Yippee! Our new book club list is in!
I always fear I’m not going to get to participate much in my book club, since I really need the time to write/ edit/ and get my own books published, but I’m quite addicted to our club and still try to keep up. (Or sometimes I just go to the meetings for the company of such engaging women.)
And even when I predict I won’t be able to go to many meetings, I still love getting the new list and opening it like a Christmas gift.
The way we do our list is that each of the nine “core members” (loosely defined as those who come all the time) selects one book, with a second or third as “backup.” We all enter our selections as “replies” on an e-vite list (so everyone else can read our choices). Members can also “second” someone else’s choice (I “seconded” The Help, for instance), which gives the book more “weight” in the selection process.
Once all the books are entered and seconded, friend and co-founder Barbara and I create the list. Usually there are a few books that clearly get lots of votes, plus we almost always have at least one classic, and we often have at least one non-fiction. In the last couple of years, we’ve also done a “Men’s Night,” where we try to pick a book the men in our lives would like to read with us, and those evenings have always been really fun.
I have to say, I really like this selection process. I like letting others pick books and simply trusting their judgment. Sometimes we have a dud, but for the most part we end up with books that we may never have picked up on our own. Many I’ve ended up loving. I don’t think I would have read The Time Traveler’s Wife if it hadn’t been on the book club list, or The Secret Life of Bees, but I loved both. After seeing The Sparrow on the list one year, I almost skipped it because it sounded like a book I would really not like. Yet I LOVED that book. And Middlesex was an absolutely amazing book, but I’m not sure I would have read that on my own (… or … I don’t know, maybe I would have?). Anyway, it showed me you just never know — it’s best to give everything a chance.
Here’s what’s in store for 2010:
- January: Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
- February: Olive Kittredge, Elizabeth Strout
- March: Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, Walter Mosley
- May: Last Night in Twisted River, John Irving
- June: The Financial Lives of Poets, Jess Walter
- July: The Children’s Book, A.S. Byatt
- August: March, Geraldine Brooks
- September: The Help, Kathryn Stockett
- October: The Echo Maker, Richard Powers
- November: Too Much Happiness, Alice Munro
- December: Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson
Have you all read any of these? Tell me what I’m in store for. …
Here was our 2009 Book Club list.
