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2007–2008 Booklist
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
Beah, at the age of 12, fled attacking rebels in Sierra Leone's civil war and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By 13, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. At 16, he was removed from fighting by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at his rehabilitation center, he learned how to forgive himself, to regain his humanity, and finally, to heal. Join us for Everybody Reads, Multnomah County Library's annual community-wide book discussion.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Twain tells the classic adventures of a boy and a runaway slave as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft.
American Nomads: Travels with Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, and Bullriders by Richard Grant
A British journalist travels the American West, meeting wanderers and pondering the lives of earlier explorers and frontiersmen.
Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior by Temple Grandin
Temple's professional training as an animal scientist and her history as a person with autism have given her a perspective like that of no other expert in the field. Standing at the intersection of autism and animals, she offers unparalleled observations and groundbreaking ideas about both.
Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
In the vast expanse of late-Victorian Britain, two boys come to life: George, the son of a Midlands vicar, and Arthur, in shabby genteel Edinburgh, both of them feeling at once near to and impossibly distant from the beating heart of Empire. One falls prey to a series of pranks en route to a legal vocation, while the other studies medicine before discovering a different calling entirely, and it is years before their destinies are entwined in a mesmerizing alliance.
The Best People in the World by Justin Tussing
A novel about love, redemption, and coming-of-age that illuminates a moment when everything was perfect — and then, when it wasn't.
Blindness by José Saramago
A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" that spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers — among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, and a dog of tears — through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing.
Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz
In an informative look at the life and travels of Capt. James Cook, Horwitz combines a sharp eye for reporting with subtle wit and a wonderful knack for drawing out the many characters he discovers. The book is both a travel narrative and a biography of the renowned 18th-century British explorer widely considered one of the greatest navigators in maritime history.
Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller
In Miller's early years, he was vaguely familiar with a distant God. But then he began to pursue the Christian life with great zeal. Within a few years he had a successful ministry that ultimately left him feeling empty, burned out, and, once again, far away from God. In this intimate, soul-searching account, Miller describes his remarkable journey back to a culturally relevant, infinitely loving God.
Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos
A debut novel of infinite charm and tremendous heart that explores the risks and rewards of human connection. Funny, heartbreaking and alive with a potpourri of eccentric and irresistible characters, Broken for You is a testament to the saving graces of surrogate families and shows how far the tiniest repair jobs can go in righting the world's wrongs.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Set in a World War II American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of John Yossarian, who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. Yossarian is also trying to decode the meaning of Catch-22, a mysterious regulation that proves that insane people are really the sanest, while the supposedly sensible people are the true madmen.
The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt
The author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil returns after a decade to offer, in his inimitable style, an intimate look at the "magic, mystery, and decadence" of the city of Venice and its inhabitants.
Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande
A brilliant and courageous doctor reveals, in gripping accounts of true cases, the power and limits of modern medicine. This book is exploratory surgery on medicine itself, laying bare a science not in its idealized form, but as it actually is — complicated, perplexing, and profoundly human.
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz
A tour of the Old South which explores why Americans are still engrossed with the Civil War and how it resonates today.
Cookoff: Recipe Fever in America by Amy Sutherland
An engrossing look at the competitive cooking circuit culminating with the ultimate event — the Pillsbury Bake-Off.
Daughter of Fortune: A Novel by Isabel Allende
A Chilean immigrant in San Francisco goes to the Gold Rush fields disguised as a man to follow her lover.
Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia by Chris Stewart
This rip-roaringly funny book about seeking a place in an earthy community of peasants and shepherds gives a realistic sense of the hassles and rewards of foreign relocation.
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss
In this impassioned manifesto on punctuation, journalist Truss gives full rein to her "inner stickler" in lambasting common grammatical mistakes. Moving from outright indignation to sarcasm to bone-dry humor, Truss turns the finer points of punctuation into spirited reading.
The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars by Joel Glenn Brenner
An account of the cut-throat competition between Hershey and Mars, two of the biggest candy manufacturers in America. Their history involves industrial espionage, blatant copycatting, bitter legal battles and many personality clashes.
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
"This is a record of hate far more than of love," writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening passages of The End of the Affair. And it is a strange hate indeed that compels him to set down the retrospective account of his adulterous affair with Sarah Miles — a hate bred of a passion that ultimately lost out to God.
Endurance by Alfred Lansing
An account of British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton's epic adventure to the South Atlantic and the first crossing of the Antarctic continent. Half a continent away from its intended base, the ship Endurance was crushed in the ice. For five months, Shackleton and his men were castaways in one of the most savage regions of the world.
Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl
Garlic and Sapphires is Reichl's account of her experience undercover in her position as food critic for The New York Times. She throws back the curtain on the sumptuously appointed stages of the epicurean world to reveal the comic absurdity, artifice and excellence there, giving us (along with some of her favorite recipes and reviews) her remarkable reflections on role playing and identity.
The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
The author tells the story of her dysfunctional, yet vibrant, family and the intense love that held them together.
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North.
A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George
Two detectives sent by the Scotland Yard to investigate a murder in a quiet corner of Yorkshire are a mismatched pair. Inspector Thomas Lynley is smooth, attractive and utterly upper-class; "stubby, sturdy" detective-sergeant Barbara Havers, conscious of her plain appearance and lower-class origins, considers Lynley a "sodding little fop."
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
It is the world of the near future, and Offred is a handmaid. She is hoping the commander makes her pregnant because she is only valued if her ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she had a job of her own, a husband, and a child, but all of that is gone now.
The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch
While the sea continues to offer him discoveries from its mysterious depths, such as a giant squid, a teenaged boy struggles to deal with the difficulties that come with the equally mysterious process of growing up.
A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage
Throughout human history certain drinks have done much more than just quench thirst. As Standage relates with authority and charm, six of them — beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola — have had a surprisingly pervasive influence on the course of history, becoming the defining drink during a pivotal historical period.
Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors by Susan Sontag
In 1978, while recovering from cancer, Sontag wrote Illness as Metaphor. It has become a classic that Newsweek called "one of the most liberating books of its time." A decade later, Sontag wrote a sequel that countered the almost universal labeling of AIDS as a "plague." Demystifying the fears surrounding these two diseases, Sontag's ground-breaking essays have had an enormous impact on the lives of countless patients and their caregivers.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
When it was first published in 1906, The Jungle exposed the inhumane conditions of Chicago's stockyards and the laborer's struggle against industry and "wage slavery." It was an immediate bestseller and led to new regulations that forever changed workers' rights and the meatpacking industry.
Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth's Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa by Mark Mathabane
This extraordinary memoir of life under apartheid is a triumph of the human spirit over hatred and unspeakable degradation. For Mathabane did what no physically and psychologically battered "Kaffir" from the rat-infested alleys of Alexandra was supposed to do — he escaped to tell about it.
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. A classic time-travel novel by an acclaimed African American science fiction writer.
The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen
Nestled in the quiet woods of the Pacific Northwest, the town of Commonwealth is a haven for the loggers who live there, until the flu starts striking down entire surrounding villages. When the residents of Commonwealth vote to quarantine themselves, armed guards are posted at the one road leading to town. But then a disheveled — and apparently sick — soldier approaches begging for food and shelter. Shots are fired, and soon Commonwealth is plunged into turmoil. This selection is a joint project with Multnomah County Health Department and will include a facilitated discussion to talk about local pandemic influenza preparedness efforts; more information can be found at Pandemic Flu Resources.
Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black by Gregory Howard Williams
A stunning journey to the heart of the racial dilemma in this country. Everyone will be enriched by reading the unforgettable tale.
Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail by Rusty Young
Inspired by the description of San Pedro Prison in La Paz, Bolivia, in the Lonely Planet guidebook — and in particular by the "English-speaking" tours it advertised — Young decided to visit the notorious jail. The tour was given by inmate Thomas McFadden, a British citizen arrested for drug smuggling. They struck up a friendship, and Young ended up spending four months in San Pedro, listening to McFadden and learning about one of the strangest places on earth.
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
A doctor is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son is perfectly healthy, but his daughter has Down syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect his wife, he asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, the nurse disappears into another city to raise the child herself.
Moloka'i by Alan Brennert
In this richly imagined novel, set in Hawai'i more than a century ago, Rachel Kalama, a spirited 7-year-old, dreams of visiting far-off lands like her father, a merchant seaman. Then one day a rose-colored mark appears on her skin, and those dreams are stolen from her. Taken from her home and family, Rachel is sent to Kalaupapa, the quarantined leprosy settlement on the island of Moloka'i. Here her life is supposed to end — but instead she discovers it is only just beginning.
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
A traditional Indian family from Calcutta is transported to the U.S. to make a new life. The difficulty of respecting the old culture and embracing the new is especially difficult for the family's American-born son.
Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine
This cold-turkey confession by an award-winning journalist follows her progress — and inevitable relapses — over an entire year of not spending.
On Beauty: A Novel by Zadie Smith
Howard Belsey is an Englishman abroad, an academic teaching in a college town in New England. Married young, 30 years later he is struggling to revive his love for his African American wife Kiki. After Howard has a disastrous affair with a colleague, his sensitive older son escapes to England for the holidays, and defies everything the Belseys represent by going to work for a right-wing academic.
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
This is a wise, funny and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages 6 to 14, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution and the devastating effects of war with Iraq.
The Places in Between by Rory Stewart
In January 2002 Stewart walked across Afghanistan — surviving by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, and the kindness of strangers. Along the way Stewart met heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders and foreign-aid workers. Through these encounters — by turns touching, confounding, surprising, and funny — Stewart makes tangible the forces of tradition, ideology, and allegiance that shape life in the map's countless places in between.
A Redbird Christmas: A Novel by Fannie Flagg
Believing that he has less than a year to live, Oswald moves to Lost River, Alabama, where he wants to spend his last Christmas. This down-home story is filled with quirky characters, warmth and humor as only Flagg (author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café) can do.
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard
After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil's most famous explorer, Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
America is destroyed, but amidst the destruction, a father and his young son walk toward the coast with no hope that things will be better there. Still they persevere, and their relationship comes to represent goodness in a world that is utterly devastated.
Saturday by Ian McEwan
A virtuosic, brilliantly macabre and suspenseful novel about 24 hours in the life of a London neurosurgeon against the backdrop of the impending war in Iraq. The gifted McEwan turns a single day into an emblem of an entire era.
Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the world's great anti-war books. Centering on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.
Snow by Orhan Pamuk
From the acclaimed author of My Name Is Red comes a spellbinding tale of disparate yearnings — for love, art, power and God — set in a remote Turkish town, where stirrings of political Islamism threaten to unravel the secular order.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel by Lisa See
See's engrossing novel, set in 19th-century China, details the deeply affecting story of lifelong, intimate friends Lily and Snow Flower, their imprisonment by rigid codes of conduct for women and their betrayal by pride and love.
The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life by Lynne Twist
In this wise and inspiring exploration of the connection between money and leading a fulfilling life, a global activist shares a journey illuminated by remarkable encounters with the richest and poorest people on earth, from the famous (Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama) to the anonymous but unforgettable heroes of everyday life.
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
A ninth grader falls mute and becomes a social pariah when, after a traumatic event, she calls the police and they invade a summer party.
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
This mesmerizing debut, uncannily uniting the trials of a postmodern upbringing with a murder mystery, heralds the arrival of a vibrant new voice in literary fiction.
Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
With characteristic originality, lucidity, and élan, de Botton addresses the anxieties that seem inextricably embedded in our pursuit of success and status, and explores what, if anything, we can do about them.
Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
This is an extraordinary novel of life under Nazi occupation — discovered and published 62 years after the author's tragic death at Auschwitz. Subtle, often fiercely ironic, and deeply compassionate, Suite Française is both a piercing record of its time and a brilliant, profoundly moving work of art.
Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World by Rita Golden Gelman
This memoir shows how Gelman redesigned her life to fit her dreams and discovered the value of trust, the rewards of risk and the magic of serendipity as a modern-day nomad.
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
This is the story of one man's campaign to build schools in the most dangerous, remote and anti-American reaches of Asia. In 1993 Mortenson was an American mountain-climbing bum wandering, emaciated and lost, through Pakistan's Karakoram. After he was taken in and nursed back to health by the people of a Pakistani village, he promised to return one day and build them a school. At last count, his Central Asia Institute had built 55 schools.
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.
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse features the serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests who are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and the conflicts within a marriage.
The Tortilla Curtain by T. Coraghessan Boyle
Explores illegal immigration in a gripping story of two couples in Southern California who live in close proximity but are worlds apart. One couple live in an exclusive housing development and the other couple have crossed the border illegally are desperately looking for work and a place to live before their baby is born.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Why is the young governess the only one who can see the ghosts? Are her young charges haunted or evil? Or is the governess herself mad? The book that claims to start out as a Christmas Eve ghost story quickly becomes a tale of psychological horror as the governess struggles — and ultimately fails — to protect the children from the "corruption" that only she can conceive of ... but cannot name.
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by John Krakauer
Using a crime committed by two brothers as a focal point, the author explores the history of radical Mormon sects.
A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot
In January 1917 five French soldiers were tossed into the no man's land and left for the Germans to shoot. Mathilde Donnay, fiancée of one of the dead soldiers, is determined to learn the truth about what really happened to these five young men.
Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen
As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now 90, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell.
Waxwings by Jonathan Raban
This unsettling, tender and always surprising novel is set in Seattle at the turn of the millennium, when the high-tech Gold Rush threatens to overwhelm the actual world with its myriad virtual alternatives. Two immigrants, though, are drawn here by more traditional versions of the American Dream.
Winter in the Blood by James Welch
Welch has written an extraordinary, evocative novel about a young Native American coming to terms with his heritage — and his dreams.
Wish You Well by David Baldacci
A mother and two children in the 1940s leave their home in New York City for rural Virginia, where the children are raised by their remarkable great-grandmother.
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
From one of America's iconic writers comes a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of marriage — and a life, in good times and bad — that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.