Book club ideas for a Facebook group

[tinkywinkyshandbag]

I've just set up a lockdown bookclub on FB, just for my friends, they are a varied group, very international, but all English speakers, mostly female 40's/50's, one man, some very intellectual some not! I want some books that are uplifting but not cheesy, not too dumbed down but not too highbrow, and ideally not too expensive/difficult to find to buy online. Am I asking for the moon? If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them.

Eleanor oliphant is completely fine
Journey of Harold Fry
Elizabeth is missing
History of Tractors in Ukraine
The Blinds
My name is Leon

Our book club operates on a members choice in turn basis.

For the first meeting the organiser chose a book to get things rolling. After that members take turns to bring 3 suggestions and one person gets to choose. That person then brings the next 3 suggestions and someone else chooses and so on. Someone needs to be primed to bring 3 selections to the first meeting or the organiser does it and someone else chooses from these. Hope that makes sense.

That way there is a varied choice and nobody can complain as everyone gets a turn to select from the suggestions and bring 3 choices themselves.

Our rules are:

• Can't be a book you've already read
• Can't have been a previously listed unselected book
• Must be available in paperback (ie affordable) we have a max upper limit of £10, but ideally try not to go over £7. Anyone who has a paper copy makes an effort to share once they've read it and people take it in turns to buy. This makes sure people can participate if they can't afford to buy every time. Often paper copies are picked up via Ebay quite cheaply. We also pay attention to what is on Kindle 99p deals for the month. The hardest thing for us is finding affordable books, but we want to be inclusive.

Books we have enjoyed:
My Sister the Serial Killer
Where the Crawdads Sing
The Five
Old Baggage
Eleanor Oliphant

Thanks - I've made some suggestions to get the ball rolling, Eleanor Oliphant and Crawdads both on the list, will check out the other suggestions thanks. The time difference makes it challenging as we have members in Australia, Singapore, France, the US and Chile! So most of our chat will be online rather than live, but we might try the occasional messenger room or maybe even zoom.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn!

Crawdads might meet your requirements, but I'm not sure Elinor will. I will admit to hating it as a book, so my opinion might be biased, but it's not even slightly literary or uplifting. For me, it's written to be more of a quick page-turner type (no snobbery with that, I read plenty of those).

I was thinking A Gentleman in Moscow might be good though? It's written very very well to please those who prefer literary things, but is very easy to read. It also deals with living circumstances changing quite quickly and loosing freedoms but accepting them and still enjoying life. A Russian gentleman is sentenced for life to live in a posh hotel. Quite appropriate for the times we live in, which should give some good discussion too.

Crazy rich Asians - so fantastic I had to visit Singapore after reading them
Anything by Julian fellows so funny cannot believe they don't get recommended more often