Top 5 Books

Any list of "top 5 books" is suspect -- because who can possible settle on just 5 books?!

Top 5 Books Read in 2016

Kathy

• The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson
• Two Old Women by Velma Wallis
• My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
• Me Before You by Jo Jo Moyes

Martha

• The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood
• Everybody's Fool by Richard Russo
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
• The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
• Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Susan

• Witches of Cambridge by Menna Van Praag
• The Way Life Should Be by Christina Baker
• Sister by Rosamund Lupton
• Don't You Cry by Mary Kubica
• Miller's Valley by Anna Quindlan
• The Magnificent Spinster by May Sarton
• "On my second trip through the Bible!"

Marion

• The Black Widow by Daniel Silva

Ruth

• The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende
• Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice by Curtis Sittenfeld
• The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood
• At the Water's Edge by Sara Gruen
• Circling the Sun by Paula McLain
• Before the Fall by Noah Hawley
• The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton
• Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
• The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

Kim

• Undivided: A Muslim Daughter, Her Christian Mother, Their Path to Peace by Patricia Raybon & Alana Raybon

Donna

• Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
• Straight Man by Richard Russo
• Two Old Women by Velma Wallis

Top 5 Books to Read in 2017

Joyce

• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• Guests Behind the Barbed Wire: German POWs in America: A True Story of Hope and Friendship by Ruth Cook
• Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Kathy

• House Rules by Jodi Picoult
• The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
• The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
• Still Life by Louise Penny

Martha

• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
• American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good by Colin Woodard
• How the Scots Invented the Modern World by Arthur Herman
• Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell
• The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill (3 volume set) by William Manchester

Mary Jane

• An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny by Laura Schroff and Alex Tresniowski

Kim

• The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

Ruth

• The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art by Sebastian Smee
• Moonglow by Michael Chabon
• Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough
• A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald by Errol Morris
• How to Be A Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life by Ruth Goodman
• The Mathews Men: Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler's U-Boats by William Geroux

Top 5 Books Ever

Kathy

• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
• One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
• A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman
• Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Martha

• Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup
• The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
• My Antonia by Willa Cather
• Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Susan

• The Book Borrower by Alice Mattison
• The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield
• The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
• "anything by Kristin Hannah"

Marion

• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
• The Once and Future King by T.H. White
• The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckley
• Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle by Betty MacDonald ("I loved that book when I was a kid")

Kim

• The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
• The Little Book of Restorative Justice by Howard Zehr
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
• "early Stephen King"

Donna

• All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriott
• The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
• A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman
• This Life is in Your Hands by Melissa Coleman
• Among Schoolchildren by Tracy Kidder

Joyce

• Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
• One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Ruth

• Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
• 11/22/63 by Stephen King
• The Dinner by Herman Koch
• Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
• Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
• Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling