer useful to anyone repeatedly tries to commit suicide. He keeps getting interrupted, however, by pesky neighbors seeking his help. Kirkus Reviews: "hysterically funny… wry descriptions, excellent pacing… In the contest of Most Winning Combination, it would be hard to beat grumpy Ove and his hidden, generous heart." Booklist: "Readers seeking feel-good tales with a message will rave about the rantings of this solitary old man with a singular outlook. If there was an award for 'Most Charming Book of the Year,' this first novel by a Swedish blogger-turned-overnight-sensation would win hands down." Suggested by Leah. Reviews. More than 50 copies in the library system.
Nora Webster by Colm Toibin. 373 pages, 2014. Toibin’s eighth novel is set in rural Ireland in the 1960s and 70s. Nora Webster has lost her husband to an illness and, according to Amazon, seems to be "slipping back into the isolated life from which her husband had rescued her... she’s so grief stricken she barely notices how her children are suffering... Nora rediscovers her love of singing, learns how art can help her navigate through grief, and how music can help even the most quiet among us to regain our voice." The Boston Globe said this novel, "tells the story of all the invisible battles the heart faces every day." The Los Angeles Times said it, "may actually be a perfect work of fiction." The Irish Times said it is, "About as perfect as a book can get... If there is more brilliant writer than Toibin working today, I don't know who that would be." The New York Times called it, "a luminous, elliptical novel in which everyday life manages, in moments, to approach the mystical." Toibin has been short-listed for the Booker Prize three times. Suggested by Andi, who says it was her favorite book of the year. Review in The Guardian. 34 copies in the library system.
The Plot Against America by Phillip Roth. 391 pages, 2004. In this speculative novel, Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election by promising to keep America out of the war. Afterwards, the country descends into anti-Semitism. New Yorker: "It’s not a prophecy; it’s a nightmare, and it becomes more nightmarish—and also funnier and more bizarre—as it goes along." Christian Science Monitor: "Clearly Roth's real target isn't an anti-Semitic aviation hero who died 30 years ago. It's an electorate he sees as dazzled by attractive faces, moved by simple slogans, and cowed by ominous warnings about threats to our security." Washington Post: "The real core of the book is family, community and country, and the consequences for all these of America's flirtation with fascism." Roth won the Pulitzer Prize for another novel. LAVA read Roth's The Human Stain in 2008. Suggested by Terence. Reviews. 21 copies in the library system.
There There by Tommy Orange. 290 pages in hardback, 2018. The author is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, and his novel is about the contemporary life of Native Americans. Amazon: "As we learn the reasons that each person is attending the Big Oakland Powwow—some generous, some fearful, some joyful, some violent—momentum builds toward a shocking yet inevitable conclusion that changes everything." New York Times: "There There has so much jangling energy and brings so much news from a distinct corner of American life that it’s a revelation… its appearance marks the passing of a generational baton." Washington Post: "Masterful. White-hot. A devastating debut novel." Seattle Times: "Funny and profane and conscious of the violence that runs like a scar through American culture." Reviews. 38 copies in the library system.
Thunderstruck by Erik Larson, 399 pages, 2006. The intersecting stories of two people: Marconi, the inventor of radio telegraphy who was frantically working to perfect his invention, and a murderer fleeing from the law across the Atlantic. Washington Post: "Larson's gift for rendering an historical era with vibrant tactility and filling it with surprising personalities makes Thunderstruck an irresistible tale... He beautifully captures the awe that greeted early wireless transmissions on shipboard." Chicago Tribune: "For his newest, destined-to-delight book, Thunderstruck, Larson has turned his sights on Edwardian London, a place alive with new science and seances, anonymous crowds and some stunningly peculiar personalities." Publishers Weekly: "Thunderstruck triumphantly resurrects the spirit of another age, when one man's public genius linked the world, while another's private turmoil made him... the first victim of a new era when instant communication, now inescapable, conquered the world." LAVA has read three books by Larson: Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts, and The Devil in the White City. Reviews. 31 copies in the library system.
Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks. 308 pages, 2002. Inspired by a true story, this novel is about the outbreak of plague in an isolated English village in 1666. Some of its inhabitants add to the community's disintegration by engaging in witch-hunting, which induces a housemaid with healing skills to take the lead in dealing with the crisis. New York Times: "She gives us what we want in historical fiction: a glimpse into the strangeness of history that simultaneously enables us to see a reflection of ourselves." The Guardian: "Year of Wonders is a staggering fictional debut that matches journalistic accumulation of detail to natural narrative flair." LAVA has read several novels by Brooks: March (which won the Pulitzer Prize) in 2008, People of the Book in 2011 and Caleb’s Crossing in 2013. Review in the Guardian. Suggested by Connie. Held over from last year. 45 copies in the library system.
Candidates for Regular Meetings (non-fiction)
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah. 285 pages, 2016. The author is host of "The Daily Show" on the Comedy Central TV channel. His memoir of his upbringing in South Africa was a #1 New York Times Bestseller. Booklist: "Incisive, funny, and vivid, these true tales are anchored to his portrait of his courageous, rebellious, and religious mother who defied racially restrictive laws to secure an education and a career for herself—and to have a child with a white Swiss/German even though sex between whites and blacks was illegal." USA Today: "What makes Born a Crime such a soul-nourishing pleasure, even with all its darker edges and perilous turns, is reading Noah recount in brisk, warmly conversational prose how he learned to negotiate his way through the bullying and ostracism." Los Angeles Times: "For all the pain, Born a Crime made me laugh—a lot. The love between Noah and his mother, and their resilience, left me inspired in these post-election days, when stories of hope and resistance are sorely needed." Suggested by Leah. Reviews. More than 50 copies in the library system.
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan. 252 pages, 2012. The true story of an investigative reporter who developed a rare and deadly brain disorder. Correctly diagnosed only at the last moment, she recovered and later used her parents' journals to write about her descent into paranoia and violent psychosis. Washington Post: "Cahalan's tale is told in straightforward journalistic prose and is admirably well-researched and described... This story has a happy ending, but take heed: It is a powerfully scary book." New York Times: "Cahalan's prose carries a sharp, unsparing, tabloid punch in the tradition of Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin." Journal of Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology: "...a superb case study of a rare neurological diagnosis; even experienced neurologists will find much to learn in it." Review in the Guardian. Held over from last year. 26 copies in the library system.
Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America by Beth Macy. 363 pages, 2018. The author traces the disastrous growth of opioid addiction in the US, beginning with the introduction of Oxycontin in 1996. New York Times: "A harrowing, deeply compassionate dispatch from the heart of a national emergency... a masterwork of narrative journalism, interlacing stories of communities in crisis with dark histories of corporate greed and regulatory indifference." USA Today: "You've probably heard pieces of this story before, but in Dopesick we get something original: a page-turning explanation." The Guardian: "Macy weaves a complex tale that unfolds with all the pace of a thriller." Los Angeles Times: "Where the factories and mines have closed down and the safety net, after years of budget cutting, is in tatters, selling drugs is a way to get by... What comes through most clearly is that we have to undo the vast transfer of wealth from poor and middle-class Americans to the rich." Reviews. 28 copies in the library system.
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover. 329 pages, 2018. The author and her sometimes violent brother were born into an off-the-grid, anti-government family of Mormon survivalists in the Idaho mountains. She first entered a classroom when she was seventeen and, remarkably, was soon studying at Harvard and Cambridge Universities. Harvard Crimson: "so much more than a memoir about a woman who graduated college without a formal education. It is about a woman who must learn how to learn." The Atlantic: "She evokes a childhood that completely defined her. Yet it was also, she gradually sensed, deforming her." New York Times: "A beautiful testament to the power of education to open eyes and change lives." This #1 New York Times bestseller was named one of the ten best books of the year by Publishers Weekly. Reviews. More than 50 copies in the library system.
Hero of the Empire by Candice Millard, 318 pages, 2016. This is a chronicle of the 24-year-old Winston Churchill's exploits during the Boer War in South Africa, which began in 1899. Traveling with British soldiers as a war correspondent, he was captured but later escaped and returned home as a war hero. New York Times: "In Ms. Millard's retelling, young Churchill was entitled, precocious, supernaturally confident—one of those fellows whose neon self-regard is downright unseemly until the very moment it is earned." Financial Times: "[The author's] eye for humanizing detail, her vivid topographical descriptions and her keen awareness of the realities (and surrealities) of war come together in a truly fascinating book." New York Times: "This book is an awesome nail-biter and top-notch character study rolled into one." LAVA read Millard's Destiny of the Republic in 2015 and River of Doubt in 2014. Suggested by Connie. Reviews. Held over from last year. 24 copies in the library system.
Mount Allegro: A Memoir of Italian-American life by Jerre Mangione. 285 pages, 1941. Thinly disguised as fiction at the insistence of his publisher, this is actually Mangione's memoir of growing up in a neighborhood of Sicilian immigrants in Rochester, NY in the early 1900s. The author is the uncle of musicians Chuck and Gap Mangione. San Francisco Chronicle: "One of the best books yet published in its field--a book in which you will learn more about the making of an American than in the most solemn or fictional volumes that purport to tell you all about the subject." Mangione's obituary in the New York Times includes a discussion of the book. Suggested by Robert. Held over from last year. More than 50 copies in the library system.
Longer Books (suitable for August and October)
We read no more than two books in this category per year, and we reserve these for our August and October discussions, which gives us two months to read them. This does not imply that our August and October books must come from this section. If all the top choices are shorter books, that is what we read all year.
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. 462 pages, 2016. In 1922, a Bolshevik tribunal orders Count Rostov to live the rest of his life in an attic in a grand hotel near the Kremlin without ever leaving the building. A man of erudition and wit who has never worked a day in his life, he embarks on a journey of emotional discovery. Kirkus Reviews: "In all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight." New York Times: "Towles’s greatest narrative effect is not the moments of wonder and synchronicity but the generous transformation of these peripheral workers, over the course of decades, into confidants, equals and, finally, friends." Wall Street Journal: "[an] entertaining yet flawed new novel ... The novel buzzes with the energy of numerous adventures, love affairs, twists of fate and silly antics... Stalin’s Soviet Union is another matter... he writes about matters as if one could just as easily be referring to Paris or Rome." Suggested by Judy. Reviews. More than 50 copies in the library system.
Moonglow by Michael Chabon. 2017, 430 pages. This work of "fictional non-fiction" is based on stories told to the author by his dying grandfather. Bookpage: "We follow his work as a soldier tasked with kidnapping Nazi scientists before the Soviets can do the same; his postwar life loving a broken, secretive Frenchwoman during her descent into madness; and finally his days as a widower in a Florida retirement community, stalking a python that preys upon small pets." Wall Street Journal: "A flamboyantly imaginative work of fiction dressed in the sheep’s clothing of autobiography... Moonglow is a movingly bittersweet novel that balances wonder with lamentation." New York Times: "Chabon constructs a loving, partial portrait of an unlikely, volatile and durable marriage... Whatever else it is—a novel, a memoir, a pack of lies, a mishmash—this book is beautiful." Boston Globe: "Chabon nails the essence of how memory and denial can be intimately interwoven." The author won the Pulitzer Prize for an earlier novel. Suggested by Ken. Reviews. More than 40 copies in the library system.
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. 512 pages, 2017. In the 1900s, a pregnant Korean woman marries a sickly minister and moves with him to Japan, beginning a dramatic story that spans four generations. Amazon: "From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters--strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis--survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history. The Guardian: "Min Jin Lee meticulously reconstructs the relatively overlooked history of the large ethnic-Korean community in Japan... Vivid and immersive, Pachinko is a rich tribute to a people that history seems intent on erasing." NPR: "Lee deftly sketches a half-familiar, half-foreign but oftentimes harsh new world of a Korean immigrant in imperialist Japan." New York Times: "In this haunting epic tale, no one story seems too minor to be briefly illuminated. Lee suggests that behind the facades of wildly different people lie countless private desires, hopes and miseries, if we have the patience and compassion to look and listen." This novel was a National Book Award Finalist, a New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year, and a Harvard Bookstore bestseller. Reviews. 35 copies in the library system.
Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver. 480 pages, 2018. In alternating chapters, this novel tells the stories of two families living on the brink of financial ruin during a period of disorienting societal shifts. They live at different times (the 1870s and in 2016), but they live at the same address in New Jersey, and their lives curiously echo one another. Washington Post: "The first major novel to tackle the Trump era straight on.... Kingsolver suggests it’s never been easy to find oneself unsheltered, cast out from the comforts of old beliefs about how the world works... We’ve adapted before. With a little creative thinking and courage, we might do so again." New York Times: "Kingsolver creates a sense... that as humans we’re inevitably connected through the possibility of collapse, whether it’s the collapse of our houses, our bodies, logic, the social order or earth itself." Bookpage: "Despite their immense struggles, these characters experience numerous comic, uplifting and revelatory moments." LAVA read Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible in 2001 and Flight Behavior in 2014. Suggested by Lindsey. Reviews. More than 40 copies in the library system.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson. 538 pages, 2010. This book, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, is the story of the migration of almost six million African Americans from the South to the North between 1915 and 1970, as illustrated partly through the lives of three individuals. New York Times Book Review (Cover Review), by David Oshinsky (the author of Bellvue, which LAVA read in June 2018): "A narrative epic rigorous enough to impress all but the crankiest of scholars, yet so immensely readable as to land the author a future place on Oprah’s couch." Wall Street Journal: "Ms. Wilkerson does for the Great Migration what John Steinbeck did for the Okies in his fiction masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath; she humanizes history, giving it emotional and psychological depth." The author previously won the Pulitzer Prize for her work as a journalist. Several reviews (scroll down). Suggested by Leah and Judy. Held over from last year. 31 copies in the library system.