We have Book Club fever here at Half Price Books! Our April-May title is The Great Gatsby, which we’re reading (or rereading) in anticipation of Baz Lurhmann’s adaptation, in theaters May 10. We love these books that draw people together over coffee/wine/dinner to discuss character, plot, themes, and symbolism, and thought it was time to suggest some popular titles. As always, we turned to our 3,000 bibliomaniacs for their opinion on the most-asked-for contemporary* Book Club recommendations, and here’s what they reported back.
*Note that this list focuses on recent(ish) fiction — we will most likely do additional Book Club round-ups for Young Adult, Classics, genre fiction, etc. Ready? Here we go:
(1) The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold (2) The History of Love, by Nicole Strauss (3) The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffinegger (4) The Tiger’s Wife, by Tea Obreht (5) Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn (6) The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce (7) A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby (8) A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (9) Life of Pi, by Yann Martel (10) The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak (11) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz (12) The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls (13) Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout (14) The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot (15)
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer (16) The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
(17) Little Bee, by Chris Cleeve (18) Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simonson (19) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, by Mark Haddon (20) Middlesex, by Jeffrey Euginedes (21) My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult (22) Sarah’s Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay (23) Room, by Emma Donoghue (24) She’s Come Undone, by Wally Lamb (25) The Help, by Kathryn Stockett (26) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows (27) The Paris Wife, by Paula McClain (28) Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston (29) The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd (30)
Unbroken, by Laura Hillard (31) Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen (32) Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese
Which of these books did your book club read? What other titles should be included on this contemporary list?