LAVA Discussion Book Candidates for 2021
These candidate books come from several sources, mostly from suggestions by LAVA members and from recommendations in Bookmarks magazine, which summarizes book reviews in major periodicals. Other sources include lists of award-winning books, favorites of other book clubs, the Harvard Bookstore’s best-seller list, literary blogs, etc. Several were carried over from the previous voting list. There are 20 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. LAVA members are encouraged to research these book candidates in bookstores, libraries, on the web, etc.
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.
We traditionally organize a combined party and book-choosing meeting in January, but we won't be able to do that this year. Instead, we will have a Zoom meeting at the regular time on Friday January 8 to share information and opinions on the books listed below. We will not have time for a normal book discussion at the January meeting.
After the January meeting and prior to the voting deadline of Sunday February 7, 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. Members often rate each book as we share what we know about it during the January meeting. After that meeting, I will email a list of the titles of the candidate books. If you wish, you can enter you rating for each book into that email and return it to me. Or you can print this document, write your rating for each book in its margins and return it to me by surface mail. You can use any method you prefer as long as you get your ratings to me by the voting deadline.
Candidates for Regular Meetings (fiction)
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. 337 pages, 2019. After their mother abandons her family to serve the poor in India, an indulged brother and his over-protective sister are exiled by their stepmother from the lavish estate they grew up in and pushed into poverty. The Washington Post says the novel's central conflict is, "not the struggle between orphans and stepmother, innocent children and wicked witch — but the war between memory and mature reflection. Subtle mystery, psychological page-turner, Patchett’s latest is a thriller." Wall Street Journal: "Each character’s role, from victim to villain, seems as clear as the sunlight flooding those marble floors. Over time, however, sharp distinctions are blurred by a series of well-timed revelations and deftly placed subplots. " The Guardian: "The major players virtually all … arrive at final positions that involve an ironic inversion of where they started." The Washington Independent Review of Books: "Fortunately for the protagonists and the reader, Patchett permits Danny and Maeve to ultimately escape resentment and hatred ... This is a serious and poignant story, but also a delightfully funny one." No. 7 on Bookmarks's list of the most favorably reviewed novels of 2019. Suggested by Connie. Reviews. Plenty of copies in the library system.
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." Bookpage: "Mathilde's secrets will surprise readers, and the book has a headlong momentum that suits its subject matter." Washington Post: "Lauren Groff just keeps getting better and better. Fates and Furies is a clear-the-ground triumph." This novel was one of five finalists for the National Book Award. Reviews. Held over from last year. More than 40 copies in the library system.
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. 341 pages, 2017. The bardo in Tibetan Buddhism is a transitional space occupied by the souls of the dead. In this novel, President Lincoln, who is 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 graveyard ghosts, many of whose backstories are expressed. 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." 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. This book won the Booker Prize for 2017 and was no. 1 on Bookmarks's list of the most favorably reviewed novels of that year. Held over from last year. More than 40 copies in the library system.
Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. 213 pages, 2020. Based on an actual institution that operated for 111 years, this is the story of "two boys unjustly sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida." New York Journal of Books: "His story is utterly engrossing, funny, at times, suspenseful, flawlessly constructed, moving, and absolutely brilliant." Wall Street Journal: "The Nickel Academy may be a 'Perpetual Misery Machine,' as Elwood thinks of it, but the writing voice that depicts it is spry and animated and seamed with dark humor, true to the irrepressible curiosity of its teenage protagonists ... Their arguments and shared affection culminate in a dazzling final twist that Mr. Whitehead stages with such casual skill that one only begins to unpack its meanings well after the book has ended." New York Times Book Review: "[Whitehead] applies a master storyteller’s muscle not just to excavating a grievous past but to examining the process by which Americans undermine, distort, hide or 'neatly erase' the stories he is driven to tell." LAVA read Whitehead's The Underground Railroad in 2017. Suggested by Tess. Reviews. This novel won the Pulitzer Prize for 2020 and was no. 4 on Bookmarks's list of the most favorably reviewed novels in 2019. More than 40 copies in the library system.
The Stranger by Albert Camus. 123 pages, 1942. A few days after his mother's funeral, a Frenchman in Algeria kills an Arab who was involved in a conflict with one of the Frenchman's neighbors. During his imprisonment and trial, he ponders the meaninglessness of life and the indifference of the universe. Camus himself said, "I summarized The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark I admit was highly paradoxical: 'In our society any man who does not weep at his mother's funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.' I only meant that the hero of my book is condemned because he does not play the game." The best-selling French novel ever, the title of L'Étranger is sometimes translated as The Outsider. The author won the Nobel Prize for literature. Suggested by Ted. Here is the Wikipedia article about this novel. More than 40 copies in the library system.
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. 418 pages, 2013. A sixteen-year-old girl in Tokyo puts her thoughts to her diary and decides to commit suicide. A novelist living on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest discovers the diary in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the 2011 tsunami. Sunday Times (London): "While Ozeki is unflinching about life's brutalities, she is also a deeply uplifting writer... Her novel is saturated with love, ideas, and compassion. It is, in short, an absolute treat." Los Angeles Times: "An exquisite novel: funny, tragic, hard-edged and ethereal at once." Seattle Times: This novel, "explores quantum physics, military applications of computer video games, Internet bullying, and Marcel Proust, all while creating a vulnerable and unique voice for the sixteen-year-old girl at its center." Washington Post: "Plunges us into a tantalizing narration that brandishes mysteries to be solved and ideas to be explored." The author is a novelist, film maker and Zen Buddhist priest. This novel was shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Suggested by Andi. Reviews. 25 copies in the library system.
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje. 285 pages, 2018. This novel's first sentence is: "In 1945 our parents went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals." The title refers to the dim lights used by emergency vehicles during the war. Minneapolis Tribune: "The pleasure of spy novels is their suggestion that smarter and savvier figures are protecting our lives. Ondaatje tweaks the notion, considering Nathaniel’s life in the context of spies falling down on the job." London Review of Books: "Whenever you come across a striking detail... you can be sure it will crop up again, be charged with more significance, be joined with the rest of the story in a long chain of meaning, even if that meaning may never become entirely clear." Seattle Times: "Warlight is a spy story, a mother-son story and a love story. They are eloquently told and heartbreakingly believable, but the main reason to read this novel is that no other writer builds a world with the delicacy and precision of Michael Ondaatje." LAVA has read several books by Ondaatje: The Cat's Table, Anile's Ghost, Running in the Family and The English Patient. Reviews. This novel was on Obama's 2018 recommended list. More than 40 copies in the library system.
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. 370 pages, 2017. When a young man is found dead, suspicion falls on a girl who survives on her own in the swamps. New York Times Book Review: "A painfully beautiful first novel that is at once a murder mystery, a coming-of-age narrative and a celebration of nature … Owens here surveys the desolate marshlands of the North Carolina coast through the eyes of an abandoned child." The Irish Times: "At first glimpse, Crawdads might seem like a gentle book … But if this is a gentle book, it is only as gentle as an animal, as gentle as the weather, as gentle as the tide: which is to say that beneath everything, there is a wild and dangerous energy." The Guardian: "The potential soppiness of a coming-of-age romance is also offset by the possibility that Kya is a murderer, although Owens has studied the big beasts of crime fiction sufficiently to leave room for doubt and surprises … these themes will reach a huge audience though the writer’s old-fashioned talents for compelling character, plotting and landscape description." The author is a nature writer who says the heroine is patterned after herself. This novel was on the New York Times best seller list for over a year and sold over 4 million copies. Suggested by Leah. Reviews. Plenty of copies in the library system.
Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham. About 240 pages, 1908. This classic children's book revolves around two characters: Mole, who is peaceful and reflective, and Toad, whose recklessness makes him a danger to himself and to others. According to one study (The Wind in the Willows: A Fragmented Arcadia by Peter Hunt), this novel is a "rare book that sits on the line between children's and adult literature. Allusive and multilayered, Willows is not merely a book for two audiences, however. The reader can turn to it over and over again: as a child, as an adult, and as an informed and curious student of literature eager to examine the interactions among the book's structure, narrative, and meaning." A. A. Milne, author of Winnie-the-Pooh, wrote approvingly, "One does not argue about The Wind in the Willows. The young man gives it to the girl with whom he is in love, and if she does not like it, asks her to return his letters. The older man tries it on his nephew, and alters his will accordingly. The book is a test of character. We can't criticize it, because it is criticizing us." Suggested by Jim. The Wikipedia article on this book. There are plenty of copies in the library system, although in many editions.
Candidates for Regular Meetings (non-fiction)
Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America; A recent history by Kurt Anderson. 388 pages, 2020. By the middle of the 1900s, the U.S. had a huge middle class, and the disparity in incomes between classes was not large enough to be destabilizing. According to the author, however, the last several decades have seen a planned and sustained attack on the middle class, resulting in a growing disparity of incomes. New York Times Book Review: "… a radicalized moderate’s moderate case for radical change. Andersen is unambiguous about where America needs to go; he is honest about what it took to get him to his current views; and he writes not as a haranguer who presumes you’re with him but as a journalist who presumes you’re not, that you might even think as he once did." Chicago Tribune: "The book is, perhaps counterintuitively, terrifically entertaining and engaging. Andersen is a lively and funny writer." Ken Burns, creator of many NPR documentaries: "Andersen brilliantly exposes how nostalgia—the strategic oversimplification of our past—has erased complexity and friction from our country’s narrative to serve a single goal: to preserve the status quo for the benefit of those in power." Suggested by Ted. Reviews. 10 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.
The Lost City of Z by David Grann. 319 pages, 2010. In April of 1925, a legendary British explorer, financed by the Royal Geographic Society, launched an expedition into the Amazon to search for the lost city of El Dorado, the "City of Gold." The expedition was never seen again. Author David Grann, with little sense of direction and an aversion to camping, found himself in the Amazon in 2004, tracking down this mysterious disappearance. Grann wrote Killers of the Flower Moon, which LAVA read in 2019. New York Times: "At once a biography, a detective story and wonderfully vivid piece of travel writing ... Reads with all the pace and excitement of a movie thriller and all the verisimilitude and detail of firsthand reportage." Washington Post: "David Grann, recounts Fawcett's expeditions with all the pace of a white-knuckle adventure story… Thoroughly researched, vividly told, this is a thrill ride from start to finish. Suggested by Connie. Review. More than 30 copies in the library system.
One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission that Flew Us to the Moon by Charles Fishman. 332 pages, 2019. Amazon: "One Giant Leap is the sweeping, definitive behind-the-scenes account of the furious race to complete one of mankind’s greatest achievements." Publishers Weekly: "Astronauts take a back seat to politicians, project managers, engineers, and the marvelous machines they created in this engrossing history of the moon landings… Fishman’s knack for explaining science and engineering and his infectious enthusiasm for Apollo’s can-do wizardry make for a fascinating portrait of a technological heroic age." Wall Street Journal: "Nearly every sentence has a fact, an insight, a colorful quote or part of a piquant anecdote. What’s more, he has pondered the meaning of the moon landing and arrived at a surprising and persuasive answer." Suggested by Lindsey. Review. 17 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.
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 588 pages, 2014. In this novel two Nigerian teenagers fall in love and separately flee their country's military dictatorship, one to the US and one to Britain. Years later, Obinze returns to Nigeria and becomes wealthy, while Ifemelu, a successful writer, also returns. They renew their relationship and face tough decisions. Chicago Tribune: "Sprawling, ambitious and gorgeously written, 'Americanah' covers race, identity, relationships, community, politics, privilege, language, hair, ethnocentrism, migration, intimacy, estrangement, blogging, books and Barack Obama. It covers three continents, spans decades, leaps gracefully, from chapter to chapter, to different cities and other lives... [Adichie] weaves them assuredly into a thoughtfully structured epic. The result is a timeless love story steeped in our times." The Washington Post said Adichie writes about the U.S. and Nigeria "with ruthless honesty about the ugly and beautiful sides of both". Tess suggested this book and Judy seconded it. This novel won the National Book Critics Circle Award) for fiction. Time magazine named it one of the 10 best books of the decade. Reviews. More than 30 copies in the library system.
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight. 764 pages, 2018. A biography of the African American who escaped slavery and became an abolitionist leader, orator, and major literary figure. Washington Post: "Blight thoroughly justifies his claim [that Douglass is a 'prophet of freedom'] in a book that is not just a deeply researched birth-to-death chronology but also an extended meditation on what it means to be a prophet ... his voice again rings out loud and clear, melancholy and triumphant — still prophesying, still agitating, still calling us to action." Los Angeles Review of Books: "While many of the contradictions in Douglass’s life were the subject of rumors and half-truths in his own time, Blight explores them fully and tactfully without succumbing to the temptations of historical gossip … Blight also delivers the larger story of four of the most dramatic decades in our national history." NPR: "In the end, this lavish, sprawling biography … is mostly an extended meditation on the prized and peculiar American penchant for self-invention and re-invention." New York Times: "Blight isn’t looking to overturn our understanding of Douglass, whose courage and achievements were unequivocal, but to complicate it — a measure by which this ambitious and empathetic biography resoundingly succeeds." This book won the Pulitzer Prize for History. Suggested by Ted. Reviews. 25 copies in the library system.
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: "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.
Overstory by Richard Powers. 502 pages, 2018. Amazon: "Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond." Boston Globe: "Powers juggles the personal dramas of his far-flung cast with vigor and clarity. The human elements of the book―the arcs his characters follow over the decades from crusading passion to muddled regret and a sense of failure―are thoroughly compelling. So are the extra-human elements, thanks to the extraordinary imaginative flights of Powers’s prose, which persuades you on the very first page that you’re hearing the voices of trees as they chide our species." San Francisco Chronicle: "A rousing, full-throated hymn to Nature’s grandeur." This novel won the Pulitzer Prize and was short-listed for the Booker Prize. It was no. 12 on Bookmarks's list of the most favorably reviewed works of non-fiction in 2018. Reviews. Suggested by Connie. 21 copies in the library system
The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson, 503 pages, 2020. LAVA has read more books by Larson than by any other author. Publisher's description: "Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports, Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family." Minneapolis Star Tribune: "The entire book comes at the reader with breakneck speed. So much happened so quickly in those 12 months, yet Larson deftly weaves all the strands of his tale into a coherent and compelling whole." Bookpage: "Larson also humanizes the prime minister through stories of his teenage daughter, Mary, struggling to make the awkward transition into adulthood in the midst of war’s chaos, and his son Randolph, whose marriage was crumbling under the weight of a gambling addiction." The reviewer in the Washington Post took issue with the book: "It’s not remotely the real story .. The Battle of Britain was won in the factories, not in English country houses." Reviews. Suggested by Judy. Lots of 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.