Love in the Time of Cholera

Looks like a month of literary awards. Don't let anyone say we read "fluff" up north. Gabriel Garcia Marquez won the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature. As stated at the Nobel site, he received the award "for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts."

Amazon.com described Love in the Time of Cholera as the story of a"turn-of-the century chronicle of a unique love triangle." SparkNotes has a very complete site.

Empire Falls

Empire Falls by Richard Russo was chosen as the winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It's the story of the failing industrial town of Empire Falls, the Whiting family, particularly Francine Whiting, the widow of the last son, who rules the town with an iron fist and Miles Roby and his family.

The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is described at Reading Group Guides as an "epic tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal . . . " In 2004 it won an ALEX Award. One of ten books chosen that year that were written for adults and "have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 to 18". While looking at the other books on the ALA site, I noticed quite a few of our book club selections listed.

Readers vote on Best Books 2007

A friend of mine belongs to a message board called "Favorite Fiction," in which people discuss books online. She has forwarded to me the list that these voracious readers have voted as their favorites from the past year. Sixty-six people voted, many of which seem to read a dozen or more books a month, from what I can tell from their posts. You will recognize a lot of the titles you see listed below.

Carmen

FICTION WInners
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini ---27 votes (biggest vote ever for one book, I believe)
13 votes Stoner - John Williams Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
8 votes The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
7 votes Nineteen Minutes - Jodi Picoult The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield
6 votes Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
4 votes
Consequences - Penelope Lively
God of Animals - Aryn Kyle
Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky
The Watchman - Robert Crais
What The Dead Know-Laura Lipman
3 vote books
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Black and White - Dani Shapiro
Digging to America - Anne Tyler
Half a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Saturday - Ian McEwan
Skylight Confessions - Alice Hoffman
Tall Grass - Sandra Dallas
The Double Bind - Chris Bojhalian
The Girls - Lori Lansens
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards

NON-FICTION winners
#1, but not by much Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson - 8 votes
Eat, Pray, Love- Elizabeth Gilbert 7 votes
The Tender Bar - JR Moehringer 5 votes
4 votes
A Long Way Gone- Ishmael Beah
The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls
The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio -Terry Ryan
3 votes
Tales of a Female Nomad - Rita Golden Gelman
The Innocent Man - John Grisham