Two Towns: One Book - Books Considered

Once the Community Coalition announced its intentions to host a community-wide read, book suggestions were solicited from librarians, Coalition trustees and volunteers, and community residents. Here are some of the books suggested and considered by the Two Towns: One Book Coordinating Committee for the 2002 community-wide read (presented in no particular order):

  • Huck Finn, by Mark Twain
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • It's the Little Things: The Everyday Interactions That Get Under the Skin of Blacks and Whites, by Lena Williams and Charlayne Hunter-Gault
  • The Buffalo Soldier, by Chris Bohjalian
  • The Color of Water, by James McBride
  • The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
  • The Human Stain, by Philip Roth
  • Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry, by Gillan
  • Honky, by Dalton Conley
  • Black, White and Jewish: An Autobiography of a Shifting Self, by Rebecca Walker
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  • The Amistad Revolt by K. Leinert or Black Mutiny, by William Owens
  • The Middle Passage, by Charles Johnson
  • Black Jacks, by Jeffrey Bolster
  • White Teeth, by Zadie Smith
  • Intuitionist, by Colson Whitehead
  • John Henry Days, by Colson Whitehead
  • The Chainysburg Incident, by David Bardley
  • Bowling Alone, The Collapse and Revival of American Community, by Robert D. Putnam
  • The Invisible Man, by Ralph Waldo Ellison
  • The Lost Legends of New Jersey, by Frederick Reiken
  • Rails Under My Back, by Jeffrey Renard Allen
  • Beowulf (new version) by Chaucer
  • Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
  • Cane River by Lalita Tademy
  • The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
  • Brown by Richard Rodrigues
  • The Founding Brothers by Ellis (section on slavery)
  • The Envy of the World by Ellis Cose
  • Color-Blind by Ellis Cose
  • Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
  • The Corrections by Franzen
  • Books by Jamaica Kincaid
  • Endurance by Alfred Lansing/ Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons
  • Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
  • The Gathering of Old Men by Ernest Gaines
  • A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines
  • Living With Music: Ralph Ellison's Jazz Writings
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat
  • The Color Purple by Alice Walker
  • Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice
  • Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
  • Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets by John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight
  • The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream by Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, Rameck Hunt (Seton Hall)
  • When Pigs Fly Barbara Kingsolver
  • Triumph in a White Suburb (about Teaneck)
  • Rite of Passage by Richard Wright
  • Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
  • Bottom Pig by William Robinson