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Book Clubs

 

Book clubs bring readers together, either in a bookstore, surrounded by favorite tomes, or online, surrounded by our personal library.  For the San Marco Books and More Book Club selections, please CLICK on that titled page from heading on the menu bar.  You'll find all the upcoming season's titles, as well as companion reads that will complement the current read and other suggested titles for you to consider adding to your To-Be-Read pile.  Enjoy!

 

September 27- October 3, 2020 is Banned Books Week.  It is an annual event that celebrates the FREEDOM TO READ and highlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and school.    We've compiled some of books for you to consider.  There are so many lists available, please explore and let us know what you want.

Whether it's Banned Book Week or not, these are books that we CAN all read.   See below for a few of our choices.  Remember, you can order a book on our website and pick it up in the bookstore and if you'd like a different edition of a title listed, simply use the SEARCH bar to see other options.

 

 

 

Staff Pick Badge
The Handmaid's Tale: A Novel By Margaret Atwood Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9780385490818
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Anchor - March 16th, 1998

Banned Book

In the world of the near future, who will control women's bodies?
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable.
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, "The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.


Staff Pick Badge
The Giver: A Newbery Award Winner (Giver Quartet #1) By Lois Lowry Cover Image
$11.99
ISBN: 9780544336261
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Clarion Books - July 1st, 2014

Banned Book

In Lowry's Newbery Medal-winning classic, 12-year-old Jonas lives in a seemingly ideal world. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver does he begin to understand the dark secrets behind his fragile community.


Staff Pick Badge
Fahrenheit 451: A Novel By Ray Bradbury Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9781451673319
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Simon & Schuster - January 10th, 2012

Banned Book

In a society in which books are outlawed, Montag, a regimented fireman in charge of burning the forbidden volumes, meets a revolutionary school teacher who dares to read. Suddenly he finds himself a hunted fugitive, forced to choose not only between two women, but between personal safety and intellectual freedom.


Staff Pick Badge
Beloved: Pulitzer Prize Winner (Vintage International) By Toni Morrison Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9781400033416
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Vintage - June 8th, 2004

Banned Book

This spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.


Staff Pick Badge
Animal Farm: 75th Anniversary Edition By George Orwell, Ann Patchett (Foreword by), Tea Obreht (Introduction by) Cover Image
By George Orwell, Ann Patchett (Foreword by), Tea Obreht (Introduction by)
$16.00
ISBN: 9780452284241
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Berkley - May 6th, 2003

Banned Book

This remarkable allegory of a downtrodden society of overworked, mistreated animals, and their quest to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality is one of the most scathing satires ever published. As we witness the rise and bloody fall of the revolutionary animals, we begin to recognize the seeds of totalitarianism in the most idealistic organization; and in our most charismatic leaders, the souls of our cruelest oppressors.


Staff Pick Badge
The Bluest Eye (Vintage International) By Toni Morrison Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9780307278449
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Vintage - May 8th, 2007

Banned Book

Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in.Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison's virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing.


To Kill a Mockingbird By Harper Lee Cover Image
$16.99
ISBN: 9780060935467
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Harper Perennial Modern Classics - July 5th, 2005

Banned Book

A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father--a crusading local lawyer--risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.


The Glass Castle: A Memoir By Jeannette Walls Cover Image
$17.99
ISBN: 9780743247542
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Scribner - January 17th, 2006

Banned Book

The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family.

The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

The Glass Castle is truly astonishing--a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.


The Hunger Games (Hunger Games, Book One) By Suzanne Collins Cover Image
$14.99
ISBN: 9780439023528
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Scholastic Press - July 1st, 2010

Banned Book

Katniss is a 16-year-old girl living with her mother and younger sister in the poorest district of Panem, the remains of what used be the United States. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, "The Hunger Games." The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed. When Kat's sister is chosen by lottery, Kat steps up to go in her place.


Staff Pick Badge
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, Book 1) By J. K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator) Cover Image
By J. K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré (Illustrator)
$10.99
Email or call for price.
ISBN: 9780590353427
Published: Scholastic Paperbacks - October 1st, 1999

Banned Book

Rescued from the outrageous neglect of his aunt and uncle, a young boy with a great destiny proves his worth while attending Hogwarts School for Wizards and Witches.


Staff Pick Badge
The Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9781594631931
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Riverhead Books - March 5th, 2013

Banned Book

An epic tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal, that takes us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the atrocities of the present day. The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy Afghan youth and the son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption. It is also about the power of fathers over sons: their love, their sacrifices, and their lies.


Staff Pick Badge
The Outsiders By S. E. Hinton Cover Image
$12.99
ISBN: 9780140385724
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Speak - September 1st, 1988

Banned Book

Three brothers struggle to stay together after their parents' death, as they search for an identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society in which they find themselves "outsiders".


Staff Pick Badge
The House on Mango Street (Vintage Contemporaries) By Sandra Cisneros Cover Image
$12.95
ISBN: 9780679734772
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Vintage - April 3rd, 1991

Banned Book

This is the story of Esperanza Cordero, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago with all its hard realities of life. She captures her thoughts and emotions in poems and stories in order to rise above the hopelessness and create a space for herself.


Staff Pick Badge
Of Mice and Men By John Steinbeck, Susan Shillinglaw (Introduction by) Cover Image
By John Steinbeck, Susan Shillinglaw (Introduction by)
$16.00
ISBN: 9780140186420
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Penguin Classics - February 1st, 1994

Banned Book

While the powerlessness of the laboring class in a recurring theme in this classic work, Steinbeck narrows his focus, creating an intimate portrait of two men facing a world marked by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness--a parable about commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss.


Staff Pick Badge
Drama: A Graphic Novel By Raina Telgemeier, Raina Telgemeier (Illustrator) Cover Image
$10.99
Email or call for price.
ISBN: 9780545326995
Published: Graphix - September 1st, 2012

Banned Book

Callie rides an emotional roller coaster while serving on the stage crew for a middle school production of 'Moon Over Mississippi,' as various relationships start and end, and others never quite get going.


Staff Pick Badge
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings By Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey (Foreword by) Cover Image
By Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey (Foreword by)
$18.00
ISBN: 9780812980028
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Random House Trade Paperbacks - April 21st, 2009

Banned Book

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local "powhitetrash." At eight years old and back at her mother's side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age--and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors ("I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare") will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.


Staff Pick Badge
Brave New World By Aldous Huxley Cover Image
$16.99
ISBN: 9780060850524
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Harper Perennial Modern Classics - October 17th, 2006

Banned Book

Brave New World is a darkly satiric vision of a "utopian" future—where humans are genetically bred and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, it remains remarkably relevant to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying entertainment.


Staff Pick Badge
The Art of Racing in the Rain: A Novel By Garth Stein Cover Image
$18.99
ISBN: 9780061537967
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Harper Paperbacks - May 22nd, 2018

Banned Book

Meet Enzo, the unforgettable canine narrator of this bittersweet and transformative story of family, love, loyalty, and hope. Enzo is a philosopher with a nearly human soul, and he's gained a wealth of knowledge from hours spent in front of the TV.


Staff Pick Badge
The Catcher in the Rye By J. D. Salinger Cover Image
$16.99
ISBN: 9780316769174
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Back Bay Books - January 30th, 2001

Banned Book

J.D. Salinger's classic of adolescent angst is now available for the first time in trade paperback. Holden Caulfield, knowing he is to be expelled from school, decides to leave early. He spends three days in New York City and tells the story of what he did and suffered there.