suggested reading: fiction

 

 

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

 

The firstborn child of the Ganguli family, freshly arrived from Calcutta, receives the name Gogol. While the Gangulis are trying hard to assimilate into American culture, Gogol rejects all of the old ways and traditions of the family and becomes thoroughly Americanized. Torn between his parents' ways and those of modern U.S. culture, Gogol finds himself on a path of divided traditions and heartbreaking love affairs that eventually lead him back to the old ways of his parents.

 

 

Hour Game by David Baldacci

Recommended by Donnell Wyche

 

A savage serial killer is on the loose in rural Virginia. While investigating another crime, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are pulled into the serial killer hunt. As they search for the countryside slayer, they begin to suspect that the two cases may be connected. Worse yet, they realize that a second killer has joined the fray, imitating the murders of the first ...

 

 

 

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Recommended by Ken Wilson

 

As his life winds down, Rev. John Ames relates the story of his own father and grandfather, both preachers but one a pacifist and one a gun-toting abolitionist. Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.

 

 

 

 

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Recommended by Emily Swan

 

Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable, beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them.

 

 

 

 

Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy by Jostein Gaarder

Recommended by Emily Swan

 

The history of Western philosophy in a nutshell, Sophie’s World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. If you want to explore philosophy without reading dozens of books, this is a masterful introduction in the form of a novel.

 

 

 

Waiting by Ha Jin

Recomended by Emily Swan

 

Winner of the 1999 National Book Award, Waiting is the poignant story of Lin Kong, a man living in two worlds, struggling with the conflicting claims of two utterly different women as he moves through the political minefields of a society designed to regulate his every move and stifle the promptings of his innermost heart.

 

 

 

Beggars In Spain by Nancy Kress

Recommended by Donnell Wyche

 

Leisha Camden, the product of genetic manipulation, is a genius and a misfit--she never sleeps, giving her a time advantage over the rest of the world. Resented by the world, the outcasts draw together for self-protection. Then the next, even stranger, generation of mutations comes along.

 

 

 

 

Paranoia by Joseph Finder

Recommended by Donnell Wyche

 

A fast-paced ride through the inner workings of corporate espionage, Joseph Finder's finely plotted novel of secret agendas and corruption unfolds in an expert fashion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Recommended by Emily Swan

 

This novel is both a crime story and a philosophical debate. Landowner Fyodor Karamazov is murdered; his sons - the atheist intellectual Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly Alyosha - are all at some level involved. Bound up with this story is Dostoevsky's exploration of ideas about the existence of God, the question of human freedom, the collective nature of guilt, and the consequences of rationalism.

 

 

A Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz

Recommended by Emily Swan

 

This first volume in the 1988 Nobel Prize winner's Cairo Trilogy describes the disintegrating family life of a tyrannical, prosperous merchant, his timid wife, and their rebellious children in post-WW I Egypt.

 

 

 

 

 

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

Recommended by Emily Swan

 

This book is a series of stories about the Vietnam experience, based on the author's recollections. It's both a novel and a collection of short stories; it's both fact and fiction. O'Brien begins by sharing the talismans and treasures his select small band of young soldiers carry into battle. The tales, ranging from a paragraph to 20 or so pages, reveal one truth after another. O'Brien is one of the greatest living American novelists.

 

 

Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi

 

Trudi Montag, the town librarian, feels dissociated from society because she is a dwarf. In her role as librarian, Trudi meticulously archives secrets, stories, and history, all of which become her source of power when the townspeople allow Jews to be mistreated during World War II.