the bookclub

February 11, 2019

June 2015
April 2016 - Saying Goodbye to Carlye
June 2015 - Saying Goodbye to Rosemary
Winter 2013 - 1st Annual Poetry Slam

Winter 2012
The Once o' Month Bookclub
(since 2006)

Currently Reading:

Past Reads:
I've marked the ones we (as a group) really enjoyed or thought very interesting with a *. Books that got a thumbs down from the group are marked with an X.

*Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (El)
*The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (D)
(X) Return to Abo by Sharon Niederman (El)
Dante Club by Matthew Pearl (Er)
*The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory (Er)
*Color of Water by James McBride
Tsotsi by Athol Fugard (D)
*The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (El)
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (Er)
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Frieden (R)
Night by Elie Wiesel (El)
*Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (D)
*A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (R)
Ophelia's Fan by Christine Balint (R)
The Geographer's Library by Jon Fasman (Er)
Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers (D)
Letters to (from?) Father Christmas by JRR Tolkien
The Christmas Story by Jean Shepherd (El)
A Boy's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing (D)
A Room with a View by EM Forester
*An American Childhood by Annie Dillard
*The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
*One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey (El)
At the Back of the North Wind by George McDonald (D)
A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (R)
*Antonio's Gun And Delfino's Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration by Sam Quinones (J)
*The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter (El)
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (D)
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (R)
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel (El)*The Know it All by A.J. Jacobs (Em)
Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare (D)
A Lesson Before Dying by Earnest J. Gaines (El)
*No Exit by Jean-Paul Sarte (Em)
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (R)
*Rebecca by de Mauier (A)
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (D)
*The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway (El)
*The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Burrows (R)
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (Er)
*The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (B)
(X) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (Em)
*Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (A)
*The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (D)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (El)
*Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (R)
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (B)
*Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford (Em)
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (D)
Persuasion by Jane Austen (R)
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (L)
My Antonia by Willa Cather (K)
*The Bridge at San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (D)
The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham (R)
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (L)
* Gilead: A Novel (Er)
* The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson (L)
Various biographies of Louisa May Alcott (G) 
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (D)
The Importance of Being Earnest (El) 
*Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (R) 5/13
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (El?) 6/13
Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom 10/13
1st Annual Poetry Slam 12/13
*The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Em) 1/14
Walk in the Park by Neil Simon (G) 2/14
Confessions by St. Augustine
Where Angels Fear to Tread by EM Forster (D) 4/14 
*Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel (R) 5/14
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (L) 6/14
*Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou (C) 9/14
A Circle of Quiet by Madeline L'Engel (D) 10/14
The Alchemist (Em) 12/14
My Family and Other Animals (L) 1/15 
Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia De Luce Novel by Alan Bradley (R)
The Rock by Daniel O'Malley (Jd)
10/15 Wild by Cheryl Strayed (L)
11/15 The Giver by Lois Lowry (K)
12/15 The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty (D)
1/16 (X) The Telling Room by Michael Paterniti (C) 
2/16 Peter Pan (K)  
3/16 * Half-Broke Horses by Jeannette Wells (L) 
4/16 Atomic Girls: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win WWII by Denise Kiernan (K) 
5/16 Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (D)
6/16 My Life in France by Julia Child (L)
*10/16 Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson (Jd) 
11/16 The Galton Case by Ross Macdonald (K)
*12/16 The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (D)
     4 English ladies take a much needed April adventure through Wisteria 
     and Sunshine in Italy. Hearts are changed in surprising ways. 
1/17 - The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World by Steven Johnson (L) 
3&4/17 The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas (N)
5/17 The FOLD by Peter Cline (J) 
      Quite a bit of consternation erupted at the discussion of this book. 
      We pretty much unanimously agreed..."What the heck?"
8/17 The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd (K)
9/17 Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome (Es)
10/17 Dead Souls (D)
11/17 Flannery O'Connor (L)
12/17 The Man Who Was Thursday (Jd)
1/18 The Warmth of Other Suns (G)
2/18 The Chilbury Ladies' Choir (K)
3/18 All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (D)
4/18 Be Frank with Me by Julia Claiborne (L) by 
4/18 The Face of a Stranger - The First William Monk Novel by Anne Perry 
5/18 Leonardo and the Last Supper by Ross King (G)
8/18 Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear (K)
9/18 Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein (D)
5/20 Reader's Choice from 32 Funniest Books list by Esquire (D)
---
9/21 I Capture the Castle by ___ (S)
10/21 TBD (D)

Currently Reading: 
 
Current Members (because we always forget whose turn it is to choose the next book!):
Laura (L)
Jessica (Jd)
Daniela (D)
Sarah (F)
Erica (Er)

Past members!
Esther (Es)
Nadine (N) 
Carlye (C) 
Rosemary (R)
Jessie (J)
Emily (Em)
Beth (B)
Erica (Er)
Ellen (El) - We miss you, Ellen. Bookclub won't ever be the same without you.

Do you need help with a reading guide or discussion questions for your bookclub? Try these:

BookBrowse
ReadingGroupGuides

Do you need help choosing a book? 
Here is a list of some obscure books that look enticing...
and a bunch of other topically arranged book lists at Flashlight Worthy and a big ol' list of...
1001 books you must read before you die
Another list of some moderately underrated books 

And a few other random lists recommended to me by various book lovers:
The Last Jihad 
THE HELP (Kathryn Stockett)
DUNE (Herbert)
The Way of the Shadows
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
How Green Was My Valley (Llewellyn)
Classics:
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Pilgrim's Progress by Bunyan
Gulliver's Travels by Swift
*Pride and Prejudice by Austen
Oliver Twist by Dickens
*Jane Eyre by Bronte
*The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne
Moby-Dick by Melville
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Stowe
Madame Bovary by Flaubert
Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky
Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
The Return of the Native by Hardy
Portrait if a Lady by James
Huckleberry Finn by Twain
Red Badge of Courage by Crane
Heart of Darkness by Conrad
The House of Mirth by Wharton
*The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald
Mrs Dalloway by Woolf
The Trial by Kafka
Native Son by Wright
The Stranger by Camus
1984 by Orwell
Invisible Man by Ellison
Seize the Day by Bellow
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez
If on a winter's night a traveler by Calvino
Song of Solomon by Morrison
White Noise by Delillo
Possession by Byatt

Autobiographies:
Augustine's Confessions
Book of Margery Kemp
Essays by Montaigne
Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself
Meditations by Descartes
Grace Abounding to the Chief if Sinners by Bunyan
Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration by Mary
Confessions by Rousseau
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Walden by Thoreau
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
Life and Times of Frederick Douglas
Up from Slavery by Booker T Washington
Ecce Homo by Nietzsche
Mein Kampf by Hitler
The Story of my Experiments with Truth by Gandhi
Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Stein
Seven Storey Mountain by Merton
Surprised by Joy by CS Lewis
Autobiography of Malcolm X
Journal if a Solitude by Sarton
Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn
Born Again by Colson
Hunger of Memory: the Education of Richard Rodriguez
*Road From Coorain by Jill Ker Conway
All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs

History
Herodotus: the Histories
The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
The Republic by Plato
Lives by Plutarch
The City of God by Augustine
Ecclesiastical history of the English People by Bede
The Prince by Machiavelli
Utopia by Sir Thomas More
True End of Civil Government by Locke
History of England, Volume V by Hume
Social Contract by Rousseau
Common Sense by Paine
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon
Vindication of the Rights if Women by Wollstoncraft
Democracy in America by Tocqueville
Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels
Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy by Burckhardt
Souls of Black Folk by WEB DuBois
Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism
Queen Victoria by Strachey
Road to Wigan Pier by Orwell
New England Mind by Miller
Great Crash by Galbraith
Longest Day by Ryan
Feminine Mystique by Friedan
Roll, Jordan, Roll: the World the Slaves Made by Genovese
Distant Mirror: Calamitous Fourteenth Century by Tuchman
All the President's Men by Woodward and Bernstein
Battle Cry of Freedom by McPherson
Midwife's Tale: the Life of Martha Ballard
End of History and the Last Man by Fukuyama

Drama
Agamemnon by Aeschylus
Oedipus the King by Sophocles
Medea by Euripides
The Birds by Aristophanes
Poetics by Aristotle
Everyman
Doctor Faustus by Marlowe
Richard III, Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet by Shakespeare
Tartuffe by Moliere
Way of the World by Congreve
She Stops to Conquer by Goldsmith
School for Scandal by Brinsley Sheridan
*Doll's House by Ibsen
Our Town by Wilder
Long Day's Journey Into Night by O'Neill
*No Exit by Sartre
Streetcar Named Desire by Williams
Death of a Salesman by Miller
Waiting for Godot by Beckett
A Man For All Seasons by Bolt
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Stoppard
Equus by Shaffer

Poetry
Epic of Gilgamesh
Iliad and Odyssey by Homer
Greek Lyricists
Horace by Odes
Beowulf
Inferno by Dante Alighieri
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Sonnets by Shakespeare
John Donne
Psalms
Paradise Lost by Milton
Songs of Innocence and of Experience by Blake
William Wordsworth
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
John Keats
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Emily Dickinson
Christina Rossetti
Gerard Manley Hopkins
William Butler Yeats
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Robert Frost
Carl Sandburg
William Carlos Williams
Ezra Pound
TS Eliot
Langston Hughes
WH Auden
Philip Larkin
Allen Ginsberg
Sylvia Plath
Mark Strand
Adrienne Rich
Seamus Heaney
Robert Pinsky
Jane Kenyon
Rita Dove

No comments:

Post a Comment