Yeah, because there aren’t a million suggestions for book club books out there already. But I’m feeling very insecure. And I got great book suggestions here last time I asked.
Tomorrow I have to recommend a book for my book club to read. A problem I’m having is that the members are most of my closest friends, and I tend to give them my favourite recent reads anyway. (One has very similar taste to me and we exchange books often, and another always hands them back unread.) I also don’t read too much at the moment, because I’m a grad student and my job is reading long and boring books in seventeenth-century French. So I’m not altogether up to date on current books.
Most of all, I’m actually really self-conscious about asking a bunch of people (most of them are my closest friends but one or two are complete strangers), all of whom are far more intelligent than me, to read a book of my choosing . I don’t want to pick one too common that everyone’s read, but not too obscure and hard to find, too literary and boring, or too light and fluffy. Stupid, I know, but I am a bundle of insecurities when it comes to dealing with people I assume to be smarter than me!
So that’s a long preamble to a simple request for book advice. Have you found a really good book for discussion that’s NOT a feel good Khaled Hosseini/Jodi Picoult/Paulo Coelho type thing? (I actually quite enjoyed the Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns but I think the others would lynch me for such a pick.) Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro went over really well, just for reference.
Go ahead and recommend the Kite Runner. It is totally not the sort of thing that I’d read, but my best friend gave it to me and I read it. And loved it. And I loved A Thousand Splendid Suns, too. I thought that both books were well-written and were interesting. I don’t know how common it is now, it’s probably available in used book stores.
Most of my favorite books are science fiction and fantasy, and if you wanted suggestions for that category, I’m sure you would have mentioned it. But I can’t help myself. If your group has feminist leanings, then I will suggest The Gate to Women’s Country, by Sheri S. Tepper. It’s widely available in both new and used.
I don’t think there is anyone left in America who hasn’t already had a chance to read the Kite Runner if they wanted to. Especially anyone who has belonged to a book club.
Sonnenstrahl, it’s always going to be risky recommending a book you haven’t read yet. What if you end up hating it too? I think you should go in with a couple different books and see what people have already read. My suggestions: anything by Ha Jin (I loved Waiting but many people have read it by now) or Haruki Murakami. I think that’s exactly the brow level you seem to be aiming for.
Yeah, I think all my friends have read it, or have passed it by deliberately. I wasn’t so much saying that that would be my choice, just that I’m not against all “book clubby books” as a matter of principal or anything.
(I even admit to reading a bunch of Jodi Picoult’s in a row when I was a teenager and not noticing anything wrong with them until I got to the end, when I realized I had just read the same book eight times. ;))
Thanks for putting it in perspective. And Murakami is one I’ve meant to read forever, so that would be good. (The rules, which were made when I was out of town, are that we have to choose a book we haven’t read yet because no one shall be allowed to miss a month without reading a new book!) I quite often enjoy hating a book, anyway. A good hatefest is almost as good as everyone liking a book.
God, I LOVED that book, despite my initial confusion about the play within the book. That said, I will add that although you need not have a strong feminist attitude going in, most men will find themselves feeling pretty well bashed by the end of the book, I would imagine.
In the “people will love it or hate it” category, allow me to stump yet again for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, an EXTREMELY LONG (don’t say I didn’t warn you) historical fantasy about the attempt to rediscover the use of “English Magic” set during the Napolonic Wars. It is slow, quirky, witty and (to me) totally irresistable, filled with insights about ambition, race relations, and, well, evil fairies. No, really – it is wonderful! Please don’t be misled by comparisons to the Harry Potter books, for better or for worse. The only things the two have in common are extreme length, England and Magic. This is NOT a children’s novel which adults can read. It is an adult novel.
Have you read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows? Bliss.
Most of the books I read for my book club turn out to be duty reads, that is, I wouldn’t pick them up or finish them if I didn’t feel obligated (though I’m often glad to have read them in the end) but this one was complete joy. It required the neglect of many household duties and several children, but I scarfed it in a day.
I LOVED Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I actually did think comparisons with Harry Potter held up, in that they are both worlds where magic was injected in a matter-of-fact and somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner into the real world. And that they’re the only two fantasy books that I have adored, so they clearly have something in common.
I’m also going to get the Guernsey Potato Peel book for my mother for mother’s day. Bonus! A book that I bet she’ll love, and I’ll get to steal it from her next time I’m home. Thanks!
I haven’t read any good novels lately but I’ve read some great non fictions that I’d recommend for a book club.
Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation or The Wordy Shipmates, two very good, quirky (in a good way) self indulgent (in a good way) books about American history, both of them relatively brief but a lot richer in content than you initially imagine. AV is basically travel writing of places associated with famous assassinations (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, JFK, MLK) that examines our fixation with violence (in a non finger pointing sort of way) and gives some great trivia along the way, while WS examines the Puritans of New England (not the Plymouth Rock pilgrims but the later ones) and does a great comparison-contrast of their ideals with our own (and finds neither time all great or all terrible); one of my favorite talking points is her discussion of The City on the Hill speech (which was not given as a “why you should be proud” speech as it is usually quoted today, but as a “this is the heavy responsibility on your shoulders” speech about obligations).
More straightforward:
Escape by Carolyn Jessop- a fascinating memoir of a woman who escaped Fundamentalist Mormon compound. At 18 she married a man three times her age who already had 3 wives and 30+ children, and by the time she escaped she was 36, had 8 children (one born with severe health problems and special needs), had $20 to her name and no gas in her van, and no idea of where she was going or how she would live, and her husband was the second most powerful man in the compound (today he’s the most powerful). It’s a fascinating story. Great discussion points are “Was her husband an evil man or just a product of his environment (he did many things for his wives and kids that others did not)?” or “Should she respect the decision of her daughter to return to the compound [her eldest returned to the compound of her own free will when she was 18 and legally an adult] or try to take her out against her will?”
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls- another excellent memoir about a woman from an extremely unconventional family. Her parents are people you want to kill one minute and like the next, but either way you’re glad they weren’t yours. They were usually penniless, largely due to their own sloth and weirdness, and for years she and her siblings lived in a home with no running water where their mother painted all day (but refused to “sell out” by teaching art) and her father gave each child a star for Christmas (he’d point it out and tell them it was theirs). One of the great moments is early in the memoir when she has a meeting in modern day in which her mother, little higher than a bag lady in NYC now, meets her for lunch and asks her for money— so she can get cosmetic surgery. (The fact she’s living in an abandoned building with a pack of stray dogs, no biggie, but “you can’t feel your best if you don’t look your best”.) Discussion points are “in what ways were they exemplary parents?” and “what were the great things they did for their children that other parents don’t?” as well as the “when did you most want to kill 'em?” or “If you’d been a social worker, would you have removed the kids?” (they were both neglected daily and loved deeply by their parents).
Anything by Joyce Carol Oats. She handles tragedy like Jodi Picoult wishes she could. They aren’t feel good fluff, but beautiful portraits of people. Really lovely books. They are very well written but not intimidatingly so. My favorite so far is We Were the Mulvanneys.
Does it have to be a recently published book? Why not something like Remains of the Day or The Color Purple or an English “classic” like The Scarlet Letter?
When I belonged to a book club, we reread (because we had all read it as teens) Catcher in the Rye–very good discussion about what a wanker Holden was to us now, versus how we perceived him then.
We’ve had a lot of success with Margaret Atwood - Robber Bride in particular. We didn’t read Oryx and Crake as a bookclub because we didn’t want suicides.
John Irving - Prayer for Owen Meany or Cider House Rules.
Michael Chabon - Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Wonderboys
Two that my book club read recently that are a bit out of the mainstream but that I quite liked were:
I Capture The Castle, but Dodie Smith, the author of 101 Dalmatians, with which this book has exactly zero in common. This book was originally published in 1948 but it does not feel dated at all. The writing is very good and the narrator’s POV is strong and sounds authentic.
These Is My Words by Nancy Turner. This is a much less “literary” book, but it’s a very enjoyable page-turner with a dash of romance thrown in.
Is your book group composed entirely of literate people with a good sense of humor who are not bothered by profanity and a bit of explicit sex? Then take a look at Christopher Moore’s new book, Fool. It’s King Lear, told through the eyes of the jester. Good stuff.
Do you do nonfiction? I just read Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says about Us) by Tom Vanderbilt. It ain’t literature, but it’s a fascinating look at road design/traffic control/psychology and the cultural differences in the way people drive in different countries/societies/environments.
Looking for a well-written classic? My book group just read For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway and we had a great, lively discussion. Several people researched the author, several looked into the Spanish civil war in more detail, and several watched the movie. It was one of our best meetings.
If you’d like a really fascinating discussion, suggest Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar…: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes by Thomas Cathcart. If nothing else, you’ll be able to spot and identify any logical fallacies during the ensuing debate–and you’ll probably have some members telling good jokes during the meeting, too.
