Help with my snobby bookclub

[HeartsTrumpDiamonds]

It is my turn to pick our next book for our book club and I am stumped. And a bit scared TBH.

It needs to be fairly highbrow and literary I'm afraid. I don't know the other women all that well (apart from the friend who introduced me to the group) and they have all been picking books that are either literary classics or modern winners of Nobel and Pulitzer prizes. So no chick lit - I think I would be kicked out of the group

I'd like to do something English or British because our current book is Runaway (Alice Munro) set in Canada.

I've already read lots of classics myself but don't really mind a repeat. I just want a book that won't make me look stupid.

So wise MNers - any recommendations?

Hons and Rebels - Jessica Mitford

Our single most successful choice last year was Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. We universally loved it and spent some time at out (admittedly not very high-brow book group) drawing our idea of a triffid.

OMG I loved John Wyndham when I was a teenager - especially Chocky and The Chrysalids.

Did anyone ever read Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time? I need to introduce DD1 to these.

DD2 has just started reading Hitchhiker's and she is hooked

I really like the point about the fact that you don't have to love a book for it to be a great book club choice. I once chose "blindness'' by Joseph Saramago which some people hated but it was such a great discussion.

We have just read 'The Goldfinch' which you may have already done but, again, it was a great discussion.

No one wanted to read a sci-fi book but it went down a storm. One of us even bought the series on dvd

The Hobbit or if thats too young The Silmarillion.

Something appropriate to the year All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Giuseppe Di Lampedusa - The Leopard (the English translation)

BrendaBlackhead - re 'The Slap' - I haven't read the actual book but read the reviews, thought the premise v interesting and watched the Austrailian TV drama and found it v watchable. It's being re-made as a US drama so evidently seen as a good story.

I've read 'The Corrections'; and found that incredibly hard-going! I wouldn't say the two books were anything like each other tbh. The story of the fallout after a family friend slaps a bratty child at a barbecue and the comment it makes on differing methods of child rearing and interpersonal relations between couples, would be of interest to many people I would imagine.

It probably works better as a TV drama than a book.

My book group have just done A Study in Scarlet, which was really popular. Lots of discussion about things that have gone on to be "trademarks" of the genre as well as how it compares to the modern Cumberbatch incarnation.

anything by Daphne Du Maurier - I've read a couple of hers this month, and really enjoyed them. I'm not very high brow.

So I have compiled a list of all the books mentioned on this thread up until 5 February or so - hopefully it won't break MN if I post it because it is quite huge.

The first half of the list is alphabetical by book title:

50 Shades of Grey
A Burnt Out Case
A Commonplace Killing - Sian Busby
A Summer Bird Cage - Margaret Drabble
All Quiet On The Western Front
All The Dancing Birds - Auburn Macanta
'Alone in Berlin' - Hans Fallada
Animal Farm
Bees
Behind the Beautiful Forever- Katherine Boo
Brave New World
Buddha Da. This is Not About Me - Janice Galloway
Catch 22
Cat's Eye Margaret Atwood
Cloud Atlas- Margaret Atwood
Diary of an Ordinary Woman
Dodger - Terry Pratchett
H is for Hawk
How to be both - Ali Smith
Humphry Clinker - Tobias Smollett
I capture the castle
If on a Winters night a traveller - Calvino
Last Exit To Brooklyn
Let the Great World Spin Colum McCann
Lolita
'Longbourne' - P&P from a servant's viewpoint,
Maus - Art Spiegelman
Morte D'Arthur - Sir Thomas Malory
Mr Pip - Lloyd Jones
Murakami
My Dear I Wanted To Tell You - Louisa Young
Naked Lunch
North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
Northanger Abbey - Val Mcdermid
On Beauty - Zadie Smith
Orlando - Virginia Woolf
Oscar and Lucinda
Parades End - Ford Maddox Ford
Paradise Lost
Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Portrait of a Lady
Rape of the Fair Country - Alexander Cordell
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
Stoner - John Williams
Testament of Youth
The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights - John Steinbeck
The Age of Innocence
The Bell - Iris Murdoch
The Bloody Chamber - Angela
The Book of Dave - Will Self
The Children Act - Ian McEwan
The Collector - John Fowles
The Edible Woman Margaret Atwood
The French Lieutenants Woman
The Game - A.S Byatt
The Great Gatsby
The Greengage Summer
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Heart of Darkness - Joesph Conrad
The Labyrinth and Other Short Stories - Jorge Luis Borges
The Lonely Passion of Miss Judith Hearne
The Magus - John Fowles
The Miniaturist - Jessie Burton
The Once and Future King - T.H. White
The Reader
The Road to Wigan Peer - Orwell
The Siege of Krishnapur
The Song of Achilles
The Sparrow
The Story of O - Anais Nin
The Summer Book - Tove Jansson
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
The Time Machine
The Trial - Franz Kafka
The unbearable lightness of being - Milan Kundera
The Voyage Out - Virginia Woolf
Tiger Tiger Burning Bright
To Kill a Mockingbird
Trainspotting
Under the skin - Michel Faber
Washington Square - Henry James
Watching Giants: The Secret Lives of Whales
Watching the English
We Need to Talk about Kevin - Lionel Shriver
We Were Liars
What to Look for in Winter - Candia McWilliam
White Oleander - Janet Fitch
Wind Up Bird Chronicle - Murakami
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

And the second half is alphabetical by author - some are just author recommendations with no actual book though:

Alison Lurie - The Truth and Lorin Jones
Alison Lurie - The War between the Tates
Angela Carter - The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
Angela Carter - Wise Children
Anne Bronte - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
AS Byatt - Possession
Austen
Baudelaire
Borges
Calvino
Caryl Brahms
Chaucer
Christopher Isherwood - All that Goodbye to Berlin, Mr Norris changes trains stuff?
David Lodge - The British Museum is Falling Down
DBC Pierre - Lights Out in Wonderland,
Doris Lessing's The Grass Is Singing
Edmund Spenser - The Faerie Queen
Eimar McBride - A Girl is a Half Formed Thing
Evelyn Waugh - Decline and Fall
Fitzgerald
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Love in a Time of Cholera
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years Of Solitude, or Love in a Time of Cholera
George Elliot - The Mill on the Floss
George Orwell - 1984
George Orwell - A Clergyman's Daughter
Graham Greene
Graham Greene - Our Man In Havana, The Third Man
Graham Swift - Waterland
Hardy
Henry James
Herman Melville - Bartleby the Scrivener
Ian McEwen - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Iris Murdoch - the Bell
Isaac Bashevis Singer - short stories
James Joyce - Ulysses
Jeanette Winterson - Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal
Jeanette Winterson - Written on the Body
Jessie Burton - The Miniaturist
JG Farrell - The Siege of Krishnapur
JG Farrell - The Singapore Grip
JG Farrell - Troubles
John Banville
Julian Barnes - Levels of Life
Laurence Sterne - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Louisa May Alcott - Little Women
Margaret Drabble - The Seven Sisters
Margaret Forster - ShadowBaby
Maupassant - Boule de Suif
Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
Molly Keane
Muriel Spark - Ballad of Peckham Rye
Peter Carey - The Girl with all the Gifts
PG Wodehouse
Robert Graves - I Claudius & Claudius the God
Robertson Davies - The Rebel Angels
Robertson Davies - What's Bred in the Bone
Rowling - A Casual Vacancy
Rumer Godden - The Peacock Spring
Saki
Sara Maitland
Sarah Waters
Scarlett Thomas - The End of Mr Y
Sebastian Faulks - Birdsong
Spenser - Faerie Queen
Stanislaw Lem
Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm
Susan Hill
Terry Pratchett
Tolstoy
Will Self - The Book of Dave
Zadie Smith - White Teeth

The book club meeting itself was great actually - and in spite of lots of wine we actually talked about the book (Runaway by Alice Munro) a lot. We all had different favourite stories and the discussion was really wide-ranging.

And thank you wise MNers for helping me decide on The British Museum is Falling Down for our next book - the suggestion was well received and I didn't look stoopid (I don't think - at least I didn't feel that way )

Doris Lessing - I second 'The Grass is Singing' or 'The Golden Notebook' - although that is long.

perfume by Patrick Susskind. It's THE best book I've ever read, and I don't like non scary fiction. They'll love it. Oh and mention you know if was made into a film but it's not a patch on the book, the book is so evocative.

Sorry, bit late to the party, but what about The Makioka Sisters, by Junichiro Tanizaki?

We read it, somewhat dubiously to begin with, at our BookClub years ago, and everyone still agrees it was one of our best choices, because it was so outside our usual "range", but was incredibly absorbing.

Sorry for resurrecting a zombie thread but since it's my own one I reckon I'm allowed.

So it's my turn to choose the book again and so far I have narrowed it down to 5:

The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair (recommendation from a friend)
The Book Thief (although we just read All The Light We Cannot See and I think they are quite similar)
How to be Both
The Time Travellers Wife
Cloud Atlas

Anyone got any comments or insights? Help me decide!

How about Memoirs of a Geisha? It's not highbrow but I do remember the story was quite fascinating and well described. Lots to discuss.

Actually OP. The Story of O would open up fascinating discussion.

Oh whoops. I checked the date and saw it was a February post so happily relied, I missed the year entirely!

Good to see you're still attending!

The Time Traveller's Wife is a fabulous book.

I LOVE The Time Travelers Wife but it's a bit marmite - I know a lot of people who really don't rate it at all. But that would certainly encourage discussion?

I would second the poster who nominated Perfume as well, it's very good.

Perfume is excellent!
The Time Traveller's Wife is also a well crafted tale, but annoyed me and I didn't enjoy it.

How about The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson?

My grandma was in a bookclub before her sight failed, and I remember her complaining to me when she was about 90 about some of the pretentious and heavy works people were suggesting.
I introduced her to the joys of Brodie's Notes and Wikipedia so she didn't have to actually read all the books.
I think she just went for the gin and tonics