My Book Clubs

If you want to enrich your life by discussing books and ideas and developing deeper friendships, why not make starting a book club your new year’s resolution?

January reminds us of new beginnings, and that’s how one of my book clubs began, as a friend’s new book2year’s resolution. Other than a couple of us, the others she asked to join were women she wanted to know on a deeper level than at social functions. So our monthly morning gatherings were in homes, with the requirement that the hostess serve coffee and tea and water. No treats necessary, although I’m the only one who has now and again gotten away with offering no morning spread. Now, fifteen years later, we’re still going strong, although members have moved away or moved on and new members have fit right in.

A neighbor started my other book club, and it has had an assortment of readers through its seventeen years of evening meetings. Jim and I are charter members, and the neighbor who started it moved across town, but is still at the core of our group.

Rarely do we all like or dislike a book, be it fiction or nonfiction, adult or young adult, a Pulitzer Prize winner or a mass market paperback. A couple times we’ve all read different biographies of the same subjects then compared them. Some of us check out books from the library or order cheap used copies or read Kindle versions. Occasionally we have to buy a new hardback and actually support an author. Discussions have become lively as we’ve debated our opinions.

Through the years, the hour meetings of both groups have increased to two hours, and although we always discuss the book and its themes that apply to our own lives, we also venture into personal issues. Friendships have grown and real trust has developed, all through the sharing of books and ideas.

We have read some outstanding books. We’ve also read terrible ones, and I believe their authors were related to the acquiring editors.

bookWe choose our books by a member’s suggestion, but the member does not have to have read the book. I’ve read books I would never have picked up. My list of books-I-should-have-read-but-avoided could stretch to the moon, but I’ve now read some of the classics.

So, I repeat, if you want to enrich your life by discussing books and ideas and developing deeper friendships, why not make starting a book club your new year’s resolution?

Here are the books I’ve read in my book clubs. I won’t mark the winners from the losers, since we all like different types of books. You will notice duplications where I conned one group into reading a book that I’d read in the other club, not just because it was good, but also so I had less to read at a busy time in my life. I’ll bet you’ve already read a number of these books.

The Evening Group:

  • A Time to Kill by John Grisham
  • Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi
  • Nightmare in Pink by John D. McDonald
  • Biographies of John Adams
  • Belgrade Square by Anne Perry
  • The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
  • To Dance with the White Dog by Terry Kay
  • Biographies of Jimmy Carter
  • Night by Elie Wiesel
  • The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
  • Biographies of Duke and Duchess of Windsor
  • Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
  • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
  • The Loop by Joe Coomer
  • Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
  • War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
  • A Simple Plan by Scott Smith
  • Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat
  • The Lighthouse Keeper by James Michael Pratt
  • God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
  • Leaving Home by Garrison Keillor
  • The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
  • A Widow for One Year by John Irving
  • Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
  • How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill
  • A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks
  • The Perfect Man by Linda Howard
  • Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler
  • A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
  • Moo by Jane Smiley
  • In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick
  • Last of the Breed by Louis L’Amore
  • Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
  • Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man by Fannie Flagg
  • West with the Night by Beryl Markham
  • Rise to Rebellion by Jeff Shaara
  • The Spirit Catches You and Then You Fall by Anne Fadiman
  • As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
  • Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
  • The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
  • Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose
  • The Persian Pickle Club by Sandra Dallas
  • The Day After Roswell by Philip J. Corso
  • The Portable Dorothy Parker
  • The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw
  • The Choiring of the Trees by Donald Harington
  • The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
  • Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
  • Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
  • Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
  • One for the Money by Janet Evanovich
  • Three Junes by Julia Glass
  • I Dreamed of Africa by Kuki Gallmann
  • The First Eagle by Tony Hillerman
  • Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
  • Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  • The Sisters by Mary S. Lovell
  • The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
  • Flying Crows by Jim Lehrer
  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
  • The Work of Wolves by Kent Meyers
  • The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
  • The Year the Colored Sisters Came to Town by J. Guidry
  • The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
  • Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
  • Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
  • My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
  • Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief by Bill Mason
  • The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
  • The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
  • Wicked by Gregory Maguire
  • Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
  • The Pale Horse by Agatha Christi
  • Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  • The Plot Against America by Phillip Roth
  • Widow of the South by Robert Hicks
  • The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett
  • The Black Rose by Thomas B. Costain
  • To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
  • Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest
  • Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
  • Anne of Green Gables by Lucy M. Montgomery
  • The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
  • Che Guerra by Eric Luther
  • Bag of Bones by Steven King
  • One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
  • The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
  • Angry Housewives Eating Bonbons by Laura Landvik
  • A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  • The River of Doubt by Candice Millard
  • A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
  • Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
  • The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman
  • The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse By Louise Erdrich
  • Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
  • The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
  • Moby Dick by Herman Melville
  • My Invented Country by Isabel Allende
  • State of Fear by Michael Crichton
  • The Hours by Michael Cunningham
  • Hot Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman
  • The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
  • The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
  • The Dutchess by Amada Foreman
  • Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
  • A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel
  • The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz
  • She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
  • Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather
  • Thunderstruck by Eric Larson
  • Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Stout
  • Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall, Denver Moore, and Lynn Vincent
  • Term Limits by Vince Flynn
  • Biographies on Albert Einstein
  • Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig
  • Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
  • 1984 by George Orwell
  • The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  • 1491 by Charles Mann
  • The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein          
  • Jackdaws by Ken Follett
  • The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
  • The Help by Kathryn Stockett
  • Citizens of London by Lynne Olson
  • The Price of Everything by Eduardo Porter
  • The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Murial Barbery
  • Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
  • The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett
  • Driftless by David Rhodes
  • The Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (Green Fire movie 1/13)
  • Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson
  • The Floor of Heaven by Howard Blum
  • The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
  • Pox and the Covenant by Tony Williams
  • God’s Bits of Wood by Sembene Ousmane
  • The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
  • The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
  • Declaration of Independence and Constitution
  • For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
  • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  • The Heart is a Lonely Hunger by Carson McCullers
  • Forgotten Man by Amity Shales
  • Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier
  • Outcasts United by Warren St. John
  • Argo by Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio
  • The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean
  • Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
  • Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
  • The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
  • Four Fish by Paul Greenberg
  • Elsewhere by Richard Russo
  • The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
  • Care of Wooden Floors by Will Wiles
  • David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
  • A Mathematical Mystery Tour by A.K. Dewdney
  • The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
  • Collapse by Jarad Diamond
  • The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  • Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford
  • Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
  • The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
  • Time and Again by Jack Finney
  • The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
  • Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
  • Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
  • Bliss by O.Z. Livaneli
  • The Lost City of Z by David Grann
  • All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
  • Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus by Nabeel Qureshi
  • The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
  • The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
  • A Man Called Ove by Frederick Backman
  • Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

The Morning Group:

  • The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
  • The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
  • The Loop by Joe Coomer
  • Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
  • The Brothers K by David James Duncan
  • Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig
  • Waiting by Ha Jin
  • West with the Night by Beryl Markham
  • The Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis
  • The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty
  • The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
  • Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro
  • The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
  • The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
  • A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
  • Protect and Defend by Richard North Patterson
  • A Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  • Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
  • A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
  • As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
  • The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
  • The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
  • Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
  • A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
  • The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
  • Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn By Betty Smith
  • Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards
  • Three Junes by Julia Glass
  • All Souls by Michael Patrick McDonald
  • The Christmas Train by David Baldacci
  • As You Like It by William Shakespeare
  • Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
  • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  • The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  • The Professor’s House by Willa Cather
  • Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
  • Natasha and Other Stories by David Bezmozgis
  • The Work of Wolves by Kent Meyers
  • The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
  • Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
  • The River Warren by Kent Meyers
  • The Dive from Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer
  • The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Flowler
  • Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.
  • The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
  • The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less by Terry Ryan
  • The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
  • Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
  • The Fourth Hand by John Irving
  • The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse By Louise Erdrich
  • The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
  • The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
  • The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
  • The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
  • The Giver by Lois Lowry
  • A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris
  • Eddie’s Bastard by William Kowalski
  • The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett
  • The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty
  • Love in the Present Tense by Catherine Ryan Hyde
  • Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  • The Mermaid Chair by Sue Kidd Monk
  • Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry
  • The Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
  • About Alice by Calvin Trillin
  • Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
  • Philistines at the Hedgerow by Steven Gaines
  • Where Ever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn
  • Walden by Henry David Thoreau
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
  • Outsourced by R.J. Hillhouse
  • Angry Housewives Eating Bonbons by Laura Landvik
  • Rhett Butler’s People by Donald McCaig
  • Astrid & Veronika by Linda Ollson
  • Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
  • Tallgrass by Sandra Dallas
  • Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
  • Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron
  • The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
  • The Awakening by Kate Chopin
  • I Don’t Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson
  • The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
  • The Necklace: Thirteen Women and the Experiment that Transformed Their Lives by Cheryl Jarvis.
  • The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
  • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  • The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan
  • The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig
  • Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
  • Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
  • Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
  • Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
  • The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Murial Barbery
  • How I Became a Famous Author by Steve Hely
  • American Pastoral by Philip Roth
  • That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo
  • Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
  • Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
  • Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
  • Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
  • Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund
  • 1984 by George Orwell
  • My Antonia by Willa Cather
  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.
  • Wishin’ and Hopin’ by Wally Lamb
  • When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins
  • Little Bee by Chris Cleave
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  • The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
  • Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
  • Driftless by David Rhodes
  • The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
  • Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
  • The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
  • Unbroken by Laura Hilldenbrand
  • The River Wife by Jonis Agee
  • Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
  • Bright’s Passage by Josh Ritter
  • Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson
  • State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
  • The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
  • Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
  • The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
  • At Wit’s End by Irma Bombeck
  • The Know It All by A. J. Jacobs
  • Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
  • Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks
  • The Greater Journey by David McCullough
  • Goldberg Variations by Susan Issacs
  • Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
  • The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe
  • Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
  • Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
  • Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
  • Native Son by Richard Wright
  • True Believers by Kurt Andersen
  • The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Stroud
  • Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier
  • The Mill on the Floss by George Elliot
  • The Round House by Louise Erdrich
  • Traps by MacKensie Bezos
  • The Circle by Dave Eggers
  • One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson
  • Man Alive by Mary Kay Zuravleff
  • All the Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner
  • The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
  • The Maid’s Version by Daniel Woodrell
  •  A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of 7th Grade by Kevin Brockmeier
  • The Interestings by Meg Walitzer
  • The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
  • Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson
  • So Big by Edna Ferber
  • In this House of Brede by Rumer Godden
  • In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist by Ruchama King Feuerman
  • The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
  • Shock of Gray by Ted Fishman
  • Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
  • The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar
  • All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
  • The Unraveling of Mercy Louis by Keija Parssinen
  • The Children Act by Ian McEwan
  • The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
  • My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
  • Us by David Nicholls
  • Bettyville: A Memoir by George Hodgman
  • Bossypants by Tina Fey
  • Plainsong by Kent Haruf
  • The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivy
  • Daisy Miller by Henry James
  • The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
  • Hold Still by Sally Mann
  • The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk