We've got books through October selected. Here are proposed reads for the following months. Leave your votes as a comment. You can vote for as many as you'd like!
Business
Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner
(Authors argue that economics is, at root, the study of incentives; use entertaining vignettes to illustrate)
Fantasy
Princess Bride by William Goldman
(The most beautiful woman in the world and her love are torn apart by pirates, death, fireswamps, giants, etc.)
Goose Girl by Shannon Hale (juvenile/young adult)
(A princess who can speak to animals faces a mutiny by those escorting her to the kingdom of her betrothed.)
Eragon by Christopher Paolini
(Eragon discovers a dragon hatchling and is thrust into a perilous new world of destiny, magic, and power.)
Memoir
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
(A Dutch girl and her family hide Jewish neighbors in their home during Nazi rule.)
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
(Women in Iran gather to read banned books.)
Listening is an Act of Love by Dave Isay
(Loved ones share simple life stories and experiences.)
A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel
(Mooreland, Indiana. Population: 300. One of the 300 shares her experience in this memoir.)
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs
(The only memoir from female slave)
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
(Boy escaped African armies of genocide)
The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams
(Modern memoir of a woman who escaped polygamist colony)
Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
(Meditation on life’s stages and lessons, written by wife of Charles Lindbergh)
Fiction
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
(Da Vinci code author; takes place in Washington, DC)
Blood on the River: James Town 1607 by Elisa Carbone (juvenile/young adult)
(Historical fiction regarding Jamestown, VA)
These Is My Words by Nancy E. Turner
(Pioneer woman crosses the plains and faces the dangers of wild America)
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
(Young man kills brothers in self defense—or is it?—and escapes prison; his family tries to track him down.)
Possession by AS Byatt
(Traces a pair of young academics as they uncover a clandestine love affair between two long-dead Victorian poets)
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
(In South America a party is taken over by terrorists.)
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
("Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano BuendÃa was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.")
(*I haven't read this but someone told me it's a little racy. Just so ya know.)
Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons
(The Birch women possess powerful charms to ward off loneliness, despair, and the human misery that all too often beats a path to their door.)
Standing in the Rainbow by Fannie Flagg
(Flagg gives us a story of richly human characters, the saving graces of the once-maligned middle classes and small-town life, and the daily contest between laughter and tears.)
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
(The tale of two women and the cafe they ran in Whistle Stop, Alabama, offering barbecue, coffee, love, laughter -- and an occasional murder.)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
(A journalist and a punk investigate the disappearance of a member of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families.)
The Ladies Auxiliary by Tova Mirvis
(The story of the world of the Orthodox community in Memphis, Tennessee and how it unravels when a newly widowed convert and her five-year-old daughter move in.)
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
(A girl is taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters in South Carolina.)
Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner
(A harrowing tale of a family trying to survive during the lean years of the early 20th century.)
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
(Traces the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin.)
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
(Confined to a wheelchair, a retired historian sets out to write his grandparents' remarkable story. Pulitzer Prize winner.)
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
(Narrated by Death; follows the life of a young girl living in Nazi Germany)
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
(A boy tells the story of his survival and coming of age against the background of South Africa during and just after World War II.)
Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris
(A woman returns to a small village on the banks of the Loire, where the locals blame her mother for a terrible tragedy during the German occupation. From the author of Chocolat.)
Precious Bane by Mary Webb
(Prue Sarn is an original and appealing heroine of English literature as she triumphs over a physical handicap to win her heart's desire.)
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (African)
(Tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria.)
Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
Roxana, a light-skinned mixed-race slave, switches her baby with her white owner's baby.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
(A beautiful friendship begins when Samuel meets his cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague.)
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
(Could you survive on your own, in the wild, with everyone out to make sure you don't live to see the morning?)
Home of the Brave by Katherine Alice Applegate
(Kek comes from Africa where he lived with his mother, father, and brother. But only he and his mother have survived. Now she’s missing, and Kek has been sent to a new home in America.)
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
(Cassandra takes her courage in both hands to follow in the footsteps of her deceased grandmother on a quest to find out the truth about their history, their family and their past.)
Religious History
Women of the Covenant: The Story of Relief Society by Janeth Russell Cannon
Poetry
Love that Dog by Sharon Creech (juvenile/young adult)
(A boy begrudgingly writes and learns about poetry in school.)
