Titles for World Literature Book Club

Read over the options for the book club unit. Complete the online form to make your selections (rank
these choices). Please understand that I will do the best I can to give you the book that you want, but
not everyone will get his/her first choice.

All Quiet on the Western Front. Erich Remarque. 1929. (Author is German;
book set in Germany.)
Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I.
Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned,
they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as
horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight
against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same
generation but different uniforms against each other--if only he can come out of
the war alive.
Anthem. Ayn Rand. 1937. (Author is Russian; book set in a futuristic society.)
Anthem is written as the diary of Equality 7-2521, a young man living in a future
in which people have lost all knowledge of individualism, to the point of not even
knowing words like "I" or "mine." Everyone lives and works in collective groups,
with all aspects of daily life dictated by "councils" -- the Council of Vocations, the
Council of Scholars, etc. His curiosity leads him to forbidden discoveries and
eventually to exile, where he makes the greatest discovery of all.
Feed. M.T. Anderson. 2002. (Author is American; book set in a futuristic
America.)
Anderson imagines a society dominated by the feed, a next-generation
Internet/television hybrid that is directly hardwired into the brain. "Chats" flow
privately from mind to mind; Titus flies an "upcar"; teens go "mal" (short for
"malfunctioning") in illegal sites that intoxicate them by scrambling the feed.
Teen narrator Titus never questions his world, in which corporations dominate the
information stream, and kids learn to employ the feed more efficiently in
School (which is trademarked because schools are controlled by major
corporations). But everything changes when he and his pals travel to the moon for
spring break. There Titus meets home-schooled Violet, who thinks for herself.
Book has profanity.
Like Water for Chocolate. Laura Esquivel. 1992. (Author is Mexican; book set
in Mexico.)
Set in turn-of-the-century Mexico, it tells the romantic tale of Tita De La Garza
whose fate, dictated by family tradition, is to remain single so that she can take
care of her mother in her old age. Tita has grown up under the tutelage of the
spinster cook Nacha and has learned all the family recipes and remedies. When
Pedro, Tita's admirer, asks for Tita's hand in marriage, her mother refuses
permission, offering instead Tita's older sister, Rosaura. Pedro accepts, thinking it
will be a way to stay close to his one true love. But Tita doesn't know his thinking
and, crushed by what she sees as betrayal, she must make the wedding cake.
Crying as she bakes, her tears mingle with the ingredients and unleash a wave of
longing in everyone who eats a piece. It is just the beginning of the realization
that Tita has special talents, both in the kitchen and beyond.
Never Cry Wolf. Farley Mowatt. 2001. (Author is Canadian; book set in
Canada.)
Hordes of bloodthirsty wolves are slaughtering the arctic caribou, and the
government's Wildlife Service assigns naturalist Farely Mowat to investigate.
Mowat is dropped alone onto the frozen tundra, where he begins his mission to
live among the howling wolf packs and study their waves. Contact with his quarry
comes quickly, and Mowat discovers not a den of marauding killers but a
courageous family of skillful providers and devoted protectors of their young. As
Mowat comes closer to the wolf world, he comes to fear with them on onslaught
of bounty hunters and government exterminators out to erase the noble wolf
community from the Arctic.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. 1962.
(Author is Russian; book set in Siberia.)
From the icy blast of reveille through the sweet release of sleep, Ivan Denisovich
endures. A common carpenter, he is one of millions viciously imprisoned for
countless years on baseless charges, sentenced to the waking nightmares of the
Soviet work camps in Siberia. Even in the face of degrading hatred, where life is
reduced to a bowl of gruel and a rare cigarette, hope and dignity prevail. This
novel is considered one of the most significant works ever to emerge from Soviet
Russia. It is both a graphic picture of work camp life and a moving tribute to
mans will to prevail over relentless dehumanization.
A Thousand Splendid Suns. Khaled Hoisseini. 2007 (Author born in
Afghanistan; book set in Afghanistan.)
Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family,
Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and
by fate. As they endure the ever-escalating dangers around them-in their home as
well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both
sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course
not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power
and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to
shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the
memory of love, that is often the key to survival. Includes sexual violence
Wuthering Heights. Emily Bronte. 1847. (Author is British; book is set in
England)
Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic
love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by
Catherine's father. After Mr. Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff is bullied and
humiliated by Catherine's brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for
Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later
as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his
former miseries. The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but
the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of
the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make
this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.