Looking for something good to read? The library has put together some book lists. You will need Adobe Reader or a .pdf reader to view these lists. Make sure to watch this space for many more book lists!

Mystery Book Lists
Adult Mysteries Book List
Young Adult Mysteries Book List
Children's Mysteries Book List

Beehive Award Lists
This year's (2008) Beehive Award Nominees
Past Beehive Award Winners

Other Lists
"On the Safe Side" Reads - A list of 'clean reads'

The following is a list of books that have been enjoyed by book groups in the area. We have several copies of each at the Pleasant Grove City Library. Visit the library for more book group titles.

A Lantern in Her Hand – by Bess Streeter Aldrich
The classic story of Abbie and Will Deal, pioneers who left everything behind for the promise of a new life on America's frontier.

Plain and Simple: A Woman's Journey to the Amish – by Sue Bender
A fascination with Amish quilts led Sue to live with the Amish in their seemingly timeless world, a landscape of immense inner quiet. This privilege, rarely bestowed upon outsiders, taught her about simplicity and commitment and the contentment that comes from accepting who you are

Midwives – by Chris Bohjalian
What happens when a woman who has devoted herself to ushering life into the world finds herself charged with responsibility in a patient's tragic death?

The Good Earth – by Pearl S. Buck
The story of a Chinese peasant and his passionate, dogged accumulation of land and more land, while weathering famine, drought, and revolution.

The Education of Little Tree – by Forrest Carter
The author recalls his life with his Eastern Cherokee Hill country grandparents and gives a touching account of 1930s depression-era life.

My Antonia – by Willa Cather
Antonia Shimerda moves to the harsh Nebraska heartland with her impoverished Bohemian family when she is still a girl. For young Jim Burden, who lives with his grandparents on a homestead nearby, Antonia is an embodiment of the female pioneer - self-sufficient, vigorous, and determined to withstand the daily challenges of maintaining home and family in a primitive countryside.

The Awakening – by Kate Chopin
Edna Pontellier, wife and mother, awakens to the pangs of passion and desire for the first time in her life. As she grows in her feelings of freedom, she becomes more aware of how repressed her life in society has been and longs for the courage to reach for less restrictions in her social life.

Woman in White – by Wilkie Collins
Sensitive to the social context of crime, Collins surrounds the enigma with an intriguingly diverse gallery of characters: a beautiful heiress in danger, a suave yet sinister nobleman, a young drawing master torn between love and propriety, and a "new woman" of extraordinary spirit and intelligence.

Pope Joan – by Donna Woolfolk Cross
When her older brother dies in a Viking attack, the brilliant young Joan assumes his identity and enters a Benedictine monastery where, as Brother John Anglicus, she distinguishes herself as a scholar and healer. Eventually drawn to Rome, she soon becomes enmeshed in a dangerous mix of passion and politics that threatens her life even as it elevates her to the highest throne in the western world.

Rebecca – by Daphne Du Maurier
For months after her death, the memory of Rebecca de Winter continues to dominate everyone at her former home, Manderley, one of the most famous English country houses.

Memoirs of a Geisha – by Arthur Golden
Golden presents the world of the geisha, where appearances are paramount, where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder, where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men, and where love is scorned as illusion.

A Woman of Independent Means – by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey
A woman coming of age early in the century had few choices, unless she had independent means. Bess Steed Garner inherits a legacy-of wealth, determination, and desire.

To Kill a Mockingbird – by Harper Lee
Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred.

The Kite Runner – by Khaled Hosseini
Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the present, this is the unforgettable, beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul

The Secret Life of Bees – by Sue Monk Kidd
When Lily Owen and her black "stand-in" mother escape the racism of a small town in South Carolina, they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sister named May, June, and August.

Poisonwood Bible – by Barbara Kingsolver
The engrossing story of quirky, feverish Baptist preacher Nathan Price who hauls his family off on a mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959.

Education of a Wandering Man – by Louis L'Amour
L'Amour writes about growing up in North Dakota, and his lifelong love affair with learning, recalling many of the books he read, the places he visited, and the people he met that catalyzed his evolution as a writer.

Screwtape Letters – C.S. Lewis
The correspondence of the worldly-wise old devil to his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man.

Gift From the Sea – by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Drawing inspiration from the shells on the shore, Lindbergh's musings on the shape of a woman's life bring new understanding to both men and women at any stage of life.

The Giver – Lois Lowry
Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.

Life of Pi – by Yann Martel
Pi Patel, the son of a zookeeper, and his family emigrate from India to North America with their animals. When the cargo ship sinks, Pi finds himself in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a Bengal tiger. Can Pi's fear, knowledge, and cunning keep him alive until they reach land?

Atonement – by Ian McEwan
On a summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister and the son of a servant. Her incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.

Twilight – by Stephenie Meyer
When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human.

Gap Creek – by Robert Morgan
Ave Maria Mulligan is the thirty-five-year-old self-proclaimed spinster of Big Stone Gap who is content with her life of doing errands and negotiating small details—until she discovers a skeleton in her family's formerly tidy closet that completely unravels her quiet, unconventional life.

Reading Lolita in Tehran – by Azar Nafisi
Prof. Nafisi resigned from her job as professor of English Literature at a university in Tehran in 1995 due to repressive government policies. For the next 2 years, until she left Iran, she gathered 7 young women, former students, at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss works of Western literature forbidden by the new regime

Mayada, daughter of Iraq: one woman's survival under Saddam Hussein – by Jean Sasson
Mayada grew up surrounded by wealth and royalty until Saddam Hussein's Baath Party seized power in Iraq in 1968. She never suspected that she could become a target of his secret police until one nightmarish day in 1999 when she was thrown into Cell 52 with seventeen other nameless, faceless women.

The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency – by Alexander McCall Smith
Delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe is drawn to her profession to help people with the problems in their lives. In her first case she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, follow a wayward daughter, and find a missing boy who may have been snatched by witch doctors.

East of Eden – by John Steinbeck
Two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, settled the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley. They helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

Big Stone Gap – by Adriana Trigiani
Ave Maria Mulligan is the thirty-five-year-old self-proclaimed spinster of Big Stone Gap who is content with her life of doing errands and negotiating small details, until she discovers a skeleton in her family's formerly tidy closet that completely unravels her quiet, unconventional life.

These Is My Words – by Nancy E. Turner
Based on the real-life exploits of the author's great-grandmother, this fictionalized diary vividly details one woman's struggles with life and love in frontier Arizona at the end of the last century.

Divine Secrets of the Divine Sisterhood – by Rebecca Wells
The eccentricities of three generations of crazy bayou debutantes trying to survive marriage, motherhood, and pain, relying always on their love for each other.

Winter Wheat – by Mildred Walker
In the wheat country of central Montana in the early 1940's we meet Ellen Webb, a willowy, strong-willed girl who can drive a truck, thresh wheat, milk cows, pluck chickens and turkeys, sit on a tractor seat all day long, and still have time to worry with her parents about paying off the combine and the mortgage.

Ethan Frome – by Edith Wharton
Ethan struggles to eke out a bare existence on his poor farm with his difficult wife. But he becomes obsessed with their "hired girl," and the scene is set for this tragic trio to race toward their destinies.

This list and many other book lists are available at the library.

Choosing books

Many groups find it is helpful to plan a year in advance. Some groups meet every month, while others skip December or the summer months, selecting a longer book to discuss when they reconvene.

Some book discussion leaders take a leading role in choosing the books for discussion. Some things to consider:

1. What are the interests of your group? Do they like literary challenges, light reading, and/or nonfiction, etc.?
2. How much input do you want from the group about the books you read? You may prepare a list and invite them to read more about them on the Internet and/or ask them for suggestions.

Some groups invite all the members to select one or two books to be considered for the year's reading. Then the group meets during the yearly planning session to collectively select the books for the year.

Getting people involved

Invite the members of your group to get involved. Find out those who are willing to lead a discussion, host the group at their home, or bring refreshments. Some groups like to divide the work each month while others prefer to have one person host the meeting, lead the discussion and provide refreshments each month.

Create a handout and/or a bookmark for the group that outlines the year's schedule and includes phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses of the group members.

Many groups find it helpful to take turns calling or emailing members of the group to remind them of the meeting.

Rules

Set up rules for your book group and make sure everyone is aware of them. Some things to consider:

1. Can members bring babies or other children?
2. Do members have to read the book to attend?
3. Should the host be responsible for reminding everyone each month?
4. What if someone finds a book offensive or dislikes it too much to read it?
5. Can members bring a friend or visitor to a discussion?
6. What are the requirements for joining the group? Can anyone join?

Preparing the discussion

When preparing the discussion, the leader might consider:

1. Research the author
2. Learn about how the book has been critically accepted
3. Prepare questions for discussion. These can sometimes be found on the publisher's internet site or other book sites.
4. Share personal experiences that relate to the book. For example:
5. For Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters one discussion leader who had lived in Egypt showed some wonderful slides and souvenirs.
6. For the book Simple Abundance by Sara Ban Breathnach one group had its members read the entries for their birthdays and discuss those.

Food

Some groups choose to serve refreshments while others provide a dinner. Some groups have a pot-luck or eat out at a restaurant occasionally. If possible, it's fun to serve food that matches a theme from the book. For an example: one group served Angel Food Cake and Devil's Food Cake after the discussion on C.S. Lewis's book The Screwtape Letters. Another group had Chinese food when they read Wild Swans by Jung Chang. For a book like Dying for Chocolate by Diane Mott Davidson the possibilities are endless.

Additional ideas

There are many ideas that can add interest and variety to your group. Some example are:

1. Read a book and then see the movie or play together and compare them.
2. Choose a book related to a seminar at BYU or UVSC or a documentary on TV. After reading the book, attend the seminar together or watch the documentary and discuss it.
3. Invite spouses to read the book and attend the discussion and/or have a mother/daughter discussion.
4. Invite an author or content expert to speak to your group.

For more questions about book groups contact Tammra Salisbury at the library at 785-3950.