What should your book club read next? Perhaps one of these!

Once each week for the next six weeks, I will highlight a different genre from the books I've read in 2012 and give mini reviews.

Often people ask, 'what should I suggest for my book club?'  I will admit, I am a hypocrite.  I love the *idea* of a book club.  You read books, you discuss them.  Great!  Well, to control-freakish types who read what others told them to for 20 years and did not develop a love of reading until they could drive (yup, true story!), not so good.  I want to read what I want, when I want and ditch it in the middle if the book so deserves that treatment (Eat Pray Love, anyone?).

Conversely, if someone wants a suggestion about what they should read or propose to their book group, I'm all over that.  I'll tell you what to read and why.  What's no good and why not.  Or what book will be a great basis for discussion, even if it isn't the best piece of literature.

A dozen recommendations that will spark great book club discussions:

Fiction:

1-  The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers (2012)
     What happens when you make a promise you never intended to make?  A promise no one can keep?  This Iraq war novel is a story of people in dire circumstances, men who form bonds and are forced to make decisions with which no one should be faced.  Authentic in detail, this book is a debut novel by an Iraq war veteran.

2-  The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Steadman (2012)
     Taken to a breathtaking Australian setting, we meet protagonists Tom and Isabel Sherbourne.  Isabel longs for a child of her own after losing babies through miscarriage and stillbirth.  A boat washes ashore.  With a living baby and a dead man aboard.  The couple is faced with an ethical dilemma.  We know what we would do.  Or do we?

3-  Faith by Jennifer Haigh (2011)
     A novel with its center a priest's sex scandal in Boston.  The twist?  Perspective.  A family is shattered when their son/brother priest falls off the grid one day and they learn of accusations against him.  The siblings are divided when one stands by him and the other does not.  Does the truth lie somewhere in between?

4-  The Snow Child:  A Novel by Eowyn Ivey (2012)
     An isolated, childless couple in 1920s Alaska creates a snow child and the next day there appears a real child!  Is she real?  Is this a fairy tale?  A story of survival?  She appears with a fox.  Mysteriously disappears.  Over time things become clearer.  It brings to mind the line from The Little Prince--are we forever responsible for what we have tamed?  Is she tamed?  Do we really want her to be?

5-  Tell The Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt (2012)
     Another debut novel that engrosses us in their world and invites questions.  It's New York, AIDS at a time when antiretrovirals weren't known and a girl who loses her beloved uncle learns her family has been harboring secrets.  One of whom is a man.  And when her family doesn't understand how deep her sense of loss runs, the forbidden man does.

6-  Mudbound by Hilary Jordan (2008)
     This Bellwether Prize Winner had me glued to its pages.  Setting is 1940s in the South.  Each chapter is voiced by a different character:  the city woman raising her family, her farmer husband, her combat-addled brother-in-law and black farmhand, considered sub-human by the community, both back from the war.  Racism is front and center in this novel.

Non-Fiction:

1-  The Pregnancy Project:  A Memoir
by Gaby Rodriguez and Jenna Glatzer (2012)
      If you were raised in a family where teen pregnancies were the rule, not the exception and you didn't want to become a statistic, you would have an uphill climb.  But you probably would not fake a pregnancy and make even your boyfriend's parents believe it was real.  Groundbreaking?  Foolhardy?  Definitely worth a look.

2-  How Children Succeed:  Grit, Curiosity and the Power of Character by Paul Tough (2012)
     When everything you thought you knew about success was wrong.  Is it the high scoring, high achiever that is destined to succeed?  Or is it the curious kid who perseveres even if he doesn't score a 2400 on the SATs?  Educators and social scientists look at what parents can do to help children overcome adversity to succeed.  Real life stories accent research.  More interesting than it sounds!

3-  The Woman Who Wasn't There:  The True Story of an Incredible Deception
by Robin Gaby Fisher and Angelo J. Guglielmo Jr. (2012)
     This book was disturbing, shocking, gripping and frustrating.  Imagine being a living, breathing victim of the tragic events on 9/11 and then being victimized again by the grand deception of a woman whose ruse hoodwinked the mayor, survivor's groups and many more.  This story proves that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

4-  The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe (2012)
     As the author accompanies his mother, an accomplished, interesting woman in her own right, to chemo sessions at Memorial Sloan Kettering, they begin a two person book club.  You meet them both in this book, but they also learn each other anew through the books they share in the last years of her life.  It's reading as a shared gift, something most bibliophiles can truly appreciate.

5-  A Thousand Lives:  The Untold Story of Hope, Deception and Survival at Jonestown
by Julia Scheeres (2011)
     An investigative and absorbing look at Jim Jones and those who became involved in his movement. What we thought we knew about the kool-aid and who was drinking.   It wasn't what it seemed.  Were they all weak-minded individuals and what were they looking for?  How do you take almost 1000 people and turn them into tragic followers?
   
6-  The Outsourced Self:  Intimate Life in Market Times
by Arlie Russell Hochschild (2012)
      Outsourcing has become de rigueur for many, but especially in the affluent community.  If you will do it, they will pay.  To plan your wedding, to plan your child's birthday party, to find a mate, to find a name...  we are so stressed that we are paying people to make our lives easier.  Or have we just made ourselves more stressed and complicated things so we think paying others make things easier?  This one makes you think.  Or it makes you feel not-so-stressed.

If you do choose one of these for your book club, please come back and comment on it.  I'd love to hear your thoughts or the group reactions to the book.  Remember, just because the book is on this list doesn't mean it was a favorite.  Just that it lends itself to good discussion.  Though a few of these do appear on my best of 2012 list!

I read, therefore I am,
the lowercase b