Book Group in a Bag 2011

Just to let you know that the Library has updated (2/3/2011) the Book Group in a Bag title Selection and have some wonderful books for book groups - the selection of titles by author is listed below. There are generally 10 books in a book bag (although more may be available if you have a larger book group). The Friends' sorting volunteers try to keep extra copies of these books as they are donated. This is a great way to read a classic and enjoy a discussion. Try non-fiction! Experience another culture or another time. Set a date to meet your friends and enjoy the reading experience!
Bryson's Shakespeare is  excellent. I highly recommend ALL of Ariana Franklin! We can learn a great deal from Gawande (I never miss his articles in the New Yorker). Your next fast passed read should be Kathleen Kent's Heretic's Daughter (and then the sequel/prequel!). I am still talking about The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, that I read for the first time last year. Cannot believe I missed that, or it's sequel a decade ago. Great new author for me. Don't miss her other books. If you need a lovely gentle read, that is also thought provoking and well written, you will enjoy Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. It is charming. When baseball season rolls around, don't forget Shoeless Joe (Kinsella) it is a classic.

Book Group Bag Titles


Sherman Alexie – The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian
Katherine Applegate – Home of the brave
Margaret Atwood – The handmaid’s tale
Muriel Barbery – The elegance of the hedgehog
Elizabeth Berg – We are all welcome here
Clara Bingham – Class action
R.D. Blackmore – Lorna Doone
Jenna Blum – Those who save us
Chris Bohjalian – Before you know kindness
T. Coraghessan Boyle – The tortilla curtain
Kevin Brockmeier – The brief history of the dead
Geraldine Brooks – Year of wonders
Bill Bryson – Shakespeare: the world as stage
Caleb Carr – The alienist
Willa Cather – O Pioneers!
Catherine Clinton – Mrs. Lincoln: a life
Bryce Courtenay – The power of one
Andre Dubus III – The house of sand and fog
Daphne Du Maurier – Rebecca
Firoozeh Dumas – Funny in Farsi
Nancy Farmer – The house of the scorpion
Drew Gilpin Faust – This republic of suffering: death and the American Civil War
Ariana Franklin – City of Shadows
Jonathan Franzen – The corrections
Gregory A. Freeman – Lay this body down: the 1921 murders of eleven plantation slaves
Atul Gawande – Better: a surgeon’s notes
Stella Gibbons – Cold Comfort Farm
Lorraine Hansberry – A raisin in the sun
Nicole Helget – The summer of ordinary ways
Ernest Hemingway – For whom the bell tolls
Sheri Holman – The dress lodger
Tony Horwitz – Confederates in the attic
Victor Hugo – The hunchback of Notre Dame
Kazuo Ishiguro – Never let me go
Joseph Kanon – The good German
Kathleen Kent – The heretic’s daughter
Haven Kimmel – A girl named Zippy
Thomas King – Green grass, running water
W.P. Kinsella – Shoeless Joe
Jonathan Kozol – Letters to a young teacher
Jhumpa Lahiri – The namesake
John Le Carre – The constant gardener
James Levine – The blue notebook
Mary Logue – Blood country
Bette Lord – Spring moon
Gregory Maguire – Wicked
James McBride – The color of water
Ian McEwan – Saturday
Alison McGhee – Shadow baby
Wes Moore – The other Wes Moore
Walter Dean Myers – Riot
Kent Nerburn – Neither wolf nor dog
Barack Obama – Dreams from my father
Sara Paretsky – Bleeding Kansas
Gordon Parks – The learning tree
Chaim Potok – The chosen
Susan Power – The grass dancer
Peter Razor – While the locust slept
O.E. Rölvaag – Giants in the earth
Tatiana de Rosnay – Sarah’s Key
Edmund Rostand – Cyrano de Bergerac
Mary Doria Russell – The sparrow
Lisa See – Shanghai girls
William Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet
Fan Shen – Gang of one: memoirs of a Red Guard
Jean Shepherd – In God we trust, all others pay cash
Helen Simonson – Major Pettigrew’s last stand
Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s cabin
Faith Sullivan – The Cape Ann
Kressmann Taylor – Address unknown
William Makepeace Thackeray – Vanity fair
P.J. Tracy – Monkeewrench
Sarah Vowell – Assassination vacation
Jeanette Walls – Half broke horses
Eric Weiner – The geography of bliss
Elie Wiesel – Night
Thornton Wilder – Our town: a play in three acts
Kao Kalia Yang – The latehomecomer: a Hmong family memoir
Jeffrey Zaslow – The girls from Ames: a story of women and a forty year friendship