Help Pick Kansas State University's 2017 Common Book

The selection committee, comprised of students, staff, administrators, and faculty, has spent the last six months reading books and has narrowed the list down to these three finalists: The Circle, Kindred, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. We would like your help selecting the 2017 university common book.

The Circle by Dave Eggers

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given the opportunity of a lifetime. What begins as the captivating story of one woman's ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

Learn more about the book:

• Sharing is Caring is Sharing

• Ring of Power. ‘The Circle,’ by Dave Eggers

• New York Review of Books: When Privacy Is Theft

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Kindred is the bestselling novel by Octavia Butler. Part time-travel tale and part slave narrative, the book documents the first-person account of a young African-American writer, Dana, who finds herself shuttled between her 1976 California home and a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation. As she meets her ancestors, Dana makes hard compromises to survive slavery and ensure her existence in her own time.

Learn more about the book:

• NPR: Octavia Butler's 'Kindred' Turns 25

• Tor.com: Time Travel and Slavery: Octavia Butler's 'Kindred'

• San Francisco Gate: Octavia Butler's 'Kindred' brings slavery era to life

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

Christopher John Francis Boone, a young autistic boy, 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. 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.

Learn more about the book:

• New York Times: The Remains of the Dog

• The Guardian: Charlotte Moore on The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, the tale of a boy detective with Asperger's syndrome

• Huff Post: When Popular Novels Perpetuate Negative Stereotypes: Mark Haddon, Asperger's and Irresistible Fiction