1. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein (fiction, 336 pages)
Enzo knows he is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul, he has educated
himself by watching television extensively, and by listening very closely to the words of his master,
Denny Swift, an up-and-coming race car driver. On the eve of his death, Enzo takes stock of his life,
recalling all that he and his family have been through: the sacrifices Denny has made to succeed
professionally; the unexpected loss of Eve, Denny's wife; the three-year battle over their daughter, Zoë,
whose maternal grandparents pulled every string to gain custody. In the end, despite what he sees as
his own limitations, Enzo comes through heroically to preserve the Swift family. A heart-wrenching but
deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope.
Nominated by Pat Booth

2. Big Short by Michael Lewis (non-fiction, ?? pages)
Michael Lewis is supposed to be funny. He is the author of The Blind Side, the book upon which the
movie is based. Big Short is about 4 people who made money during the debacle by selling short (i.e.
selling stock or something while not owning it and contracting to buy it back later, hoping of course for a
lower price). If the purchase price is not lower than the selling price, you lose.
The #1 New York Times bestseller: a brilliant account, character-rich and darkly humorous—of
how the U.S. economy was driven over the cliff. When the crash of the U. S. stock market became
public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news. The real crash, the silent crash, had taken
place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn’t shine, and the SEC
doesn’t dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent
impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can’t pay
their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope
and fear; in any case, they weren’t talking.
The crucial question is this: Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real
estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based
on piles of doubtful mortgages? Michael Lewis turns the inquiry on its head to create a fresh, characterdriven
narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 best-selling Liar’s
Poker. Who got it right? he asks. Who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become,
and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception? And what qualities of character made
those few persist when their peers and colleagues dismissed them as Chicken Littles? Out of this
handful of unlikely—really unlikely—heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of
his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times.
Nominated by Diane Brauch, Marge Mueller and Yoko Suzuki.

3. Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follett (fiction, 533 pages)
In 1866, tragedy strikes at the exclusive Windfield School. A young student drowns in a mysterious
accident involving a small circle of boys. The drowning and its aftermath initiates a spiraling circle of
treachery that will span three decades and entwine many lives... From the exclusive men's club and
brothels that cater to every dark desire of London's upper classes to the dazzling ballrooms and
mahogany-paneled suites of the manipulators of the world's wealth, Ken Follett conjures up a stunning
array of contrasts. This breathtaking novel portrays a family splintered by lust, bound by a shared
legacy... men and women swept toward a perilous climax where greed, fed by the shocking truth of a
boy's death, must be stopped, or not just one man's dreams, but those of a nation, will die...
This book is a real page turner and very difficult to put down.
Nominated by Myrna Diaz

4. Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende (fiction, 399 pages)
Oprah Book Club® Selection, February 2000: Until Isabel Allende, a Bay area author, burst onto the
scene with her 1985 debut, The House of the Spirits, Latin American fiction was, for the most part, a
boys' club comprising such heavy hitters as Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, and Mario
Vargas Llosa. But the Chilean Allende shouldered her way in with her magical realist multi-generational
tale of the Trueba family, followed it up with four more novels and a spate of nonfiction, and has
remained in a place of honor ever since. Her sixth work of fiction, Daughter of Fortune, shares some
characteristics with her earlier works: the canvas is wide, the characters are multi-generational and
multi-ethnic, and the protagonist is an unconventional woman who overcomes enormous obstacles to
make her way in the world. Yet one cannot accuse Allende of telling the same story twice; set in the
mid-1800s, this novel follows the fortunes of Eliza Sommers, Chilean by birth but adopted by a British
spinster, Rose Sommers, and her bachelor brother, Jeremy, after she is abandoned on their doorstep.
Nominated by Heidi Sloss

5. Eden’s Outcasts by John Matteson (non-fiction, 512 pages)
Publishers Weekly: They were both born on November 29 (he in 1799 and she in 1832), but willful,
passionate Louisa May Alcott couldn't have been more different from her serene, unworldly father,
Bronson, whom fellow transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau revered for his wide-ranging
philosophical pursuits and occasionally ridiculed for his lack of common sense. Bronson's failed
educational and utopian ventures placed a great burden on his wife, Abba, while elder daughters Louisa
and Anna worked as teachers and paid companions to support the family. Yet Louisa honored her
father's steadfast principles, avers Matteson, a professor of English at John Jay College, who views
both father and daughter with a sympathy that doesn't quite conceal the book's slightly specious
premise. Bronson was far closer to Anna and younger sister Lizzie; Louisa's fiery nature sometimes
dismayed him. She only gained his full approval when mistreatment with a mercury-based medicine
during the Civil War made her a near-invalid for the rest of her life. This is really a biography of the
whole Alcott family, though it narrows to a dual portrait after the wild success of Little Women in 1868
gave Louisa the independence she longed for and Bronson enjoyed more modest acclaim for his book.
Nominated by Marijke Vallaeys

6. Game Change by John Heileman and Mark Helperin (non-fiction, 437 pages)
This bookis about the presidential campaign of 2008, mostly about Obama, Clinton and some about
John Edwards. Very readable as it was a humdinger of a campaign.
Nominated by Marge Mueller.
.
7. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson (fiction, 608 pages)
An epic tale of serial murder and corporate trickery spanning several continents, the novel takes in
complicated international financial fraud and the buried evil past of a wealthy Swedish industrial family.
Through its main character, it also references classic forbears of the crime thriller genre while it
stylistically follows and mixes aspects of the sub-genres. There are mentions of Astrid Lindgren, Enid
Blyton, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers; as well as Sue Grafton, Val McDermid, Elizabeth
George, Sara Paretsky, and several other key figures in the history of the detective novel.
Nominated by Pat Booth, Marge Mueller and Sherry Barba

8. The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeanette Walls (fiction, ?? pages)
Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat" and there's perhaps no more apt nickname
for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass
Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her
frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls's childrearing style
laissez faire would be putting it mildly. As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia,
uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely
to their own devices. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own
mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that
eventually landed them on the streets. Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in
this family, from the embarrassing (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color
her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle
pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being pimped by
her father at a bar). Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the
victim. In fact, Walls' removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the
circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on
the contrary, Walls respects her parents' knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love
for them--despite their overwhelming self-absorption--resonates from cover to cover.
Nominated by Marianne Dahl, Beth Watt and Sherry Barba

9. The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oats (fiction, 582 pages)
At the beginning of Oates's 36th novel, Rebecca Schwart is mistaken by a seemingly harmless man for
another woman, Hazel Jones, on a footpath in 1959 Chatauqua Falls, N.Y. Five hundred pages later,
Rebecca will find out that the man who accosted her is a serial killer, and Oates will have exercised, in a
manner very difficult to forget, two of her recurring themes: the provisionality of identity and the awful
suddenness of male violence. There's plenty of backstory, told in retrospect. Rebecca's parents escape
from the Nazis with their two sons in 1936; Rebecca is born in the boat crossing over. When Rebecca is
13, her father, Jacob, a sexton in Milburn, N.Y., kills her mother, Anna, and nearly kills Rebecca, before
blowing his own head off. At the time of the footpath crossing, Rebecca is just weeks away from being
beaten, almost to death, by her husband, Niles Tignor (a shady traveling beer salesman). She and son
Niley flee; she takes the name of the woman for whom she has been recently mistaken and becomes
Hazel Jones. Niley, a nine-year-old with a musical gift, becomes Zacharias, "a name from the bible,"
Rebecca tells people. Rebecca's Hazel navigates American norms as a waitress, salesperson and
finally common-law wife of the heir of the Gallagher media fortune, a man in whom she never confides
her past. Oates is our finest novelistic tracker, following the traces of some character's flight from or
toward some ultimate violence with forensic precision. There are allusions here to the mythic scouts of
James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, who explored the same New York territory when it
was primeval woods. Many of the passages are a lot like a blown-up photo of a bruise—ugly without
seeming to have a point. Yet the traumatic pattern of the hunter and the hunted, unfolded in
Rebecca/Hazel's lifelong escape, never cripples Hazel: she is liberated, made crafty, deepened by her
ultimately successful flight. Like Theodore Dreiser, Oates wears out objections with her characters,
drawn in an explosive vernacular. Everything in this book depends on Oates' ability to bring a woman
before the reader who is deeply veiled—whose real name is unknown even to herself—and she does it
with epic panache. (June).
Nominated by Heidi Sloss.

10, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and
Annie Barrows (fiction, 290 pages)
Publishers Weekly: The letters comprising this small charming novel begin in 1946, when single, 30-
something author Juliet Ashton (nom de plume Izzy Bickerstaff) writes to her publisher to say she is
tired of covering the sunny side of war and its aftermath. When Guernsey farmer Dawsey Adams finds
Juliet's name in a used book and invites articulate—and not-so-articulate—neighbors to write Juliet with
their stories, the book's epistolary circle widens, putting Juliet back in the path of war stories. The
occasionally contrived letters jump from incident to incident—including the formation of the Guernsey
Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society while Guernsey was under German occupation—and person to
person in a manner that feels disjointed. But Juliet's quips are so clever, the Guernsey inhabitants so
enchanting and the small acts of heroism so vivid and moving that one forgives the authors (Shaffer
died earlier this year) for not being able to settle on a single person or plot. Juliet finds in the letters not
just inspiration for her next work, but also for her life—as will readers.
Nominated by Sherry Barba and Marijke Vallaeys

11. Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff & Sheryl WuDunn (non-fiction., 253 pages)
This is a story of the oppression of women in the present day and how to turn oppression into
opportunity. Lots of it is pretty sad that involves sex trafficking, child prostitution etc. but there are many
hopeful signs. Everyone is reading this book so you will probably get a lot of recommendations for it.
Nominated by Marge Mueller

12. The Help by Kathryn Stockett (fiction, 444 pages)
Four peerless actors render an array of sharply defined black and white characters in the nascent years
of the civil rights movement. They each handle a variety of Southern accents with aplomb and draw out
the daily humiliation and pain the maids are subject to, as well as their abiding affection for their white
charges. The actors handle the narration and dialogue so well that no character is ever stereotyped, the
humor is always delightful, and the listener is led through the multilayered stories of maids and
mistresses. The novel is a superb intertwining of personal and political history in Jackson, Miss., in the
early 1960s, but this reading gives it a deeper and fuller power.
“The Help" tells the story of three women during the formative years of the civil rights movement in
Mississippi, where it was dangerous to push the boundaries of segregation for both blacks and whites
— though for very different reasons.
So when black maids Aibileen and Minny begin to work with a white woman named Skeeter on a book
about their experiences as domestic help, they fear retribution ranging from firings to beatings.
In a sense, it's a story of the movement behind the civil rights movement. But it is much more. At turns
hilarious and heart-wrenching, the story feels like a pitch-perfect rendering of a time when black people
weren't even second-class citizens in a state where anti-integration forces fought back with both
restrictive laws and violence.
Nominated by Nomi Trapnell, Heidi Sloss and Sherry Barba

13. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (fiction, 256 pages)
This is a book of collected short stories, published in Nov 2009.
Eight short stories on modern Pakistan, with its extreme opulence and harrowing misery. By setting one
grand land lord family at the back or sometimes upfront, the book successfully sets the stage to present
a three-dimensional Pakistani society. A son of Pakistani father and American mother, the author is US
educated, but spent his childhood and later worked in Pakistan. This acclaimed first book earned
multiple prizes. It was sited as one of 2009 notable books by UK and US journals.
Nominated by Yoko Suzuki

14. The Little Bee by Chris Cleave (fiction, 304 pages)
NPR: Little Bee is a Nigerian girl who has escaped her home country only to find herself interned in a
British immigration center. She's searching for a man she once met on the African coast, and she thinks
he will help her, only we already know that won't be possible.
Quickly, the story jumps to the man's widow Sarah, a smart but somewhat unlikeable (correction: she's
really unlikeable) woman caring for her son Charlie, a boy taken to running around in a Batman suit.
Little Bee is another book with a secret, which I won't reveal here, but Cleave's book contains much I
can talk about. It's a story about rebuilding family, about the gray morality of life and about tough
decisions. It's a wise book, but one that doesn't take itself too seriously. And it's a book that reads
differently to different people, with an ending that has led to seriously different interpretations.
Nominated by Marijke Vallaeys.

15. Mao’s Last Dancer by Li Cunxin (fiction, 444 pages)
In 1961, three years of Mao's Great Leap Forward--along with three years of poor harvests--had left
rural China suffering terribly from disease and deprivation. Li Cunxin, his parents' sixth son, lived in a
small house with twenty of his relatives and, along with the rest of his family, subsisted for years on the
verge of starvation. But when he was eleven years old, Madame Mao decided to revive the Peking
Dance Academy, and sent her men into the countryside searching for children to attend.
Chosen on the basis of his physique alone, Li Cunxin was taken from his family and sent to the city for
rigorous training. What follows is the story of how a small, terrified, lonely boy became one of the
greatest ballet dancers in the world. One part Falling Leaves, one part Billy Eliot, Mao's Last Danceris
an unforgettable memoir of hope and courage.
Nominated by Karen Bonke

16. Mists of Avalon by Marian Zimmer Bradley (fiction, 876 pages)
Even readers who don't normally enjoy Arthurian legends will love this version, a retelling from the point
of view of the women behind the throne. Morgaine (more commonly known as Morgan Le Fay) and
Gwenhwyfar (a Welsh spelling of Guinevere) struggle for power, using Arthur as a way to score points
and promote their respective worldviews. The Mists of Avalon's Camelot politics and intrigue take place
at a time when Christianity is taking over the island-nation of Britain; Christianity vs. Faery, and God vs.
Goddess are dominant themes.
Nominated by Heidi Sloss.

17. The New Earth: Create a Better Life by Ekhart Tolle (non-fiction, 336 pages)
It is a life transforming book. It is mainly about the importance of being aware and present in the
moment, eliminating the power our ego has over us and our relationships, and becoming our best
selves. I read it and bought copies for my family. It resonated on a very deep level.
Nominated by Myrna Diaz.

18. Not a Genuine Black Man by Brian Copeland (non-fiction, 245 pages)
In the summer of 1972, when Brian Copeland was eight, his family moved from Oakland to San
Leandro, California. At the time, San Leandro was 99.99% white and widely considered one of the most
racist enclaves in the nation. This reputation was confirmed immediately: Brian got his first look at the
inside of a cop car after walking to the park with a baseball bat in hand. Days later, Brian was turned
away by several barbers who said we don t cut that kind of hair. And that Christmas, while shopping at a
local department store, Brian was accused of stealing and forced to empty his pockets in front of store
security.
It was a time that Brian spent his adult years trying to forget, until one day an anonymous letter arrived
that forced him to reevaluate his childhood: As an African American, I am disgusted every time I hear
your voice because YOU are not a genuine black man!
A poignant and disarming memoir about growing up black in an all-white suburb, Not a Genuine Black
Man is also a powerful contemplation on the meaning of race, and a thoughtful examination of how our
surroundings make us who we are.
Nominated by Heidi Sloss

19. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (fiction, 270 pages)
Thirteen linked tales from Strout (Abide with Me, etc.) present a heart-wrenching, penetrating portrait of
ordinary coastal Mainers living lives of quiet grief intermingled with flashes of human connection. The
opening Pharmacy focuses on terse, dry junior high-school teacher Olive Kitteridge and her gregarious
pharmacist husband, Henry, both of whom have survived the loss of a psychologically damaged parent,
and both of whom suffer painful attractions to co-workers. Their son, Christopher, takes center stage in
A Little Burst, which describes his wedding in humorous, somewhat disturbing detail, and in Security,
where Olive, in her 70s, visits Christopher and his family in New York. Strout's fiction showcases her
ability to reveal through familiar details—the mother-of-the-groom's wedding dress, a grandmother's
disapproving observations of how her grandchildren are raised—the seeds of tragedy. Themes of
suicide, depression, bad communication, aging and love, run through these stories, none more vivid or
touching than Incoming Tide, where Olive chats with former student Kevin Coulson as they watch
waitress Patty Howe by the seashore, all three struggling with their own misgivings about life. Like this
story, the collection is easy to read and impossible to forget. Its literary craft and emotional power will
surprise readers unfamiliar with Strout.
This story, written by Elizabeth Strout, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, takes place in
modern times in the small town of Crosby, Maine. It's 13 chapters which don't necessarily tell a
longitudinal story but rather are connected by the characters. Olive Kitteridge is the primary character.
She is a ruthless but honest person. There is wry humor in her observations and insights of every day
life in this small town. This collection of stories is one that I think would appeal to our group.
Nominated by Heidi Sloss & Gail Moberg

20. The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland (fiction, 288 pages)
Susan Vreeland is also the author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue. The Passion of Artemisia, another New York
Times bestseller, is about the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the few female 17th century painters
to achieve fame during her life (1593-1653). At age eighteen, Artemisia Gentileschi finds herself
humiliated in papal court for publicly accusing the man who raped her - Agostino Tassi, her painting
teacher. When even her father does not stand up for her, she knows she cannot stay in Rome and begs
to have a marriage arranged for her. Her new husband, an artist named Pietro Stiatessi, takes her to his
native Florence, where her talent for painting blossoms. She becomes the first woman elected to the
Accademia dell'Arte. But marriage clashes with Artemisia's newfound fame as a painter, and she begins
a lifelong search to reconcile painting and motherhood, passion and genius. Set against the glorious
backdrops of Rome, Florence, and Genoa, people with historical characters such as Cosimo de'Medici
and Galileo and filled with details of the life of a Renaissance painter, The Passion of Artemisia is the
story of Gentileschi's struggle to find love, forgiveness, and wholeness through her art. At once a
dramatic tale of love and a moving father-daughter story; it is the portrait of an astonishing woman that
will captivate lovers of Gentileschi's paintings and anyone interested in the life of a woman who ignored
the conventions of her day and dared to follow her heart.
Nominated by Myrna Marshall.

21. The Politician by Andrew Young (non-fiction, ?? pages)
This is the non-fiction story of John Edwards. It is a very unflattering portrait of Edwards. However, the
author has lied so much for Edwards while he was working for him (including saying he was the father of
Edward's love child) that one does not know where truth begins. It is a fun readable very gossipy book.
Nominated by Marge Mueller
22. Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam (biography – space science, 368 pages)
Amazon.com Review: Inspired by Werner von Braun and his Cape Canaveral team, 14-year-old Homer
Hickam decided in 1957 to build his own rockets. They were his ticket out of Coalwood, West Virginia, a
mining town that everyone knew was dying--everyone except Sonny's father, the mine superintendent
and a company man so dedicated that his family rarely saw him. Hickam's smart, iconoclastic mother
wanted her son to become something more than a miner and, along with a female science teacher,
encouraged the efforts of his grandiosely named Big Creek Missile Agency. He grew up to be a NASA
engineer and his memoir of the bumpy ride toward a gold medal at the National Science Fair in 1960--
an unprecedented honor for a miner's kid--is rich in humor as well as warm sentiment. Hickam vividly
evokes a world of close communal ties in which a storekeeper who sold him saltpeter warned, "Listen,
rocket boy. This stuff can blow you to kingdom come." Hickam is candid about the deep disagreements
and tensions in his parents' marriage, even as he movingly depicts their quiet loyalty to each other. The
portrait of his ultimately successful campaign to win his aloof father's respect is equally affecting. --
Wendy Smith
Nominated by Beth Watt

23. Run by Ann Patchett (fiction, 295 pages)
Novelists can no longer take it as an insult when people say their novels are like good television,
because the finest American television is better written than most novels. Ann Patchett's new one has
the texture, the pace and the fairy tale elegance of a half dozen novels she might have read and loved
growing up, but the magic and the finesse of Run is really much closer to that of Six Feet Under or ER
or The Sopranos, and that is good news for everybody, not least her readers. Bernadette and Bernard
Doyle were a Boston couple who wanted to have a big lively family. They had one boy, Sullivan, and
then adopted two black kids, Teddy and Tip. Mr. Doyle is a former mayor of Boston and he continues
his interest in politics, hoping his boys will shape up one day for elected office, though none of them
seems especially keen. Bernadette dies when the adopted kids are just four, and much of the book
offers a placid requiem to her memory in particular and to the force of motherhood in lives generally. An
old statue from Bernadette's side of the family seems to convey miracles, and there will be more than
one before this gracious book is done. One night, during a heavy snowfall, Teddy and Tip accompany
their father to a lecture given by Jessie Jackson at the Kennedy Centre. Tip is preoccupied with
studying fish, so he feels more than a little coerced by his father. After the lecture they get into an
argument and Tip walks backwards in the road. A car appears out of nowhere and so does a woman
called Tennessee, who pushes Tip out of the car's path and is herself struck. Thus, a woman is taken to
hospital and her daughter, Kenya, is left in the company of the Doyles. Relationships begin both to
emerge and unravel, disclosing secrets, hopes, fears. Run is a novel with timeless concerns at its
heart—class and belonging, parenthood and love—and if it wears that heart on its sleeve, then it does
so with confidence. And so it should: the book is lovely to read and is satisfyingly bold in its attempt to
say something patient and true about family. Patchett knows how to wear big human concerns very
lightly, and that is a continuing bonus for those who found a great deal to admire in her previous work,
especially the ultra-lauded Bel Canto. Yet one should not mistake that lightness for anything cosmetic:
Run is a book that sets out inventively to contend with the temper of our times, and by the end we feel
we really know the Doyle family in all its intensity and with all its surprises.
Nominated by Heidi Sloss.

24. Searching for Tamsen Donner by Gabrielle Burton (non-fiction, 274 pages)
Burton was first drawn to the story of Tamsen Donner in the 1970s, just as she was becoming
enmeshed in the women’s movement. She saw in Tamsen an independent spirit—wife, mother, and
brave pioneer—with whom she somehow identified. Her career as a writer kept circling back to the
Donner party and its tragic end in the Sierra Nevadas in the winter of 1846–47. Finally, in the summer of
1996, Burton, her husband, and their five daughters retrace the steps taken by Tamsen, her husband
George, and their five daughters from Springfield, Illinois, to California via the Oregon and California
Trails. Trying to reconstruct Tamsen’s lost journal (her body was never found), Burton and family follow
the trek of the Donner party—23 wagons and 87 people when they entered Utah—stopping at countless
Donner-related sites across the country. The result is a thoughtful and engaging blend of history and
memoir that inspires the reader to delve further into the Donner party’s fate, while at the same time
enjoying Burton’s struggle to be both a full-time mother and successful writer. (only in hard cover)
Nominated by Heidi Sloss

25. The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano (fiction, 379 pages)
Giordano’s deeply touching debut novel immediately thrusts the reader into the lives of two individuals,
at the moment when each of their young lives takes a sharp turn toward painful solitude: Alice has been
crippled in a childhood skiing accident, Mattia is consumed by guilt after playing an unintended but key
role in his twin sister’s disappearance. Upon meeting in their early teens, they develop a frequently
uncomfortable yet enveloping friendship. What follows is a beautiful and affecting account of the ways in
which seemingly inconsequential decisions reverberate so intensely as to change a life forever.
Translated from the Italian, this is a book about communication: in lacking a facility for self-expression,
our stunted protagonists exist almost solely, and safely, in their own minds. Despite its heavy subject
matter, it reads easily, due in part to the almost seamless translation. A quietly explosive ending
completes the novel in just the fashion it was started, as an intimate psychological portrait of two “prime
numbers”—together alone and alone together.
Nominated by Marijke Vallaeys

26. South of Broad: A Novel by Pat Conroy (fiction, ?? pages)
Charleston, S.C., gossip columnist Leopold Bloom King narrates a paean to his hometown and friends
in Conroy's first novel in 14 years. In the late '60s and after his brother commits suicide, then 18-year old
Leo befriends a cross-section of the city's inhabitants: scions of Charleston aristocracy; Appalachian
orphans; a black football coach's son; and an astonishingly beautiful pair of twins, Sheba and Trevor
Poe, who are evading their psychotic father. The story alternates between 1969, the glorious year Leo's
coterie stormed Charleston's social, sexual and racial barricades, and 1989, when Sheba, now a movie
star, enlists them to find her missing gay brother in AIDS-ravaged San Francisco. Too often the not-sowitty
repartee and the narrator's awed voice (he is very fond of superlatives) overwhelm the stories
surrounding the group's love affairs and their struggles to protect one another from dangerous pasts.
Some characters are tragically lost to the riptides of love and obsession, while others emerge from the
frothy waters of sentimentality and nostalgia as exhausted as most readers are likely to be. Fans of
Conroy's florid prose and earnest melodramas are in for a treat.

27. The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer (fiction, 195 pages)
It is 1953 and Pearlie, a dutiful young housewife, finds herself living in the Sunset district in San
Francisco, caring not only for her husband's fragile health, but also for her son, who is afflicted with
polio. Then one morning, a stranger appears on her doorstep and changes their life. The author
manages not one but two shocking surprises in this story of the class, racial and sexual restraints of
1950's America. Beautiful prose and plentiful historical facts from the time period.
Nominated by Karen Bonke

28. Those is my Words by Nancy Turner (fiction, 416 pages)
Publishers Weekly: Based on the real-life exploits of the author's great-grandmother, this fictionalized
diary vividly details one woman's struggles with life and love in frontier Arizona at the end of the last
century. When she begins recording her life, Sarah Prine is an intelligent, headstrong 18-year-old
capable of holding her own on her family's settlement near Tucson. Her skill with a rifle fends off a
constant barrage of Indian attacks and outlaw assaults. It also attracts a handsome Army captain
named Jack Elliot. By the time she's 21, Sarah has recorded her loveless marriage to a family friend,
the establishment of a profitable ranch, the birth of her first child and the death of her husband. The love
between Jack and Sarah, which dominates the rest of the tale, has begun to blossom. Fragmented and
disjointed in its early chapters, with poor spelling and grammar, Sarah's journal gradually gains in clarity
and eloquence as she matures. While this device may frustrate some readers at first, Taylor's deft
progression produces the intended reward: she not only tells of her heroine's growth, but she shows it
through Sarah's writing and insights. The result is a compelling portrait of an enduring love, the rough
old West and a memorable pioneer.
Nominated by Beth Watts