{"id":3168,"date":"2024-09-01T10:00:37","date_gmt":"2024-09-01T17:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/?p=3168"},"modified":"2024-09-06T11:43:50","modified_gmt":"2024-09-06T18:43:50","slug":"ppl140-2000-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/2024\/ppl140-2000-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"PPL140: 2001-2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

Image Credit: “reading#2” by rschmidtz, 2015, used courtesy of CC by 2.0<\/a> Attribution License<\/p>\n

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\"CoverThe Life of Pi<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Yann Martel, 2001\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yann Martel’s 2001 novel Life of Pi<\/em> tells the incredible story of a sixteen-year-old Indian boy’s survival drifting across the Pacific Ocean for 227 days trapped in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. An international best seller and winner of the Man Booker Prize, Life of Pi<\/em> combines the thrill and suspense of a survival narrative with the complexity and depth of a postmodern novel to tell the story of Pi, a gentle-natured Hindu-Muslim-Christian, and his companion, Richard Parker, a starving, 450-pound adult tiger. With a focus on the overlap between religion and science and the gap between what is known and what can never be known, the novel tests the reader’s suspension of disbelief at every turn as Pi’s journey across the Pacific steadily frays reality. An alternative version of Pi’s survival, delivered unceremoniously at the end of the novel, casts into question the plot that comes before it. But billed as a story that can make a nonbeliever believe in God, Life of Pi<\/em> leaves its readers desperate to believe in the better story: the one with the animals.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Read Along:\u00a0The Cauliflower<\/em><\/a> by Nicola Barker <\/strong>(2016)<\/p>\n

To the world, he is Sri Ramakrishna–godly avatar, esteemed spiritual master, beloved guru. To Rani Rashmoni, she of low caste and large inheritance, he is the brahmin fated to defy tradition. But to Hriday, his nephew and longtime caretaker, he is just Uncle–maddening, bewildering Uncle, prone to entering trances at the most inconvenient of times, known to sneak out to the forest at midnight to perform dangerous acts of self-effacement, who must be vigilantly safeguarded not only against jealous enemies and devotees with ulterior motives, but also against that most treasured yet insidious of sulfur-rich vegetables: the cauliflower.\u00a0Rather than puzzling the shards of history and legend together, Barker shatters the mirror again and rearranges the pieces. The result is a biographical novel viewed through a kaleidoscope. Dazzlingly inventive and brilliantly comic, irreverent and mischievous, The Cauliflower<\/em> delivers us into the divine playfulness of a twenty-first-century literary master.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Cover<\/a>The Kite Runner <\/strong><\/em><\/a>by Khaled Hosseini, 2003 (2005 One City, One Story Selection)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Khaled Hosseini’s debut\u00a0novel<\/span>,\u00a0The<\/span>\u00a0Kite<\/span>\u00a0Runner<\/span><\/i>–recognized as\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0first English-language\u00a0novel<\/span> by an Afghan writer–became a sensation after its publication in 2003, providing a window into one of the world’s most intense hotspots, Afghanistan, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9\/11 and American-assisted military action against the reigning Taliban. The novel picks up in Kabul in the 1960s, during the childhood of Amir, the narrator. Amir has a brotherly relationship with the son of his father’s servant, Hassan, but their ethnic differences–the masters being Pashtun, the servants Hazara–foster discrepancies in their perspectives and self-understanding. In time, a tragedy, hinted at from the first page, changes Amir’s and Hassan’s lives forever.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Read Along: Swing Time<\/em><\/a> by Zadie Smith\u00a0<\/strong>(2016)<\/p>\n

An ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from North West London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of\u00a0White Teeth<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0On Beauty<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Two brown girls dream of being dancers–but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It’s a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early twenties, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either.<\/p>\n

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\"Cover<\/a>Gilead<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by Marilynne Robinson, 2004<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gilead<\/span><\/i>\u00a0by Marilynne Robinson was published in 2004 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, amid widespread acclaim. This epistolary novel presents a sympathetic portrait of Reverend John Ames, who writes about his life and his beliefs ever mindful of the fact that he has only a short time to live. Reverend Ames takes up the task of writing in the hopes that his little boy will read this book when he is an adult and thus become acquainted with the father he may barely remember otherwise.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Read Along:\u00a0The Magic Kingdom<\/em><\/a> by Russell Banks\u00a0<\/strong>(2022)<\/p>\n

Property speculator Harley Mann begins recording his life story onto a reel-to-reel machine, reflecting on his youth in the early twentieth century. He recounts that after his father’s sudden death, his family migrated down to Florida to join a Shaker colony. Led by Elder John, a generous man with a mysterious past, the colony devoted itself to labor, faith, and charity, rejecting all temptations that lay beyond the property. Though this way of life initially saved Harley and his family from complete ruin, when Harley began falling in love with Sadie Pratt, a consumptive patient living on the grounds, his loyalty to the Shakers and their conservative worldview grew strained and, ultimately, broke. As Harley dictates his story across more than half a century–meditating on youth, Florida’s everchanging landscape, and the search for an American utopia–the truth about Sadie, Elder John, and the Shakers comes to light, clarifying the past and present alike. With an expert eye and stunning vision, Russell Banks delivers a wholly captivating portrait of a man navigating Americana and the passage of time<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Never Let Me Go<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005<\/strong><\/p>\n

As children Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.<\/p>\n

Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special\u2013and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together. Suspenseful, moving, beautifully atmospheric, Never Let Me Go<\/em>\u00a0is another classic by the author of\u00a0The Remains of the Day<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Read Along:\u00a0Memory of Water<\/em><\/a> by Emmi It\u00e4ranta\u00a0<\/strong>(2014)<\/p>\n

Global warming has changed the world’s geography and its politics. Wars are waged over water, and China rules Europe, including the Scandinavian Union, which is occupied by the power state of New Qian. In this far north place, seventeen-year-old Noria Kaitio is learning to become a tea master like her father, a position that holds great responsibility and great secrets. Tea masters alone know the location of hidden water sources, including the natural spring that Noria’s father tends, which once provided water for her whole village.<\/p>\n

But secrets do not stay hidden forever, and after her father’s death the army starts watching their town–and Noria. And as water becomes even scarcer, Noria must choose between safety and striking out, between knowledge and kinship.Imaginative and engaging, lyrical and poignant, Memory of Water<\/em> is an indelible novel that portrays a future that is all too possible.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>The Road<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Cormac McCarthy, 2006<\/strong><\/p>\n

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food–and each other.<\/p>\n

The Road<\/i>\u00a0is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Read Along:\u00a0The Dog Stars<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by Peter Heller\u00a0<\/strong>(2012)<\/p>\n

Hig survived the flu that killed everyone he knows. His wife is gone, his friends are dead, he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, his only neighbor a gun-toting misanthrope. In his 1956 Cessna, Hig flies the perimeter of the airfield or sneaks off to the mountains to fish and to pretend that things are the way they used to be. But when a random transmission somehow beams through his radio, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life–something like his old life–exists beyond the airport. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return–not enough fuel to get him home–following the trail of the static-broken voice on the radio. But what he encounters and what he must face–in the people he meets, and in himself–is both better and worse than anything he could have hoped for.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Book<\/a>The Story of Edgar Sawtelle<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by David Wroblewski, 2008<\/strong><\/p>\n

Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose thoughtful companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar’s lifelong friend and ally. But with the unexpected return of Claude, Edgar’s paternal uncle, turmoil consumes the Sawtelles’ once peaceful home. When Edgar’s father dies suddenly, Claude insinuates himself into the life of the farm–and into Edgar’s mother’s affections. Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father’s death, but his plan backfires–spectacularly. Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father’s murderer and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs turn Edgar ever homeward. David Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes–the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain–create a riveting family saga, a brilliant exploration of the limits of language, and a compulsively readable modern classic.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Read Along:\u00a0Aquarium<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by David Vann\u00a0<\/strong>(2015)<\/p>\n

Twelve year old Caitlin lives alone with her mother–a docker at the local container port–in subsidized housing next to an airport in Seattle. Each day, while she waits to be picked up after school, Caitlin visits the local aquarium to study the fish. Gazing at the creatures within the watery depths, Caitlin accesses a shimmering universe beyond her own. When she befriends an old man at the tanks one day, who seems as enamored of the fish as she, Caitlin cracks open a dark family secret and propels her once-blissful relationship with her mother toward a precipice of terrifying consequence.<\/p>\n

In crystalline, chiseled yet graceful prose,\u00a0Aquarium<\/i>\u00a0takes us into the heart of a brave young girl whose longing for love and capacity for forgiveness transforms the damaged people around her.<\/p>\n

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\"Cover<\/a>A Visit from the Goon Squad<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Jennifer Egan, 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bennie Salazar, a<\/span>n a<\/span>ging former punk rocker a<\/span>nd record executive, a<\/span>nd Sasha, the<\/span> passionate, troubled young woman he employs confront the<\/span>ir pasts in this powerful story a<\/span>bout how rebellion a<\/span>ges, influence corrupts, habits turn to a<\/span>ddictions, lifelong friendships fluctuate a<\/span>nd turn, a<\/span>nd how a<\/span>rt a<\/span>nd music have the<\/span> power to redeem.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Read Along:\u00a0Utopia Avenue<\/em><\/a> by David Mitchell\u00a0<\/strong>(2020)<\/p>\n

Soho, London, 1967. Folk-rock-psychedelic quartet Utopia<\/span> Avenue<\/span> is formed. Guitarist Jasper de Zoet, a shy, half-Dutch public-school musical prodigy, was hearing voices long before he dropped acid. Keyboardist Elf Holloway must defy the prejudices of her bank manager father, her housewife mother, and her age to forge her own career. Bassist Dean Moss cannot, will not, spend his life on the factory floor like everyone else in Gravesend. Band manager Levon Frankland–gay, Jewish, and Canadian–is not unduly burdened by conscience. The drummer is a drummer. Over two years and two albums, Utopia<\/span> Avenue<\/span> navigates the dark end of the Sixties: its parties, drugs and egos, political change and personal tragedy; and the trials of life as a working band in London, the provinces, European capitals and, finally, the promised land of America. What is art? What is fame? What is music? How can the whole be more than the sum of its parts? Can idealism change the world? How does your youth shape your life? This is the story of Utopia<\/span> Avenue<\/span>. Not everyone lives to the end<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Austerlitz <\/a><\/em>by W. G. Sebald, 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

Austerlitz<\/span><\/em> is the story of a man’s search for the answer to his life’s central riddle. A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz<\/span> is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, Austerlitz<\/span> follows their trail back to the world he left behind a half century before. There, faced with the void at the heart of twentieth-century Europe, he struggles to rescue his heritage from oblivion.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Read Along:\u00a0The Garden of Evening Mists<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by Twan Eng Tan\u00a0<\/strong>(2012)<\/p>\n

Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of<\/span> a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of<\/span> Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden<\/span> in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former garden<\/span>er of<\/span> the emperor of<\/span> Japan. Despite her hatred of<\/span> the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden<\/span> in memory of<\/span> her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon comes.” Then she can design a garden<\/span> for herself. As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the garden<\/span>er and his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the Garden<\/span> of<\/span> Evening<\/span> Mists<\/span> remains a place of<\/span> mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of<\/span> how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of<\/span> all?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Gone Girl<\/strong><\/em><\/a> by Gillian Flynn, 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy’s diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge\u00a0.<\/b>\u00a0Under mounting pressure from the police and the media–as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents–the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter–but is he really a killer?<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Read Along:\u00a0In the Blood<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by Lisa Unger\u00a0<\/strong>(2014)<\/p>\n

Lana Granger lives a life of lies. She has told so many lies about where she comes from and who she is that the truth is like a cloudy nightmare she can’t quite recall. About to graduate from college and with her trust fund almost tapped out, she takes a job babysitting a troubled boy named Luke. Expelled from schools all over the country, the manipulative young Luke is accustomed to control\u00adling the people in his life. But, in Lana, he may have met his match. Or has Lana met hers? When Lana’s closest friend, Beck, mysteriously disappears, Lana resumes her lying ways–to friends, to the police, to herself. The police have a lot of questions for Lana when the story about her where\u00adabouts the night Beck disappeared doesn’t jibe with eyewitness accounts. Lana will do anything to hide the truth, but it might not be enough to keep her ominous secrets buried: someone else knows about Lana’s lies. And he’s dying to tell.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Americanah<\/a><\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be Black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9\/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Read Along:\u00a0The Bad Immigrant<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by Sefi Atta\u00a0<\/strong>(2021)<\/p>\n

Through the voice of her first male protagonist, Atta peels away nuanced layers to expose the realities of migration from Nigeria to the USA. Covering a wide range of issues, including interracial and intra-racial tensions, and familial strains exacerbated in a new geographic and cultural environment, this novel is a thoroughgoing exposition of the many challenges that confront a modern migrant, told from the perspective of a protagonist whose sophistication and educational prowess is no guarantee of success in a country that is prone to valuing conformity over merit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bestselling Fiction in the U.S. 2001-2015<\/h3>\n

On the Street Where You Live<\/i><\/a> by Mary Higgins Clark<\/p>\n

The Summons <\/i><\/a>by John Grisham<\/p>\n

The Da Vinci Code<\/a> <\/i>by Dan Brown<\/p>\n

The Broker<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>by John Grisham<\/p>\n

For One More Day <\/i><\/a>by Mitch Albom<\/p>\n

A Thousand Splendid Suns <\/i><\/a>by Khaled Hosseini<\/p>\n

The Appeal<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>by John Grisham<\/p>\n

The Lost Symbol<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>by Dan Brown<\/p>\n

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest <\/em><\/a>by Stieg Larsson<\/p>\n

Dead Reckoning<\/i><\/a> by Charlaine Harris<\/p>\n

Fifty Shades of Grey<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by E.L. James<\/p>\n

Inferno<\/em><\/a> by Dan Brown<\/p>\n

The Goldfinch<\/a> <\/i>by Donna Tartt<\/p>\n

The Girl on the Train<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>by Paula Hawkins<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Descriptions and overviews from The Gale Literature Resource Center, NoveList Plus, <\/em>and publisher content.<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image Credit: “reading#2” by rschmidtz, 2015, used courtesy of CC by 2.0 Attribution License   The Life of Pi\u00a0by Yann Martel, 2001\u00a0 Yann Martel’s 2001 novel Life of Pi tells […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":3335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-shaunar","post-3168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-book-lists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/11\/files\/sites\/11\/2024\/09\/2001-2015.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p71KTL-P6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3168"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3366,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions\/3366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}