Battle of the Books am 24/25.02.2022

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Beloved by readers of all ages, taught everywhere from grade school to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, this book is a remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero. Told in a series of vignettes (short stories)--sometimes heart-breaking, sometimes deeply joyous--it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become.

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

Crazy Rich Asians is an outrageously funny novel about three super-rich, pedigreed Chinese families and the gossip, backbiting, and scheming that occurs when the heir to one of the most massive fortunes in Asia brings home his ABC (American-born Chinese) girlfriend to the wedding of the season. Uproarious and addictive, Crazy Rich Asians is an insider's look at the Asian JetSet; a perfect depiction of the clash between old money and new money; between Overseas Chinese and Mainland Chinese; and a fabulous novel about what it means to be young, in love, and gloriously, crazily rich.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby is arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers' advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives – until their own inner crises reveal how much they've unknowingly inherited of their mothers' pasts.