Faculty & Friends Club of FSU: Book Discussion Group

(selected books through the years)

2009

A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz
Dreams from my Father, by Barack Obama
Vivaldi’s Virgins, by Barbara Quick
Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan
A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time, by Greg Mortenson and D.A. Relin
The Best Stories of Anton Chekhov, by Anton Chekhov (ed. John Kulka)
Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid, by Jimmy Carter
The House on Boulevard Street, by David Kirby
The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga
The Fall, by Albert Camus

2008

Saturday, Ian McEwen

The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie (was at FSU)

June Bug’s Grocery and the Cornfield Jook. . Mary Sterner Lawson

The Summer before Dark, Doris Lessing

Flights of Love, Bernhard Schlink

The Year 1000, Robert Lacey

Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe

Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Mario Vargas Llosa

The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck

Saving Fish from Drowning, by Amy Tan

2007

The Story of Lucy Gault, William Trevor

The Lost Painting:  The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece, Jonathan Harr

March, Geraldine Brooks

Bread and Wine, Ignazio Silone

One Thousand White Women, Jim Fergus

The Interpreter, Suki Kim

1776, David McCullough

Runaway, Alice Munro

Emma, Jane Austin

Wings of Fire, Charles Todd

2006

Babel, Barbara Hamby

The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood

Wild Swans, Jung Chang

Amsterdam, Ian McEwen

Unless, Carole Shields

The Sound of the Mountain, Yanunari Kawabata

A Different Drummer, William Melvin Kelley

The Periodic Table, Primo Levi

American Prometheus:  The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kai Bird

The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon

2005

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller

Crabwalk, Gunter Grass

Girl Talk, Julianna Baggott

Victoria’s Daughters, Jerrold Packard

Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon

The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

A Hole in Texas, Herman Wouk

The Piano Tuner, Daniel Philippe Mason

Cane River, Lalita Tademy

2004

The Next Step in the Dance, Tim Gautreaux

Life is So Good, George Dawson and Richard Glaubman

Colors of the Mountain, Da Chen

Buddha, Karen Armstrong

Smoke and Mirrors, Neil Gaiman

Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides

Alas, Babylon, Pat Frank

Life of Pi, Yann Martel

The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Kidd Monk

Killing Mr. Watson, Peter Matthiessen

2003

Soul Mountain, Xiangian Gao

Nickle and Dimed: on Not Getting by in America, Barbara Ehrenreich

Five Quarters of the Orange, Joanne Harris

Atonement, Ian McEwan

Empire Falls, Richard Russo

Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, Bernard Lewis

Mid-Passage, Wendy Bishop

Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Robert Olen Butler

The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany, Martin Goldsmith

2002

The Monkey’s Raincoat, Robert Crais

The Last Survivor: Legacies of Dachau, Timothy Ryback

High Tide in Tucson, Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

Native Speaker, Chang-Rae Lee

Seven Daughters of Eve, Bryan Sykes

Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier

Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs and Declar of Indepen, John Hockenberry

Two Old Women, Velma Wallis

The Arcanum, Janet Gleeson

2001

The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Melissa Bank

Thirteen Stories, Eudora Welty

A Lesson before Dying, Ernest Gaines

The Reader, Bernhard Schlink

The Smile of the Acrobat, Audrey Wilson

The Professor and the Madman: a Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford Dictionary, Simon Winchester

The Samurai’s Garden, Gail Tsukiyama

The Love of a Good Woman, Alice Munro

Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. I, Blanche Wiesen Cook

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie

The Hours, by Michael Cunningham

2000

Sperm Wars, Dr. Robin Baker

Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom, and Reinventing Womanhood, Carolyn Heilbrun

Slaves in the Family, by Edward Ball

Travels of William Bartram, William Bartram

The Alphabet of Desire, Barbara Hamby

What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, Pearl Cleage

Dancing at the Rascal Fair, Ivan Doig

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling

Baltasar and Blimunda, José Saramago

1999

Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier

Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt

Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden

All Over But the Shoutin’, Rick Bragg

The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

The Paperboy, Pete Dexter

Three mysteries: A Certain Justice, P.D. James

The Seville Communion, Arturo Perez-Reverte

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, Walter Mosley

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

Little Altars Everywhere, Rebecca Wells

The Concubine’s Children, Denise Chong

1998

How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, Julia Alvarez

Stones from the River, Ursula Hegi

Original Sin, P.D. James

The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris

The Cunning Man, Robertson Davies

Debt to Pleasure, John Lanchester

A Civil Action, Jonathan Harr

Bridges to Humanity, Bruce Grindal

Faith and Treason, Antonia Fraser

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

Eva Luna, Isabelle Allende

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

The Irish R.M., E. Sommerville and Martin Ross

What Mad Pursuit, Francis Crick

Joshua, Joseph Girzone

Whose Body, Dorothy Sayers, and Indemnity Only, S. Paretsky

Necessary Losses, Judith Viorst

Burden of Proof, Scott Turow

Jump and Other Stories, Nadine Gordimer

Life and Death in Shanghai, Nien Cheng

1991

My Antonia, Willa Cather

Exit the Rainmaker, Jonathan Coleman

The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov

The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco

The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir

The Road Less Traveled, Scott Peck

Soviet Women, Francine Duplessix Gray

Fair and Tender Ladies, Lee Smith

The Oldest Living Confederate Widow. . , Allan Gurganus

1990

Beloved, Toni Morrison

The House of the Spirits, Isabelle Allende

Her Mother’s Daughter, Marilyn French

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

The Old Gringo, Carlos Fuentes

Wedding Song, Naguib Mahfouz

Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy

Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

1989

The Country Girls’ Trilogy, Edna O’Brien

The Dead and the Living, Sharon Olds

The Periodic Table, Primo Levi

A Short History of a Small Place, T. Pearson

The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin

Bonfire of the Vanities, Thomas Wolf

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Barcia Marquez

Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher

The Optimist’s Daughter, Eudora Welty

1988

Womenfolk:  Growing Up Down South, S. Abbot

Life of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell

The Weaker Vessel, Antonia Frazer

West with the Night, Beryl Markham

The Beet Queen, Louise Erdich

Cold Sassy Tree, Olive Burns

Emma, Jane Austin

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman

Gone to Soldiers, Marge Piercy

Three mysteries, by Dorothy Sayer, Tony Hillerman, and Dick Francis

1987

Opening Nights, Janet Burroway

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Anne Dillard

The Accidental Tourist, Anne Tyler

The Good Apprentice, Iris Murdoch

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

Love Medicine, Louise Erdich

Her First American, Lore Segal

Foreign Affairs, Alison. Lurie

Children of Sanchez, Oscar Lewis

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks

Not Wanted on the Voyage, T. Findley

1986

The Moviegoer, Walker Percy

Nectar in a Sieve, K. Markanduyer

Burmese Days, George Orwell

Middlemarch, George Eliot

Old Wives’ Tales, A. Bennet

Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton

Lucky Jim, K. Amis

The Once and Future King, T. H. White

Out of Africa,  Isak Dinesen

Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

I, Claudius, Robert Graves

1985

1984

1983

The Great Railway Bazaar, Paul Theroux

The Lost Steps, Carlos Fuentes

1982

The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford

Vanity Fair,  W.M. Thackery

Sophie’s Choice, William Styron

The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

Fifth Business, Robertson Davies

Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula LeGuin

October Light, Gardner

Small is Beautiful,

1981

1980

1979

1978

Trinity, Lion Uris

Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

Kinflicks, Lisa Alther

The Sacred and the Profane, Iris Murdoch

1977

Old Age, Simone de Beauvoir

Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon

Orlando, Virginia Woolf’

Memoirs of a Survivor, Doris Lessing

Unfinished Woman, Lillian Hellman

Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene

Raw Silk, Janet Burroway

A Mass for the Dead, William Gibson

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Fathers and Sons, Turgenev

Faculty & Friends Club of FSU: Book Discussion Group