2008 List of Suggested Titles

Posted on November 3, 2008

Each winter, the public submits suggestions for next year’s book. In January, a panel of community members reviews the suggestions, narrowing that list down to 10 titles, and then chooses two or three books to present for a public vote.

Final 10 Selections

  • Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
    Barbara Kingsolver
  • The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
    Bill Bryson
  • Life of Pi
    Yann Martel
  • The Madonnas of Leningrad
    Debra Dean
  • The Tenderness of Wolves
    Stef Penney
  • The Things They Carried
    Tim O’Brien
  • The Thirteenth Tale
    Diane Setterfield
  • Three Cups of Tea
    Greg Mortenson
  • The Whistling Season
    Ivan Doig
  • The Worst Hard Time
    Timothy Egan

Other Suggested Titles

  • 100 Years of Solitude
    Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • 1984
    George Orwell
  • The Accidental
    Ali Smith
  • The Air We Breathe
    Andrea Barrett
  • All Creatures Great and Small
    James Herriot
  • All the King’s Men
    Robert Penn Warren
  • All Quiet on the Western Front
    Erich Maria Remarque
  • Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
    Michael Chabon
  • Ana’s Story
    Jenna Bush
  • Angels & Demons
    Dan Brown
  • Another World: A Retreat in the Ozarks
    William Claassen
  • Anthem
    Ayn Rand
  • Because They Hate
    Brigitte Gabriel
  • Bel Canto
    Ann Patchett
  • Best Friends
    Martha Moody
  • The Bible
  • Blackberry Wine
    Joanne Harris
  • Blackbird
    Jennifer Lauck
  • Blind Your Ponies
    Stanley Gorden West
  • Blink
    Malcolm Gladwell
  • Blue Highways
    William Least Heat-Moon
  • Bottled Up
    Jaye Murray
  • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
    Junot Diaz
  • Bridge of Sighs
    Richard Russo
  • The Bright Forever
    Lee Martin
  • The Burn Jouranls
    Brent Runyon
  • Cat’s Cradle
    Kurt Vonnegut
  • The Center of Everything
    Laura Moriarty
  • A Child Called ‘It’
    David Pelzer
  • The Children of Hurin
    J.R.R. Tolkien
  • The Coalwood Way
    Homer Hickam
  • The Collector
    John Fowles
  • The Color of Water
    James McBride
  • A Confederacy of Dunces
    John Kennedy Toole
  • Confederates in the Attic
    Tony Horwitz
  • The Covered Wagon
    Emerson Hough
  • Crashing Through
    Robert Kurson
  • Criss Cross
    Lynn Rae Perkins
  • Dark Angel
    David Klass
  • Daughter of Heaven: A Memoir With Earthly Recipes
    Leslie Li
  • Deep Economy
    Bill McKibben
  • A Deepness in the Sky
    Vernor Vinge
  • Devil In the White City
    Erik Larson
  • Dies the Fire
    S.M. Stirling
  • Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
    Alexandra Fuller
  • The Double Bind
    Christopher Bohjalian
  • Dracula
    Bram Stoker
  • East of Eden
    John Steinbeck
  • Eastern Standard Tribe
    Cory Doctorow
  • TheEar, the Eye, and the Arm
    Nancy Farmer
  • Eat, Pray, Love
    Elizabeth Gilbert
  • Elements of Style
    Wendy Wasserstein
  • Ella Enchanted
    Gail Carson Levine
  • Emma & Me
    Elizabeth Flock
  • The Most Exclusive Club
    Lewis L. Gould
  • Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
    Jonathan Safran-Foer
  • Fahrenheit 451
    Ray Bradbury
  • The Faith Club
    Ranya Idliby
  • A Farewell To Arms
    Ernest Hemingway
  • Fifth Sacred Thing
    Starhawk
  • Finn
    Jon Clinch
  • Fooling With Words
    Bill Moyers
  • Freakonomics
    Steven D. Levitt
  • Funny in Farsi
    Firoozeh Dumas
  • Gilead
    Marilynne Robinson
  • Give Me My Father’s Body
    Kenn Harper
  • The Glass Castle
    Jeanette Walls
  • The God Delusion
    Richard Dawkins
  • The Good People of New York
    Thisbe Nissen
  • Great Projects: Epic Story of the Building of America
    James Tobin
  • The Greatest Game Ever Played: A True Story
    Mark Frost
  • The Gun Seller
    Hugh Laurie
  • Harry Potter
    J.K. Rowling
  • Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave?
    Bill Buford
  • Holes
    Louis Sachar
  • The Hot Zone
    Richard Preston
  • How to Win Friends and Influence People
    Dale Carnegie
  • I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew
    Dr. Suess
  • I Know This Much Is True
    Wally Lamb
  • The Importance of Being Earnest
    Oscar Wilde
  • In Cold Blood
    Truman Capote
  • The Innocent Man
    John Grisham
  • Into the Wild
    Jon Krakauer
  • Ishmael
    Daniel Quinn
  • Jewell: A Novel
    Bret Lott
  • Johnny Got His Gun
    Dalton Trumbo
  • The Killer Angels
    Michael Shaara
  • The King of Attolia
    Megan Whalen Turner
  • King Leopold’s Ghost
    Adam Hochschild
  • The Kite Runner
    Khaled Hosseini
  • The Known World
    Edward Jones
  • Last Breath: Cautionary Tales From the Limits?
    Peter Stark
  • Lay That Trumpet In Our Hands
    Susan Carol McCarthy
  • The Learning Tree
    Gordon Parks
  • Lies My Teacher Told Me
    James Loewen
  • Life Is So Good
    George Dawson & Richard Glaubman
  • The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History
    Brian Fagan
  • Looking for Alaska
    John Greene
  • Lord of the Flies
    William Golding
  • Losing Moses on the Freeway
    Chris Hedges
  • The Lovely Bones
    Alice Sebold
  • The Maytrees
    Annie Dillard
  • The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
    Kim Edwards
  • Milkweed
    Jerry Spinelli
  • A Million Little Pieces
    James Frey
  • The Mood Cure
    Julia Ross
  • Moomin (series)
    Tove Janssen
  • A Most Uncommon Degree of Popularity
    Kathleen Gilles Seidel
  • Mountains Beyond Moutains
    Tracy Kidder
  • My Sister’s Keeper
    Jodi Picoult
  • Never Let Me Go
    Kazuo Ishiguro
  • New Jack: Guarding Sing Sing
    Ted Conover
  • Nickel and Dimed
    Barbara Ehrenreich
  • Nineteen Minutes
    Jodi Picoult
  • Northern Borders
    Howard Frank Mosher
  • Nowhere to Call Home
    Cynthia DeFelice
  • Oh Pure and Radiant Heart
    Lydia Millett
  • On the Beach
    Nevil Shute
  • Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte?
    Bob Greene
  • Party of the Century
    Deborah Davis
  • Pay It Forward
    Catherine Ryan Hyde
  • Peace Like a River
    Lief Enger
  • Persepolis
    Marjane Satrapi
  • The Persian Pickle Club
    Sandra Dallas
  • Pillars of the Earth
    Ken Follett
  • The Pirate’s Daughter
    Margaret Cezair-Thompson
  • Plum Wine
    Angela Davis-Gardner
  • Plan B 2.0
    Lester Russell Brown
  • The Poisonwood Bible
    Barbara Kingsolver
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray
    Oscar Wilde
  • A Prayer for Owen Meany
    John Irving
  • Prodigal Summer
    Barbara Kingsolver
  • Pushed
    Jennifer Block
  • The Rest of Her Life
    Laura Moriarty
  • River of Doubt
    Candice Millard
  • Run With the Horseman
    Ferrol Sams
  • Running With Scissors
    Augusten Burroughs
  • Sabriel
    Garth Nix
  • Sand County Almanac
    Aldo Leopold
  • The Satanic Verses
    Salman Rushdie
  • The Secret Life of Bees
    Sue Monk Kidd
  • The Scarlet Letter
    Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • Short Trip to the Edge
    Scott Cairns
  • Silent Spring
    Rachel Carson
  • Slaughterhouse-Five
    Kurt Vonnegut
  • Snowflower and the Secret Fan
    Lisa See
  • Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You
    Peter Cameron
  • Sophie’s World
    Jostein Gaarder
  • The Stolen Child
    Keith Donohue
  • Strange Fits of Passion
    Anita Shreve
  • Suite Francais
    Irene Nemirovsky
  • Tasting the Sky
    Ibtisam Barakat
  • The Tender Bar: A Memoir
    J.R. Moehringer
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God
    Zora Neale Hurston
  • Then We Came to the End
    Joshua Ferris
  • They Cage the Animals at Night
    Jennings Michael Burch
  • Things Not Seen
    Andrew Clements
  • The Tipping Point
    Malcolm Gladwell
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns
    Khaled Hosseini
  • The Time Traveler’s Wife
    Audrey Niffenegger
  • Tuesdays With Morrie
    Mitch Albom
  • Turtle on a Fencepost
    Allen C. Emery
  • The Ultimate Gift
    Jim Stovall
  • Under the Banner of Heaven
    Jon Krakauer
  • Up From Orchard Street
    Eleanor Widmer
  • The Uses of Haiti
    Paul Farmer
  • The Way of the Peaceful Warrior
    Dan Millman
  • What Is the What
    Dave Eggers
  • What You Have Left
    Allison Will
  • When the Emperor Was Divine
    Julie Otsuka
  • Whistling in the Dark
    Lesley Kagen
  • The Wife
    Meg Wolitzer
  • The Winter Range
    Claire David
  • The Witch of Portobello
    Paulo Coelho
  • The Woman Warrior
    Maxine Hong Kingston
  • The World is Flat
    Thomas L. Friedman
  • You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train
    Howard Zinn
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
    Robert Pirsig
2008 Program
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