Word of Mouth – Best Books of 2008

We spent a little time at our January meeting talking about the best books we read in 2008.  And here’s the result…enjoy!

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society / Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows.
As London is emerging from the shadow of World War II, writer Juliet Ashton discovers her next subject in a book club on Guernsey–a club born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi after its members are discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island.
This title was the Number 1 pick!

Unaccustomed Earth / by Jhumpa Lahiri.
From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories—that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers.

Olive Kitteridge / Elizabeth Strout.
At the edge of the continent, in the small town of Crosby, Maine, lives Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher who deplores the changes in her town and in the world at large but doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle / David Wroblewski.
A tale reminiscent of “Hamlet” that also celebrates the alliance between humans and dogs follows speech-disabled Wisconsin youth Edgar, who bonds with three yearling canines and struggles to prove that his sinister uncle is responsible for his father’s death.

Songs for the missing / Stewart O’Nan.
“”It was the summer of her Chevette, of J.P., and letting her hair grow.” It is also the summer when, without warning, college-bound Kim Larsen disappears from her quiet Lake Erie town. Her parents, her little sister, her best friends and new boyfriend now must do everything to find her.

People of the book / Geraldine Brooks.
In 1996, Hanna Heath, a young Australian book conservator is called to analyze the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a priceless six-hundred-year-old Jewish prayer book that has been salvaged from a destroyed Bosnian library. When Hanna discovers a series of artifacts in the centuries’ old, she unwittingly exposes an international cover up.

The lace reader / Brunonia Barry.
A young woman descended from a long line of mind readers and fortune tellers has returned to her hometown of Salem, Massachusetts, for rest and relaxation. Any tranquility in her life is short-lived, however, when her aunt drowns under mysterious circumstances.

The heretic’s daughter / Kathleen Kent.
Martha Carrier was one of the first women to be accused, tried and hanged as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts. Like her mother, young Sarah Carrier is bright and willful, openly challenging the small, brutal world in which they live. Often at odds with one another, mother and daughter are forced to stand together against the escalating hysteria of the trials and the superstitious tyranny that led to the torture and imprisonment of more than 200 people accused of witchcraft.

The good thief / by Hannah Tinti.
One-handed orphan Ren, a likeable young scamp with a talent for thievery, finds that his life changes forever when fast-talking con man Benjamin Nab rescues him from the orphanage by claiming to be Ren’s long lost brother. In reality, Nab perceives that Ren, with his missing hand, will serve as a useful accomplice. The duo, along with Nab’s partner (the erudite and perpetually tipsy Tom), runs one successful scam after another until they arrive in the mining town of North Umbrage, where everything begins to fall apart. Suddenly, Ren is torn between protecting the only family he’s ever known and discovering his true identity in this “dark and rousing 19th-century picaresque” tale

Bound / Sally Gunning.
Alice Cole spent her first seven years living in two smoky, crowded rooms in London with her family. But a new home and a better life waited in the colonies, or so her father promised–a bright dream that turned to ashes when her brothers and mother took ill and died during the arduous voyage. Arriving in colonial New England unable to meet the added expenses incurred by their misfortunes at sea, her father bound Alice into servitude to pay his debts.

The senator’s wife / Sue Miller.
Once again Sue Miller takes us deep into the private lives of women with this mesmerizing portrait of two marriages exposed in all their shame and imperfection, and in their obdurate, unyielding love.

Time is a river / Mary Alice Monroe.
While recovering from breast cancer in a remote cabin in North Carolina, Mia Landan finds the journal of Kate Watkins, a 1920s fly fisher, and, inspired by Kate’s example, learns to fish and uncovers many secrets around her.

Memo to the President elect : how we can restore America’s reputation and leadership / Madeleine Albright with Bill Woodward.
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright offers a persuasive, wide-ranging set of recommendations to the prospective winner of the 2008 Presidential election. Secretary Albright explains how to select a first-rate foreign policy team, how to avoid the pitfalls that plagued earlier presidents, how to ensure that decisions, once carefully made, are successfully implemented, and how to employ the full range of tools available to a president to persuade other countries to support U.S. objectives

Alex & me : how a scientist and a parrot discovered a hidden world of animal intelligence–and formed a deep bond in the process / Irene M. Pepperberg.
This story of Alex, a famous African Grey parrot, documents his thirty-year relationship with his trainer and the ways in which his life has changed scientific understanding about language and thought.

Hot, flat, and crowded : why we need a green revolution– and how it can renew America / Thomas L. Friedman.
Friedman’s bestseller “The World Is Flat” has helped millions of readers to see globalization in a new way. Now the author brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy.

Sundays in America : a yearlong road trip in search of Christian faith / Suzanne Strempek Shea.
Award winning Massachusetts novelist Shea grew up Catholic then drifted away from church. The 2005 funeral of John Paul II and a diagnosis of breast cancer made her wonder for the first time what so many people found in Christianity that she did not. She set out on a year-long tour of non-Catholic churches, mostly Protestant, around the US and lived to tell the tale.