Cast your vote for the 2023 One Book, One Valley community read.

Drag and drop or use the arrow buttons to place the books in order from your most preferred book to your least preferred. One Book, One Valley 2023 is planned for January 2023.

MOST PREFERRED

Finders Keepers by Craig Childs

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[Nonfiction, 274 pages] To whom does the past belong? Is the archeologist who discovers a lost tomb a sort of hero— or a villain? If someone steals a relic from a museum and returns it to the ruin it came from, is she a thief? Written in his trademark lyrical style, Craig Childs’s riveting new book is a ghost story— an intense, impassioned investigation into the nature of the past and the things we leave behind. We visit lonesome desert canyons and fancy Fifth Avenue art galleries, journey throughout the Americas, Asia, the past and the present. The result is a brilliant book about man and nature, remnants and memory, a dashing tale of crime and detection..
Themes: Archaeology and its benefits and tradeoffs; history of the American West; ancient civilizations; memory; who “owns” the past and who should benefit from it
Formats: Regular print; eBook; eAudio

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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

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[Fiction, 444 pages] France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
Themes: Freedom and how it relates to belonging/connection to others; isolation/loneliness; memory and being remembered; art and its inspiration; love; loss; immortality; LGBTQIA+
Note: Contains some sexual content.
Formats: Regular print; eBook; eAudio; large print (on order); Spanish (on order)

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Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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[Fiction, 333 pages] One snowy night, a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. That same evening, a devastating flu pandemic arrives in the city, and the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time–from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains–the novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.
Themes: Endurance and resonance of art; ambition; fame; humanity and human connection; collapse of civilization; survival; memory; faith
Note: This is a work of pre/post-apocalyptic fiction set against the unfolding and aftermath of a global pandemic.
Formats: Regular print; eBook; eAudio; large print (on order); Spanish (on order)

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LEAST PREFERRED

 

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