Help me choose the next book for my book club to read

[FairClaire]

It's my turn to choose the next book we read.  Our book club has ten members (all women and moms) ages 25-45.  Some of us homeschool and some don't.  Some of us work outside the home and some of the women are stay-at-home moms. Our group includes women from a wide range of religious backgrounds including Agnostics, Catholics, and Evangelicals.  My main goal in choosing a book is to pick something that will lead to good discussion.

 

The types of books that haven't worked well/haven't been appreciated in the past are:

1)  Books that are too predictable

2)  Books with a lot of violence or language

3)  Books that are very popular (because someone in the group has already read it)

 

Books that tend to be favorites:

1) Memoirs

2) Books with characters our group (women/moms) can identify with

(The Snow Child, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Wonder are books that everyone enjoyed)

 

Any ideas? I'm running out of time and want to choose a good one!!

[Stacia]

The best discussion we've ever had in our book group was for The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. There is a little bit of language & there are some disturbing things in the story, but that is greatly overshadowed by the depth & questions this book raises. Highly recommended. (I thought our group would be divided on liking/not liking it; surprisingly, everyone thought it was a great book.)

 

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

 

AN EXPERIENCE NOT TO BE MISSED . . . If you have to send a group of people to a newly discovered planet to contact a totally unknown species, whom would you choose? How about four Jesuit priests, a young astronomer, a physician, her engineer husband, and a child prostitute-turned-computer-expert? That's who Mary Doria Russell sends in her new novel, The Sparrow. This motley combination of agnostics, true believers, and misfits becomes the first to explore the Alpha Centuri world of Rakhat with both enlightening and disastrous results. . . . Vivid and engaging . . . An incredible novel.

 

[FairClaire]

The best discussion we've ever had in our book group was for The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. There is a little bit of language & there are some disturbing things in the story, but that is greatly overshadowed by the depth & questions this book raises. Highly recommended. (I thought our group would be divided on liking/not liking it; surprisingly, everyone thought it was a great book.)

 

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

 

This looks really interesting! I will have to check with a few of the members to see if they have read this before.  I am definitely going to read it whether or not I end up choosing it for my group to read.

[Stacia]

This looks really interesting! I will have to check with a few of the members to see if they have read this before.  I am definitely going to read it whether or not I end up choosing it for my group to read.

 

The nice thing is that is also a little older, so it's likely that your library system will have at least one copy easily available. (That's a criteria that our book club often looks for.)

 

A very new book I read & think is fabulous (& which is on the shortlist for this year's Booker prize) is A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. I loved it & think it would be a great book to discuss in a group.

 

Book description:

A brilliant, unforgettable novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki—shortlisted for the Booker Prize

 

“A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.â€

 

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.

 

Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.

 

Full of Ozeki’s signature humor and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.

 

[LostSurprise]

The Sparrow is a very interesting, but disturbing, book. It also takes a good 100 pages or so to get into the concept of Jesuits on an alien planet. You should get a lot of discussion but not everyone will love it. I enjoyed it a lot but I know people who would have trouble with some of the themes/violence. If you have a group who hate conflict or don't like to discuss religion it may be a tricky choice. 

 

I love memoirs so I'm going to concentrate on that. 

 

If you liked Henrietta Lacks, your group may like The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Its another medical retelling which delves into the cultural differences between the Hmong people and the US medical system by talking about one little girl with a severe seizure disorder. Fairly popular. 

 

Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezzi is one I've been recommending lately. Its part true crime reconstruction of a serial killer case that rocked Florence, Italy in the '70s and early '80s. Then it gets weird. The author started the book while living in Italy in the '90s and befriending a local journalist who ran the case. A new prosecutor starts charging random people, including the author or the novel so he has to leave the country. The last third of the novel is an interesting look into some of Italy's judicial problems. That same prosecutor did the Amanda Knox case. Also fairly popular. 

 

If you're looking for cultural/historical memoirs Wild Swans by Jung Chang is the best book about China I've ever read. It follows a family of 3 women and covers the immense changes in China over the 20th century. What makes it a truly remarkable book is that the author's family were in Communist leadership so a lot of the thought processes behind decisions and what happened in Communist leadership. A truly amazing memoir and history. 

 

The Forest People by Richard Turnball is an anthropologist memoir from the '60s. Turnbull was one of the earliest scholars to live with the Pygmy people of Africa. This is not particularly scholarly, but it is very enjoyable. You feel like you get to know the people in the tribe and you feel that Turnbull likes and respects them.

 

Honeymoon in Purdah~Canadian woman travels through Iran with a platonic friend (traveling as a married couple because neither of them could travel there easily otherwise). This focuses a lot on individuals and families in Iran. The author is very friendly and really connects with people. Very positive book. Not as well known. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[kewb]

I am currently reading Moloka'i by Alan Brennert for my book club.  It is about a girl growing up with leprosy in the leper colony in Hawaii.  Very thought provoking.

[FairClaire]

 

 

I love memoirs so I'm going to concentrate on that. 

 

 

Memoirs are my favorite as well!  Thanks for the suggestions.  My library has a couple of these.  I have until mid October to decide on a book so I think I'll read 2 or 3 books and then decide on which one to go with.

[FairClaire]

I am currently reading Moloka'i by Alan Brennert for my book club.  It is about a girl growing up with leprosy in the leper colony in Hawaii.  Very thought provoking.

 

 

This looks interesting too!