Let's put it to a vote

Here are a few books that I would be interested in reading/re reading. For description, I'm just going to write what's on the book jacket.

Please leave a comment and let me know which one appeals to you most.

I wanted it to be a round number of 5, but then The Trial would have been nixed. It made me think too hard.

1. Middlesex (won a Pulitzer) Jeffery Eugenides (also wrote Virgin Suicides)

Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition -era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of 1967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.

2. Hunger Games (part 1 of a trilogy) Suzanne Collins
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. 

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that will weigh survival against humanity and life against love

3. One Hundred Years of Solitude    Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Nobel Prize Winner)

Tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family.

4. The Great Divorce      C.S. Lewis   (We've all probably read this)

The writer, in a dream, boards a bus on a drizzly afternoon and embarks on an incredible voyage through Heaven and Hell. He meets a host of supernatural beings far removed from his expectations and comes to significant realizations about the ultimate consequences of everyday behavior.

5. The Trial      Franz Kafka

The Trial tells the terrifying tale of Joseph K, a respectable functionary in a bank who is suddenly arrested and must defend his innocence against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, parable, or a prophecy, this hauntingly believable story stands out as one of the great novels of our times. Kafka's unsurpassed nightmare vision rings with chilling truth as it foreshadows the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the mad agendas of the twentieth century totalitarian regimes.


6. Wicked    Gregory Macguire

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

It's Rita

Hi ladies!

Sara-Beth has asked me to head up the next book. I hesitantly agreed. I think we're a tough crowd (primarily me) and I don't want virtual tomatoes thrown when my choice doesn't please the masses.

Kim has graciously volunteered to start a forum for book discussions. Is that cool with everyone? I have never posted on a forum so I have zero experience but I think it's worth a shot.

Later tonight I'll post a list of possible book selections and then let everyone have a say.

Also think about how you want to break the book up. Do you want to discuss at the very end in a few weeks, or would it be more beneficial to break the book up into parts and then discuss after each section. I've done both and am good with either one.