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2003–2004 Booklist

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: Mindless television shows have numbed the masses in a society where firemen burn books, rather than douse flames. Bradbury's classic 1953 novel explores what happens when one fireman dares to rescue books and read them. Join us for Everybody Reads, Multnomah County Library's annual community-wide book discussion.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon: Young escape artist Joe Kavalier has just smuggled himself out of Hitler's Prague and is in New York City. His cousin, Sammy Clay, in Brooklyn is looking for a partner in creating heroes and art for comic books. Inspired by their own fantasies, Kavalier and Clay create the Escapist, the Monitor and other heroes as the golden age of comic books begins.
Arranged Marriage: A Novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: These short stories are about Indian-born women caught in cultural changes both in the United States and India.
Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan: A domestic crisis becomes a crime story that changes lives in an upper-middle-class English country home on a hot summer day in 1935. This haunting novel is McEwan at his most closely observed and psychologically penetrating.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie: Set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the novel tells the story of two hapless city boys sent to a remote mountain village for re-education. The author, himself an unwilling participant in Mao's re-education program, has created an enchanting and uplifting tale from one of the darkest moments in recent history.
Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min: Min has written a strikingly original, erotically charged portrayal of Madame Mao, one of the most vilified women of the 20th century. Before her stint as Mao's first lady, Jiang Ching was an actress, a singer and a star in Communist films.
Bel Canto: A Novel by Ann Patchett: When terrorists invade a vice president's mansion in an unnamed South American country, an American opera singer is taken hostage. Her singing links her fellow hostages to the outside world and breaks the boundaries between hostage and terrorist.
The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan: Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. Who is domesticating whom?
The Brothers K by David James Duncan: This family saga is a complex tapestry of family tensions, baseball, politics and religion, by turns hilariously funny and agonizingly sad.
A Child Called "It": An Abused Child's Journey From Victim to Victor by David Pelzer: This brief, horrifying account relates Pelzer's torturous childhood at the hands of his maniacal, alcoholic mother before a teacher rescues him.
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire: From the author of the acclaimed novel Wicked comes a fresh perspective on another timeless tale — Cinderella — sure to enchant readers young and old alike.
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey: Tey focuses on the legend of Richard III, the evil hunchback of British history accused of murdering his young nephews. With an American researcher's help, protagonist Grant delves into his country's history to discover just what kind of man Richard Plantagenet was and who really killed the little princes.
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller: With candor and a unique and subtle sensitivity to racial issues, Fuller remembers her African childhood, describing her parents' racism and the wartime relationships between blacks and whites through a child's watchful eyes.
Empire Falls by Richard Russo: Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at his family's business, the Empire Grill, for 20 years. What keeps him there? Author Russo delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache and grace.
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser: This devastating exposé reveals how the fast-food industry's drive for consolidation, homogenization and speed has radically transformed America's diet, landscape, economy and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways.
Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland: Eight interrelated stories describe the history of Girl in Hyacinth Blue, a painting that a math teacher has claimed is an original by the Dutch master Vermeer. Gentle and beautiful words trace the painting's ownership back three centuries to the moment of its inspiration.
The Hours by Michael Cunningham: Cunningham draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair. A Pulitzer Prize winner.
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus: An attractive bungalow in California represents more than a place to live when an immigrant family from Iran purchases it from a county auction and the house's former owner, a recovering alcoholic and addict down on her luck, wants it back.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison: In this classic, an African American man's search for success and the American dream leads him out of college to Harlem and a growing sense of personal rejection and social invisibility.
Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong: The author presents Islamic history from an objective, unbiased point of view, demonstrating that history and politics are inseparable vehicles of religious expression and cultural identity within the Muslim world.
It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong: Armstrong tells his inspiring story, from the dark night of advanced testicular cancer through his dramatic victory in the 1999 Tour de France.
The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century by David Salsburg: This account explores the lives and discoveries of the pioneers of 20th-century statistics, including Ronald Fisher. A genius who founded mathematical statistics and mathematical genetics, Fisher conducted an experiment on whether tea poured into milk tastes different from milk poured into tea.
Life of Pi: A Novel by Yann Martel: Pi Patel practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When his family and their zoo animals emigrate to North America, their ship sinks and Pi finds himself in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra and a 450-pound Bengal tiger as his only companions. Winner of the Man Booker Prize.
Married to my Garden by Barbara Blossom Ashmun: Meet the author! Ashmun has written a collection of delightful stories based on her love affair with gardening.
Memoirs of a Geisha: A Novel by Arthur Golden: This story of a celebrated geisha is told with authenticity and lyricism.
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf: Probably Woolf's most famous stylistic accomplishment, this brilliant novel explores the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a woman's life. Woolf insists that Mrs. Dalloway locates the enormous in the mundane; that a seemingly trivial life reflects the incisive and idiotic simultaneously.
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich: The author studies the millions of Americans who work for poverty-level wages by joining their ranks.
Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks: Award-winning journalist Geraldine Brooks offers an intimate, often shocking, portrait of the lives of modern Muslim women. Her stunning vignettes carefully distinguish misogyny and oppressive cultural traditions from what the author considers the true teachings of the Koran.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez: This fictional history follows several generations and the passions, thoughts and myths of a labyrinth of people. Winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982.
Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year by Anne Lamott: This diary of a single mother's introduction to motherhood is brutally honest, poignant and hilarious.
The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream by Samson Davis: Three young black men in the medical profession — a dentist, an emergency-room physician and an internist — recall an informal pact they made as youths that guided them out of their inner-city Newark neighborhoods and into successful careers.
Palace Walk by Najib Mahfuz: This first volume in the Cairo Trilogy describes the disintegrating family life of a tyrannical, prosperous merchant, his timid wife and their rebellious children in post-World War I Egypt. Mahfuz is the first Arabic writer to win the Nobel Prize (1988).
The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945 by Wladyslaw Szpilman: The author tells how he played Chopin's Nocturne during the last live music broadcast on Polish Radio as shells exploded in Warsaw. After years in hiding, a German officer saves his life after hearing him play the same Chopin Nocturne on a piano found among the rubble.
Plainsong by Kent Haruf: The small-town lives of two abandoned young boys, a pregnant teenager and two elderly bachelor brothers run parallel to each other until Maggie Jones, a teacher, makes them intersect.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: This comedy of manners features splendidly civilized sparring between Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet, as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of 18th-century drawing-room intrigues.
Prodigal Summer: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver: Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives in southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region.
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester: This true tale describes the criminally insane American physician who, locked up in an English asylum for murder, spent his life compiling the Oxford English Dictionary.
The Quiet American by Graham Greene: While the French Army in Indo-China is grappling with the Vietminh, back in Saigon a young and high-minded American named Pyle begins to channel economic aid to a Third Force.
The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne: In the tradition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, this mystery by the author of the Winnie-the-Pooh books is set in the English countryside in a stately British mansion with an abundance of characters and curious clues.
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky: This unique world history shakes out all the value systems influenced by the only rock we eat.
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand: The author tells how three unlikely partners survive a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy and severe injury to transform the racehorse Seabiscuit from a neurotic also-ran into an American sports icon.
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd: When her African American nanny is thrown into jail for attempting to vote during the 1964 Civil Rights movement, 14-year-old Lily rescues her and the two set across South Carolina to begin a new life.
The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell: This engrossing narrative captures the distinct personalities of six headstrong, determined and witty women who had a surprisingly pervasive impact on 20th-century social, political and literary history.
Sometimes a Great Notion: A Novel by Ken Kesey: The legendary Oregon author tells a wild-spirited and hugely powerful tale of an Oregon coastal logging town torn by lumber strike and family differences.
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell: A charismatic Jesuit priest leads a 21st-century scientific mission to a newly-discovered extraterrestrial culture.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston: Even though Janie Crawford has married three men and been tried for the murder of one of them, she feels no need to justify herself to the town. But she tells all to her friend, Phoeby, with the implicit understanding that Phoeby will tell them what she says.
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe: In what is the most widely read work of African fiction, Achebe captures the missionary experience from an African point of view.
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell: How do social epidemics — whether they be hush puppies or STDs — work? This elegant book examines significant social trends and their reflection of that elusive critical mass: collective consciousness.
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck: In the shabby district called Tortilla Flat above Monterey, California, lives a gang whose exploits compare to those of King Arthur's knights.
The Voyage of the Narwhal: A Novel by Andrea Barrett: Part adventure, part love story, this novel captures a crucial moment in the history of exploration. Combining fact and fiction, the story focuses on Erasmus Darwin Wells, a 19th-century scholar/naturalist, and his expedition to search for an open polar sea. Winner of the National Book Award.
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson: Bryson hauls his out-of-shape, middle-aged butt over hill and dale in this delightful chronicle of the trail, the people who created it, and the places it passes.

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