LAVA Archives and Reading Resources

Click below for reading and discussion resources for books that LAVA has read (or will soon read) since 2004. Only limited information is available for earlier books.
2024
River of the Gods by Candice Millard
An Immense World by Ed Yong
The Cold Millions by Jess Walter
2023
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller
The Summer of 1787 by David O. Stewart
The Boy in the Field by Margot Livesey
Your Children are Very Greatly in Danger by Justin Murphy
Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
South to America by Imani Perry
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
In Love by Amy Bloom
2022
Evil Geniuses by Kurt Andersen
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Gut by Giulia Enders
Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
Hell of a Book by Jason Mott
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
Writers and Lovers by Lily King
2021
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Frederick Douglass by David W. Blight
The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
2020
There There by Tommy Orange
The 1619 Project by the New York Times
Dopesick by Beth Macy
Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
The Plot against America by Phillip Roth
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre
2019
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
American War by Omar El Akkad
Nora Webster by Colm Toibin
Thunderstruck by Erik Larson
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
2018
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel Brown
The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande
The Children Act by by Ian McEwan
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
Bellevue by David Oshinsky
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance
2017
The Martian by Andy Weir
The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
Dead Wake by Erik Larson
Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
& Sons by David Gilbert
Beyond Words by Carl Safina
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
2016
Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen
Queen of the Fall by Sonja Livingston
Lila by Marilynne Robinson
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff
Euphoria by Lily King
Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett
2015
The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan
The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor
Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches by Samuel C. Gwynne
Just Kids by Patti Smith
2014
Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
The River of Doubt by Candice Millard
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
2013
The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton
Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
A Mercy by Toni Morrison
In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
Faith by Jennifer Haigh
The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
2012 2011
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Too Close to the Falls by Catherine Gildiner
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Here if You Need Me by Kate Braestrup
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by M. A. Shaffer and Annie Barrows
2010
Biography of Ben Franklin
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Eventide by Kent Haruf
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
2009
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Jim the Boy by Tony Earley
Free Lunch by David Cay Johnston
Waiting by Ha Jin
The Sea by John Banville
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
The Moral Instinct by Steven Pinker
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
2008
Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
Intution by Allegra Goodman
Mapping Human History by Steve Olson
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Collapse by Jared Diamond
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
March by Geraldine Brooks
2007
The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter
The Buffalo Soldier by Chris Bohjalian
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brian
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
The Forgetting: Alzheimer's by David Shenk
Snow by Orhan Pamuk,
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
2006
The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels
Name All the Animals by Alison Smith
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
Love in the Time of the Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Copies in Seconds by David Owen
Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr
2005
The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
Servants of the Map by Andrea Barrett
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Arabian Nights and Days by Naguib Mahfouz
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Last Orders by Graham Swift
2004
A Student of Weather by Elizabeth Hay
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Personal History by Katharine Graham
The Plague by Albert Camus
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusas
1994 through 2003