2010 Book Club Picks Survey

*** PLEASE VOTE BY JANUARY 25TH ***

Time to pick our next set of book club reads.

Please check ALL titles that you would be interested in reading.

The titles with the most votes will be our next selections.

-Malia

*** PLEASE VOTE BY JANUARY 25TH ***

Member Suggested Titles

Member Suggested Titles 1. HIDDEN MESSAGES IN WATER BY MASARU EMOTO - An eye-opening theory showing how water is deeply connected to people's individual and collective consciousness. Drawing from his own research, scientific researcher, healer, and popular lecturer Dr. Masaru Emoto describes the ability of water to absorb, hold, and even retransmit human feelings and emotions. Using high-speed photography, he found that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed toward it.

2. THE DANCE OF ANGER: A WOMAN'S GUIDE TO CHANGING THE PATTERNS OF INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS BY HARRIET LEVNER - In The Dance of Anger, Lerner describes anger patterns of women and how these patterns impact their intimate relationships. She describes anger as a signal to women that something is wrong, a sign of ignoring emotional needs. Maybe they are giving too much of the self to others or assuming too much burden from others. Tuning into anger may form a path to self-awareness and help to open new opportunities while at the same time setting limits or boundaries on the impositions of others.

3. STILL LIFE BY LOUISE PENNY - Winner of the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony, and Dilys awards. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.

4. BROOKLYN, A NOVEL BY COLM TOIBIN - Leaving her home in post-World War II Ireland to work as a bookkeeper in Brooklyn, Eilis Lacey discovers a new romance in America with a charming blond Italian man before devastating news threatens her happiness.

5. THE BEEKEEPER'S APPRENTICE BY LAURIE R. KING - When Mary Russell meets famous detective Sherlock Holmes, she discovers that he is also a beekeeper. Soon she finds herself on the trail of kidnappers and discovers a plot to kill both Holmes and herself. Full of brilliant deductions, disguises, and dangers, this first book of the Mary Russell--Sherlock Holmes mysteries is "wonderfully original and entertaining . . . absorbing from beginning to end"

More member suggestions

More member suggestions 6. SARAH’S KEY BY TATIANA ROSNAY - On the sixtieth anniversary of the 1942 roundup of Jews by the French police in the Vel d'Hiv section of Paris, American journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article on this dark episode during World War II and embarks on investigation that leads her to long-hidden family secrets and to the ordeal of Sarah, a young girl caught up in the raid. Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.

7. ONE THOUSAND WHITE WOMEN: THE JOURNALS OF MAY DODD BY JIM FERGUS - One Thousand White Women is the story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial "Brides for Indians" program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man's world. Toward that end May and her friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetime. Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time.

8. THE HUNGER GAMES BY SUZANNE COLLINS - In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss's skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place..

9. LOOK AT THE BIRDIE : UNPUBLISHED SHORT FICTION BY KURT VONNEGUT - A volume of fourteen early and previously unpublished short works offers insight into the social satirist's developing literary style and includes pieces that explore such themes as innocence, ironic twists of fate, and morality.

10. LOST CITY OF Z BY DAVID GRANN - In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called “The Lost City of Z.” In this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett’s quest for “Z” and his own journey into the deadly jungle, as he unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century.

The Classics

The Classics 11. THE MOONSTONE BY WILKIE COLLINS - Called "the first and greatest of English detective novels" by T.S.Eliot, The Moonstone is a masterpiece of suspense. A fabulous yellow diamond becomes the dangerous inheritance of Rachel Verinder. Outside her Yorkshire country house watch the Hindu priests who have waited for many years to reclaim their ancient talisman, looted from the holy city of Somnauth. When the Moonstone disappears, the case looks simple, but in mid-Victorian England no one is what they seem and nothing can be taken for granted.

Witnesses, suspects, and detectives each narrate the story in turn. The bemused butler, the love-stricken housemaid, the enigmatic detective Sergeant Cuff, the drug-addicted scientist--each speculate on the mystery as Collins weaves their narratives together.

12. POSSESSION : A ROMANCE BY A. S. BYATT - Roland Mitchell, underpaid English research assistant, is on a search for nineteenth-century poet Randolph Henry Ash's copy of Vico, in the hopes that Ash will have written something enlightening in the margins. The book is brought up from the vaults of the British Museum, and in it Mitchell finds far more than Randolph Ash's thoughts on Vico. Hidden between the pages, unknown to anyone, are two rough drafts of a love letter to an unknown woman, written by Randolph Ash - a man scholars believe was eternally, faithfully married. From here on, the plot thickens, as they say, to include romance, poetry, parodies of feminist and Freudian criticism, trips to old houses and foreign countries, thefts, deceptions, and true love.

13. JUNGLE BY UPTON SINCLAIR - The story follows Jurgis and his wife Ona, Lithuanian immigrants, are they search and struggle to find the American dream. 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.

14. REBECCA BY DAPHNE DUMAURIER - “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. . .” With these words the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone manse on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew. For in every corner of every room in the immense, foreboding estate were phantoms of a time dead but not forgotten -- a past devotedly preserved by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers: a suite immaculate and untouched, clothing laid out and ready to be worn, but not by any of the great house's current occupants. And with an eerie presentiment of evil tightening her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter walked in the shadow of her mysterious predecessor, determined to uncover the darkest secrets and shattering truths about Maxim's first wife -- the late and hauntingly beautiful Rebecca.

15. GREAT EXPECTATIONS BY CHARLES DICKENS - A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor - these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip's life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman. Dickens' haunting late novel depicts Pip's education and development through adversity as he discovers the true nature of his 'great expectations'.

16. CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS BY RUDYARD KIPLING - The only one of Kipling's novels to be cast in an American setting, Captains Courageous endures as one of literature's most cherished and memorable sea adventures. Harvey Cheyne, spoiled millionaire's son, tumbles overboard from a luxury liner--only to be rescued by the crew of a Gloucester schooner. Thus begins the boy's second voyage into the rugged rites and ways of sailors.