Suggestions for a 'Book Club' reading list...

Not like the Oprah Book Club…

I need suggestions for a wide and varied range of literature.

…am contemplating suggesting “Equus” by Peter Shaffer next.

Help!

Are there any guidelines for your club? Is everything allowed? What books have they been reading? Does there seem to be theme to the books?

How about Maia by Richard Adams. :smiley:

Nice reply…LOL

Actually yes, anything’s allowed.

Only one book into it at the moment. First one was ‘The Lovely Bones’ by Alice Sebold.

Was OK, but too ‘bestsellerish’.

Well, if you wanted to continue the afterlife aspect, you could go with Connie Willis’s Passage. However, not her best work, and didn’t go over very big with my book group.
Or… you could keep up the murder aspect and go with The Alienist by Caleb Carr. I really enjoyed that.
I’ve found it’s truly difficult to choose a bookclub book. My advice, pick what you want to read.

Embers by Sandor Marai.

Henrik and Konrad, inseparable companions from boyhood through their thirties, meet again for one last time in their old age–more than 40 years after they last saw each other and the woman who came between them. They talk from dinner until dawn, seated at the same places where they had last sat together in their youth, as they explore the mystery of a few taut days more than four decades earlier that broke their relationship and bent their lives. Those events, which neither man fully understands, illuminate questions of friendship and love, loyalty and betrayal, honor and truth–which the two men explore for a night by dying firelight until morning parts them forever.

The author, Sandor Marai, was a celebrated Hungarian novelist before World War II. But he fled abroad when the postwar Communist government suppressed his work, including this book. Exiled and forgotten, he committed suicide in California in 1989, a year before this book was republished in Hungary. All his novels are now scheduled for republication and translation.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

Legendary Stuff: The Odyssey & The Iliad by Homer; Mythology by Edith Hamilton, a good translation of Beowulf

Classic Novels: A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Doestovsky (spelling might be off), Moby Dick by Herman Melville, East of Eden & The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck; Arrowsmith, Dodsworth & Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis; Sir Richard Francis Burton’s translation of the Arabian Nights; 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls & To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway; All Quite on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Classic Short Stories: Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson; Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War Stories (there are several editions of these; check out Dover’s catalogue), any good-sized collection by Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe or Jorge Luis Borges; the Illustrated Man & The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury;

Poetry: William Blake, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robinson Jeffers, Emily Dickinson, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, William Butler Yeats, John Keats, e.e. cummings, Nikki Giovani, Gwendolyn Brooks, T.S. Eliot, Seamus Haney, Palo Neruda, Robert Frost

Theatre: Medea by Euripedes; Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, Macbeth, King Lear, As You Like It by William Shakespeare; A Doll’s House & An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibson; Major Barbara, The Millionairess, Man and Superman, & Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw; The Crucible and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller; The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Science Fiction: Tau Zero, The Night Face, A Knight of Ghost and Shadows, The Dancer from Atlantis & Brain Wave by Poul Anderson; The Past Through Tomorrow, Double Star & The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein; The Foundation Trilogy & I, Robot by Isaac Asimov; the Skaith trilogy by Leigh Brackett; Sentinels of Space, Wasp, Three to Conquer & Sinister Barrier by Eric Frank Russell; Dune by Frank Herbert; Martians, Go Home by Fredric Brown; Dangerous Visions (editor) and Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison; the Maker of Universes and the Riverworld Stories by Philip Jose Farmer; Bug Jack Barron by Norman Speinrad, The Space Merchants by Fredric Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth

Fantasy: Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber, Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson, The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hour of the Dragon by Robert E. Howard, the Lyonesse trilogy and the Eyes of the Overworld by Jack Vance; The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany; The Wierdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner; The Shining by Stephen King; Tea with the Black Dragon & the Damiano trilogy by R.A. McAvoy; the Screwtape Letters & the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis

Horror: the Books of Blood by Clive Barker; any damn thing by Ramsey Campbell and Michael Slade; the Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft

Mystery: The Maltese Falcon & The Glass Key by Dashielle Hammett; The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The Lady in the Lake, The High Window & The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler; The Greek Coffin Mystery, the Egyptian Cross Mystery, The Four of Hearts, Calamity Town, Cat of Many Tails, The Player on the Other Side, And on the Eighth Day, and Face to Face by Ellery Queen; any damn mystery by P.D. James is good, but I especially recommend Death of an Expert Witness, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, Devices and Desires, A Taste for Blood, A Certain Justice, Original Sin, and Death in Holy Orders; Double Indemity & The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain; The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes & The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Ghost Stories: Any damn thing by M.R. James, J. Sheridan le Fanu and H.R. Wakefield
Jornalism: Ten Days that Shook the World by John Reed and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail & the Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson

Damn me to hell!!!

I left off Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman; Sense and Sensibility & Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen; Ringworld by Larry Niven; and Lucifer’s Hammer by Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

That should keep you busy for a while. :smiley: :smiley:

Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy.

Uh, if you wern’t exactly looking for the Complete History of Western literature…:wink:

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

Really really cool, and well written. I’m surprised it hasn’t been made into a movie yet.

The Prophet Khalil Gibran

Peyote…tell me it isn’t so! You rendered such an impressive list of books and nary a mention of Thomas Hardy’s novels or poetry…especially his novels…notably:

Mayor of Casterbidge
The Return of the Native
Tess of the d’Urbervills
Far From the Maddening Crowd

Maia If you’re looking for eclectic non-fiction reading may I suggest:

“Longitude” and “Galileo’s Daugter” both by Dava Sobell

“The Ether Day” by Julie M. Fenster

“Seabiscuit” by Laura Hillenbrand

I found our next read.

It’s called ‘Reply to maia’s Thread’ by The Peyote Coyote
:smiley:
Seriously…thanks to you all. Some were books I already had in mind, so that’s helped immensely.