your top ten novels you would recommend if starting a book club

Yes I did read Quarantine.

tears down my cheeks now.

Quint - You're the first person I know that has read Being Dead by Jim Crace. Did you read Quarantine too ?

And second Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Not many books make me cry.

And The Final Confession Of Mabel Stark is wonderful. She was the last great Tiger Trainer in a circus.

Sorry for earwigging, but what course are you talking about ?

Psychob... I got a grade 2 pass (just missed a distinction). Go on.. sign up

Sod Never mind DH! You do the course love. It's wonderful it really is. I enjoyed it so much more than I thought I would and it's given me a real confidence in my writing.

Psychob.. if I told you the truth I'd have to kill you lol! Actually it wasn't too bad. The exercises aren't too difficult. I would just write when I found a moment (normally the night the blessed thing was due) but I enjoyed it enormously and get my results soon. Go for it. It's a lovely course and they've just written a level 3 one which I've registered for! Though that involves more script writing and I'll actually have to put some work into it!

In our group we take it in turns to choose a book (we go in alphabetical order of our names) and then that person hosts that month's discussion. We don't have any rules about genre, and because there is a mix of people in the group we have read a wide spectrum of books. We all bring wine/snacks etc

Our group prob has about 8 members, there have been a few changes over the years, I've been involved for about 3 yrs and really look forward to it each month.

ours is a group of parents from school but what is nice about it is there is minimal school/birthday party chat as the book is the focus and provides in roads into other areas (past relationships, siblings, childhood etc.) so it is really nice in that sense. It is funny because there is very little if any book chat in the playground as we 'save it' for book group.

As we are all parents there is a high degree of flexibility with regard to membership - who comes and who doesn't etc - I think we have about 12 people who drift in and out with a 'hardcore' of 4 who have already read the book.

Ones that went down well:

the red tent
the kite runner
case histories
private peaceful
kim
booky wook
chocolat
white teeth
jane eyre

the real no-no was the story of O!

a maidens grave by jeffrey deaver

i would love to start a book group or even be in one

but im not at school and have no one to ask

Invite your school mums. Just have a rule that you don't talk about school (including the obligatory moan about the Head/secretary/Y6 teacher), then all should be fine.

If you have a few school mums and then get a couple of them to invite outside people your circle instantly grows.

consider my arse here! lol

Okay.. my bookgroup has been running for over 10 years now. I love my bookgroup.

This is what we do:

Someone volunteers to host (we kinda take turns but not in any specific order... it's more a case of... "ooh I haven't hosted for a while"). The hostess provides wine and nibbles (at a recent bookgroup her husband cooked a lovely meal with a to-die-for pudding).

We all throw in suggestions for books to read and then either by dint of persuasion or shouting the loudest the book is chosen.

We try not to stick to the same genre for too long. One can only read so many traumatic childhood bravely struggling through and surviving books.

If we're ever stuck for something to read we might look at recommended books via Orange book prize, Booker prize etc, but we normally manage to find one. We're not so keen on reading what everyone else is reading (so no Richard and Judy's choice for us).

I love the women in my group. We hardly see each other in the day to day which is great because it means that we don't discuss school etc, in fact our children go to very different schools and some have finished University.

Our evening follows a pretty similar pattern. We arrive, open wine and start to nibble. Quick check on how everyone's lives are going. Start to put the world to rights then someone says "hey what about the book". So we discuss the book, what we loved, hated etc. All the time eating and drinking. When the book has been exhausted we resuming world righting until someone else says "hey what's the next book?".

We meet about once a month. We choose two books to read over the summer and/or Christmas. We read fiction, non-fiction, biographies, autobiographies, "trauma" novels, fun novels (eg Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day).

Some bookgroups like to have their choices set out for the year. Too control freaky for us. We're a bit more organic. The aim of the bookgroup is to have fun and read things that we wouldn't normally pick up in the bookshop/library. Works really well. If the chosen book is a short one we'll often have a second one in there as well.

Over the summer we're reading Sky Burial by Xiran (brilliant) and Bill Bryson's Shakespeare.

Your bookgroup is what you make it. You set the "rules" and see what works best for the people that you have in it.

We have 9 in our group. We used to have 10. 1 member died of breast cancer, another woman came along a year later and then another left because her life became to busy. We're a tight group now and I don't think that it would be easy for anyone to join us as we've been through loss, divorce, illness, career changes, new men etc. Love my group.

I think that a bookgroup might become unmanageable with more than 10 people. 8-10 seems a good number.

hth

If on a Winters Night a traveller - Italo Calvino
The Flanders Panel - Arturo Perez-Reverte
The Third Mountain - Paulo Coehlo
Being Dead - Jim Grace
Sharks - Jens Bjornebo

Oops - kitten walking on keyboard! She seems to have downloaded something too!
I'm going to bed - it's taken too long to type a coherent message...

Small Island by Andrea Levy
Oranges are not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
I know why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
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I love talking about books so I think book groups are ace, but personally I would keep it pretty chilled out - set a maximum number, there are 8 of us in our group. Which seems pretty workable. I think the woman who set my group up just invited some friends to join and over the past couple of years some have left and some others have taken their place - always keeping to round about 8 people.

I think the best way to choose books is by taking it in turns to recommend something - then you get to know your friends reading choices. I would suggest reading reasonably 'complex' books or books with a strong theme - you need something fairly meaty to discuss. But the occasional light relief can be good too. I find that non-fiction doesn't really work so well, we have read a couple of biographies but it seems that the discussions are more limited even if the books themselves are good.

Lots of wine and snacks also helps .

If you're doing a count, so far I would second

The Corrections
Engleby
Cloud ATlas man David Mitchell, well I like Black Swan Green

If you want something differnet with some var var funny bits in mt, try Woman's World by Graham Rawle

Just FYI, our public library does a good service for book groups, the group joins and they issue you with a set of books. They do have a list to choose from, but they will get stuff that's not on the list, but may take longer as they have to trawl the county for them.
Not sure about etiquette, I think they all differ. I hear otherr groups meet in people's homes and drink wine. We meet in a pub and drink beer.

oh yes the road v good too

and The Reader