Book Club Recommendations
You’re away from your literate friends who have similar reading tastes, you’ve been out of school for quite some time, and you don’t have access to a hip librarian or brick-and-mortar bookstore or informative publications like the New York Times Book Review. But you are hungry for some good literature. Where or to whom do you turn?
One of the best ways to find out what books to read is to look at book club recommendations. Of course, you might want to get a feel for which book club personality fits yours first, so here are a few descriptions of the clubs and their typical kinds of recommendations, be they direct suggestions or indirect hints:
MAIL ORDER BOOK CLUB RECOMMENDATIONS
When I was a kid, Mom—a voracious reader—belonged to a mail-order book club. Later, when I was old enough to have my own account, I joined with her. I can’t recall which exact club that first one was, but here are the most popular:
Book-of-the-Month-Club
Quality Paperback Books
The Literary Guild
Each mail-order system is different, but does have one obnoxious trend: they send you a notification of the recommended title (based on the profile you registered with, based on your reading habits) and/or the hottest book of the season. If you get the card first and do not refuse the offer, you get the book…and have to pay for it. If you get the book automatically mailed to you, you have to send it back within a short period of time of receipt…or you pay. This is the only true complaint of such clubs, though a close second gripe is the title listings aren’t all that engaging: for these are not necessarily the current bestsellers but instead may be remaindered or lesser selling titles or books with older publication dates.
TV BOOK CLUB RECOMMENDATIONS
There are two televised book discussion shows that come immediately to mind for me: Charlie Rose’s author interviews and Oprah’s Book Club. (Both are, in my case, American airings, the former showing only on PBS-affiliated stations, but 214 of them nationwide!)
Charlie Rose interviews in all fields, if you will, so only a select number of the shows focus on books, but the authors he interviews are contemporary fiction and nonfiction writers who offer fascinating, intelligent, and personal impetus for reading their books. A few of the authors who have appeared on his show include Maureen Dowd, Tom Clancy, James Risen, Toni Morrison, and Seamus Heany.
Oprah interviews authors, too, but her book club extends further: she reads a lot; she ferrets out the authors of books she loves; and she introduces the book and has a book discussion session on the book. If you find, as I did, that What Oprah recommends is what you have just finished devouring and loving or what you once read and agree is a must-read, then you would do well to follow her recommendations in the future. She has been dead-on about such titles as Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone; Kaye Gibson’s Ellen Foster; and, of course, all (or most) of Toni Morrison’s works—books that you must read, as Morrison is one of the best authors of our century.
INTERNET BOOK CLUB RECOMMENDATIONS
There are also a number of quality niche book groups and clubs online. That is, if you are a teen seeking highly recommended books, you will find TeenInk.com to be a super place for finding the best books in your age group. If you are Christian who loves fiction, you will find such communities as FocusonFiction.net to be most helpful in listing and detailing the best books for Christian readers of fiction.
And individual genre sites and top 100 book list sites serve a similar purpose. These include the following:
Nextbook.org – a gateway to Jewish literature (comprehensive archive)
Storycode.com – book recommendations made by way of a unique search tool
Random House’s List of 100 Best novels [of all time] – at http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html
These should be enough to keep you reading happily for years to come!
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