The following list of proposed books is provided here for your review and consideration for next year's reading list.

Before suggesting a book, please be sure you have read the book yourself, and are willing to serve as a Discussion Leader if the book is selected for the Final Reading List. Also, think about whether the book is discussable or open to some interpretation, giving members something to talk about during the meeting. Do you think it would have appeal to most members? And please, we steer away from patently religious or political books!

To propose a book for next year, click HERE to email me, or phone me at 813-416-8453. I will update the list below so everyone can preview and study your idea.

Thanks for all the fine suggestions and input, everyone.

• The Tender Bar (J.R. Moehringer)
  Proposed by: Joyce S.
  
  Moehringer grew up listening for the sound of his missing father, a disc jockey who disappeared before J.R. spoke his first words. His mother was his world, his anchor, but J.R. needed something more. So, he turned to the patrons of a grand old New York saloon. There, the flamboyant characters along the bar taught him, tended him, and provided a kind of fatherhood by committee. Riveting, moving, and achingly funny, "The Tender Bar" is an evocative portrait of one boy's struggle to become a man.
  
  
• The Heights (Peter Hedges)
  Proposed by: Joyce S.
  
  Tim Welch and Kate Oliver are happily married, living the urban dream in Brooklyn Heights, until the wealthy and beautiful Anna Brody moves in nearby, forcing them to question if happiness is enough. Anna's arrival coincides with the forced retirement of Tim's father, a celebrated women's basketball coach, due to a sexual scandal; a lucrative job for Kate; and the reappearance of Kate's former love, now a television star. And while the entire neighborhood is fascinated with Anna, it's Tim and Kate she pulls into her orbit-intent on taking Tim as a lover-causing the seams of their marriage to fray and forcing them into situations they never would have predicted for themselves, even if the reader isn't exactly surprised at how things play out. The plot tends toward busy, but Hedges (What's Eating Gilbert Grape) keeps it under control, his sympathetically real characters holding down the novel's solid center.
  
  
• Finding Caruso (Kim Barnes)
  Proposed by: Joyce S.
  
  Seven years separate Buddy from his big brother, Lee, but the boys have always been close, comforting and protecting each other as their father-defeated by poor land and hostile weather-sank deeper into alcohol and rage. When a drink-fueled accident takes not only his life but that of the mother who tried so hard to shield her sons, the boys sell off what little remains of their daddy's tenant farm and leave Oklahoma. It is 1957, and work is still to be had in the logging camps of northern Idaho. But just outside Snake Junction, they stop at a roadhouse; and there, Lee's country-and-western talents get him a job. The two settle in, Lee to his music-and women and drink-and seventeen-year-old Buddy to roaming the landscape, at loose ends until a woman nearly twice his age turns up. Irene Sullivan is a smoky beauty, and Lee makes a play for her. But it is Buddy she wants. By turns darkly violent and heartbreakingly tender, Finding Carusois a work of extraordinary emotional power from an astonishingly original writer.
  
  
• Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human (Richard Wrangham)
  Proposed by: Joyce S.
  
  Ever since Darwin and The Descent of Man , the existence of humans has been attributed to our intelligence and adaptability. But in Catching Fire, renowned primatologist Richard Wrangham presents a startling alternative: our evolutionary success is the result of cooking. In a groundbreaking theory of our origins, Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the key factor in human evolution. When our ancestors adapted to using fire, humanity began. Once our hominid ancestors began cooking their food, the human digestive tract shrank and the brain grew. Time once spent chewing tough raw food could be sued instead to huntand to tend camp. Cooking became the basis for pair bonding and marriage, created the household, and even led to a sexual division of labor. Tracing the contemporary implications of our ancestors' diets, Catching Fire sheds new light on how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. A pathbreaking new theory of human evolution, Catching Fire will provoke controversy and fascinate anyone interested in our ancient origins--or in our modern eating habits.
  
  
• The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien)
  Proposed by: Joyce S.
  
  The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and of course, the character Tim O'Brien who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they miss the lives they left back home. Yet they find sympathy and kindness for strangers (the old man who leads them unscathed through the mine field, the girl who grieves while she dances), and love for each other, because in Vietnam they are the only family they have. We hear the voices of the men and build images upon their dialogue. The way they tell stories about others, we hear them telling stories about themselves. With the creative verve of the greatest fiction and the intimacy of a searing autobiography, The Things They Carried is a testament to the men who risked their lives in America's most controversial war. It is also a mirror held up to the frailty of humanity. Ultimately The Things They Carried and its myriad protagonists call to order the courage, determination, and luck we all need to survive.
  
  
• Short Stories by Alice Munro. (Alice Munroe)
  Proposed by: Joyce S.
  
  Latest anthologies. Frequent contributor to New Yorker. Dear Life" 2012.
  Too Much Happiness 2010.
  
  
• Painter of Silence (Georgina Harding)
  Proposed by: Dorothy B.
  
  From the B&N Overview: It is the early 1950s. A nameless man is found on the steps of the hospital in Iasi, Romania. He is deaf and mute, but a young nurse named Safta recognizes him from the past and brings him paper and pencils so that he might draw. Gradually, memories appear on the page: the man is Augustin, the cook?s son ....
  Georgina Harding?s kaleidoscopic new novel will appeal to readers of Anne Michaels, Michael Ondaatje, and Sandor Marai.
  
  
• The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
  Proposed by: Kathy S.
  
  It's been a long time since I read this in school; would like to revisit it, as an adult.
  
  From the B&N Overview: The mysterious Jay Gatsby embodies the American notion that it is possible to redefine oneself and persuade the world to accept that definition. Gatsby's youthful neighbor, Nick Carraway, fascinated with the display of enormous wealth in which Gatsby revels, finds himself swept up in the lavish lifestyle of Long Island society during the Jazz Age. Considered Fitzgerald's best work, The Great Gatsby is a mystical, timeless story of integrity and cruelty, vision and despair. The timeless story of Jay Gatsby and his love for Daisy Buchanan is widely acknowledged to be the closest thing to the Great American Novel ever written.
  
  
• Truth and Beauty (Ann Patchett)
  Proposed by: Susan R.
  
  From B&N.com writeup:
  
  Overview
  Ann Patchett and the late Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writers? Workshop, began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In Grealy?s critically acclaimed memoir, Autobiography of a Face, she wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, years of chemotherapy and radiation, and endless reconstructive surgeries. In Truth & Beauty, the story isn?t Lucy?s life or Ann?s life, but the parts of their lives they shared. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans twenty years, from the long winters of the Midwest, to surgical wards, to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs, and despair, this is what it means to be part of....
  
  
• Angle of Repose (Wallace Stegner)
  Proposed by: Susan R.
  
  From B&N.com writeup:
  
  Overview
  Angle of Repose tells the story of Lyman Ward, a retired professor of history and author of books about the Western frontier, who returns to his ancestral home of Grass Valley, California, in the Sierra Nevada. Wheelchair-bound with a crippling bone disease and dependent on others for his every need, Ward is nonetheless embarking on a search of monumental proportions - to rediscover his grandmother, now long dead, who made her own journey to Grass Valley nearly a hundred years earlier. Like other great quests in literature, Lyman Ward's investigation leads...
  
  
• Indian Country (Philip Caputo)
  Proposed by: Ed C.
  
  A Vietnam veteran who witnesses, and is perhaps responsible for, the death of his best friend on the battlefield faces psychological torment when he returns to civilian life. A changed man, he feels compelled to atone for his friend's death and lives a facsimile of the one the dead man might have lived. Violence, strong language, and explicit descriptions of sex
  
  
• The Fourth Procedure (Stanley Pottinger)
  Proposed by: Ed C.
  
  Congressman MacLeod can't forget the long-ago death of his pregnant girlfriend. MacLeod and his lover, attorney Victoria Winters, are targeted by pro-lifers. Her friend, a surgeon, is driven to perform mysterious procedures. Two men who bombed an abortion clinic are found dead with baby doll implants. Strong language, violence, and explicit descriptions of sex
  
  
• Thirty-Three Men Inside the Miraculous Survival and Dramatic Rescue of the Chilean Miners (Jonathan Franklin)
  Proposed by: Ed C.
  
  Franklin, an American reporter stationed in South America for fifteen years, investigates the August 5, 2010, copper-mine explosion in northern Chile that trapped thirty-three men underground for ten weeks. Describes the miners' ordeal and highlights the rescue attempt that brought them to the surface. 2011
  
  
• 97 Orchard Street (Linda Granfield)
  Proposed by: Caroline S.
  
  Caroline remembered this book about immigrant life, after reading the Fabiano book, Elizabeth Street.
  
  
• Bel Canto (Ann Patchett)
  Proposed by: Kathy S.
  
  From B&N.com writeup:
  
  Overview
  Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxane Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening?until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds....
  
  
• The Cider House Rules (John Irving)
  Proposed by: Kathy S.
  
  From the B&N.com writeup:
  
  Overview
  Editorial Reviews From Barnes & Noble It has been said before, and it shall be said 1,000 times again: John Irving is the American Dickens. Rich in characterization, epic in scope, The Cider House Rules is the heart-wrenching story of orphan Homer Wells and his guardian, Dr. Wilbur Larch. With nods of affection to both David Copperfield and Jane Eyre, Irving's novel follows Homer on his journey from innocence to experience, brilliantly depicting the boy's struggle to find his place in the world.
  First published in 1985, The Cider House Rules is John Irving's sixth novel. Set in rural Maine in the first half of this century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch - saint and obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Cloud's, ether addict and abortionist. It is also the story of Dr. Larch's favorite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted.
  
  
• Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson)
  Proposed by: Ray O.
  
  
• The Freedom Riders (Raymond Arsenault)
  Proposed by: Jean K.
  
  Having just read and discussed the womens' movement from Gail Collins book The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, we have the opportunity to read the other half of the story in USFSP professor Ray Arsenault's recent book, The Freedom Riders. Author Collins tied the two movements together during the tumultuous 60s and 70s. I reccomend reading his abbreviated version now in print.
  
  
• The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War 1890-1914 (Barbara Tuchman)
  Proposed by: Nancy R.
  
  From the B&N Overview: "...The fateful quarter-century leading up to the World War I was a time when the world of Privilege still existed in Olympian luxury and the world of Protest was heaving in its pain, its power, and its hate. The age was the climax of a century of the most accelerated rate of change in history, a cataclysmic shaping of destiny. In The Proud Tower, Barbara Tuchman concentrates on society rather than the state. With an artist's selectivity, Tuchman bings to vivid life the people, places, and events that shaped the years leading up to the Great War...."
  
  
• Art and Madness: A Memoir of Lust without Reason (Anne Roiphe)
  Proposed by: Susan R.
  
  From the BN website, Library Journal review: "In this bold book, Roiphe, a veteran novelist and memoirist, focuses on her years among the literary icons of the late 1950s and 1960s. Growing up in a wealthy, dysfunctional Jewish family in New York, she looked to artists and writers as her salvation. At 23, she married Jack Richardson, a promising playwright. Putting her own writing ambitions on hold, she typed his manuscripts and ..."
  
  
• A Bittersweet Season: Caring for Our Aging Parents--and Ourselves (Jane Gross)
  Proposed by: Susan R.
  
  
  
• Unbroken: A World War II Airman's Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption (Laura Hillenbrand)
  Proposed by: Susan R.
  
  From the B&N Overview: ":On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane?s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys...."
  
  
• Just Kids (Patti Smith)
  Proposed by: Susan R.
  
  From the B&N Overview: "Winner of the 2010 National Book Award for Nonfiction It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation....Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame. "
  
  
• Montecore: The Silence of the Tiger (Jonas Hassen Khemiri)
  Proposed by: Susan R.
  
  From the B&N Overview: "At the start of this dazzlingly inventive novel from Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Abbas, a world-famous photographer and estranged father to a young novelist?also named Jonas Hassen Khemiri?is standing on a luxurious rooftop terrace in New York City. He is surrounded by rock stars, intellectuals, and political luminaries gathered to toast his fiftieth birthday. And yet how did Abbas, a dirt-poor Tunisian orphan and Swedish émigré, come to enjoy such success?..."
  
  
• Thoughts Without Cigarettes: A Memoir (Oscar Hijuelos)
  Proposed by: Susan R.
  
  From the B&N Overview: "The beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist turns his pen to the real people and places that have influenced his life and, in turn, his literature. Growing up in 1950's working-class New York City to Cuban immigrants, Hijuelos journey to literary acclaim is the evolution of an unlikely writer. Oscar Hijuelos has enchanted readers with vibrant characters who hunger for success, love, and self-acceptance. In his first work of nonfiction, Hijuelos writes from the heart about the people and places that inspired his international bestselling novels. Born in Manhattan's Morningside Heights to Cuban immigrants in 1951, Hijuelos introduces readers to the colorful circumstances of his upbringing. The son of a Cuban hotel worker and exuberant poetry- writing mother, his story, played out against the backdrop of an often prejudiced working-class neighborhood, takes on an even richer dimension when his relationship to his family and culture changes forever. During a sojourn in pre-Castro Cuba with his mother, he catches a disease that sends him into a Dickensian home for terminally ill children. The yearlong stay . . . "
  
  
• The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (Nicholas Carr)
  Proposed by: Susan R.
  
  From the B&N Overview: "?Is Google making us stupid?? When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net?s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet?s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by ?tools of the mind??from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer?Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience... "
  
  
• Everyman (Philip Roth)
  Proposed by: Caroline S.
  
  This book won the Pen/Faulkner Award. The book is a 3rd person account of the end of a man's life when he has to confront his own mortality and what he's done and failed to do. Amazingly well written and very honest in its assessment of the main character who you feel sure is a reflection of the author on himself.
  
  
• Olive Kitteridge (Elizabeth Strout)
  Proposed by: Susan R.
  
  Susan noted that this is a novel about an opinionated women. Pulitzer Prize winner.
  
  
• The Exiles (William Stuart Long)
  Proposed by: Ed C.
  
  This book is number 1 in a series of 12. (Ed is up to book 5, he says.) These are historial novels about the forming of Austrailia.
  
  First book in "The Australians" series, historical novels set in the harsh Australian wilderness. In England, widowed Rachel and her fifteen-year-old daughter Jenny mistakenly fall in with thieves. Falsely accused the two are transported on separate convict ships to New South Wales, but only Jenny survives the journey. One of the few settlers to make friends with the natives, her life is complicated by several lovers. Some strong language.
  ISBN-13: 9780440123743
  
  
• The Swan Thieves (Elizabeth Kostova)
  Proposed by: Dorothy B.
  
  Synopses (tw) provided by Dorothy: Psychiatrist Andrew MARLOW desperate to understand the secret that torments renowned painter Robert Oliver embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism. His ordered life thrown into disarray when he begins treating an unstable genius artist who has recently attacked a canvas at the National Gallery of Art, psychiatrist and art hobiest Andrew Marlowe struggles to understand the secret that torments the artist. Dorothy says this book should promote good discussion within the group.
  
  kss note: this came out in Hard Cover in Jan 2010, paperback is being issued soon. Apparently fairly popular....
  
  
• Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell)
  Proposed by: Gale B.
  
  UPDATED INFO: Kathy found a link to an audio interview by author David Mitchell, on that BBC World Book Club site. Click to listen.
  Gale notes that this book was published a few years ago, written by David Mitchell. It's a tale broken into 6 parts, or narratives, with little obvious connection to each other until the end of the story, when everything comes together clearly. The story takes place in a variety of settings across time; one reviewer referred to this novel as a "puzzle book" genre.
  
  
• The Great Alone (Janet Dailey)
  Proposed By: Ed C.
  An historical saga that begins in the 17th century with Luka, a Russian fur trader. The story follows the stalwart family and their descendants as they move through the harsh landscape and play their parts in Alaskan history. Some strong language and explicit descriptions of sex.
  
  
• The Daily Coyote: A Story of Love, Survival, and Trust in the Wilds of Wyoming (Shreve Stockton)
  Proposed By: Ray O. (NOTE: very limited library availability)
  After leaving NYC and San Francisco, Shreve falls in love with Wyoming. She meets up with a widower, Mike, who is about her age and who shoots coyotes while working for the state of Wyoming. Mike brings her a coyote pup, Charlie, which she raises and in the process starts a web page and sends out daily photos of the Coyote. In need of money, she starts charging a fee to continue receiving the photos as well as developing a calendar showing her coyote photos - also for sale. She also gets a contract to write the book by the same name. Neither her love life with Mike nor the Coyote goes smoothly. Heavily illustrated with colored photos of Charlie, it is an easy read at 288 pages and conceivably could be coupled with another selection in the same month.The book is akin to Marley and Me and Dewey Read More.