Nominees for March through June 2012

 Below are the books nominated for March through June of next year. Please read through the brief descriptions below. The descriptions without quotes are as submitted by the nominators. The descriptions in quotes were cut and pasted from Amazon.com. Select your favorite four and email your selections to psunlane@yahoo.com.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I learned While Editing My Life by Donald Miller –  “Details one man's opportunity to edit his life as if he were a character in a movie.”

Bringing Up Bébé by  Pamela Druckerman – Memoir about American in Paris raising a child, learning from the French ways of child-rearing.

In-flight Entertainment by Helen Simpson – Sounds like a fun collection of short stories by a contemporary British author.

Riding the Bus with my Sister by Rachel Simon – About having a disabled sister (and she apparently wrote a novel, too, The Story of Beautiful Girl).

The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje –  “In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the “cat’s table”—as far from the Captain’s Table as can be—with a ragtag group of “insignificant” adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship crosses the Indian Ocean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another...”

The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee – “A magnificent, profoundly humane ‘biography’ of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.”

The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls – A friend of mine from another book group said that her group loved the book.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides – It is #8 on the Bay Area paperback best seller list.  It is also a staff recommendation for the SF Chronicle by Orinda Books.  “It is a coming of age novel about three Brown graduates who find and lose love and each other as they emerge from the groves of academe.”

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern – “The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway: a duel between two young magicians…”

The Paris Wife by Paula McClain –  “A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.”

The Sense of an Ending Julian Barnes – “This intense novel follows Tony Webster, a middle-aged man, as he contends with a past he never thought much about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present.”

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller –  “In this new twist on the Trojan War story, Patroclus and Achilles are the quintessential mismatched pair--a mortal underdog exiled in shame and a glorious demigod revered by all--but what would a novel of ancient Greece be without star-crossed love?”

Zahra’s Paradise by Amir and Khalil – Contemporary Iran in a graphic novel.