The Coronado Public Library and the Coronado Cultural Arts Commission are proud to announce the six finalists for the 2018 Coronado Community Read. The subcommittee of the Literary Arts working group read through the forty-two titles nominated by the community and has narrowed the field down to these six finalists. Now it’s time for the community to vote for their favorite. The winner will be announced in September. Voting will take place throughout the month of August.
Titles are in alphabetical order by author:
- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline: In the year 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenager Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade has devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator’s obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. When Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade’s going to survive, he’ll have to win and confront the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape. (Fiction)
- The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Copper: Helene Cooper, a descendant of two Liberian dynasties traced back to the first ship of freemen that set sail from New York in 1820 to found Monrovia. Helene grew up at Sugar Beach, a twenty-two-room mansion by the sea. Her childhood was filled with servants, flashy cars, a villa in Spain, and a farmhouse up-country. It was also an African childhood, filled with knock foot games and hot pepper soup, heartmen and neegee. When Helene was eight, the Coopers took in a foster child, a common custom among the Liberian elite. Eunice, a Bassa girl, suddenly became known as “Mrs. Cooper’s daughter.” For years the Cooper daughters, Helene, her sister Marlene, and Eunice, blissfully enjoyed the trappings of wealth and advantage. (Memoir)
- Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan: Surfing only looks like a sport, but in Finnegan’s memoir, it is an obsession. To initiates, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, and Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our noses. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships forged in challenging waves. (Memoir)
- And the Mountains Echoed by Khalid Housseini: Khaled Hosseini’s third novel is told via a series of interlinking stories beginning in an Afghanistan village in 1952 when an impoverished man named Saboor is faced with the prospect of giving up one of his children in order to survive. From this crucial moment, the narrative expands, as Saboor’s decision impacts his descendants and acquaintances for generations to come. What follows is a series of stories within the story, told through multiple viewpoints, spanning more than half a century, and shifting across continents. The novel moves through war, separation, birth, death, deceit, and love, illustrating again and again how people’s actions, even the seemingly selfless ones, are shrouded in ambiguity. (Fiction)
- The Book of Joy by His Holiness the Dailai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu: The occasion was a big birthday. And it inspired two close friends to get together in Dharamsala for a talk about something very important to them. The friends were His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The subject was joy. Both winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, both great spiritual masters and moral leaders of our time, they are also known for being among the most infectiously happy people on the planet. (Non-Fiction)
- The Wright Brothers by David McCullough: On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two unknown brothers from Ohio changed history. But it would take the world some time to believe what had happened: the age of flight had begun, with the first heavier-than-air, powered machine carrying a pilot. This book chronicles the dramatic story-behind-the-story about the Wright brothers, sharing insights into the disadvantages that challenged their lives and their mechanical ingenuity. (Non-Fiction)
Cast your vote in person at the Library or online at: https://goo.gl/NkK12i. Voting will be open during the month of August. The winner will be announced in September, and activities and programs will take place in February 2018.
The Coronado Community Read is made possible by the Friends of the Coronado Public Library and the Coronado Cultural Arts Commission. The voting link is also available at the Library’s website: www.coronado.lib.ca.us and the Coronado Cultural Arts Commission website: www.coronadoarts.com.
