Bound Feet, Western Dress A great story of Chinese America and how traditions change.
Sweetness in the Belly A sad love story and is a view of Islam that most people do not see.
Emma my all time favorite. I won the Wentworth Travel Scholarship on this book. I went to England and studied Jane Austen. Which PBS is doing a month long tribute to Jane Austen last Sunday was the unsuccessful love matches of Jane Austen and this Sunday is Pride and Predjudce. Also, Jane Austen Book Club movie just came out at Blockbuster and Becoming Jane with Ann Hathaway is coming out later this week at Blockbuster.
All Creatures Great and Small was a novel I read in High School, it actually was a series on the BBC and is on PBS. It ,of course, deals with animals and 1940's/50's England.
Where the Red Fern Grows This was a book I read in Middle School and the first one to make me cry.
Persepolis was the first graphic novel and was one I couldnt put down. Interesting side of what we think we know i.e. Iran and Islam. It is funny and disturbing and in a way a reflection on western thought. This is going to be a movie out soon as well.
School for Hawaiian Girls I have a good friend from Hawaii and I felt I was able to share some of her heritege. Also, it is an interesting historically novel as well as a murder mystery.
Equiano is a famous story I read years ago, as a history minor. It is a controversal story of a slave who "did good".
The Kite Runner again, I have a friend who is Afghani and I felt in readin this I would get a better understanding of his culture.
Wendy Chilcote
East of Eden
Jane Eyre
Sound and the Fury
To Kill a Mockingbird
My favorite novels are common favorites.
Danielle Woods
Cronopios and Famas // Julio Cortazar
Rabbit Punches // Jason Ockert
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel // Amy Hempel
Novels:
If You Lived Here // Dana Sachs (local writer!)
Chronicle of a Death Foretold // Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Bell Jar // Sylvia Plath
Kathryn Starks
On the Road // Jack Kerouac (ditto)
Brave New World // Aldous Huxley
Weaveworld // Clive Barker
Crime and Punishment // Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Walden Two // B.F. Skinner
The Gunslinger Series // Stephen King
The Short Stories of Edgar Allen Poe // EAP
Each of the books and authors portray worlds different from what we know as the everyday. They may portray differences of ways to live (Kerouac), spiritual (Hesse), philosophical (Huxley), ethical (Dostoevsky), or fantastical (Barker) (and all these authors tend to fall under several of these categories at the same time). And they reveal not only what's missing in our own lives, but also indirectly point to what we should cherish in our lives. Each of these authors also found refreshingly new ways to write and present their views within intriguing and entertaining ways.
Kris Asher