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.

Comments

  1. That sounds like a great idea! I'd love to join. I'm sure I can handle reading one book a month. Also, I really enjoyed North and South. The language is a little difficult but still good.

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  2. Paige @ Little NostalgiaJuly 28, 2014 at 9:11 AM

    YES! YES! Meeeeeeeeee! When can we start? I've read 15 things on the list and started-but-didn't-finish several more, but it's been so long for a lot of them that I don't remember much. I'm so glad we're all book people! This is going to be awesome! (So many exclamation points today!)

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  3. I wish I could, I love reading but I'm a super slow reader and I can see myself committing and then falling off lol!

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  4. I'm surprised that I haven't read more of these, but I think it's just because of the type of literature I focused on in school and college. Does that make me a failure of an English major?! LOL!

    I'd be happy to join in, but I do tend to take a while to get through a book, so don't hold that against me! I just have a really hard time focusing-- something I've had to teach myself to overcome.

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  5. I'm in if there's a group. I need to be more accountable about my reading...if we're choosing from that list then I might be forced to read something I very carefully avoided from my high-school reading lists!

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  6. Invited you to a FB group, too!

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  7. Invited you to the group!!!!!!

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  8. I can not force myself to read Animal Farm ever again! :)

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  9. I've never read it! I guess I'm going to have to now. I actually JUST finished And Then There Were None...in one day. I need to go to sleep LOL!

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