For Book Clubbers: Which books had the most thought provoking discussions?
For Book Clubbers: Which books had the most thought provoking discussions?
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For Book Clubbers: Which books had the most thought provoking discussions?
i wanna hear….
Pope Joan by Donna Cross – by far the most intense discussion with strong and divergent opinions – in 15 years of book clubbing!
Fie! Oh my goodness. I love that book. Have read it twice already!
A House Without Windows
Which author?
It’s fiction, but you just know there are so many truths to it.
Lolita. I know it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but the book club discussion we had on it lasted for over 3 hours.
1984.
We had a great night discussing Her Husband’s Secret. Opinions differed on whether the wife would have honored his request to not read the letter she found in the attic.
Too funny we both said the same book at almost the exact same time!
Surprisingly A Husbands Secret . We read a lot of classics but this one had a great discussion on could you keep a secret like that and was a 50/50 split
The New Jim Crow
Anna Karenina
The Thirteenth Tale
Read that in my English class HS senior year & loved it. Provides a lot of great discussion
Incredible book.
This is my absolute favorite modern novel…and I’ve read it in every book club I’ve belonged to (and, oddly, I was never the person to recommend it!)
Interesting. I listened to this book and thought it was boring. This may be a case of the narrator not serving the book well.
@Lynn I get what you mean. I remember the opposite happening- I listened to a book, loved it. My mother read it on my recommendation and was lukewarm. Funny how the voice of the book is different for everyone!
Rules of Civility
The Red Tent
I’ve been in a lot of book clubs. The ones I remember the most discussion about were Time Traveler’s Wife, Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Thirteenth Tale, Gone Girl, and The Next Thing on My List.
Power of one. Not on,the list. One of my favorites.
Has anyone read this? Thoughts?
One of my all time favorites.
Loved it.
@Janet I loved this book!
Melville’s short story “Billy Budd”
Americanah and Blindness
Sing, unburied, sing. A reliable wife, orphan train
Great question! I’m always looking for a good bookclub suggestion.
The Hate U Give
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
Small Great Things
11/22/63
Half the Sky
Defending Jacob
Little Bee
Still Alice
The Color Purple
Angela’s Ashes
11-22-63 Amazing book
@Jane My book club is reading this for June and this makes me excited to read it!
The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks
Loved this book!
Great discussion!
I’m not in a book club, but I think the books “Hausfrau” and “All The Ugly and Wonderful Things” would be great discussion books.
My book club did “All the Ugly and Wonderful Things” and it was definitely a heated discussion!
I bet!
Do people actually discuss books at book club? I’ve been in 3, and they all were really more about getting together and eating.
Our books get a few minutes?
@Heather I guess ours do too. We go around the table and see who read the book. The people who read the book then tell the people who didn’t if it is worth reading or not.
I’m currently in 3. We talk about the books, then life, then ‘oh, Hey! So what about this book..’, then life
For a bit.
Yes, I facilitate the meeting. We try to find questions provided by the author or online. We start with what each person read during the month, then discuss the current selection, pick next month’s book and still find time to eat and visit.
@Bettina love a firm and good facilitator.
Yes
I’ve been in several book clubs and the one I’m in now definitely talks about the books. However, most of the members of the club don’t know each other outside of the club. When I’ve been in clubs where everyone knew each other, we rarely spent more than 10 minutes on the book.
I was in a club at the library. As someone else said we were not friends so we did focus on the book. When the group stopped being library sponsored I went to one or two more meetings but did not enjoy it as much. As an introvert I liked talking about the books.
Maybe the fact that we don’t know each other is why this book club is working so well.❤️?
Lilac Girls.
If the Creek Don’t Rise
The Birth of Venus, All the Light We Cannot See, The Color Purple, The Diary of Ann Frank, The Handmaids Tale, All of Thomas Hardy !
Color of Law
The Gate to women’s country by Sherri Tepper ,
Kindred
Glass Castles
Oh, Yes! That one too!!
The Life of Pi had various opinions as to what was the tiger really!
Beloved by Toni Morrison.
The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
The help
A Fine Balance.
A Fine Balance is one of my top five faves since forever! And I’m old!
All of these are excellent choices.
This is How it Always is
Boys in the Boat, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and Warmth of Other Suns
Home town writer,Atul Gawande’s “ Being Mortal “
Everyone should read that book!
Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan
Brave New World
The Underground Railroad, Never Let Me Go, News of the World, the Sympathizer, the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, Half the Sky
News of the world was one of our favorites
I Am David…a book about a Jewish boy during the haulicost….
Farenheight 451
Oddly enough, one of our best discussions was about a book everyone hated, Cleopatra. It was poorly written, but it sparked a really interesting discussion of the role of women in the ancient world and today.
The Unit. Great ideas for discussion on what a society values.
Staggerford
Sisters-in-Law about Sandra Day O’Conner and Ruth Bader Ginsberg – their lives and time on the Supreme Court
That sounds really interesting. And I like the title too
@Karen it was really interesting but we got into it over some of O’ Conners decisions
Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Revolutionary Road and East Of Eden.
Underground railroad and handmaid’s tale.
The Second Mrs Hockaday was probably our most academic discussion (writing style and historic realities), and The Painted Veil was the liveliest (a lot of characters to have strong opinions about).
I LOVED The Painted Veil!
A Mother’s Reckoning (most difficult read as moms of teen boys but one of our favs), Small Great Things ( lots of good, introspective discussion re race relations), We Were the Lucky Ones ( good, in-depth discussion re Holocaust) & Lab Girl (only because we were divided- 2 liked it, 2 hated it, 1 was neutral; probably our most spirited ??)
The Help and an amazing discussion was had with Siddhartha by Herman Hesse!
For our club it was One Second After by William R. Forstchen
Ours too
That book has haunted me for two years! I shared it with my office mates and it freaked out all of us!
Carole Hay, I just purchased it for my husband so he can freak out like me and the others in our book club! There’s a sequel. I haven’t had the nerve to read it yet!
@Linda I’ve read all three. Start stockpiling now!!
We’ve found that the best conversations are usually about the books we didn’t like! For example, we pretty much all hated The Goldfinch…we read it about 4 years ago, and it has come up again at our book clubs meetings literally every single month since!
Oh my gosh. That book came highly recommended and I disliked it. It was such a waste of my time.
@Wittney so funny how different people’s tastes are. I loved The Goldfinch.
I really enjoyed the Goldfinch.
I should clarify and say that I liked some aspects of it. It really captured my attention in the beginning. I cared enough about the characters to keep reading but it was just too much doom and gloom. I hate to say that a book was “too wordy” but I felt it should have been about 200 pages shorter ?
I do agree it could have been shortened.
It’s true… as a fellow member of this book club, the books we dislike the most have the best discussions… The Goldfinch, The Beautiful and the Damned…
Sara’s Key, The Physician, Woman in Gold, Angela’s Ashes.
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
All the Light We Cannot See. Beautiful book.
Beautiful!
I don’t know why it doesn’t get more attention
That was my book club’s best discussion too!
One of my all time favourite books.
The Red Tent, Stranger in a Strange Land, Mists of Avalon.
Girlfriend, you are my match! ♥️
In many ways.
I gave a copy of Mists of Avalon to all three of my girls on their 16th birthday.
Red Notice, Necessary Lies
Huckleberry Finn, Night Circus, Room
Room… amazing.
Portrait of Dorian Gray
The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe
A Little Life – a truly amazing book, so filled with emotional depth and thought-provoking issues.
The Orphan Masters Son
Alias Grace
Most recently, Only Child by Rhiannon Navin.
The Hate U Give, The Circle, Just Mercy and the Nix
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and The Paris Architect.
??
The Perks of Being A Wallflower.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. By Mark Haddon
Frankenstein or The Da Vinci Code
@AnnieFraizer thoughts for book club
Evicted by Matthew Desmond
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
The Glass Castle
The Land Remembers
Glass Castle.
My book club too! We talked about it for 2 whole hours.
The Glass Castle, Middlesex, Before You Know Kindness, The Sound of Gravel
About 6 years ago, my husband and I joined a book club for mysteries. We’ve found that books with an unreliable narrator spark the most passionate and involved discussions. A cozy only takes 30 minutes to talk about and then the group is at a loss.
How about The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit. Very interesting.
She’s Come Undone and The Cider House Rules.
Small Great Things can stir up some important conversation.
The Women in the Castle
The Light between Oceans, The Secret Wisdom of the Earth
Just finished The Light Between the Oceans for my book club which meets next week. I thought it was a sad book and I cried buckets at the end. Glad I read it and curious to see if anyone else in my group cried.
I loved this book. Have you read The Nightengale?
@Cortney not yet- too many things on the list before I get to it. Will I cry?
i definitely cried!
@Deanna Thanks for the warning. Doesn’t mean I won’t read it because sometimes we all need a good cry.
We had a good discussion on Light Between…about choices that were made and the consequences of said choices. Nightingale surprised me as I am not a huge Hannah fan – she outdid herself on this one. All the Light we Cannot See was another one I read in that some time frame 🙂
@June multiple times!! But is a wonderful book.
@Tana yes!!! I had never read one of her books but this one blew me away. I also read The Winter Garden and it was good. Not Nightingale level, but still good.
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. It was absolutely fascinating to hear discussion from those in the group who were the college students of that era and how their views have transformed over time.
Boys in the Boat…great book, true story.
We really enjoyed that in our book club
I loved that book!
Olive Kittrage
East of Eden. Like arguing the Bible.
Team of Rivals had the best discussion. One of our members is from Argentina so this really interested her. We even rented the movie Lincoln and then discussed how it compared with the book.
The Idea of You by Robinne Lee
“Tortilla Curtain” by T C Boyle. It’s a hot button issue here in Texas.
I loved that book, but didn’t like his other novels.
My Sister’s Keeper
The Radium Girls. We all loved it and discussed how the book’s message stayed with us.
We had a great discussion on this book. Horrifying what went on! Also, I live in an area where a copper smelter was in operation for almost 100 years. Air pollution from it settled on the soil surface of over 1000 square miles. Arsenic, lead and other heavy metals are still in the soil as a result of this pollution. We included this in our discussion and also about the people that lived in the neighborhoods close by. Like in Radium Girls, some people were told the air was safe. Hmmm….
written**
All The Stars in Heaven By Adrianna Trigiani
One we just read, The Blue Diary.
I listened to this book on audio. It was much better.
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Oh! I loved that book!
The Prizewinner of Defiance Ohio, and even more intense was We Need to Talk About Kevin
The Immortalist, The Last Sin Eater, Little Fires Everywhere.
mines been two weeks lol
and thank you!!
Try listening – I sometimes find that helpful with a variety of books (like the Winternight Trilogy with all those Russian names!). Keep trying!!
thank you!!
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay. It’s a collection of essays and a modern day must-read!
small great things
The Da Vinci Code.
A Man Called Ove
I couldn’t put that book down. Love it!!
I just could not get into A Man Called Ove. Why did you like it. How far did you read before you knew it was a great book for you Pamela Meerbrey?
@Gail I liked it from the start. Ove was just a unique character. I read it for my book club and everyone liked it.
@Gail stick with it. He is cranky at first and seems like an old grouch but as the story unfolds you find out why and he changes and evolves. It’s really about love.
I think we all know an old curmudgeon!
Oddly…Odd Thomas…we talked about the nature of horror, fear… what scares us, nightmares, .. love, denial, psychology, …all sorts of stuff…Koontz would have been proud. Horror doesn’t always get the respect it deserves.
Oh, best series ever!
I loved the Da Vinci Code! It was so well thought out and unique I could have read it twice in a row but waited a year so I got the super illustrated edition.He hasn’t come up with anything better than that yet!!
As an English teacher: Things Fall Apart and The Kite Runner. As an individual/student: Never Let Me Go… and too many books that I have read that I can’t find anybody to else to discuss with. I read alot of author’s authors like Barthelme, Pynchon, Nabokov, etc.
Fifty Shades of Grey, as to it is a love story. It is two main characters’ road to a different level of understanding of their true feelings …. just saying
Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen – the great why do victims of domestic violence stay discussion. Eye opening to me as someone who had never worked with a victim before. Now after 20 years of working with victims, I recommend this book so others can understand why leaving a domestically violent relationship can be incredibly dangerous.
The Book of Night Women.
A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn.
In our book club we had a good discussions with: Lilac Girls, Small Great Things, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, Still Alice, The Hate you Give.
Lilac Girls, The Nightingale, Under The Banner of Heaven, The Glass Castle. Love the great discussions in my book groups!!!
Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Girl on the Train
I read it in college and don’t recall having trouble with it, but I know what you mean. Because I commute an hour to work I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I don’t mean this to insult anyone from the South, but I tried listening to American Sniper and just couldn’t do it because I couldn’t stand all of the “y’alls.” Maybe it would be better if I read the print format.
Tattoos on the Heart & Barking at the Choir. Both by Greg Boyle. We had amazing discussion after first and chose his second book as soon as it came out.
Our first outing – going to see Book Club at Arc Light Cinema in El Segundo today at 12:55 pm …looking forward to seeing yiou.
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett – it still makes me smile to think how the author wove this story together – try it.
So LOVE Bel Canto!!
Night Circus
The Good Father, Nightingale, to name a few.
Life of Pi
Three women. Powerful book but invoked anger and outrage. Ohio National grard recruits followed for 5 years. Iraq warb timeframe
One would think it would be the easy, typical book club books, but for my group, it was the books that made us a little uncomfortable. A few months ago we reviewed A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota . It was a series of essays by Minnesotans of color.
I felt one of the best discussions our book club had was the book A Gentleman in Moscow. I was not to sure about reading it but the more I read the more I liked it.
I hope I feel the same way since we are reading this book for our book club
The Great Gatesby – we had a great discussion on the differences between love & obsession.
My book club at church had hours and hours of great discussions while reading The Shack.
Good book Reliable Wife, very interesting author.
Waking up White
@Linda i will join!!!
50 Shades of Grey for my book club.
i joined 3 new ones today. i just see no point if i cant be involved ?
@Shayler That’s how I feel!
To those discouraged about pending posts, there was a recent message from the administrators that they were unable to handle the volume. Their intention was to create a forum for discussing the books on the list – 1984 and Alice’s Adventures this week. Let’s not lose sight of those discussions!
@Linda agreed
@Linda It’s because they only put up 2 a week among the jillions of other (mostly fun) discussions!
ours must not be fun then ??♀️
Like this post. I have led book discussion groups and some books are easier to discuss than others. I don’t mean “easy” in that they don’t spark controversy or heated discussions. I mean the books , have so much to discuss. Maybe it was just me being not a good leader in the less than good book discussions but some boy, they were loaded with ideas and though provoking thoughts. I did a LOT of Young Adult book discussions and wow, some of the thoughts were wonderful.
Again I must say THE BLUEST EYE.
Red Tent, The Miniaturist,A Man Called Ove, The Dove Keepers to name a few.
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Orhan’s Inheritance, Did you Ever Have a Family, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper, The Secret Daughter, Those who Saved Us….there are just so many…..
I read the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The way her cells were sold for research around the globe and her family mired in poverty was unbelievable.
The Good Daughter and about to start Handmaid’s Tale!
Reading some posts that book clubs seem to work better when the members don’t know each other. I guess I am really lucky because we have such a successful club. In the 20 years we have been meeting we have supported each other through cancer, deaths of spouses, miscarriages, weddings and births of grandchildren. Love my book club friends and yes, we discuss the book every month. @Jennifer
I am in one through a library. We know the people in the club but not outside friends. It works for us. And we too discuss the book and any others we might have read. There is only one man in the group. Meeting for 10th year
The Help
Life of Pi. Were those really animals in the boat with him or were they actually people?
We will never know.
That’s what made it interesting and so fun to discuss!
The Kite Runner The Namesake, and Snowflower and the Secretary Fan
The Girl from the Train I thought she might have a split personality when I began this book. Anyone else think that?
??♀️??♀️
All the Light We Cannot See
Love in the Time of Cholera
@Shayler Mine never posted either but there are so many discussions going on I don’t really miss it
We usually have spirited discussions, but last year we decided to choose whatever biography of Coco Chanel we thought would be interesting then present each book and it’s merits. Well, we were thinking she was a double agent during WWII and one book was Sleeping with the Enemy which we believed would be about her bravery as a spy. We were so surprised by the facts and her close relationship with so many famous artists, etc. including Winston Churchill, who got her off of some charges against her…..saving her life. She was intense, strongly loyal to family and certain friends, but mistreated so many others. It’s amazing in so many crazy ways.
@Louise im glad
Beartown
Believe it or not, Where Did You Go Bernadette?
The Book Thief and All the Light We Cannot See
Both great books!
Monuments Men and The Boys in the Boat!
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks and Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
Loved People of the Book!!!
@Nina I actually read it backwards when I finished it.
Love and love
Nancy Hill what a great idea!! Have you read The Book or Speculation? Time jumping again but was really good
Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson
Me Before You!!
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.
Where is everyone from …I am from Los Angeles, CA.
NYC
TN
Wow
We are all over …maybe down the road we will pick a place in the middle for a reunion
Detroit area MI
Grew up in Detroit. Married a civil engineer and have now lived in the suburbs of St. Louis, New London, CT, behind Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake City, TX, and now live in Mission Viejo, CA.
used to be Glendale, Ca but relocated 18 years back to Nashville , TN area
The Eight, The Road, A Gentleman in Moscow, My Brilliant Career
The Road, what a read. ?
Diane Ainsworth I agree. The Road was a book club selection that I unsuccessfully opposed. I expected to hate it, but, in retrospect, it was profoundly affecting.
A Gentleman in Moscow because one of the younger ladies had worked in the Peace Corps in Russia when it was still the USSR. She had a lot to offer in terms of just talking about the Russian friends she made and the Russian way of looking at things. She knew the hotel in Moscow very well.
I loved this book. No one in my book club has been interested in reading it so far.
@Bettina I loved it, too. It’s a bit slow to get into so maybe that’s why some people give up. Once the story gets started it’s fascinating especially if you know a little Russian history.
@Charla I think you’re right.