I know I mentioned this before, when describing books I’ve read, but I’m in a book club. We’ve been going strong now since the summer of 2001 when we read our first book, James Paterson’s Suzanna’s Diary for Nicholas (so not my favorite book) but we followed it strong with Jumpha Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, still one of my favorite reads. Since then we’ve read over 60 books, from really easy ones, to tombs like Team of Rivals. We try to meet each month, usually skipping December, and maybe only meeting once or twice for June, July and August. For one year, we only met every other month. Not everyone reads every book for every gathering and not everyone attends every gathering but we almost always have enough to have a bit of discussion and while we may always discuss the book for long or in great length, we always do find something to talk about for at least a couple of hours.
You can see an almost complete list of what we’ve read here. It’s almost complete because it’s hard going back in time to recreate the list from memory when you didn’t keep copious notes.
Of course, we’re always looking for new books to read. Below is a list of potentials from another book club:
- We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oats
- The Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland (I’ve read this – it was pretty good).
- My Antonia by Wila Cather
- Sea Glass by Anita Shreve
- Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier
- All He Ever Wanted by Anita Schreve
- The Persian Pickle Club – Sandra Dallas
- A Good House by Bonnie Burnard
- On the Occassion of My Last Afternoon by Kaye Gibbons
- Revenge of the Middle Age Woman by Elizabeth Buchan
- Galileo’s Daughter by Dana Sobel
- Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafise
- Howard’s End by E.M. Forster
- The Last Time They Met by Anita Schreve
- The Murder Room by PD James (this is number 12 in the series; I’d sooner start with number one).
- The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates
- Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
- A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George (I read this too and honestly, while I’m up for Inspector Lyndsey as much as the next person, I don’t see this as book club material).
- Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith
- Dreams From my Father – by Barack Obama
- The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
- The Measure of a Man by Gene Getz
If you have any additional suggestions, comments on the above or on any that we’ve scheduled for next year, please feel free to leave a think.
Wow! Jessica great suggestions – thanks!
Kim – you guys have read some great books and on the list you provide here I can highly recommend My Antonia and Reading Lolita in Tehran.
Others my group has read and loved – Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner (if you haven’t read him – he is fabulous and this was probably one of our groups all time favorites); Mists of Avalon (we used this as a summer read, it is close to 1000 pages so we treated it as our only book for the summer – I stayed up till 2 AM for 7 nights and finished it in a week – need I say more?); anything by Barbara Kingsolver; Their Eyes Were Watching God (this is one of my favorites); another good middle eastern non-fiction was Nine Parts of Desire (very eye opening)… That is enough for now – enjoy your club it is a rare opportunity to find a group you like and stay with it for so long!
Jess
Charles, Water for Elephants was my favorite book from last year – I just loved the ending. Have you read Shadow of the Wind yet? I think you would enjoy it.
Wow. Wouldn’t have expected “Devil in the White City” from a group called the Book Babes. It was very good, I found the Worlds’ Fair stuff more interesting than the serial killer stuff.
And for future suggestions, I have been proselytizing The Time Traveler’s Wife ever since I read it, absolutely loved Water for Elephants, and am currently about 2/3 of the way through American Wife.
(No, I don’t stick to chick books, but I feel better recommending these to mass audiences than sci fi like the Ender’s Game series or horror/romance like the Laurell Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, or Kim Harrison stuff.)