Book Discussion Final Nominations for 2018 AZS Convention
1) A Gentleman in Moscow – Armor Towles (2016) - fiction
When, in 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
2) Hillbilly Elegy – A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis - non-fiction
J.D. Vance (2016)
Hillbilly Elegy sheds light on the oft-overlooked lives of the white working class. In particular, Vance focuses on the "hillbillies" of Appalachia, a region of the Eastern United States named after the Appalachian Mountains, which run through it.
3) Option B - Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant (2017) – non-fiction
Option B shares the stories of people who’ve had to deal with a traumatizing event, most notably Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg, to help you face adversity, become more resilient and find joy again after life punches you in the face.
4) The Forever Bridge – T. Greenwood (2013) – fiction
Sylvie can hardly bear to remember how normal her family was two years ago. All of that changed on the night an oncoming vehicle forced their car over the edge of a covered bridge into the river. With horrible swiftness, Sylvie’s young son was gone, her husband was permanently paralyzed, and she was left with shattering blame and grief.
5) The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead (2016) – historical fiction
Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey - hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black prople in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.
6) The Little Paris Bookshop – Nina George (2015) - fiction
Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls.The only person he can't seem to heal through literature is himself; he's still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened. After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story. Joined by a bestselling but blocked author and a lovelorn Italian chef, Perdu travels along the country’s rivers, dispensing his wisdom and his books, showing that the literary world can take the human soul on a journey to heal itself.