Suggestions for Book Group books, please.

[suedonim]

Can I have suggestions for books for my book group, please? We're not in the UK and I'm not too au fait with the latest UK must-reads. The books must be available in paperback. TIA.

My best recommendation: Don't choose 'book club books'.

How about some of these

My book club does a mix of contemporary & classics, which works well...

Ok - some of these have been around so you may already have done them :

Thousand Splendid Suns
The Thirteenth Tale
The Shadow of the Wind
We need to talk about Kevin
Time Traveller's wife

Don't know authors (or at least correct spellings ) off hand but can get them if there are any you haven't done

We've had different approaches to choosing our book club books. Last year everyone had a genre and picked from there. This year its 'whatever has been collecting dust on your bookshelf'. Each month someone different hosts and that person chooses the book.

Popular ones we've had have been Half a Yellow Sun, England's Mistress (biog of Emma Hamilton) and An Isabel Allende off the top of my head. I think I am going to choose Suite Francaise (unless MN tells me otherwise ).

The Richard and Judy ones usually go down well

here

Also would add

Small Island
The Kite Runner
The Book Theif - Markus Zusak
The Island - Victora Hislop
Winter in Madrid

All were popular in my book-clubs

Memory Keeper's Daughter is fab

As is The lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

and The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon

Wheelybug - Suite Francaise is a very easy read. Interesting too & quite cinematic.

Posie - good selection, good for keeping the discussion going.

We've also done A short history of tractors in Ukrainian, Nineteen Minutes (J Picoult).

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - brilliant.

The Memory Keeper's daughter - mind-numbingly dull, slow, and ultimately pointless if you already know that it is a Very Bad Thing to lie to your spouse about her child being dead or alive.

1000 Splendid Suns - Written by an Afghan who left his country as a child. And he clearly doesn't remember much. Only bearable for those of us who know nothing about Islam and the culture/traditions of the region. Two women are beaten up and otherwise abused for years. Nothing else happens. No character development, no insight into life in Afghanistan (except that they beat women up there), no landmarks or places described (except the two Buddha statues blown up by Taliban that everyone in the West knows about).

This year our books have included

Notes from an exhibition - all loved
The secret History - Donna Tartt
A confederacy of Dunces

Currently

When we were bad - Cahrlotte Mendlesonn
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.

Have a look at the MN book club selections as well for ideas.

We just read Persepolis. I was rather sceptical of reading a comic strip novel but I really enjoyed it and felt it really gave me a sense of the life of a young girl in Iran.

It was fun because on the night of the book group discussion we all made Middle Eastern dishes and had a Iranian buffet while talking.

PosieFlump - Are you in my bookclub??

We have read all those in the last year.

Message withdrawn

A confederacy of Dunces is one of my favourite books & I've recommended it to loads of people.

CotedAzur - I think I agree with your post above but one of the points of book groups is to discuss things and I find books that are not universally well received get the discussion going much better than those we all like. I haven't read 1000 Splendid Suns and after reading about it on here (was it you? I can't remember), I'm not tempted either. I liked The Kite Runner, though.

Cold Comfort Farm
Crow Road
Persuasion

In my work book group (very mixed bag of punters in terms of ages, background, tastes etc)
we have all enjoyed
Kite Runner
Curious Incident Of the Dog In the Nightime
19 Minutes

So far...

Am watching this thread for inspiration for the next few books

A spot of bother - mark haddon

Love2bake - lol
I work in a library, I know what reading groups read!!

Lol, I'm not as out of touch as I thought - I've read the majority of these already. But I guess I'll need to have read them to be able to recommend them for a book group. I don't know any of the R&J books, though. The other thread also has some interesting ideas.

This month's choice is either/both of Khaled Hosseini's books. I finished 1000 Splendid Suns this weekend. I preferred it to The Kite Runner but I wouldn't say it was an outstanding book.

"But I guess I'll need to have read them to be able to recommend them for a book group." That's not how it works in my current book club, people seem to recommend books they'd like to read rather than have read already.

That's not how it works in ours either,

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver.

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver.

That's interesting. I've been in several book clubs and the books have always been chosen on someone's recommendation. Do you go by newspaper reviews or what's on the bestsellers list or some other method?

I think in this situation, where we only have limited access to books, we do really want to be sure we have something with plenty of discussion in it and which is worthwhile passing on to others. 'The Reading Group' for example, was pretty shallow and when books have rarity value, it seemed a waste of time and effort.