Book Group Favorites
I assembled this list for book groups or book lovers looking for something new to read and discuss — with an emphasis on the books being both readable and discussable. We enjoyed "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" by Alexander McCall Smith, for example, but it doesn't make for a great discussion. The titles are alphabetized by the first letter of the MAIN first word of the title, so you will find “A Fine Balance” in the F section, for example.
I've provided links below to other good lists from which to find book club selections. There's a particular emphasis in this list on fiction, although some nonficton is included. (At a "summit" of book groups at Politics & Prose, we noticed that men's groups tended to read more nonfiction; one men's group alternated nonfiction books one month with sports events the next.) If you google "study guide" and the name of a book, you may find useful guides to discussion -- as I did, for example, for Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. You can also find many discussion guides (by title, by author, and by genre) at Reading Group Guides
Click on a title to go to the Amazon.com reviews of the title.
• Achebe, Chinua, Things Fall Apart. (Be sure to read Bearing Witness, With Words (Dwight Garner, NY Times Books, 3-22-13)
• Adams, Douglas. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
• Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, Purple Hibiscus
• Adiga, Aravind. The White Tiger
• Akpan, Uwem. Say You're One of Them
• Aktipis, Athena. Cheating Cell, The: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer
• Alameddine, Rabih, An Unnecessary Woman
• Albom, Mitch, Tuesdays With Morrie
• Alexie, Sherman, Reservation Blues
• Alexievich, Svetlana, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster transated by Keith Gessen (fascinating and eminently discussable)
• Ali, Ayaan Hirsi. Infidel
• Allende, Isabel, Daughter of Fortune
• Allende, Isabel, The House of the Spirits
• Alvarez, Julia, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
• Amis, Kingsley, Lucky Jim
• Angelou, Maya, The Heart of a Woman
• Atwood, Margaret, Cat's Eye
• Atwood, Margaret, Oryx and Crake
• Atwood, Margaret, The Blind Assassin
• Atwood, Margaret, The Handmaid's Tale
• Austen, Jane, Persuasion
• Backman, Fredrik. A Man Called Ove
• Bainbridge, Beryl, Master Georgie
• Baldwin, James, Go Tell It on the Mountain
• Banks, Russell, Cloudsplitter
• Banks, Russell, Continental Drift
• Banks, Russell, The Sweet Hereafter
• Barker, Pat, Regeneration
• Baum, L. Frank, The Wizard of Oz
• Benitez, Sandra, The Weight of All Things
• Berendt, John, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
• Berg, Elizabeth, The Art of Mending
• Berger, Thomas, Little Big Man
• Bernieres, Louis de, Corelli’s Mandolin
• Binchy, Maeve, Tara Road
• Black, Alethea. You've Been So Lucky Already: A Memoir. An empowering and disarmingly funny memoir about grief and illness—and the wit and wisdom it takes to survive it.
• Blunt, Judy, Breaking Clean
• Bock, Charles, Beautiful Children: A Novel
• Bohjalian, Chris, Midwives
• Bohjalian, Chris, The Buffalo Soldier
• Boo, Katherine. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. See interview with Boo: Finding 'Life, Death And Hope' In A Mumbai Slum (Fresh Air, NPR, 11-16-12)
• Bordewich, Fergus M., Washington:The Making of the American Capital
• Boyd, William, Armadillo
• Boyle, T. Coraghessen, The Tortilla Curtain
• Bragg, Rick. All Over But the Shouting (southern memoir series)
• Bragg, Rick. Ava's Man
• Bragg, Rick. The Prince of Frogtown
• Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre
• Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights
• Brooks, Geraldine, March
• Brooks, Geraldine, The Year of Wonders: Novel of the Plague
• Brown, Dan, The Da Vinci Code
• Buchan, Elizabeth, Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman
• Buck, Pearl S., The Good Earth
• Buckley, Christopher, Thank You for Smoking
• Burroughs, Augusten, Dry
• Byatt, A.S., Possession
• Caldwell, Ian and Dustin Thomason, The Rule of Four
• Canin, Ethan, Carry Me Across the Water
• Carey, Peter, Oscar and Lucinda
• Carr, J. L., A Month in the Country
• Cather, Willa, My Antonia
• Chabon, Michael, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
• Chernow, Ron. Grant
• Chang, Jung, Wild Swans
• Chessman, Harriet Scott, Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper
• Chevalier, Tracy, The Girl with a Pearl Earring
• Chevalier, Tracy, The Virgin Blue
• Cleage, Pearl, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day
• Cleave, Chris. Little Bee , a novel
• Cline, Emma. The Girls
• Coelho, Paulo, The Alchemist
• Coetzee, J., Elizabeth Costello
• Coetzee, J. M., Disgrace
• Coetzee, J. M., Waiting for the Barbarians
• Conlon, Edward, Blue Blood
• Conroy, Pat, The Great Santini
• Conway, Jill Ker, Road from Coorainbr />• Coolidge, Calvin. Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge by Calvin Coolidge
• Coomer, Joe, The Loop
• Cortazar, Julio, Hopscotch
• Cotton, Eddie Joe, Hobo: A Young Man's Thoughts on Trains and Tramping in America
• Courtemanche, Gil, Sunday at the Pool in Kigali
• Crowther, Yasmin. Saffron Kitchen, The
• Cunningham, Michael, The Hours
• Danticat, Edwidge, Breath, Eyes, Memory
• Danticat, Edwidge, The Dew Breaker
• Davies, Robertson, Fifth Business
• Deane, Seamus, Reading in the Dark
• DeLillo, Don, Libra
• DeLillo, Don, Underworld
• DeLillo, Don, White Noise
• Desai, Anita, Fasting, Feasting
• Desai, Kiran, The Inheritance of Loss
• Diamant, Anita, The Red Tent
• Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs, and Steel
• Díaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
• Didion, Joan, The Last Thing He Wanted
• Didion, Joan, The Year of Magical Thinking
• Dinesen, Isak. Out of Africa
• Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee, The Mistress of Spices
• Doctorow, E. L., The March
• Doctorow, E.L., Loon Lake
• Doerr, Harriett, Stones for Ibarra
• Doig, Ivan, Bucking the Sun
• Doig, Ivan, Dancing at the Rascal Fair
• Donoghue, Emma. Room, a novel
• Dorris, Michael, Yellow Raft in Blue Water
• Drehle, David Von, Triangle: The Fire That Changed America
• Dubus III, Andre, House of Sand and Fog
• Dufresne, John, Louisiana Power and Light
• Du Maurier, Daphne. Rebecca
• Duncan, David James, The Brothers K
• Duras, Marguerite, North China Lover
• Ebershoff, David, The Danish Girl
• Edwards, Kim, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
• Eggers, Dave, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
• Ehrenreich, Barbara, Nickel and Dimed: on (not) getting by in America
• Eliot, George, Middlemarch
• Elkin, Stanley, Mrs. Ted Bliss
• Ellis, Joseph J., Founding Brothers
• Enger, Leif, Peace Like a River
• Englander, Nathan, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
• Eprile, Tony, The Persistence of Memory
• Erdrich, Louise, Love Medicine
• Erdrich, Louise, The Beet Queen
• Erdrich, Louise, The Master Butchers Singing Club
• Erdrich, Louise.The Night Watchman
• Esquivel, Laura, Like Water for Chocolate
• Eugenides, Jeffrey, Middlesex
• Farquhar, Michael. Behind the Palace Doors: Five Centuries of Sex, Adventure, Vice, Treachery, and Folly from Royal Britain
• Farley, Richard E. Wall Street Wars: The Epic Battles with Washington that Created the Modern Financial System
• Faulkner, William, As I Lay Dying
• Faulkner, William, Light in August
• Ferrante, Elena Lying Life of Adults, The
• Finney, Jack, Time and Again
• Fitch, Janet, White Oleander
• Fitzgerald, F. Scott, The Great Gatsby
• Fitzgerald, Penelope, Blue Flower
• Flynn, Gillian. Gone Girl
• Foer, Jonathan, Everything Is Illuminated
• Ford, Jamie. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
• Forster, E.M., A Passage to India
• Fowles, John, The French Lieutenant's Woman
• Fowles, John. The Magus
• Fox, Paula, Desperate Characters
• Franklin, Miles, My Brilliant Career
• Franzen, Jonathan, The Corrections
• Franzen, Jonathan. Freedom (a novel)
• Fraser, Caroline. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Frazier, Charles, Cold Mountain
• Freed, Lynn, House of Women
• Fremont, Helen, After Long Silence
• Friedman, Thomas L. Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations
• Gaines, Ernest J., A Lesson Before Dying
• Gautreaux, Tim, The Clearing
• Gautreaux, Tim, The Next Step in the Dance
• Glass, Julia, Three Junes
• Godwin, Gail, Good Husband
• Goldberg, Myla, Bee Season
• Golden, Arthur, Memoirs of a Geisha
• Golding, William, Lord of the Flies
• Goldstein, Jan, All That Matters
• Goodman, Allegra, Intuition
• Goodwin, Doris Kearns, Team of Rivals
• Gottlieb, Lori. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
• Gowdy, Barbara, The White Bone
• Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. See Rosemary Hills' Guardian piece about the book.
• Green, Graham, The Quiet American
• Greene, Graham, A Burnt-Out Case
• Greene, Graham, Brighton Rock
• Greene, Graham, The End of the Affair
• Greene, Graham, The Heart of the Matter
• Greene, Melissa Fay, Praying for Sheetrock
• Greenway, Alice, White Ghost Girls
• Gregory, Philippa. The White Queen (Elizabeth)
• Grossman, David, Be My Knife
• Gruen, Sara, Water for Elephants
• Gunther, John, Death Be Not Proud
• Guterson, David, Snow Falling on Cedars
• Haddam, Jane, Skeleton Key
• Haddon, Mark, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• Halprin, Mark, Winter's Tale
• Hamilton, Jane, A Map of the World
• Hamilton, Jane, The Book of Ruth
• Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon
• Hansen, Ron, Mariette in Ecstasy
• Hardy, Thomas, Jude the Obscure
• Harris, Thomas. Red Dragon (terrifying classic that introduced cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter)
• Haruf, Kent, Eventide
• Haruf, Kent, Plainsong
• Hay, Elizabeth, A Student of Weather
• Hayasaki, Erika. Death Class, The: A True Story About by Erika Hayasaki
• Hegi, Ursula, Stones from the River
• Helprin, Mark, A Soldier of the Great War
• Hemingway, Ernest, The Sun Also Rises
• Hersey, John, A Bell for Adano
• Hesketh, Peggy. Telling the Bees<
• Hill, Jenna Miscavige Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape br />• Hillenbrand, Laura, Seabiscuit
• Hillenbrand, Laura. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
• Hoffman, Alice, Here on Earth
• Hoffman, Andrew J. How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate
• Hornby, Nick, How To Be Good
• Hosseini, Khaled, The Kite Runner
• Hosseini, Khaled, A Thousand Splendid Suns
• Hulme, Keri, The Bone People
• Hurston, Zora Neale, Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World
• Irving, John, A Prayer for Owen Meany
• Irving, John, The Cider House Rules
• Ishiguro, Kazuo, Never Let Me Go
• Ishiguro, Kazuo, The Remains of the Day
• Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House
• James, P.D., Original Sin
• James, P.D. Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography
• Japrisot, Sebastien, A Very Long Engagement
• Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer, Heat and Dust
• Jiles, Paulette. News of the World
• Jin, Ha, Waiting
• Johnson, Charles, Middle Passage
• Johnson, Denis, Jesus’ Son
• Johnson, Diane, Le Divorce
• Jones, Edward P., The Known World
• Junger, Sebastian, The Perfect Storm
• Kalanithi, Paul. When Breath Becomes Air
• Kanigel, Robert. The Man Who Knew Infinity (A Life of the Genius Ramanujan)
• Kanon, Joseph, The Good German
• Kantor, MacKinlay. Andersonville “The greatest of our Civil War novels” (New York Times)
• Karr, Mary, The Liar’s Club
• Kaysen, Susanna, Girl, Interrupted
• Kernan, Michael, The Lost Diaries of Frans Hals
• Kesey, Ken, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• Kidd, Sue Monk. The Invention of Wings
• Kidd, Sue Monk, The Secret Life of Bees
• Kincaid, Jamaica, Autobiography of My Mother
• King, Stephen. Different Seasons , four novellas, including "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" and "The Body" (the movie "Stand By Me")
• Kingsolver, Barbara, The Lacuna (a novel)
• Kingsolver, Barbara, Pigs in Heaven
• Kingsolver, Barbara, Prodigal Summer
• Kingsolver, Barbara, The Bean Trees
• Kingsolver, Barbara, The Poisonwood Bible
• Kline, Christina Baker. Orphan Train
• Krakauer, Jon, Into Thin Air
• Krakauer, Jon, Under the Banner of Heaven
• Krauss, Nicole, The History of Love
• Kundera, Milan, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• Kureishi, Hanif. The Buddha of Suburbia
• Kurson, Robert. Crashing Through: The Extraordinary True Story of the Man Who Dared to See (about Mike May)
• L'Engle, Madeleine, A Wrinkle in Time
• Lahiri, Jhumpa, Interpreter of Maladies
• Lahiri, Jhumpa, The Namesake
• Lamb, Wally, I Know This Much Is True
• Lamb, Wally, She's Come Undone
• Lamott, Anne, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
• Lamott, Anne, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
• Landvik, Lorna, Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons
• Larson, Erik, The Devil in the White City
• Larson, Erik. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
• Larson, Erik. Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
• Lawrence, D.H., The Rainbow
• Lawson, Mary, Crow Lake
• Laxness, Halldor, Independent People
• LeBlanc, Adrian Nicole, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
• Ledger, Wendy. Loudest Meow. The: A Talking Cat Fantasy (Cats of the Afterlife)
• Lee, Chang-Rae, A Gesture Life
• Lee, Christine Hyung-Oak. Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life A memoir of reinvention after a stroke at thirty-three.
• Lee, Harper, To Kill A Mockingbird (possibly with Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles Shields
• LeGuin, Ursula, A Wizard of Earthsea
• Lehane, Dennis, Mystic River
• Leiner, Katherine, Digging Out
• Leonard, Elmore, Stick
• Lessing, Doris, The Grass Is Singing
• Letts, Billie, Where the Heart Is
• Lewis, C.S., The Screwtape Letters
• Lively, Penelope, The Photograph
• Lodge, David, Therapy
• MacDonald, Ann-Marie, Fall on Your Knees
• Macleod, Alistair, No Great Mischief
• MacMillan, Terry, Waiting to Exhale
• Mafouz, Naguib, Palace Walk
• Maguire, Gregory, Wicked
• Mallon, Thomas, Dewey Defeats Truman
• Malouf, David, Remembering Babylon
• Mandel, John. Station Eleven
• Mann, Thomas, The Magic Mountain
• Marquez, Gabriel Garcia, Love in the Time of Cholera
• Marquez, Gabriel García, One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Martel, Yann, Life of Pi
• Mason, Daniel, The Piano Tuner
• Matthiessen, Peter, At Play in the Fields of the Lord
• Maugham, Somerset, Of Human Bondage (great for discussion--a good, though long, read, with characters who seem real)
• Maugham, W. Somerset, The Razor’s Edge
• Maxwell, William, So long, see you tomorrow
• Maxwell, William, Time Will Darken It
• Mayes, Frances, Under the Tuscan Sun
• Maynard, Joyce, The Usual Rules
• McBride, James, The Color of Water
• McCarthy, Cormac, Blood Meridian
• McCarthy, Cormac, Cities of the Plain
• McCarthy, Cormack, The Road
• McCourt, Frank, Angela’s Ashes
• McCrumb, Sharyn, Sharyn McCrumb mysteries
• McCullers, Carson, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
• McCullough, David, 1776
• McCullough, David, John Adams
• McDermott, Alice, Charming Billy. Author reading from and talking about writing the novel (listen to podcast here)
• McDonald, Ann Marie, The Way the Crow Flies
• McEwan, Ian, Atonement
• McEwan, Ian, Enduring Love
• McEwan, Ian, Saturday
• McGovern, Cammie, Eye Contact
• McGregor, Elizabeth, A Road Through the Mountains
• McLain, Paula. Paris Wife, The
• McMurtry, Larry, Lonesome Dove
• Mee, Benjamin. We Bought a Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals that Changed Their Lives Forever
• Messud, Claire, The Last Life
• Miller, Arthur, Death of a Salesman
• Miller, Arthur, The Crucible
• Miller, Sue, The Distinguished Guest
• Miller, Sue, While I Was Gone
• Min, Anchee, Wild Ginger
• Minou, Delphine and Lara Vergnaud. The Book Collectors: A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories That Carried Them Through a War (listen to Maureen Corrigan's review)
• Mistry, Rohinton, A Fine Balance
• Mitchard, Jacquelyn, The Deep End of the Ocean
• Lee, Christine Hyung-Oak. Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life A memoir of reinvention after a stroke at thirty-three.
• Mitchell, Margaret, Gone With the Wind
• Moore, Lorrie, Anagrams
• Moriarty, Laura, The Center of Everything
• Moriarty, Liane. The Husband's Secret
• Morrison, Toni, Beloved
• Morrison, Toni, Jazz
• Morrison, Toni, Paradise
• Morrison, Toni, Song of Solomon
• Morrison, Toni, Sula
• Morrison, Toni, The Bluest Eye
• Moyes, Jojo. Me Before You by
• Mulisch, Harry, The Assault
• Mundy, Liza. Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II
• Munro, Alice, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
• Murakami, Haruki, A Wild Sheep Chase
• Murakami, Haruki, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
• Myers, Kent, The Work of Wolves
• Nabokov, Vladimir, Lolita
• Nabokov, Vladimir, Pale Fire
• Nabokov, Vladimir, Pnin
• Nafisi, Azar, Reading Lolita in Tehran
• Naipaul, V. S., A Bend in the River
• Naipaul, V. S., A House for Mr. Biswas
• Nemirovsky, Irene, Suite Française
• Niffenegger, Audrey, The Time Traveler's Wife
• Noor, Queen, Leap of Faith
• O'Brien, Tim, The Things They Carried
• O'Dell, Tawni, Back Roads
• Oates, Joyce Carol, The Tattooed Girl
• Oates, Joyce Carol, Them
• Oates, Joyce Carol, We Were The Mulvaneys
• Obama, Barack, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
• Obama, Barack, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
• O'Farrell, Maggie. I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death “It takes a deft storyteller to alternate between charming and terrifying on the page but here it is, a set of linked stories that play with that most curious fact: that we experience life’s joys and losses in the context of a mortal vessel."~Kelly Corrigan, New York Times
• Okri, Ben, The Famished Road
• Oliver, Mary, New and Selected Poems
• Ondaatje, Michael, The English Patient
• Ondaatje, Michael. Warlight: A novel
• Orlean, Susan, The Library Book. See also Hillary Kelly's Q&A with Orlean (Intelligencer, New York, 10-17-18).
• Orlean, Susan, Orchid Thief, The: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession
• Oufkir, Malika, Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail
• Oz, Amos, To Know a Woman
• Ozeki, Ruth L., My Year of Meats
• O’Brien, Tim, In the Lake of the Woods
• O’Reilly, Mary Rose, Barn at the End of the World
• Packer, George. The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (discuss the people profiled and what they represent
• Pamuk, Orhan, Snow
• Parini, Jay. The Last Station
• Parkhurst, Carolyn, The Dogs of Babel
• Patchett, Ann, Bel Canto
• Patchett, Ann. The Dutch House
• Patchett, Ann. State of Wonder
• Patchett, Ann, Truth and Beauty: A Friendship
• Paton, Alan, Cry, The Beloved Country
• Patterson, James, Sam's Letters to Jennifer
• Pears, Ian, The Dream of Scipio
• Pedersen, Laura, Beginner's Luck
• Percy, Walker, The Second Coming
• Picoult, Jodi. My Sister’s Keeper
• Picoult, Jodi.Nineteen Minutes
• Picoult, Jodi. The Pact
• Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• Plato, The Republic
• Pollan, Michael, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
• Portis, Charles. True Grit
• Potok, Chaim, My Name is Asher Lev
• Powell, Dawn, A Time to Be Born
• Powers, Charles, In the Memory of the Forest
• Powers, Richard, The Time of Our Singing
• Pratchett, Terry. The Color of Magic
• Prejean, Sister Helen, Dead Man Walking
• Prose, Francine, Blue Angel
• Proulx, Annie, The Shipping News
• Pynchon, Thomas, The Crying of Lot 49
• Quindlen, Anna, Black and Blue
• Quindlen, Anna, One True Thing
• Radish, Kris, The Elegant Gathering of White Snows
• Raghavan, Gautam. West Wingers: Stories from the Dream Chasers, Change Makers, and Hope Creators Inside the Obama White House
• Rand, Ayn, Atlas Shrugged
• Reynolds, Sheri, The Rapture of Canaan
• Richardson, Heather Cox. To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party
• Robinson, Marilynne, Gilead
• Robinson, Marilynne, Housekeeping
• Roorbach, Bill. Remedy for Love,, The (“A page-turner, a love story and a vivid drama of man (and woman) against the elements . . . A great read by a wonderful writer.” —Newsday)
•Roth, Philip, American Pastoral
• Roth, Philip, Everyman
• Roth, Philip, The Human Stain
• Roth, Philip, The Plot Against America
• Rowling, J.K., Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• Roy, Arundhati, The God of Small Things
• Rubio, Gwyn Hyman, Icy Sparks
• Russell, Mary Doria, The Sparrow
• Russell, Mary Doria. Doc, a novel about Doc Holliday, best known for his friendship with Wyatt Earp
• Russert, Tim, Big Russ and Me: Father and Son--Lessons of Life
• Russo, Richard, Empire Falls
• Russo, Richard, Nobody’s Fool
• Russo, Richard, Straight Man
• Russo, Richard, The Risk Pool
• Rölvaag, O.E., Giants in the Earth
• Sackville-West, Vita, All Passion Spent
• Salinger, J.D., The Catcher in the Rye
• Sanger, Mary Ellen Blackbirds in the Pomegranate Tree
• Saramago, Jose, Blindness (listen to Myla Goldberg on the novel on All Things Considered)
• Saramago, José, All the Names
• Schlink, Bernhard, The Reader
• Schlosser, Eric, Fast Food Nation
• Schwarz, Christina, Drowning Ruth
• Scliar, Moacyr, The Centaur in the Garden
• Sebold, Alice, The Lovely Bones
• See, Lisa, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
• Seth, Vikram,An Equal Music (wonderful in the audio version, in which you hear the music)
• Seth, Vikram, Suitable Boy
• Shaara, Michael, The Killer angels
• Shaffer, Mary Ann, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
• Shapiro, Dani, Family History
• Shetterly, Margo Lee. Hidden Figures (The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race) See C-Span video of her talking at National Book Festival
• Shields, Carol, Larry’s Party
• Shields, Carol, The Stone Diaries
• Shreve, Anita, The Pilot's Wife
• Shriver, Lionel, We Need to Talk About Kevin
• Sijie, Dai, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
• Sittenfeld, Curtis. American Wife
• Slovo, Gillian, Red Dust
• Smiley, Jane, A Thousand Acres
• Smiley, Jane, Good Faith
• Smith, A. McCall, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
• Smith, Alexander McCall, The Full Cupboard of Life
• Smith, Betty, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
• Smith, Dodie, I Capture the Castle
• Smith, Haywood, The Red Hat Club
• Smith, Lee, Fair and Tender Ladies
• Smith, Wilbur, When the Lion Feeds
• Smith, Zadie, White Teeth
• Stedman, M.L. The Light Between Oceans
• Stegner, Wallace, Angle of Repose
• Stegner, Wallace, Crossing to Safety
• Steinbeck, John, East of Eden
• Steinbeck, John, Of Mice and Men
• Steinbeck, John, The Grapes of Wrath
• Steinbeck, John, The Pearl
• Stone, Robert, Damascus Gate
• Storr, Will. Science of Storytelling, The: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better
• Strout, Elizabeth. Amy and Isabelle
• Strout, Elizabeth. Olive Kitteridge (interrelated stories about secrets and small-town Maine)
• Styron, William, The Confessions of Nat Turner
• Sunley, Christina. The Tricking of Freya
• Suri, Manil, The Death of Vishnu
• Suskind, Patrick, Perfume
• Swift, Graham, Last Orders
• Szpilman, Wladyslaw, The Pianist
• Tademy, Lalita, Cane River
• Tartt, Donna, Secret History
• Taylor, Peter, A Summons to Memphis
• Tolle, Eckhart. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
• Tolstoy, Leo, Anna Karenina
• Trevor, William, Felicia’s Journey
• Trigiani, Adriana, Lucia, Lucia
• Trollope, Anthony, Barchester Towers
• Tsukiyama, Gail, The Samurai's Garden
• Twain, Mark, Innocents Abroad
• Tyler, Anne, The Accidental Tourist
• Tyler, Anne, Back When We Were Grownups
• Tyler, Anne, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
• Tyler, Anne, Ladder of Years
• Tyler, Anne. A Patchwork Planet
• Tyler, Anne. A Spool of Blue Thread
• Umrigar, Thrity, The Space Between Us
• Updike, John, Rabbit, Run and the other Rabbit novels
• Velmans, Loet. Long Way Back to the River Kwai: Memories of World War II
• Verghese, Abraham. Cutting for Stone, a novel
• Vonnegut, Kurt, Slaughterhouse Five
• Vreeland, Susan, Girl in Hyacinth Blue
• Waldman, Amy. The Submission: A Novel
• Walker, Alice, The Color Purple
• Walls, Jeannette, The Glass Castle: A Memoir
• Warren, Robert Penn, All the King’s Men
• Wells, Rebecca, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
• Welty, Eudora, One Writer's Beginnings
• West, Dorothy, The Wedding
• West, Nathaniel, Day of the Locust
• Westover, Tara, Educated (growing up a Mormon survivalist on a remote Idaho mountainside)
• Wharton, Edith, Custom of the Country
• Wharton, Edith, The House of Mirth
• White, E.B., Charlotte's Web
• Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad: A Novel
• Wiesel, Elie, Night
• Wilder, Thornton, The Bridge of San Luis Rey
• Winchester, Simon, The Professor and the Madman
• Wolfe, Tom, Bonfire of the Vanities
• Wolitzer, Meg, The Wife
• Wood, Barbara, The Blessing Stone
• Woolf, Virginia, Mrs. Dalloway
• Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
• Wright, Richard, Black Boy
• Wroblewski, David, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
• Wynd, Oswald, The Ginger Tree
• Yates, Richard. Revolutionary Road. Read “The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy.” (Kari Howard, One Great Sentence. NiemanStoryBoard, 3-23-18)
• Young, William P. The Shack
• Zafón, Carlos Ruiz, The Shadow of the Wind
• Zinn, Howard. People's History of the United States, A
Reading Group Guides (an online community for reading groups) offers various helpful pages for book groups. Reading group discussion guides can be found by title, by author, or by genre, for example. You can check out the most requested guides, you can read interviews with a long list of book groups, or look at the lists of ongoing favorites.
Try a theme.
For example, in September our book group is reading any book(s) we want about the King Arthur legend, which could include
· The Once and Future King by T.White
· The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
· A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
· In search of myths & heroes: exploring four epic legends of the world by Michael Wood (based on his PBS series; in 60 pages you get a good overview of King Arthur)
· The Search for King Arthur, by David Day
· The video, King Arthur, with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley, directed by Antoine Fuqua (and don't miss the Wikipedia entry about same)
Then your discussion can center on how the various treatments differ, and whether and how much the legend is based on fact, etc.