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?

I dare you to suggest 50 Shades, just to see their faces

Sorry, there are so many great suggestions here that I am finding it impossible to keep up with the thread but later today I am going to comb through and make some notes.

I love that book Watching the English.

We've done a Henry James already.

I can guarantee that they have all already read all that stuff like Possession, White Teeth, Gatsby, etc. This is where it is getting tricky you see.

Angela Carter also an obvious choice, I would go for The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman if I were being bloodyminded.

trainspotting was originally a book

Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami is excellent

I agree with tisiphone, have confidence in your own likes. Robertson Davies is fine.

That's ok, BellMcEnd - my favourite Austen is Mansfield Park, so I'm used to being on the wrong end of discussions

I dare you to suggest 50 Shades, just to see their faces

Don't tempt me

Has your club read We Need to Talk about Kevin, by Lionel Shriver? It's classic book club fodder, opens up the nature/nurture debate beautifully.

I was going to suggest The Miniaturist too

You're Canadian? Go with national pride and choose a Margaret Atwood.

Unless the book clubs are there for a show I would have thought you should choose something your joy reading.

Good luck, you could always bring more wine to help things along!

White Oleander - Janet Fitch
On Beauty - ZAdie Smith

SunnyBaudelaire

you mean the W word, lurkinghub?

sadly no . The book is set in the village of "--". That's how it's printed. So (I was an arsey 14 yo) when I had to write an essay I used "----" which lost me marks. I complained, since we were encourage to quote from the text.

I detested Eng. Lit. which was a shame, as I love reading (luckily carried on) and would probably have considered a more literary career. Still I wonder how many of my classmates were published in the US ?

'The Miniaturist* is definitely not literature so don't go for that suggestion!

I'd go for 'To Kill a Mockingbird' given all the hoo-ha just now - I bet lots of people think they've read it, but haven't, or have forgotten what it's like.

Naked Lunch
Last Exit To Brooklyn

I heartily recommend The Sparrow:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sparrow_%28novel%29 (don't read too much of the plot summary - spoilers).

It is an amazing book but not very well known because it's classed as Sci-Fi. The Sci-Fi is really incidental to the main message of the book which is about how well-meaning interference can destroy people.

How about Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett? It's epistolary and I rather like it. It's very rude though.

I've just read 'H is for Hawk' - was very engaging and is suitably award-laden too .

All The Dancing Birds by Auburn Macanta - it's a first person perspective book about the slow decline into Alzheimers - and winner of the IPPY Gold Winner for Popular Fiction and Benjamin Franklin Silver Medal. Very thought provoking and would promote a lot of discussion, I think.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez- One Hundred Years Of Solitude, or Love in a Time of Cholera?

Totally different suggestion - its not a new book

Rape of the Fair Country by Alexander Cordell

Its historical fiction based on the industrial revolution in South Wales and covers the Chartists and the Newport Rising.

The new Sarah waters? Get in before she wins more awArds?

Christopher Isherwood? All that Goodbye to Berlin, Mr Norris changes trains stuff? Lots of people haven't read that and it's got the lot - Cabaret, Nazis, DV, guilt, etc.

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell.

It's a "classic" and it was written by Charlotte Brontë's friend and biographer, but it's actually a lengthier Mills & Boon.

Oh just read that you're Canadian. You absolutely have to choose a Canadian author then.