Book Club.

 

I was invited to join a book club a few months ago by a couple of friends and I've been attending ever since.  I really enjoy getting together with the ladies, who are all about the same age with children all around the same age, so while we talk about the latest book, we also talk about work, projects, kids, food, and everything in between.  It's nice to sit with a group of nice people, and it's even better when someone else finds a book for me to read!

We just had a meeting this past week and the next book is And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.  I had read this long, long ago (I think I ordered it from the Scholastic Book Club) so I wanted to get it to refresh the story in my mind.  I had to scrounge a copy from the Teen Summer Reading shelf at the library and decided to see what else they were reading.  Fahrenheit 451 caught my eye and I realized that that was one of those high school books that I never read.  And I decided right there that I should find out what some more of those high school books were and read them.

Naturally I headed to Good Reads first, and their first list of 208 titles is impressive, and their second list of 402 titles even more so, although I think there are some repeats within the lists.  It seemed like an awful lot of choices, so I did the next natural thing and asked around on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  I got a lot of great recommendations, so I made a list and I'm going to hit at many as I can, excepting anything by Shakespeare and also The Iliad and The Odyssey.  Been there, done that, thank you very much.

In no particular order:

Fahrenheit 451

Catch-22

Welcome to the Monkey House

The Three Musketeers

The Great Gatsby

Lord of the Flies

To Kill a Mockingbird

Wuthering Heights

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Madame Bovary

Frankenstein

The Handmaid's Tale

Moby Dick

War and Peace

Anna Karenina

A Clockwork Orange

1984

Briddenbrooks

Pride and Prejudice

North and South

Brave New World

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Stranger

Flannery O'Connor

The Scarlett Letter

The Giver

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Animal Farm

Of Mice and Men

Gone With the Wind

Daisy Miller

Leaves of Grass

A Separate Peace

The Catcher in the Rye

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Fountainhead

The Jungle

Like Water for Chocolate

Sense and Sensibility

Jane Eyre

The Canterbury Tales 

The Grapes of Wrath

The Crucible 
The Old Man and the Sea
The Andromeda Strain 
Slaughterhouse Five
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Oedipus Rex
Dracula
The House on Mango Street
The Joy Luck Club
A Farewell to Arms

Then I realized that a lot of my Internet friends are great readers- you had all kinds of suggestions, after all- so how about we read some of these together and be an online book club of sorts?  I was thinking I could set up a Facebook group or a Google group, since that's an easy way to chat, and if anyone wants to read along and join in, we can chat about it there.  One book a month, until we get bored.  Anyone in?  Anyone have another title to add to the list?  I'm ready to catch up on all these books I missed out on, whether they are fabulous or not.