Lists | Book Chatter

If you visited me earlier in the week, you may have read this post where I expressed my ~~anxiety~~ anticipation over my book club’s yearly selection meeting. Well, we met at Border’s last night to select twelve books and let me tell you, it was hard to limit myself to two books. I came in with a stack of oh… 18 or so.

I’ve separated them into two groups.

Once the chosen books have been assigned to a month, I will post them under the Book Club tab.

The Chosen

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
A Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell
A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japriscot
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Pearl of China by Anchee Min
Room by Emma Donoghue
The Lost City of Z by David Grann
*The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
The Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
*Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

*Pitched by me

The Recommended (not chosen)

A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
*Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong
Candide by Voltaire
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu
Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
*Safe From the Sea by Peter Geye
Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli
The Photographer by Emannuel Guibert
The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
*The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
*We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

*Pitched by me

What do you think of the list? Sometimes it’s hard to choose for an entire year because you just don’t know what you’ll want to read several months down the line but we’ve been choosing this way for years. It seems to work for us.

My book club meets this Thursday to select our books for the year. There are about 15 members who regularly attend and we each get to pitch two titles to the group.

One of the requirements, is that the book is available in paperback. I hate this requirement because it sort of prevents us from exploring newer titles, but if it’s slightly new and will be available in PB later this year, then that would be okay.

The other thing is that they frown if the page length is too long. By too long, I’d say anything over 500 pages would have to be deemed fabulous before it made the list.

I’m not really into pitching books that everyone will like. I am more interested in pitching a title that will prompt discussion, be it good or bad. If we can talk about it, then I consider it good. If they happen to enjoy it too, then that’s a win-win.

Of course, the aim is to blow their minds but it doesn’t always work that way.

Here are some of the titles that came to mind:

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes

As you can see, these don’t necessarily fit the criteria I laid out above but I’ve been wanting to read them and might pitch one of them anyway.

I was also thinking about this one:

The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha

If you have feedback on any of these titles or want to toss another title into the hat, please do so.

I try to add titles to my Goodreads list as I see them, but I know that there are a few out there that I meant to add, but missed.

If you have a title you want to recommend, just let me know in comments and if possible, include a sentence or two on why you are recommending it.

I’ll post an update post later in the month to let you know which ones I pitched and which ones made the list.