Recommend a good book for my book club.

We've read the following books already:

Life of Pi
The Secret Life of Bees
The Yiddish Policeman's Union
A Spell for Chameleon
P.S. I love you
Wicked
1984

Any good suggestions? :hi:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anansi_Boys

Loved it and will read it again!

I get it. None of the books we've read are all that heavy in material. I will read it myself eventually though. My mother-in-law already gave me a copy.

Fantastic novels.

Did you get to the part about the breasts yet? What about the part with the breasts?

And don't forget the breasts.


In the name of all that is literary, I forbid your book club to read anything else by Piers Anthony.

It's all very fluffy and you know it will have a happy ending.


You want to know the worst part?




I enjoyed the book

:blush:

Wonderful book. One of the first times everyone in the book club agreed.
It's by Kent Haruf.

http://januarymagazine.com/fiction/plainsong.html

Mz Pip
:dem:

:hi:

Forget the lurid title
Its how the town turns on itself that is so fascinating
here is a snippet of the plot
Serial killers populate much of contemporary fiction, but few authors use the serial killer theme the way Stephen Dobyns does in The Church of Dead Girls.

In Aurelius, a fictional small town in upstate New York, young girls begin to disappear. Through the eyes of an unnamed first person narrator, who's fiftyish and a biology teacher at the local high school, we watch as paranoia, and then vigilante justice, set in as the town seeks a scapegoat.

Of course, the first horror is that a peaceful, idyllic town could harbor such a fiend: "Nobody looked at this person and thought, Monster. Perhaps this was the most disturbing aspect of the business: that the person, on the surface at least, never seemed extraordinary, or none of us had the wit to identify the signs. What would those signs have been? Wouldn't evil or monstrosity call attention to itself?" (4).

True to human nature, the people of Aurelius begin the search for the evil one in their midst by singling out anyone who's different in any way: a member of an ethnic, political, or religious minority; or an outsider, someone who's come to town only lately. Once the vigilantes begin to terrorize the citizenry, the introspective, reclusive narrator analyzes their behavior: "They could justify their actions by calling them reactions. They could do something terrible and call it punishment or revenge or retribution, but it was still terrible. Their inner temptations were transformed into overt behavior and they, too, came to share the characteristics of the monster" (121).

Its about a journalist who teaches a writing class to LA juvenile deliquents....it is very good and not all hollywood-ish with happy endings

Also Thunderbird Falls, and Coyote Dreams, by the same author.

For some lighthearted fun, try Pyramid Scheme by Eric Flint and Dave Freer. Another would be "The Infinite Plan" by Isabel Allende. Yes, before you ask, she is the niece of the former president of Chile.

They are a series, so I advise that you read them in order:

1. Urban Shaman

2. Thunderbird Falls

3. Coyote Dreams

I found the writing to be refreshingly witty and humorous, she's a new author, and I feel that her writing is really good, and the stories seem interesting.

Into Thin Air :: by Jon Krakauer
Without Remorse :: by Tom Clancy
The Partner :: by John Grisham
The Charm School :: by Nelson DeMille
The General's Daughter :: by Nelson DeMille
The Caine Mutiny :: by Herman Wouk
Eye of the Needle :: by Ken Follett
Lie Down with Lions :: by Ken Follett
Pillars of the Earth :: by Ken Follett
A Thief of Time :: by Tony Hillerman
Dune :: by Frank Herbert
Absolute Power :: by David Baldacci
Day of the Jackal :: by Frederick Forsyth

I loved The Negotiator, but they're all great. Day of the Jackal is a classic in the genre (and the influence for a lot of what came after).

Ha! It's been eons since I read it, and I still can feel the goosebumps.

...called "Half the Day Is Night". Good character development and a tight story. It would be a good book for discussion in a book club.

short magical imaginative read.

Geek Love is quite the different too, Katherine Dunn.

and The Poison Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

Divided Ground by Alan Taylor
Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie

Those are non-fiction but they are all well told stories.

For Fiction:
"Learning the World" by Ken Macleod (It's science fiction but is so well done I don't hesitate to suggest it to no SF readers, and it's not very long)

If the group does like Science Fiction and is up to taking on a large Tome: "River of Gods" by Ian McDonald - 900 pages I think and I didn't think I would make it, I hesitated a long time over starting this but once I did the story just carried me a long and the length only became and issue when I was sorry I came to the end of the story much sooner than I expected when I picked up the book.

Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diament
Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
Lamb by Christopher Moore
Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stenger

Pulitzer winner, and rightly so.

It was the first book my club read, and a great way to start out!

..."Dirty White Boys" by Stephen Hunter. Both are fantastic, but if I had to chose just one, it would be "The Alienist".

and of course the parody "Shroud of the Thwacker"

I actually found a copy, literally, on the ground. There were a bunch of books on the pavement next to the subway stop with a "free" sign attached.

I recognized Selby's name and picked it up. :D

it is truly an astonishing work

Refresh, Refresh by Benjamin Percy
Truck, a love story by Michael Perry
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Diving Mr. Albert by Michael Paterniti
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

:hi:

RL

Thomas Pynchon.

Edit: "None of the books we've read are all that heavy in material."

Cancel this one then.

I'll second "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" as a great read.

Against the Day.

I just finished it. It's brilliant.

In my opinion it is Steinbeck's second best book and deserves far more recognition.

One selling point is that it has an ending that you will never see coming.

"#1 Ladies' Detective Agency" **

"A Game of Thrones" **

** warning: reading of either of these books may lead to addictive serial searching until you have finished the list

Great book...

unless nobody's read "Angela's Ashes" in which case that is even more highly recommended.

You will love it and it's a quick read.

Different, very different. A good read.

The book is set between about AD 1405 (783 solar years since the Hegira, by the Islamic calendar used in the book), and AD 2002 (1423 after Hegira). In the eighth Islamic century, almost 99 per cent of the population of medieval Europe is wiped out by the Black Death (rather than the approximately 30-60% that died in reality). This sets the stage for a world without Christianity as a major influence.

The novel follows a jāti of three to seven main characters and their reincarnation through time, in very different cultural and religious settings. The book features Muslim, Chinese (Buddhist, Daoist, Confucianist), American First Nations, and Hindu culture, philosophy and everyday life. It mixes sophisticated knowledge about these cultures in the real world with fictional developments, partly resembling the actual history, but shifted and reflected by different cultural settings.

The main characters, marked by identical first letters throughout their reincarnations, but changing in gender, culture-nationality and so on, struggle for progress in each life. Each chapter has a different style, reflecting its setting.

Key issues of the novel are hybrid cultures; Progress and science; alternate history; philosophy, religion and human nature; politics; feminism and equality of all humans; and the struggle between technology and sustainability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_of_Rice_and_Salt



I got so much out of this book and have read it twice in the last few years, with plans to read it again.

By Mark Kurlansky

http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=9780142001615

I picked up a book at a tag sale that was quite amusing: "Cold Sassy Tree" by Olive Ann Burns.

WashPost said: "Rich with emotion, humor and tenderness...A novel about an old man growing young, a young man growing up, and the modern age coming to a small southern town."

San Jose Mercury News: "It's a winner, it rings with authority, it moves fast, and its use of language is as surefooted and convincing as any in 'The Color Purple'."


Oh, and what's that book about earning your way through college? That was HILARIOUS. Here it is: http://www.amazon.com/How-Paid-College-Friendship-Musical/dp/0767918541 How I Paid for College: a Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater by Marc Acito. (Not for cultural conservatives.)

Even better than Cold Mountain, IMO.

Don't know anything about the film but I just bought the book for SO.

Read it years back. Amazingly good.

A very densely written novel about coming of age in Brooklyn during the run up to Rudy...

Written by Jonathan Lethem, it's so wonderfully written that I would have to say it is one of the best books I have ever read...

I really enjoyed the Yiddish Policeman's Union and the Fortress of Solitude is like Chabon, only a denser, if there is such a word...

http://www.amazon.com/Point-Entry-Novel-Peter-Schechter/dp/0060843306


It is a fluff book but has great insight to some current events. A good read.

Jon Katz: The Dogs of Bedlam Farm: An Adventure with Sixteen Sheep, Three Dogs, Two Donkeys, and Me.
http://www.amazon.com/Dogs-Bedlam-Farm-Adventure-Sixteen/dp/0812972503/ref=pd_bbs_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195412405&sr=8-3

I heard him interviewed on the Diane Rehm Show on NPR one day and got the book. I read parts of it aloud to my husband while we were on a camping trip. Some of it was funny, some touching, all of it interesting!

The Echo Maker by Richard Powers.
A story of brain damage that makes us question who we are.

One of the best books I've read in a long, long time.

http://www.amazon.com/Trout-Sea-Cortez-John-Salter/dp/1582433429

An autistic 15-year-old with a fondness for Sherlock Holmes looks for the killer of a neighbor's dog and starts on a journey that reveals that, and a lot more about himself, his family and neighbors.

Haddon has an amazing ability to get you inside the thought processes of an autistic child. Funny and poignant, and a fast read.

Catch-22. always been one of if not my favorite book of all time. failing that i would say go wuthering heights. if not, well then frankenstein is AMAZING, shelley is quite ambitious and you can talk about things such as genetic engineering. failing THAT well then you need to meet new people to read books with.