BOOK GROUP MEMBERS’
ALL-TIME FAVORITES
THE
SHACK
by William P. Young
Mackenzie
Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family
vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an
abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of
his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God,
inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he
arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest
nightmare. In a world where religion
seems to grow increasingly irrelevant The
Shack wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so
filled with unspeakable pain?"
PASSIONATE
SAGE by
Joseph Ellis 
Of
all the brilliant cast of characters who brought the United States into being,
none is more noteworthy or more controversial than John Adams. Ellis makes clear that Adams has much to teach
modern America, which has discovered limits to its power and is beginning to
doubt the myths of American exceptionalism. The
author's vivid sketch of the famous Adams-Jefferson correspondence shows his
subject's delightful personality, intellect, warmth, and capacity for
friendship, as well as his devotion to the Union and to the Federalist cause. Ellis brings a
fresh perspective in understanding the legacy of one of the most misunderstood
men of American history; a perspective that can help reform not only the
historian's view, but the public's perception as well.
Gallico is a
self-described "storyteller." Many of his stories are told in the
apparently artless style of a folk tale or legend. Like other
"storyteller" writers, the charm and power lie in something about the
cumulative effect of plainly told detail after plainly told detail. Gallico once told New
York Magazine “…I'm not even literary. I just like to tell stories and all
my books tell stories.... If I had lived 2,000 years ago I'd be going around to
caves, and I'd say, 'Can I come in? I'm hungry. I'd like some supper. In
exchange, I'll tell you a story. Once upon a time there were two apes.' And I'd
tell them a story about two cavemen."
Books
by Charles Dickens (especially OLIVER
TWIST and A
TALE OF TWO CITIES)
Dickens is famed for many things—his depiction of the
hardships of the working class, his intricate plots, his sense of humor. But he
is perhaps most famed for the characters he created. His novels were heralded
early in his career for their ability to capture the everyday man on paper and
thus create a memorable character to whom readers
could relate, and envision as a real person. Beginning with Pickwick Papers in 1836, Dickens wrote
numerous novels, each uniquely filled with believable personalities and vivid
physical descriptions. Dickens's friend and biographer, John Forster said that
Dickens gave "characters real existences, not by describing them but by
letting them describe themselves.”
Born
James Alfred White, he joined the practice
of two veterinarian brothers working in the Yorkshire Dales and at age 50 was
persuaded by his wife to write down his collection of anecdotes. His humorous,
fictionalized reminiscences were published under the name James Herriot in If
Only They Could Talk (1970) and It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet (1972),
which were issued in the U.S. as All Creatures
Great and Small (1972). The instant best-seller inaugurated a series of
highly popular books, which were adapted for two films and a long-running
television series. His writing has
everything: finely drawn and colorful characters, empathy for humans and
animals, a good story set in a gentler time, humor, respect for uneducated but
hard-working people and an appreciation of the land.
A
TREE
GROWS IN BROOKLYN by Betty Smith
Through
it is often categorized as a coming-of-age novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
is much more than that. Its richly-plotted narrative of three generations in a
poor but proud American family offers a detailed and unsentimental portrait of
urban life at the beginning of the century.
It's not so much a book with a plot, rather a portrait of a life and a
time. To enjoy this kind of novel, you must love the characters, and it is easy
to love the Nolans.
Francie is her father's child--romantic and
hungry for beauty. But she is her mother's child, too--deeply practical and in
constant need of truth. Like the Tree of
Heaven that grows out of cement or through cellar gratings, resourceful Francie struggles against all odds to survive and thrive.
LORD
OF THE RINGS (trilogy)
by J.R.R Tolkien
In
ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths,
and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring,
filling it with his power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring
was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it
remained lost. Then, after many ages, it fell by chance into the hands of the
hobbit Bilbo Baggins. Sauron's power spread far and
wide from the Dark Tower of Mordor. He gathered all
the Great Rings to him, but always searched for the One Ring that would
complete his dominion. On Bilbo's eleventy-first
birthday, he disappeared, bequeathing to his young cousin, Frodo, the Ruling
Ring and a perilous quest: to journey across Middle-earth, deep into the shadow
of the Dark Lord, and destroy the Ring by casting it into the Cracks of Doom.
The Lord of the Rings tells of the great quest undertaken by Frodo and the
Fellowship of the Ring. "A unique, wholly realized
other world, evoked from deep in the well of time, massively detailed,
absorbingly entertaining, profound in meaning." — New York Times Book
Review
Books
and stories by Edgar Allan Poe
Ever since Poe's
short stories first began to appear in the 1830s readers have been intrigued by
the nature of the man or the mind that produced them. Was he as demonic or demented as the protagonists of his horror tales,
and as analytical or psychic as the heroes of his detective and mystery
stories? Contrary to popular legend, Poe
was neither an alcoholic nor a drug addict, though he did struggle during much
of his adult life against a predisposition to drink during periods of stress
and despair. In his supernatural
fiction Poe usually dealt with paranoia rooted in personal psychology, physical
or mental enfeeblement, obsessions, the damnation of death, feverish fantasies,
and the cosmos as source of horror and inspiration.
For a writer whose novels appear to be exclusively comic southern
fiction, Rita Mae Brown has, in fact, produced a varied body of work. At the
most basic level, her novels celebrate a particular image of the southern
United States of America; they are funny, sassy, full of geographically specific
language and populated with hosts of astonishingly colorful characters. Rubyfruit Jungle is often classified as
a lesbian, feminist, or Southern novel, but Brown's text does not fit in these
three simple classifications. Brown is best known for this
1973 bestseller, although her contributions to grass roots women's activism are
equally important. Her relationship and breakup with tennis star Martina
Navratilova caused national publicity as well.
In 1995, Letts, then 56, published her first novel, Where the Heart Is, which brought her a movie deal. But that was
just a prelude. Chosen by Oprah Winfrey for her book club, Where the Heart Is
shot to the top of the New York Times paperback bestseller list. The exposure
also benefited Letts's
second novel, Honk and Holler Opening
Soon. Lett’s
appeal is true-to-life characters and stories of human growth. Her characters care for each other in a
special way and people can relate to their struggles. Says Letts of the characters in what she calls
her Okie stories: "They're ordinary folks trying
to get by with a little bit of dignity. They deal with serious issues while still
finding some joy in their lives."
Known as "The Queen of Suspense", Higgins Clark is a "master
plotter" who has the ability to slowly draw out the tension while making
the reader think everyone is guilty. Her novels feature strong, independent young
women who find themselves in the midst of a problem that they must solve with
their own courage and intelligence. The heroines come across as real people who
make sensible decisions, so it is easy for readers to relate to the situations
those characters find themselves in.
Many of the books deal with crimes involving children or with telepathy.
As of 2010, Higgins Clark has written
twenty-six suspense novels, which have sold over 80 million copies in the
United State. All of her
suspense novels have been best-sellers, and as of 2010 all are still in print,
including Where are the Children? which is in its 75th printing.
CATCH-22
by Joseph Heller
At the heart of Catch-22 resides the
incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a
hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save his skin from the horrible
chances of war. His efforts are perfectly understandable because as he
furiously scrambles, thousands of people he hasn't even met are trying to kill
him. His problem is Colonel Cathcart, who keeps
raising the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet
if Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself
from the perilous missions that he is committed to flying, he is trapped by the
Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, the hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule from
which the book takes its title: a man is considered insane if he willingly
continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes the necessary
formal request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of making the
request proves that he is sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. Catch-22 is a microcosm of the
twentieth-century world as it might look to someone dangerously sane — a
masterpiece of our time.
TO
KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
When To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960, it brought its young first-time author, Harper Lee, a startling amount of attention and notoriety. The novel replays three key years in the life of Scout Finch, the young daughter of an Alabama town's principled lawyer. The work was an instant sensation, becoming a best-seller and winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Scout's narrative relates how she and her elder brother Jem learn about fighting prejudice and upholding human dignity through the example of their father. Atticus Finch has taken on the legal defense of a black man who has been falsely charged with raping a white woman. A regional novel dealing with universal themes of tolerance, courage, compassion, and justice, To Kill a Mockingbird combined popular appeal with literary excellence to ensure itself an enduring place in modern American literature.
SOPHIE’S
CHOICE by William Styron
William Styron's novel Sophie's Choice
explores the way people moved on with life after the Great Depression, and
World War II. The book gives an inside look into the lives of two very
different individuals, Sophie, a Polish woman and an Auschwitz survivor, as
well as Nathan, a Jewish man who is a paranoid schizophrenic and growing more
mentally unstable. The story is told through the eyes of a young writer named Stingo. Sophie's Choice is a bold, substantial novel
with serious themes that also tells a riveting story. Styron meditates
frequently on the historical dimension of the Holocaust and how such a thing
could happen, letting the matter resonate with his own knowledge of oppression
that occurred in the American South. The characters are powerfully and
engagingly drawn, often with wit and humor, and the novel speaks with great
humanity.
THE
HISTORIAN by Elizabeth Kostova
The
first main storyline follows Helen and Paul in the early 1950s as they try to
find Dracula’s grave and the secrets it might hold to the disappearance of
Paul’s college adviser and mentor, a man who had also pursued the Dracula
legend in the 1930s. The current storyline is that of Paul’s daughter in 1972,
who ends up on her own adventure after her father abruptly departs on a
business trip that she is convinced is actually a resumption of his Dracula
research. The Historian is a mystery, a thriller, and a romance. It is the story of men of God who protect a
devil and Turks and Romanians and Bulgarians and a lot of monasteries. There
are libraries and archives and ancient clues, even an ancient society of
warriors. There are many, many dragons. In short, The Historian is all
things that make a book compulsively readable.
GONE
WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
Published
in 1936, Gone with the Wind became an immediate best-seller, bringing
first-time novelist Margaret Mitchell an overwhelming amount of critical and
popular attention. Awarded the 1937 Pulitzer Prize, the novel was adapted as a
film in 1939—an achievement that won ten Academy Awards. A historical romance
set in northern Georgia during the drama of the Civil War and Reconstruction
years, Gone with the Wind traces the life of Scarlett O'Hara and her
relationships with Rhett Butler, and Ashley and Melanie Wilkes. The novel
addresses such themes as survival, romantic love, and the societal structuring
of gender and class. Mitchell’s
powerful, enduring story has made Gone with the Wind one of the most
popular novels in American history.