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The Current Selection:
Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
Book description courtesy of Amazon.com: "Uwem Akpan's first published short story, "An Ex-mas Feast," appeared in The New Yorker's Debut Fiction issue in 2005. The story's portrait of a family living together in a makeshift shanty in urban Kenya, and their attempts to find gifts of any kind for the impending Christmas holiday, gives a matter-of-fact reality to the most extreme circumstances--and signaled the arrival of a breathtakingly talented writer.
"My Parents' Bedroom" is a Rwandan girl's account of her family's struggles to maintain a facade of normalcy amid unspeakable acts. In "Fattening for Gabon," a brother and sister cope with their uncle's attempt to sell them into slavery. "Luxurious Hearses" creates a microcosm of Africa within a busload of refugees and introduces us to a Muslim boy who summons his faith to bear a treacherous ride through Nigeria. "What Language Is That?" reveals the emotional toll of the Christian-Muslim conflict in Ethiopia through the eyes of childhood friends. Every story is a testament to the wisdom and resilience of children, even in the face of the most agonizing situations our planet can offer.
Uwem Akpan was born in southern Nigeria. He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003 and received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006. In 2007, he began a teaching assignment at a seminary in Harare, Zimbabwe."
Say You're One of Them is available from Amazon.com.
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2008
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel (P.S.)
Amazon Price: $8.49 (as of 12/01/2009)
"David Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes-the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain-create a riveting family saga, a brilliant exploration of the limits of language, and a compulsively readable modern classic."
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61)
Amazon Price: $10.08 (as of 12/01/2009)
"With his bestselling spiritual guide The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle inspired millions of readers to discover the freedom and joy of a life lived "in the now." In A New Earth, Tolle expands on these powerful ideas to show how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness is not only essential to personal happiness, but also the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world. Tolle describes how our attachment to the ego creates the dysfunction that leads to anger, jealousy, and unhappiness, and shows readers how to awaken to a new state of consciousness and follow the path to a truly fulfilling existence."
Recently Recommended by Ms. O. Herself
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The Amazon Kindle sells for $359 at Amazon.com. Check the positive ratings (over 3000 five star ratings).
2007
The Pillars of the Earth
The Pillars of the Earth (Deluxe Edition) (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 12/01/2009)
"A spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England, this is Ken Follett's historical masterpiece."
Love in the Time of Cholera
Love in the Time of Cholera
Amazon Price: $17.13 (as of 12/01/2009)
"Set in a country on the Caribbean coast of South America, this is a story about a woman and two men and their entwined lives. From the author of the legendary One Hundred Years of Solitude."
Middlesex: A Novel
Middlesex: A Novel
Amazon Price: $17.82 (as of 12/01/2009)
"In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond clasmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them--along with Callie's failure to develop--leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all."
The Road
The Road (Movie Tie-in Edition 2008 of the 2006 publication)
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 12/01/2009)
"The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation."
The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography
The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: $10.17 (as of 12/01/2009)
"In this luminous memoir, a true American icon looks back on his celebrated life and career. His body of work is arguably the most morally significant in cinematic history, and the power and influence of that work are indicative of the character of the man behind the many storied roles. Sidney Poitier here explores these elements of character and personal values to take his own measure-as a man, as a husband and a father, and as an actor."
2006
Night
Night (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: $9.95 (as of 12/01/2009)
"Born in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were taken from their home in 1944 to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and then to Buchenwald. Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. This new translation by his wife and most frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, corrects important details and presents the most accurate rendering in English of Elie Wiesel's testimony to what happened in the camps and of his unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again."
2005
A Million Little Pieces
A Million Little Pieces
Amazon Price: $10.85 (as of 12/01/2009)
"Intense, unpredictable, and instantly engaging, A Million Little Pieces is a story of drug and alcohol abuse and rehabilitation as it has never been told before. Recounted in visceral, kinetic prose, and crafted with a forthrightness that rejects piety, cynicism, and self-pity, it brings us face-to-face with a provocative new understanding of the nature of addiction and the meaning of recovery."
Light in August
Light in August: The Corrected Text (Modern Library)
Amazon Price: $14.93 (as of 12/01/2009)
"One of Faulkner's most admired and accessible novels, Light in August reveals the great American author at the height of his powers. Lena Grove's resolute search for the father of her unborn child begets a rich, poignant, and ultimately hopeful story of perseverance in the face of mortality. It also acquaints us with several of Faulkner's most unforgettable characters, including the Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen, and Joe Christmas, a ragged, itinerant soul obsessed with his mixed-race ancestry."
The Sound and the Fury
The Sound and the Fury (Norton Critical Editions)
Amazon Price: $11.83 (as of 12/01/2009)
"First published in 1929, Faulkner created his "heart's darling," the beautiful and tragic Caddy Compson, whose story Faulkner told through separate monologues by her three brothers--the idiot Benjy, the neurotic suicidal Quentin and the monstrous Jason."
As I Lay Dying
As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text (Modern Library)
Amazon Price: $11.53 (as of 12/01/2009)
"As I Lay Dying was originally published in 1930, and remains a captivating and stylistically innovative work. The story revolves around a grim yet darkly humorous pilgrimage, as Addie Bundren's family sets out to fulfill her last wish: to be buried in her native Jefferson, Mississippi, far from the miserable backwater surroundings of her married life. Told through multiple voices, it vividly brings to life Faulkner's imaginary South, one of the great invented landscapes in all of literature, and is replete with the poignant, impoverished, violent, and hypnotically fascinating characters that were his trademark."
2004
The Good Earth
The Good Earth (Enriched Classics)
Amazon Price: $6.99 (as of 12/01/2009)
"A poignant tale about the life and labors of a Chinese farmer during the sweeping reign of the country's last emperor."
Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: $11.05 (as of 12/01/2009)
"Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness."
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: $9.86 (as of 12/01/2009)
"This novel is the work of a supreme artist, Carson McCullers's enduring masterpiece. The heroine is the strange young girl, Mick Kelly. The setting is a small Southern town, the cosmos universal and eternal. The characters are the damned, the voiceless, the rejected. Some fight their loneliness with violence and depravity, Some with sex or drink, and some -- like Mick -- with a quiet, intensely personal search for beauty."
One Hundred Years of Solitude
One Hundred Years of Solitude (P.S.)
Amazon Price: $10.76 (as of 12/01/2009)
"One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women -- brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul -- this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction."
2003
Cry, The Beloved Country
Cry, the Beloved Country (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: $10.20 (as of 12/01/2009)
"Cry, the Beloved Country is a beautifully told and profoundly compassionate story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set in the troubled and changing South Africa of the 1940s. The book is written with such keen empathy and understanding that to read it is to share fully in the gravity of the characters' situations. It both touches your heart deeply and inspires a renewed faith in the dignity of mankind. Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic tale, passionately African, timeless and universal, and beyond all, selfless."
East of Eden
East of Eden
Amazon Price: $11.05 (as of 12/01/2009)
"Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Here Steinbeck created some of his most memorable characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity; the inexplicability of love; and the murderous consequences of love's absence."
2002
Sula
Sula (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 12/01/2009)
"At its center--a friendship between two women, a friendship whose intensity first sustains, then injures. Sula and Nel--both black, both smart, both poor, raised in a small Ohio town--meet when they are twelve, wishbone thin and dreaming of princes."
Fall on Your Knees
Fall On Your Knees (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: $11.52 (as of 12/01/2009)
"The Piper family is steeped in secrets, lies, and unspoken truths. At the eye of the storm is one secret that threatens to shake their lives -- even destroy them. Set on stormy Cape Breton Island off Nova Scotia, Fall on Your Knees is an internationally acclaimed multigenerational saga that chronicles the lives of four unforgettable sisters. Theirs is a world filled with driving ambition, inescapable family bonds, and forbidden love. Compellingly written, by turns menacingly dark and hilariously funny, this is an epic tale of five generations of sin, guilt, and redemption."
2001
A Fine Balance
A Fine Balance (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: $10.85 (as of 12/01/2009)
"With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India. The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future."
2000
The Bluest Eye (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: (as of 12/01/2009)
Back Roads
Amazon Price: $11.20 (as of 12/01/2009)
Daughter of Fortune: A Novel (P.S.)
Amazon Price: $10.76 (as of 12/01/2009)
Gap Creek : The Story Of A Marriage (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: $11.70 (as of 12/01/2009)
1999
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White Oleander
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"Oleander time" is a time when white oleanders blossom and "lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind". Janet Fitch describes the Santa Ana blossoms as desert survivalists as "delicate poisonous blooms" with "dagger green leaves". Thr...
The Pilot's Wife
Amazon Price: (as of 12/01/2009)
Jewel (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: (as of 12/01/2009)
1998
Black and Blue (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: $10.20 (as of 12/01/2009)
Here on Earth (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 12/01/2009)
Paradise (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: $10.20 (as of 12/01/2009)
1997
A Lesson Before Dying
A Lesson Before Dying
Amazon Price: $18.98 (as of 12/01/2009)
"From the author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman comes a deep and compassionate novel. A young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach visits a black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting."
1996
The Book of Ruth
The Book of Ruth (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: $10.17 (as of 12/01/2009)
"Winner of the 1989 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for best first novel, this exquisite book confronts real-life issues of alienation and violence from which the author creates a stunning testament to the human capacity for mercy, compassion and love."
Song of Solomon
Song of Solomon
Amazon Price: $10.20 (as of 12/01/2009)
"Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family's origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world."
The Deep End of the Ocean
The Deep End of the Ocean (Oprah's Book Club)
Amazon Price: $10.20 (as of 12/01/2009)
"Few first novels receive the kind of attention and acclaim showered on this powerful story--a nationwide bestseller, a critical success, and the first title chosen for Oprah's Book Club. Both highly suspenseful and deeply moving, The Deep End of the Ocean imagines every mother's worst nightmare--the disappearance of a child--as it explores a family's struggle to endure, even against extraordinary odds. Filled with compassion, humor, and brilliant observations about the texture of real life, here is a story of rare power, one that will touch readers' hearts and make them celebrate the emotions that make us all one."
Oprah Book Club Books Guestbook
Which books have you read and recommend?
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Reply
- mulberry mulberry Dec 15, 2008 @ 5:39 pm
- I've read several of these, I always look for Oprah's picks when I go to library book sales!
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