Spring '11 Book Club

Each season I will list ten books. You will pick one, read it, review it and snail mail the review to your partner. I’ll pick genres/themes for each season, and try to include a variety. This time the theme is TOP BOOK CLUB BOOKS, so there should be something for everyone. The reason for the large choice list is this: if you get a few chapters in and think “Errrr”, then you can pick another book and have another go. You do need to read the whole book for this swap, but like I said, you have plenty of choices. Remember that the point of this is to read books/genres/authors that you otherwise wouldn’t, even if you have to grit your teeth and bear it. You may pick a book you’ve read before, but that kind of defeats the object, right? But, yes, you can do this.

One of my favorite websites, readinggroupguides.com (which is part of bookreporter.com) had a poll at the end of the year asking what books people read for their book clubs in 2010 and the compiled a list of the top 25. We already had the first two books as book club selections (The Help and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), so the pick list involves the next ten after those two.

So here’s your book list :

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

Oliver Kitterage by Elizabeth Strout

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls

Your review should be about one side of printer paper. You should include the following points :

• Which book you picked and why.

• What the book is about – you can copy out the synopsis if you want.

• What you initially thought of the book when just starting it.

• What you thought of the book halfway through.

• What you thought of the book when you’d finished it.

• Would you recommend this book? Would you read it again? Would you read more from that author? Or from the same genre? Is it the type of thing you like, or is it totally new for you? Why or why not would you read more like it?

• Why or why didn’t you like it?

• How long did it take you to read it? Why was this? (i.e – because you couldn’t put it down and sat up all night, because you usually read at that pace, because you couldn’t read at your usual pace due to life things, or because you had to make yourself read it…).