Lincoln County Library System

Reading Group Choices 2010

31 Hours by Masha Hamilton

Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos

Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga

The Book of Dahlia by Elisa Albert

The Condition by Jennifer Haigh

The Courtier’s Secret by Donna Russo Morin

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles

Decision and Destiny by DaVa Gantt

The Devlin Diary by Christi Phillips

Dragon House by John Shors

The End by Salvatore Scibona

Every Last Cuckoo by Kate Maloy

The Florist’s Daughter by Patricia Hampl

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane

Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy

The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss

Henry’s Sisters by Cathy Lamb

Home Repair by Liz Rosenberg

I See You Everywhere by Julia Glass

In a Perfect World by Laura Kasischke

The Last Summer of Her Life by Jean Page

The Laws of Harmony by Judith Hendricks

The Little Book by Selden Edwards

The Longshot by Katie Kitamura

The Love of Her Life by Harriet Evans

Maynard and Jennica by Rudolph Delson

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

Now & Then by Jacqueline Sheehan

Of Men and Their Mothers by Mameve Medwed

Once in a Blue Moon by Eileen Goudge

One Week in December by Holly Chamberlin

Real Life and Liars by Kristina Riggle

The Return by Victoria Hislop

The Sari Shop Widow by Shobhan Bantwal

The Scent of Sake by Joyce Lebra

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos

A Thread of Truth by Marie Bostwick

Time is a River by Mary Alice Monroe

Two Rivers by T. Greenwood

The Visibles by Sara Shepard

The Well and Mine by Gin Phillips

While My Sister Sleeps by Barbara Delinsky

With Violets by Elizabeth Robards

Booklist Editors’ Choice

Fiction

Awarded 01/09

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

The Black Tower by Louis Baynard

Come With Me to Babylon by Paul M. Levitt

Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories by Steven Millhauser

Driftless by David Rhodes

The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie

Esther’s Inheritance by Sandor Marai

Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane

House of Widows by Askold Melnyczuk

Indignation by Philip Roth

Kieron Smith, boy by James Kelman

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon

Lush Life by Richard Price

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

A Partisan’s Daughter by Louis de Bernieres

People of the Whale by Linda Hogan

The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich

The Red Scarf by Kate Furnivall

Three Girls and Their Brother by Theresa Rebeck

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike

YALSA (Young Adult) Best Books 2009

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson

Airman by Eoin Colfer

Amulet. Book 1, The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi

Another Kind of Cowboy by Susan Juby

Antsy Does Time by Neal Shusterman

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Vol II by M.T. Anderson

Audrey, Wait by Robin Benway

Bonechiller by Graham McNamee

The Boy Who Dared by Susan Bartoletti

Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson

Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman

A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth Bunce

Cybele’s Secret by Juliet Marillier

Dark Dude by Osacar Hijueles

Elephant Run by Roland Smith

The Fortunes of Indigo Skye by Deb Caletti

Ghost Medicine by Andrew Smith

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve

The Host by Stephanie Meyer

How to Build a House by Dana Reinhardt The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Hush: an Irish Princess Tale by Donna Jo Napoli

Impossible by Nancy Werlin

Into the Volcano by Don Wood

Jelicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

Kendra by Coe Booth

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Mexican WhiteBoy by Matt de la Pena

Nation by Terry Pratchett

The Savage by David Almond

Shift by Jennifer Bradbury

The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp

Stealing Heaven by Elizabeth Scott

Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica George

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

Waiting for Normal by Leslie Connor

What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell

Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers 2009

The Age of Orphans by Laleh Khadivi

All the Living by C.E. Morgan

Atlas of Unknowns by Tania James

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell

Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz

China Underground by Zachary Mexico

Columbine by Dave Cullen

The Convalescent by Jessica Anthony

The Cradle by Patrick Somerville

The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha

The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos by Margaret Mascarenhas

The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan

Hands of My Father by Myron Uhlberg

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Hold Love Strong by Matthew Goodman

A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg

The Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson

The Hunger by John DeLucie

In Hanuman’s Hands by Cheeni Rao

In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White

It’s Beginning to Hurt by James Lasdun

John the Revelator by Peter Murphy

The King’s Rifle by Biyi Bandele

Life’s That Way by Jim Beaver

A Long, Long Time Ago & Essentially True by Brigid Pasulka

The Longshot by Katie Kitamura

Mother in the Middle by Sybil Lockhart

The Natural Laws of Good Luck by Ellen Graf

Perfection by Julie Metz

The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee

Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing by Lydia Peele

Righteous Porkchop by Nicolette Niman

Ruins: A Novel of Cuba by Achy Obejas

Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen

The Spare Room by Helen Garner

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

The Unforgiving Minute by Craig Mullaney

The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose

The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist

Vanessa & Virginia by Susan Sellers

Wildflower by Mark Seal

When Skateboards Will Be Free by Said Sayrafiezadeh

Mark’s List

In the Land of No Right Angles by Daphne Beal

America, America by Ethan Canin

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

The Meadow by James Galvin

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhupa Lahiri

A Peculiar Grace by Jeffrey Lent

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Wendi’s List

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

Gentleman of the Road by Michael Chabon

In the Woods by Tana French

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Letham

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Jennifer’s List

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Identical by Ellen Hopkins

The Evolution of Calpurnica Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

Day After Night by Anita Diamant

Love Walked In by Mris De los Santos

Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Under This Unbroken Sky by Shandi Mitchell

Rachelle’s List

Go to Bed Monster by Natasha Wing

Eenie Meenie Minee Moe Who ate all the Cookie Dough? By Karen Beaumont

I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More! By Karen Beaumont

Bark George by Jule Feiffer

Grumpy Badger’s Christmas by Paul Bright

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Bloody Jack: being an account of the curious adventures of Mary “Jacky” Farber ship’s boy by L.A. Myer

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Everyday Grace by Marianne Williamson

Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

Writing Picture Books: A hands-on guide from story creation to publication by Ann Whitford Paul

Reading Challenge Lists

• Indie Fiction Picks 2009
• Novels by Wyoming Authors
• Booklist Editors’ Choice Fiction
• YALSA (Young Adult) Best Books 2009
• Barnes&Noble Discover New Writers
• Alpine Branch Library Staff Picks
  

New World Monkeys: A Novel

By Nancy Mauro

Shaye Areheart Books (2009)

On Wild Boars, Backyard Bones, and the State of Modern Marriage

In a quality, wonderfully imagined and darkly comic debut novel, Nancy Mauro has certainly written one of the most memorable opening chapters of the year, a chapter that swings between the metaphoric rendering of an accident that reflects Lily and Duncan’s troubled marriage in the second paragraph:

“What they won’t talk about is the way Lily’s arm shunted across his chest in an

attempt to grab the wheel.  To steer their destiny in the space before impact.

He’ll later recall this moment as something stretched and precipitous over which

he was suspended, eggbeater legs and arms akimbo.”

Creating a blackly humorous turn three pages later, Mauro stages the other unexpected result of this accident once they discover the object they had tried to miss was a wild boar (and a new source of tension for the couple):

“…when he [Duncan] looks back at the tire iron, Lily herself brings it down with a

batter’s crack against the base of the animal’s skull.”

This becomes one of the many things Lilly and Duncan don’t talk about.     And the wild boar turns out to be the mascot for the Hudson River Valley town where Lily intends to retreat while she finishes her dissertation on architectural history (specifically the history of the pointed arch), an animal beloved by certain of the town’s strange citizenry.  The boar even has a name:  The Sovereign of the Deep Wood.  The house in this strange town of Osterhagen is part of Lily’s birthright, a decaying old house as loaded with questionable familial history as it is with bad wiring and rotting floorboards.  Some of that history includes the disappearance two generations ago of the family’s nanny.  The plan is that Duncan will flee his pressure-ridden job as the de facto creative director of a Manhattan advertising agency for weekends of respite in pastoral Osterhagen with Lily.  Action such as killing the town boar and finding human remains while gardening in the back yard begin to put a damper on Duncan’s enthusiasm for these weekends and add renewed strain to an already strained marriage.  Just wait until Lily meets up with Lloyd, a self-declared peeping Tom and want-to-be pervert.  Or perhaps it is the lynching proposed by some town elders and nightly cannon firing, both seemingly targeted at Lily and Duncan, that worsens Duncan’s fragile sanity.

Sound strange?  You bet, but wonderfully so in its best moments.  The book is one of those reads that makes you wonder sometimes while you are reading but dares you to put it down.  Consistently surprising, always strangely funny, and excellently crafted, Mauro handles this dark comedy with deftness.  Moreover, along the way she makes readers consider the nature of marriage and identity and offers such a scathing (while hilarious) indictment of the advertising industry that readers won’t be surprised to learn that Mauro worked in the industry prior to becoming a novelist.  This element of the novel is so pointed that—once we stop looking at accident scenes and following local voyeurs—we recognize something elementally tragic in our image-driven, consumer-fixated culture.  Maybe these are some of the themes we often fail to talk about.

This won’t be a book for every reader, but it will be a welcome read for those who love sarcasm and something just a little askew.  Mauro certainly will be a writer we will hear more from as her career progresses.