2008–2009 Booklist

Join us for Everybody Reads, Multnomah County Library's annual community-wide book discussion, and read the true story of three generations of a Japanese-American family, spanning across the 20th century in Hood River, Portland and Eugene.

Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm-town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

Wade Whitehouse is an unlikely protagonist of a tragedy. Wade looms in one's mind as a blue-collar American Everyman afflicted by the dark secret of the macho tradition, his tale told by his articulate, equally scarred younger brother.

This inspirational story of a young man's journey to maturity follows a shepherd boy as he dreams of seeing the world and finding treasure in the Egyptian pyramids.

Brimming with insights into Middle Eastern history and American foreign policy, this book is an eye-opening look at an event whose unintended consequences - Islamic revolution and violent anti-Americanism - have shaped the modern world.

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.

A 20th century classic, Appointment in Samarra is the masterpiece by the writer Fran Leibowitz called "the real F. Scott Fitzgerald." With trademark verisimilitude, O'Hara captures the personal politics and easy bitterness of small-town life in this first and most widely read of his books.

A novel that is as lyrical and profound as it is unforgettable, Bel Canto engenders in the reader the very passion for art and the language of music that its characters discover.

The New York Times bestselling author examines the complex and risk-filled medical profession and how those involved progress from merely good to great. Gawande provides rare insight and offers an honest firsthand account of his own life as a surgeon.

This novel tells the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster child living outside Munich during WWII. Liesel scratches out a meager existence by stealing when she discovers something she can't resist: books.

When a possibly paranoid patient of therapist Brian Hanson is murdered, Hanson sets out to determine whether she was the victim of a serial killer, like the police believe, or of a high-level conspiracy, like the victim herself claimed before she died.

Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. Who is domesticating whom?

The comic book transfigured, this graphic novel tells the story of Spiegelman's parents Vladek and Anna, Jews reaching maturity in a Europe on the verge of Nazism, and their terrifying history and eventual survival in the concentration camps.

Kurson tells the true story of one man's heroic odyssey from blindness into sight.

Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing.

An intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society's ideals. The author takes the reader on an around-the-world tour as she discovers herself.

The bestselling author of The Plot Against America now turns his attention to one man's lifelong confrontation with mortality. Roth's hero is a man bewildered not only by his own decline but by the unimaginable deaths of his contemporaries and those he has loved.

Set in an alternate universe where literature is the primary form of entertainment and Shakespeare inspires cult-like followings, Thursday Next is a literary detective. She can jump into books and interact with the characters. Unfortunately, arch-villian Acheron Hades has this ability as well, and he is threatening the life of Charlotte Bronte's beloved character, Jane Eyre.

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 nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan are gathering in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother, Liam, drowned in the sea. His sister, Veronica, collects the body and keeps the dead man company, guarding the secret she shares with him — something that happened in their grandmother's house in the winter of 1968. As Enright traces the line of betrayal and redemption through three generations, she shows how memories warp and secrets fester.

The author tells the story of her dysfunctional, yet vibrant, family and the intense love that held them together.

Anna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier years. In a red one she records her political life, her disillusionment with communism. In a yellow one she writes a novel in which the heroine reviles part of her own experience. And in the blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna tries to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.

Roth's award-winning first book instantly established its author's reputation as a writer of explosive wit, merciless insight, and a fierce compassion for even the most self-deluding of his characters. Goodbye, Columbus is the story of Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin, he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills, who meet one summer break and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love.

When a mixture of deceit, good luck, and misfortune draws three strangers — an aging house-sitter, a struggling con man and a pregnant young woman — together at Walden Manor, each sees one final chance to start over.

Set in the New York of the 1930s, this entrancing, richly plotted novel brims with intriguing characters. Orphaned at 18, with few possessions, Rose Meadows finds steady employment with the Mitwisser clan and watches as the refugee family's fortunes rise and fall, against the vivid backdrop of a world in tumult.

Knecht chronicles how an obscure fish merchant in California "discovered" and renamed the Patagonian toothfish to Chilean Sea Bass, kicking off a worldwide craze for a fish no one had ever heard of — and everyone had to have.

A New Yorker staff writer, bestselling author and professor at Harvard Medical School unravels the mystery of how doctors figure out the best treatments — or fail to do so. This book describes the warning signs of flawed medical thinking and offers intelligent questions patients can ask.

A hilarious and satirical look at race relations that is almost too close for comfort, this pseudo-guidebook gives both renters and rentals "much-needed" advice and tips on technique. This text shocks and amuses, presenting a strikingly stark mirror of human relationships.

In this profoundly affecting memoir from the internationally renowned author of The Caged Virgin, Ali tells her life story, from her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia to her intellectual awakening in the Netherlands to her life under armed guard in the West.

The author of the acclaimed Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard takes readers to the northeastern Himalayas where a rising insurgency in Nepal challenges the old way of life — and opens up a grasping world of conflicting desires.

In another quiet but powerful novel from Goodman, a struggling cancer lab at Boston's Philpott Institute becomes the stage for its researchers' personalities and passions, and for the slippery definitions of freedom and responsibility in grant-driven American science.

In a landmark work of history, Shorto presents astonishing information on the founding of our nation and reveals in riveting detail the crucial role of the Dutch in making America what it is today.

Weaving history with observations of people, places, and art, Pamuk shows Istanbul's transformation from the seat of faded imperial glory to the capital of a modern nation at the dizzying crossroads of East and West.

Fowler's novel features her trademark sly wit, quirky characters and digressive storytelling. Five women and one enigmatic man meet on a monthly basis to discuss the novels of Jane Austen. As they debate each book, they reveal their own "private Austen(s)."

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.

Part memoir and part education (or lack thereof), The Know-It-All chronicles NPR contributor A.J. Jacobs's hilarious, enlightening, and seemingly impossible quest to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z.

A recently widowed American food writer finds solace and love — and the most inspiring food she's ever encountered — during a visit to China.

Humbert Humbert is a scholar who moves into a boarding house where Lolita and her mother live. He eventually marries the mother, but is obsessed with Lolita. Her mother dies and Humbert begins his downfall through his obsession with Lolita.

This novel follows Russian emigré Marina Buriakov, 82, who is preparing for her granddaughter's wedding near Seattle while fighting a losing battle against Alzheimer's. Struggling to remember whom Katie is marrying (and indeed that there is to be a marriage at all), Marina remembers her youth as an Hermitage Museum docent as the siege of Leningrad began; it is into these memories that she disappears.

Maisie Dobbs isn't just any young housemaid. Through her own natural intelligence and the patronage of her benevolent employers, she works her way into college at Cambridge. When World War I breaks out, Maisie goes to the front as a nurse. It is there that she learns that coincidences are meaningful and the truth elusive. After the war, Maisie sets up on her own as a private investigator. But her very first assignment, seemingly an ordinary infidelity case, soon reveals a much deeper, darker web of secrets, which will force Maisie to revisit the horrors of the Great War and the love she left behind.

Written during the darkest, most repressive period of Stalin's reign, this novel gives substance to the notion of artistic and religious freedom. Despite its devastating satire of Soviet life and its audacious portrayals of Christ and Satan, the manuscript had somehow eluded Russian censors, and the enthusiasm of its readers assured the novel immediate and enduring success.

What happens when a trained killer discovers that his true vocation is love? Having survived the killing fields of World War I, Fidelis Waldvogel returns home to his quiet German village and marries the pregnant widow of his best friend who was killed in action.

Those of us growing up in the 1930–1950 era will appreciate Lansing's experiences as related in My Montana. You needn't have grown up in rural Montana to appreciate them either — many western and mid-west farms and ranches shared the same lifestyle. No running water, no electricity except by generator; hand-cranked wall telephones and party lines; water wells that needed priming before pumping, country dances. And those WWII years of food/gasoline/rubber/shoe rationing; the theoretical 35 mph national speed limit; collecting magazines, papers, tinfoil, metal for the war effort; candy bar shortages; young men leaving for the armed forces, some never to return. Difficult days? Yes, but the challenges were met with ingenuity, cooperation, camaraderie and humor.

An award-winning correspondent on PBS's The News Hour with Jim Lehrer offers a fresh and surprisingly optimistic assessment of modern Africa, revealing that there is more to the continent than the bad news of disease, disaster and despair.

This cold-turkey confession by an award-winning journalist follows her progress — and inevitable relapses — over an entire year of not spending.

Tracking dinner from the soil to the plate, a journalist juggles appetite and conscience.

In the story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity; just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of the village of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.

Atwood depicts a near-future world that turns from the merely horrible to the horrific, from a fool's paradise to a bio-wasteland. Snowman (a man once known as Jimmy) sleeps in a tree and just might be the only human left on our devastated planet. He is not entirely alone, however, as he considers himself the shepherd of a group of experimental, human-like creatures called the Children of Crake. As he scavenges and tends to his insect bites, Snowman recalls in flashbacks how the world fell apart.

An early morning adventure out stealing horses leads to the tragic death of one boy and a resulting lifetime of guilt and isolation for his friend, in this moving tale about the painful loss of innocence and of traditional ways of life that are gone forever.

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 epic story of the building of a cathedral in 12th century England and the lives of the people entwined with it and each other is a sensuous, enduring narrative, and a gripping tale of faith, ambition, bloodshed and betrayal.

In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran, Iran, due to repressive policies, the author invited seven of her female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature. The women were forced to meet secretly because the books they read were officially banned by the government.

In the manner of Barbara Tuchman and Paul Johnson, a superior, popular account of how five plants — quinine, sugar, tea, cotton and the potato — have determined the course of history.

Piercy re-creates a turbulent period in American history witnessed through the lives of its most notorious figures and explores the changing attitudes toward women, minorities, religion, and sexuality in 19th century America.

Whether Kingsolver is contemplating the Grand Canyon, motherhood, genetic engineering or the future of a nation, these essays are grounded in the author's belief that our largest problems have grown from the earth's remotest corners as well as from our own backyards, and that answers may lie in both places.

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.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius as she chronicles the rise of the one-term congressman/prairie lawyer from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.

Set in the South of France in the decade after World War I, Tender Is the Night is the story of a brilliant and magnetic psychiatrist named Dick Diver; the bewitching, wealthy and dangerously unstable mental patient, Nicole, who becomes his wife; and the beautiful, harrowing 10-year pas de deux they dance along the border between sanity and madness.

Neuroscientist and professional musician Levitin presents a fascinating exploration of the relationship between music and the mind — and the role of melodies in shaping our lives.

Larson's compelling history juxtaposes scientific intrigue with a notorious murder in London at the turn of the 20th century. It alternates the story of Guglielmo Marconi's quest for the first wireless transatlantic communication with the tale of Hawley Crippen, a mild-mannered murderer caught as a result of the invention.

McPhee, in prose distinguished by its warm humor, keen insight, and rich sense of human character, looks at the people who drive trucks, captain ships, pilot towboats, drive coal trains, and carry lobsters through the air: people who work in freight transportation.

The wickedly entertaining, hunger-inducing, behind-the-scenes story of the revolution in American food that has made exotic ingredients, celebrity chefs, rarefied cooking tools, and destination restaurants familiar aspects of our everyday lives. The United States of Arugula is a rollicking, revealing stew of culinary innovation, food politics, and kitchen confidences chronicling how gourmet eating in America went from obscure to pervasive — and became the cultural success story of our era.

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.

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.

The saga of how a widow from Minneapolis and her brother — soon to become the new teacher in a tiny Montana community in 1909 — change lives in unexpected ways has all the charm of old-school storytelling, from Dickens to Laura Ingalls Wilder.

From the bestselling author of The Hot Zone comes an amazing account of scientific and spiritual passion for the tallest trees in the world, the startling biosystem of the canopy, and those who are committed to the preservation of this astonishing and largely unknown world.

In pre-war China, young Pei is sold to Auntie Yee, who runs a home for silk workers. Eventually, their lives are touched by the war with Japan, and the combined difficulties of monsoons, isolation, strike, war and death.

In this deeply moving and heartfelt memoir, Rowell shares her astonishing story of growing up in the foster care system, and pays tribute to her personal champions — the remarkable women who loved, nurtured, taught, and challenged the young girl to become the person she is today.

Heathcliff, an orphan, is raised by Mr. Earnshaw as one of his own children. Hindley despises him, but wild Cathy becomes his constant companion, and he falls violently in love with her. When she will not marry him, Heathcliff's terrible vengeance ruins them all — but still his and Cathy's love will not die.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay pens an homage to the stylish menace of 1940s noir, in a novel that imagines Alaska, not Israel, became the homeland for the Jews after World War II.