Book: (Summary from Wikipedia) Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster is a bestselling non-fiction book written by Jon Krakauer. It details the author's May 10, 1996 ascent of Mount Everest, which turned catastrophic when eight climbers were killed and several others were stranded by a 'rogue storm'.

Book: (Summary from Wikipedia) Blindness (Portuguese: Ensaio sobre a cegueira, meaning Essay on Blindness) is a novel by Portuguese author José Saramago. It was published in Portuguese in 1995 and in English in 1997. It is one of his most famous novels, along with The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and Baltasar and Blimunda.

Book: (Summary from Wikipedia) Then We Came to the End is the first novel by Joshua Ferris. It was released by Little, Brown and Company on March 1, 2007. A satire of the American workplace, it is similar in tone to Don DeLillo's Americana, even borrowing DeLillo's first line for its title.

Book: (Summary from Wikipedia) What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng is a 2006 novel written by Dave Eggers. It is based on the real life story of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee and member of the Lost Boys of Sudan program.

Book: (Summary from Wikipedia) A Lesson Before Dying is Ernest J. Gaines' eighth novel, published in 1993. "A Lesson Before Dying" is a story of two African-American men scrabbling to attain their manhood in a deeply prejudiced community. Jefferson, a young man with an undersized education, witnesses a fatal shooting between a white store owner and two black purloiners.

Book: (Summary from Wikipedia) The Pillars of the Earth is a historical novel by Ken Follett published in 1989 about the building of a cathedral in Kingsbridge, England. It is set in the middle of the 12th century, primarily during the time known as The Anarchy, between the time of the sinking of the White Ship and the murder of Thomas Becket.

07/16/2007 - Book: (Summary from Wikipedia) The Road (2006), It is a post-apocalyptic tale describing a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted years before by an unnamed cataclysm which destroyed civilization and most life on earth. The novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

06/22/2007 - Book: (Summary from Wikipedia)
I Know This Much is True (1998), by Wally Lamb. Dominick Birdsey's identical twin, Thomas, is a paranoid schizophrenic. Thinking he is making a sacrificial protest that will stop the war in the Middle East, Thomas cuts off his own hand in a public library.

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Confessions of an Economic Hitman(2004), by John Perkins. It tells the story of his career with consulting firm Chas. T. Main. Before employment with the firm, he interviewed for a job with the National Security Agency (NSA).

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The Kite Runner(2003), by Khaled Hosseini. The Kite Runner tells the story of Amir, a well-to-do Pashtun boy from the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul, who is haunted by the guilt of betraying his childhood friend Hassan, the son of his father's Hazara servant.

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The Fountainhead (1943) by Ayn Rand. The book's title is a reference to Rand's statement that "man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress," and is a more specific version of the book's theme, which is, in Rand's words, "individualism and collectivism in man's soul."

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Life of Pi(2001) by Yann Martel. The protagonist Piscine "Pi" Molitor Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, explores the issues of religion and spirituality from an early age and survives 227 days shipwrecked in the Pacific Ocean. The novel won the prestigious Booker Prize the following year.

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A Fine Balance (1995) by Rohinton Mistry. Set in Mumbai, India between 1975 and 1977 during the turmoil of The Emergency, a period of expanded government power and crackdowns on civil liberties... First published by McClelland and Stewart in 1995, it won the Giller Prize. In 2001 it was selected for Oprah's Book Club.

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (2003), by Mark Haddon. The story is written in the first-person narrative of Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old boy living in Swindon, Wiltshire in 1998. The book has been adapted into a film, directed by Steve Kloves, which is currently in production and due for release in '07.

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Fahrenheit 451 (1951) by Ray Bradbury. It is a novel where censorship is prevalent and about a moranic society who learn from television. Most books are banned and critical thought is suppressed; the central character, Guy Montag, is employed as a "fireman" (which, in this case, means "book burner").

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The Alchemist (Portuguese: O Alquimista) (1988) by Paulo Coelho. It is a symbolic story that urges its readers to follow their dreams. The plot draws largely from an English legend, "The Pedlar of Swaffham", which has been also used by Leo Perutz in "By Night under the Stone Bridge" and Borges' Tale of Two Dreamers...

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Tuesdays With Morrie (1997) by Mitch Albom It is the true story of Brandeis University sociology professor, title personage Morrie Schwartz and his relationship with student Mitch Albom. Both the film and the book chronicle the lessons about life that Mitch learns from his professor, who is dying from ALS.

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Slaughterhouse-Five(1969) by Kurt Vonnegut. One of his most popular works and widely regarded as a classic, it combines science fiction elements with an analysis of the human condition from an uncommon perspective, using time travel as a plot device and the bombing of Dresden in World War II, the aftermath of which...

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Flowers for Algernon (1959) by Daniel Keyes. It was originally published as a novelette in the April 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, winning a Hugo award for Best Short Fiction in 1960. It was later extended into a full-length novel under the same title, which won the Nebula Award for Best Novel...

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For One More Day (2006) by Mitch Albom. It is about a man whose mother has been dead for 8 years and is allowed one more day to spend with her. This is also a very powerful book about how if you lose a loved one in your life and get the chance to spend another day with them...

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The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger. Despite this censorship, or perhaps due to it, the novel has become one of the most famous literary works of the 20th century, and a common part of high-school curricula in many English-speaking countries, such as the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia.

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The Lovely Bones (2002), by Alice Sebold, is a novel told in the first person by Susie Salmon, a 14-year-old girl who is raped, murdered, and dismembered in the first chapter. Over the next few years, from a personalized heaven that takes the form of a high school she never lived...