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Book club readers really know their books: what they liked, didn't like, and what sparked the best discussions and debates. Nominate your group's all-time favorite titles (click EasyEdit to type on this page). Include the book title and author, some basic information about your club, and maybe a bit about why you liked the book(s) so much!

From:

Not Your Bookclub, Seattle, Washington

1. Lolita (Nabokov)
2. The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner)
3. The Love of a Good Woman (Munro)
4. Waterland (Swift)
5. The Fifth Business (Davies)
6. The Sheltering Sky (Bowles)
7. Independent People (Laxness)
8. The Secret Agent (Greene)
9. Blood Meridian (McCarthy)
10. Progress of Love (Munro)
11. Light in August (Faulkner)

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From:

Erudition (aka Guys Who Like Beer) Book Club, Seattle/Eastside, WA

We are a bunch of guys who formed a club in "response" to some of our wives having their own club. We have been going for 3 years or so, and usually meet at a small brewery or a bar with a good tap selection. Our club generally selects a mix of sci-fi/cyberpunk, offbeat current fiction, and some older stuff. As you can see below. Some of the stuff we've done that we've liked (myself in particular :-) :

1. Life of Pi (Yann Martel) - great discussion generator
2. Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole) - hilarious novel set in New Orleans
3. The Sweet Hereafter (Russell Banks) - the book is better than the movie, which was excellent in and of itself
4. Neuromancer (William Gibson) - he started the cyberpunk genre
5. Syrup (Maxx Barry) - funky book
6. ((Frequencies)) (Joshua Ortega) - local author who came in person to our meeting!
7. The Fermata (Nicholson Baker) - kind of porno, but in a literary way
8. All the Little Live Things (Wallace Stegner) - one of my favorites
9. Watchmen (Alan Moore) - cool '80s graphic novel, one of the earliest in the genre

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The ModNov Book Club says:
We are a bunch of recent college grads who adore all novels of the modern era. Give us Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Powell, Joyce, Conrad, Ford, Woolf--we love them all! Here are some of our favorites:

1. Turn, Magic Wheel by Dawn Powell
2. A Moveable Feast by Hemingway
3. Tender is the Night by Fitzgerald
4. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
5. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
8. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
9. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
10. A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway

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CBD Book Club - Brisbane

We're a relatively new book club, less than a year old. But our most successful book so far has been The Riders by Tim Winton. We all thoroughly enjoyed it, had a lot to discuss and each got something different from the book that we could bring to the group to discuss.

One that caused a fantastic discussion, but really polarised our members is Never Let Me Go by Kazuro Ishiguro. There seemed to be no middle ground, half hated it, half really enjoyed it. This ensured a very lively discussion indeed, which for me, despite having absolutely and passionately loathed the book, made for an enjoyable book club get together.

I hope we have more titles that keep us all engaged in the conversation like these two.

We all just read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and that was a very successful title for us as well. We all loved it, but it generated lots of discussion and gave us all plenty of food for thought.


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The Qingdao Book Club, Qingdao, Shandong, China

Our group has been meeting for a little more than two years. Our membership has changed with the comings and goings of different people to the city but there is a core membership of five or so people that maintain the necessary continuity to keep the club going. Our average meeting size is about 12 people. Regardless of the make up, we've always been a very cosmopolitan group with our members coming from such diverse places as China, North and South America, Scandinavia, the Philippines, Israel and Europe.

The mix of cultural perspectives from our membership is one of the greatest appeals of our club. By way of example --it's truly a gift to be able read books about China's recent history and have members in the club who lived thorough the era offer their views and experiences on topics or issues directly related to the book. However, our selections are not limited to just Asian literature. Over the last couple of years we've read a wide range of titles.

It's difficult to say which were favorites because there is always a range of different responses to each month's read. The most memorable discussions were generated via books that we choose and which the group was split in opinion over;
where members either really enjoyed or disliked the writing style, the characters, or political voice or message. Some recent titles in this category include: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, Johnny Got His Gun,by Dalton Trumbo, Wild Grass by Ian Johnson (non fiction, political) and The White Castle by Orphan Pamuk.

Below, is a more complete list of our reading selections since we began meeting:

1. DaVinci Code - Dan Brown
2. Red Sorghum -Mo Yan
3. Longest Journey -Rohington Mistry
4. 11 Minutes -Paulo Cohelo
5. Collected Short Stories -Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
6. Soul Mountain -Gao Xingjan
7. Cat's Cradle -Kurt Vonnegut
8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime -Mark Haddon
9. Arcadia -Jim Crace
10. Red Dog -Louis de Bernières
11. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress -Dai Sijie
12. Johnny Got His Gun -Dalton Trumbo
13. FUP -Jim Dodge
14. Life of Pi -Yann Martel
15. Becoming Madame Mao -Anchee Min
16. Wild Grass -Ian Johnson
17. The White Castle Orphan Pamuk.
    
18. Ficciones -Jorge Luis Borges
19. Being Dead -Jim Crace
20. The Unbearable Lightness of Being -Milan Kundera
21. Ella Minnow Pea -Mark Dunn
22. Waiting -Hai Jin
23. Silence -Shusako Endo
24. Player Piano -Kurt Vonnegut
25. The God Delusion -Richard Dawkins
26. Jigs & Reels -Joanne Harris