Help me pick a book for my book club

[Nonny]

I've been part of a book club for about 5 months, and we're getting ready to make the selections for next year.  I have a month to pick a book for my turn as the host.  There are no real rules about picking the book, other than to not pick something that has already been read (a bit of challenge, as this group has been meeting for 20 years(!) and as far as I know there is no archival list of books to exclude).

The group is all women, 2-3 of us in our 30s/40s, and then another 10-12 in their 50-70s, but is also open to the public, so anyone can join at any time (I joined because they publicized a book I had already read and really wanted to discuss).

Anyway, they read basically everything, from Dave Eggers The Circle (which I hated with the fire of a thousand suns) to Redeployment (short stories about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan), to Sue Monk Kidd's The Invention of Wings.  

I've been thinking about Station Eleven, which I just loved, but since we've read several books off the 2014 National Book Award nominee list, I'm afraid they might have already read it before I joined.  I want to come with a couple of options, just in case my first choice is already taken.

[charlatti]

I think Speak by Louisa Hall would be really interesting to discuss. www.goodreads.com/book/show/23215488-speak
(Drive by posting -- I'll try to look for more later.)

[MrsAxilla]

My book club is terrible at picking books! The last good one we read was My Beloved Life, Sonia Sotomayors's memoir.

[dorothyinAus]

I don't read best-sellers when they are current, and my personal library is full of books that are out-of-print or hard to find, so my suggestions might not be worth much. But thinking about the books I've read lately I'd enjoy discussing…

I'm sure the big-name classic mysteries have been done, but what about something relatively new -- Julie Hyzy's White House Chef mysteries are good. Susan Elia MacNeal's Mr. Churchill's Secretary leaves the door open for interesting discussions of current themes in historical fiction.

Mary Stewart's thrillers are well worth reading and would definitely make for an interesting discussion.

I read it a while ago, but I really enjoyed Susan Vreeland's The Girl in Hyacinth Blue and would have really liked to participate in discussion of it.

Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series would be great for a discussion -- especially the episodes in Book World.

Alison Weir's An Innocent Traitor would be interesting to discuss.

I've also wished I could have had a discussion about The Assassination of the Archduke, which was interesting and put forth a very different idea of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

[Nonny]

Sept 26, 2015 19:45:27 GMT -5 charlatti said:

I think Speak by Louisa Hall would be really interesting to discuss. www.goodreads.com/book/show/23215488-speak
(Drive by posting -- I'll try to look for more later.)

This looks fascinating, but sadly our library only has 6 copies, and while we don't have to make sure there are tons of copies available it's accepted practice to check the system for the number of copies before making your selection.  Adding it to my Good Reads profile.

[Nonny]

Sept 26, 2015 22:00:18 GMT -5 MrsAxilla said:

My book club is terrible at picking books! The last good one we read was My Beloved Life, Sonia Sotomayors's memoir.

This looks interesting, and there are a plenty of copies, thanks for the suggestion!

[Nonny]

Sept 28, 2015 1:52:21 GMT -5 dorothyinAus said:

I'm sure the big-name classic mysteries have been done, but what about something relatively new -- Julie Hyzy's White House Chef mysteries are good. Susan Elia MacNeal's Mr. Churchill's Secretary leaves the door open for interesting discussions of current themes in historical fiction.

Mary Stewart's thrillers are well worth reading and would definitely make for an interesting discussion.

I read it a while ago, but I really enjoyed Susan Vreeland's The Girl in Hyacinth Blue and would have really liked to participate in discussion of it.

Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series would be great for a discussion -- especially the episodes in Book World.

Alison Weir's An Innocent Traitor would be interesting to discuss.

I've also wished I could have had a discussion about The Assassination of the Archduke, which was interesting and put forth a very different idea of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

I'm not big on mysteries, and I kind of want to avoid a series.

The Girl in Hyacinth Blue looks really good, and so does The Assassination of the Archduke, but they both have the same problem as Speak, not enough copies, but going on my Goodreads.

Ugh, this shouldn't be so hard!

[MrsAxilla]

Sept 28, 2015 19:44:13 GMT -5 Nonny said:

Sept 26, 2015 22:00:18 GMT -5 MrsAxilla said:

My book club is terrible at picking books! The last good one we read was My Beloved Life, Sonia Sotomayors's memoir.

This looks interesting, and there are a plenty of copies, thanks for the suggestion!

I'm pretty sure I wrote a gushing review during our weekly check in.     It was a great read.  Very inspirational.