LAVA Discussion Book Candidates for 2010
These candidate books come from several sources, including suggestions from LAVA members, favorites of other book clubs, lists of “The Year’s Best Books,” The Harvard Bookstore’s best-seller list (my personal favorite), literary blogs, etc. Several were carried over from the previous voting list. There are 27 books on this list, but we will choose only 8 of them in this balloting, which means that unfortunately 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 the “If all of Rochester Read the Same Book” program. In July and September we see a film at The Little Theater instead of discussing a book. Therefore we need to choose only 8 books to cover a full year.
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 my house on Saturday, January 9, which will be devoted to sharing information and opinions on these books (and eating good food!)
After the January 9 meeting and prior to the voting deadline of Monday, February 1, please “mark your ballots” and return them to me. 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 wish, you can write your rating for each book in the margins of this document. Last year, several members rated each book as we discussed it during the January meeting and then handed their marked list to me as they left, but you can use any method you prefer as long as you get your ratings to me 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.
American Pastoral by Philip Roth. 423 pages, 1998. An all-American boy marries Miss New Jersey and they seem to settle into the perfect life. During the Viet Nam war, however, their teen-age daughter turns to terrorism as a means of protest. This novel won the Pulitzer Prize and is part of a trilogy that includes The Human Stain, which LAVA read in November 2008 (and liked very much). New York Times: "One of Roth's most powerful novels ever...moving, generous and ambitious...a fiercely affecting work of art." Boston Globe: “a wrenching, compassionate, intelligent novel." Additional critical comments: http://www.answers.com/topic/american-pastoral-critical-overview. The library system has 17 books.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. 335 pages, 2007. This book won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. It was designated by a readers’ poll by “The Millions,” a prominent literary blog, as one of the best novels since 2000. Oscar is a nerdy, overweight kid who loves superheroes and is forever falling in love. His family moved to New Jersey after suffering from the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. The family (and possibly the entire Caribbean, and maybe the whole world) is plagued by a curse that began when Europeans brought African slaves to the Americas. “Oscar Wao” is how his friends pronounce “Oscar Wilde,” the nickname they have given him. The New York Times described it as, “so original it can only be described as Mario Vargas Llosa meets Star Trek meets David Foster Wallace meets Kanye West…. he’s fashioned both a big picture window that opens out on the sorrows of Dominican history, and a small, intimate window that reveals one family’s life and loves.” The library system has 40 books and five CDs. Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/brief_wondrous_life_of_oscar_wao/
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. 325 pages, 2007. This warm, graceful and philosophical French novel was a run-away best-seller in Europe and is now a best-seller in the U.S. The scene is an upper-crust apartment building in Paris, and the main characters are the building’s concierge and a twelve-year-old girl who lives there. Both are extremely intelligent, but they feel they must hide their intelligence to avoid problems with others. The Washington Post reviewer describes the book as, “gently satirical, exceptionally winning and inevitably bittersweet.” La Repubblica: “This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.” Suggested by Bill and Andi, this was also Rev. Kaaren Anderson’s Book of the Month for Sept 2009. It was #1 on the Harvard Bookstore’s best-seller list in Oct 2009. The library system has 39 books and 1 CD.
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 building a “created family” from caring friends. 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.” Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/eventide. The library system has 37 books and 11 CDs.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shafer and Annie Barrows. 290 pages, 2008. Guernsey is a small British island near France that was occupied by the Germans during World War II. This novel is presented as a series of letters from members of a Guernsey book club who talk about life there during that period. Washington Post: "…a sweet, sentimental paean to books and those who love them.... It affirms the power of books to nourish people enduring hard times.” The San Francisco Chronicle described it as, “Traditional without seeming stale, and romantic without being naïve,” noting that it “stays within modest bounds, but is successful in ways many novels are not. This book won't change your life, but it will probably enchant you.” Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/guernsey_literary_and_potato_peel_pie_society. Suggested by Vicki and Rod. This book club favorite was #7 on the Harvard bookstore’s best-seller list in Oct 2009. The library system has 90 books and 13 CDs.
The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey. 311pages, 2008. Two friends, both unmarried women in their 30s, have very different personalities: one is fragile and gives her heart away too easily, the other is tough and considers men to be interchangeable. Each of the novel’s four sections is told from viewpoint of a different person with revelations that help explain the behavior of other characters. The New York Times reviewer noted that, “The reader is expected to absorb these interlocking life stories, then re-sort them, ‘Rashomon’ style, to answer the puzzle of why Abigail and Dara have made such drastically dissimilar choices.” Boston Globe: “The considerable suspense in her writing arises not so much from complicated turns of plot as from her ability to project the emotional states of her characters into the universe they inhabit…. Even in paragraphs in which nothing actually happens, Livesey can make the blood race.” Recommended by Andi, who says it produced a good discussion in her book group. Livesey dedicates this book, by the way, to her close friend Andrea Barrett, a former Rochestarian and a LAVA favorite. (We read Barrett’s Voyage of the Narwhal and Servants of the Map.) Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/house_on_fortune_street. The library system has 21 books.
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan. 356 pages, 2007. This novel is a fictionalization of the life of Mamah Cheney, who abandons her family to run away to Europe with architect Frank Lloyd Wright. There she becomes the translator for Ellen Key, a Swedish women's rights advocate who rejects conventional ideas of marriage and divorce. Cheney is torn between the desire to achieve something important and guilt over abandoning her children. The New York Times noted that Cheney is made into, “an enigmatic Everywoman—a symbol of both the freedoms women yearn to have and of the consequences that may await when they try to take them." The book also provides insights into Frank Lloyd Wright’s work and the “feel” of his houses. This book became a best-seller and a book group favorite. Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/loving_frank/ Suggested by Ertem. The library system has 51 books and 9 CDs.
The Master, by Colm Toibin. 338 pages, 2004. This imagined portrait of Henry James, author of several classics (including Turn of the Screw, which LAVA read in 2005), won the 2007 International Dublin Literary Award, was short-listed for the Booker Prize, and was designated by a readers’ poll by “The Millions,” a prominent literary blog, as one of the best novels since 2000. Washington Post: “Say, with due reverence, ‘the Master’ and any serious novel-reader instantly knows you are referring to Henry James. . . . Colm Toibin has written a superb novel about a great artist, and done it in just the right way.” According to Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours, which LAVA read in 2001, “Colm Toibin takes us almost shockingly close to the soul of Henry James and, by extension, to the mystery of art itself.” Review by John Updike:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/06/28/040628crbo_books?currentPage=all. Other reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/the_master. Suggested by Bill and Andi. The library system has 16 books.
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill. 256 pages, 2007. Winner of the PEN/Faulkner award, this novel became an instant best-seller when President Obama mentioned that he was reading it and said it was “a wonderful book.” It reached the #2 position on the Harvard Bookstore’s best-seller list. The New York Times: “Joseph O’Neill’s stunning new novel, ‘Netherland,’ provides a resonant meditation on the American Dream.” The Elegant Variation, a prominent literary blog, raved about it: “A Gatsby-like meditation on exclusion and otherness, it's an unforgettable New York story in which the post 9/11 lives of Hans, a Dutch banker estranged from his English wife, and Chuck Ramkissoon, a mysterious cricket entrepreneur, intertwine. The New York City of the immigrant margins is unforgettably invoked in gorgeous, precise prose, and the novel's luminous conclusion is a radiant beacon illuminating one of our essential questions, the question of belonging. Our strongest possible recommendation.” Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/netherland/. The library system has 16 books and 1 CD.
The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson. 294 pages, 2006. Long-listed for the Booker Prize, this novel was written by the author of Crow Lake, which LAVA read in February, 2008. Publishers Weekly: “In this follow-up to her acclaimed Crow Lake, Lawson again explores the moral quandaries of life in the Canadian North. At the story's poles are Arthur Dunn, a stolid, salt-of-the-earth farmer, and his brother, Jake, a handsome, smooth-talking snake in the grass.” The Washington Post: “The Other Side of the Bridge is an admirable novel. Its old-fashioned virtues were also apparent in Crow Lake-- narrative clarity, emotional directness, moral context and lack of pretension -- but Lawson has ripened as a writer, and this second novel is much broader and deeper. The author draws her characters with unobtrusive humor and compassion, and she meets one of the fiction writer's most difficult challenges: to portray goodness believably, without sugar or sentiment.” Penelope Lively in The Guardian: “An enthralling read, both straight-forward and wonderfully intricate.” Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/other_side_of_the_bridge. The library system has 20 books.
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. 372 pages, 2007. Amazon: "One of the earliest Jewish religious volumes to be illuminated with images, the Sarajevo Haggadah survived centuries of purges and wars thanks to people of all faiths who risked their lives to safeguard it. Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March [which LAVA read in 2009], has turned the intriguing but sparely detailed history of this precious volume into an emotionally rich, thrilling fictionalization that retraces its turbulent journey." The Washington Post reviewer described it as, "intelligent, thoughtful, gracefully written and original," adding that, "Brooks tells a believable and engaging story about sympathetic but imperfect characters -- 'popular' fiction demands all of that -- but she also does the business of literature, exploring serious themes and writing about them in handsome prose." Suggested by Nancy W. and Joan S. Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/people_of_the_book/ The library system has 67 books and 7 CDs.
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. 335 pages, 1949. Two young people travel through the Sahara in hope of overcoming their world-weariness and recapturing the love they once shared. The indifferent desert, however, is more than they can understand or handle. This classic from the Existentialist/Beat period was made into a movie in 1990 starring Debra Winger and John Malkovich. Bowles lived the last 50 years of his life in Morocco. Tobias Wolff: "[The Sheltering Sky] is one of the most original, even visionary, works of fiction to appear in this century." Sunday Observer: “Now and then….a novel appears which does not repeat the pattern of commonplace existence…but makes us realize that our life is extraordinary. The Sheltering Sky is such a novel.” Suggested by Ertem. A contemporary review by Tennessee Williams: http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/bowles-sheltering.html The library system has 11 books and 4 videos.
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, 333 pages, 2008. This is a collection of eight short stories, which, at first glace, would seem awkward for group discussion. However the stories share a theme of generational problems of immigrants from India and the last three stories are related, so we could focus our discussion on those three, two of which are relatively long. Lahiri’s earlier collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize. Of Bengali ancestry, Lahiri was raised in the US since the age of three. The Boston Globe said these are, “eight beautifully crafted stories that reaffirm their author's status as one of this country's most accomplished and graceful young writers.” San Francisco Chronicle: “It's early to be proclaiming a best book of the year, but Jhumpa Lahiri's gorgeous new collection of eight stories, ‘Unaccustomed Earth,’ will be hard to top…. The three linked stories that make up the second part of ‘Unaccustomed Earth’ offer a happy compromise between the long and short forms, and some of Lahiri's best writing.” Andi, who read it for her book club, recommended this one, saying it was her favorite book of 2008. It was designated by a readers’ poll by “The Millions,” a prominent literary blog, as one of the best novels since 2000. Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/unaccustomed_earth/ The library system has 60 books and 6 CDs.
World Made by Hand, by James Howard Kunstler. 317 pages, 2008. “In the wake of global catastrophes that have destroyed industrial civilization, the inhabitants of Union Grove, a small New York town, do anything they can to get by, as they struggle to deal with a new way of life over the course of an eventful summer.” Publishers Weekly: “Kunstler's name is mostly associated with nonfiction works like The Long Emergency, a bleak prediction of what will happen when oil production no longer meets demand, and the antisuburbia polemic The Geography of Nowhere. In this novel, his 10th, he visits a future posited on his signature idea: when the oil wells start to run dry, the world economy will collapse and society as we know it will cease... Kunstler's world is convincing if didactic: Union Grove exists solely to illustrate Kunstler's doomsday vision. Readers willing to go for the ride will see a frightening and bleak future.” San Francisco Chronicle: “…an impassioned and invigorating tale whose ultimate message is one of hope, not despair.” Suggested by Ken. The library system has 22 books.
The World to Come by Dara Horn. 314 pages, 2006. A man steals a Chagall painting that once hung in his bedroom as a child, convinced that it still rightfully belongs to his family. This is the second novel for Horn, who is a doctoral candidate in Hebrew and Yiddish literature at Harvard. It explores a wide variety of topics, including Chagall’s life, ancient Jewish mysticism and the tumultuous experience of Jews in Russia immediately after the communist revolution. The phrase “the world to come” refers both to the afterlife and to this life as seen from the viewpoint of those who have not yet been born. Booklist: “A compelling collage of history, mystery, theology, and scripture, The World to Come is a narrative tour de force crackling with conundrums and dark truths.” Los Angeles Times: “An accomplished work that beautifully explains how families - in all their maddening, smothering, supportive glory—create us.” Kirkus Reviews: “An appealing journey into the past…An engrossing adventure…a remarkably coherent, finely crafted tale.” Washington Post: "Captivating and startling... it stays aloft in the mind like a dream you can't decide was sweet or frightening.” Recommended by Andi’s book club. Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/world_to_come. The library system has 16 books.
Candidates for Regular Meetings (non-fiction)
The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer House by George Howe Colt. 319 pages, 2003. This best-selling book was a National Book Award finalist. The author is a journalist, a poet and a college teacher who spent 42 summers at his family’s house on Cape Cod, which, according to Publishers Weekly, is “not only an architectural gem but a device to chronicle family, local history and the culture of Boston Brahmins.” The New Yorker: “Colt's account, like the house that lies at its center, is full of surprises and contains more than seems humanly possible: a family memoir, a brief history of the Cape, an investigation of nostalgia, a catalogue of local fauna, a study of class, and a meditation on the privileges and burdens of the past.” Booklist: “Colt goes beyond his own wistful longing, rendering keen observations of a lifestyle borne of privilege, perpetuated by tradition, and celebrated through elegance.” The New York Times noted that the house, “has been the site, and sometimes the occasion, of five weddings, four divorces, three deaths and more nervous breakdowns than any one family should have to endure.” The library system has 16 books. Review in The New York Times: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E7DD103BF935A35754C0A9659C8B63
Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler. 338 pages, 2009. “We influence and are influenced by people up to three degrees removed from us, most of whom we do not even know. For example, your friend's friend's friend has more impact on your happiness than $5,000 in your pocket.” Andrew Gelman, author of Red State, Blue State, says the authors back up their conclusions, “with dozens of interconnected stories of research findings by themselves and others, ranging from bank runs to suicide prevention, from nut allergies among schoolchildren to epidemics in virtual worlds, from the spread of happiness to the spread of voting." The New York Times said this is one of those, “works of brilliant originality that can stimulate and enlighten and can sometimes even change the way we understand the world." Christakis is a Harvard professor who was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009. New York Times review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/books/review/Stossel-t.html There were only six copies in the library system as of Nov 28, 2009, but this book is newly published (on Sept 28), so the number will probably grow. It was #10 on the Harvard Bookstore’s hardback bestseller list in Oct. 2009.
The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeanette Walls. 288 pages, 2005. Here is the first sentence of the book: “I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.” This is the true story of a family that is beyond eccentric, with a brilliant but alcoholic father and a tempestuous mother who is a frustrated artist. Both scorn normal life and neither have any interest in raising their four children. They all end up homeless, with the children left to fend for themselves. Even after the children grow up and prosper, the parents choose to live as homeless people. The New York Times: “Memoirs are our modern fairy tales.... The autobiographer is faced with the daunting challenge of attempting to understand, forgive, and even love the witch.... Readers will marvel at the intelligence and resilience of the Walls kids." Publisher Weekly: “An excellent book. . . Walls has a fantastic storytelling knack.” This book is still on the Independent Bookstores Non-Fiction Best-Seller list today even though it was published in 2005. Andi read it for her book club and recommends it. The library system has 80 copies and 9 CDs.
Here If You Need Me: A True Story by Kate Braestrup. 211 pages, 2007. After the death of her husband, Braestrup became a Unitarian Universalist minister, serving as chaplain to the Maine Game Warden Service, which conducts search-and-rescue operations that deal with everything from lost hikers to missing children, accidents, murders and suicides. Washington Post: "A superbly crafted memoir of love, loss, grief, hope and the complex subtleties of faith.... [Braestrup is] remarkable, steady, peaceful and wise." Boston Globe: "As gripping as any police thriller." Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Even the most jaded secularist would fall for the chaplain of the Maine Warden Service.” This best-selling memoir was suggested by Mary Lyubomirsky, music and arts coordinator at the church. Here is an excerpt: http://www.uuworld.org/spirit/articles/50622.shtml The library system has 30 books and 1 CD.
How To Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas Foster, a professor of English at the University of Michigan at Flint. 296 pages, 2003. Each chapter discusses a symbol or other literary device and illustrates it with loads of examples. One chapter, for example, is titled “It’s More Than Just Rain or Snow,” and another “It’s Never Just Heart Disease.” The book ends with a short story by Katherine Mansfield followed by two detailed and very different analyses of it, each of which uncovers hidden layers of meaning. The author also discusses in detail James Joyce’s three-page story “Araby,” which is freely available on the web and could be a discussion point for us. Written to engage young college students, this book’s style might be a bit too breezy for some, but James Shapiro, a prominent professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, speaks highly of it: “I know of no other book that so vividly conveys what it’s like to study with a great literature professor.” Suggested by Bill. The library system has 12 books.
Longer Books (suitable for August and October)
We read no more than two books in this category per year, and we reserve them 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 of the top choices are shorter books, that is what we read all year.
Battle Cry for Freedom: The Civil War Era, by James McPherson, 2003, 862 pages. This Pulitzer Prize-winner links descriptions of military campaigns to the complex economic, political, and social forces behind the conflict. Washington Post: "The finest single volume on the war and its background." New York Times: "The best one-volume treatment of [the Civil War era] I have ever come across. It may actually be the best ever published.... I was swept away, feeling as if I had never heard the saga before.... Omitting nothing important, whether military, political, or economic, he yet manages to make everything he touches drive the narrative forward. This is historical writing of the highest order.” New York Times review: http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/specials/mcpherson-freedom.html Recommended by Margaret, who suggests that we focus on Chapter 16, “We Must Free the Slaves or Be Ourselves Subdued.” The library system has 19 books.
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. 541 pages, 2006. The interconnected lives of a politically active Nigerian professor, his houseboy, the professor’s mistress, her twin sister, and an Englishman in love with the sister are all upended by the outbreak of the Biafran war of secession from Nigeria in the 1960s. The author was born in Nigeria, but her family moved to the U.S. when she was 19. This, her second novel, won the Orange Prize and was short-listed for the National Book Critics Circle award. It was designated by a readers’ poll by “The Millions,” a prominent literary blog, as one of the best novels since 2000. The New York Times says her first two novels, “explore the gap between the public performances of male heroes and their private irresponsibilities. And both novels shrewdly observe the women — the wives, the daughters — left dangling over that chasm.” The stories centers on dissimilar twin sisters who “struggle with an on-again-off-again mutual loyalty crosshatched with mistrust and betrayal.” The Harvard Book Review: “Are there any easy answers in [Half of a Yellow Sun]? Certainly not. But Adichie, in the process, asks the hell out of her questions, rendering them in all their haunting, beautiful silence.” New York Times review: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/books/21masl.html Recommended by Andi, who read it for her book club. The library system has 13 books and 2 CDs.
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—And How It Can Renew America by Tom Friedman, who has won the Pulitzer Prize three times. 412 pages, 2008 edition; 528 pages, 2009 edition. This was one of five books on President Obama’s vacation reading list for 2009. (The other four, by the way, included Plainsong by Kent Haruf and John Adams by David McCullough, both of which LAVA has already read.) Friedman urges the U.S. to embrace green technology to alleviate global warming and restore our economic and political stature. New York Times: "If Friedman's profile and verve take his message where it needs to be heard, into the boardrooms of America and beyond, that can only be good--for all our sakes." Financial Times: "Tom Friedman has done it again…. He has lit upon what he might describe as another Big Idea, and, given his track record as a zeitgeist thermometer, we should all pay attention…. He has a gift for weaving anecdotes and examples from around the world into his broader tapestry." Recommended by Vicki and Rod. Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/hot_flat_and_crowded/ The library system has 78 books and 14 CDs.
Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Dame Antonia Fraser. 458 pages, 2001. “Antonia Fraser’s lavish and engaging portrait of Marie Antoinette, one of the most recognizable women in European history, excites compassion and regard for all aspects of her subject, immersing the reader not only in the coming-of-age of a graceful woman, but also in the unraveling of an era.” Washington Post: “Fascinating . . . the court at Versailles comes alive.” New Yorker: “Absorbing as ever. Fraser’s blend of insight and research persuade us that this unfortunate queen deserves neither the vilification nor the idealization she has received.” Fraser has won several awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Suggested by Rachel S. Review in The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/09/24/010924crbn_brieflynoted3 The library system has 18 books and 1 CD.
The Seven Storey Mountain, the autobiography of Thomas Merton. 424-462 pages, depending on the edition, 1948. Amazon.com: “In 1941, a brilliant, good-looking young man decided to give up a promising literary career in New York to enter a monastery in Kentucky, from where he proceeded to become one of the most influential writers of this century.” Written when the author was only 31 years old, this book has been translated into at least 15 languages. According to Wikipedia, “Merton was a prolific poet, a social activist, a student of comparative religion… Merton was a keen proponent of inter-religious understanding, engaging in spiritual dialogues with the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh and D. T. Suzuki.” Suggested by Tess. Review in The New York Times on the book’s 50th anniversary: http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/11/bookend/bookend.html The library system has 25 books.
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. 754 pages, 2005. This book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography; the author also won the Pulitzer for an earlier work. When Barack Obama first entered the White House and was asked which book he could not live without there, he named this book. Library Journal: “Much more than a biography of Lincoln, historian Goodwin's book also closely examines the lives of Lincoln's chief opponents for the Republican nomination—Edward Bates, Salmon P. Chase, and William H. Seward—all of whom appeared better qualified to be President than he. After Lincoln persuaded the three men—as well as other strong figures—to join his cabinet, it was expected that his former rivals would dominate him. Instead, the exact opposite occurred.” Washington Post: “[G]ood narrative in American history is what we lack, and Goodwin's narrative powers are great.” Reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/team_of_rivals/ Recommended by Barb and Bob. The library system has 35 books and 22 CDs.