The Makings of a Great Book Club Book
(plus a few examples)
If you didn’t already know, in addition to being the Blog Boss, I also run 2 of our store’s book clubs—Found in Translation, where we read books in translation from across the globe, and Women from Other Worlds, which I inherited from former Bookseller Danika and Internationally Famous Author Genevieve Gornichec where we read Sci-Fi and Fantasy written by women and other marginalized genders.
I was inspired to write this post after having a truly excellent meeting of Women from Other Worlds this month which got me thinking about some of the best book club experiences I’ve had. I asked around for people’s favorite book club books and what made the discussion so great. I think a great book club book has these qualities:
Is not just okay
You need a book club book to either be great or awful. If it is merely “okay” then book club will be boring. People love to rave about books they really enjoyed or rant about books they hated. Both of these poles can be fun, but apathy is not
Helps you connect to your own life and experiences
Even if a book is very different than your own life, finding something to connect to helps make for a more interesting book club. It helps get at the common humanity found through reading.
Has some iconic scenes that everyone will react to
Having those “we have to talk about this” scenes really gets folks riled up, and that excitement will propel the club for the entirety of the hour.
Has some big idea or message you can debate
If a book has some central thesis or argument (even ones not made explicitly) you can really dig in to broader social and communal implications that make talking about the book more fun.
I’m sure there are others aspects not on this list, but pulling from my own well of experience, this would be a place to start when considering books to pick for your club. And if you’d like some concrete examples, here are some books from my own clubs that made for really great club meetings.
Jawbone by Monica Ojeda, translated by Sarah Booker
Found in Translation seems to always have a great time discussing horror novels, and this was evident for our most recent meeting when we discussed Jawbone. A booktok darling (?!) this story follows best friends Fernanda and Annalise while they attend Delta Bilingual Academy, but takes a turn when Fernanda ends up tied up on the floor of their teacher’s house. This cosmic-horror-adjacent book from Ecuador was an absolute trip—deeply weird and often uncomfortable to read—but we had such a great time talking about it. Even though few of us have been kidnapped and held against our will by our teachers (as far as I know), all of us felt like there were parts of our lives or experiences we could see in this book, especially with regards to how ungainly and strange teenagerdom was. Being able to take a deeply odd book and see ourselves in it helped guide the conversation to really interesting places, and even if not all of us actually enjoyed reading the book, we all got something out of talking about it. If your group can handle the weird and scary, this would be a great pick.
Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses
When I asked my husband (who always shows up to Found in Translation) what his favorite book club book we’d done was he immediately brought up Tender is the Flesh. A horror novel that explores a world where all animal meat is (allegedly) tainted and human flesh is now sold as “special meat,” this book is certainly not for the faint of heart. I was a little nervous when my co-host Sarah and I picked it, but for how subversive this book is, it led to an excellent book club. Sean liked how it allowed the group to get at broader concepts of politics and humanity, and what people can be capable of if pushed to their absolute limit. During this club, everyone was really excited to talk about it because of how “gross” it was, not in spite of it (fulfilling the “we have to talk about this” requirement). Though its subject matter was polarizing, I think ever member of the club would agree that it earned its spot as a Certified Excellent Book Club Book .
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, translated by Carol and Thomas Christensen
I asked my fellow Bookseller Jess what one of her favorite book club experiences was—it’s important to note here that Jess is in a lot of book clubs. We talk pretty frequently about them, especially a classics one that she really enjoys, so color me surprised when she said the Found in Translation meeting where we talked about Like Water for Chocolate was such a standout. Set in turn-of-the-century Mexico Like Water for Chocolate follows the youngest daughter of the De La Garza family, Tita, as she experience love, loss, and plenty of great cooking. There was a lot to talk about—different things going on with the family, the girls, the historical/political situation in Mexico. The book is brimming with spell-binding moments of magical realism and symbolism. Plus, who could forget the scene where a woman has sex on a horse. And on top of all of that, it also has a movie adaptation, which always makes for a fun compare and contrast situation.
A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys
In this book I experienced for the first time loving a book that the rest of my club didn’t like so much. A Half-Built Garden was the first book I finished reading after Babel (which is one of my other favorite book club books, but I’ve talked about it so much I thought some other books should have a chance to shine) that really sucked me in. Featuring alien first-contact, hope-punk climate change solutions, and incredibly interesting conceptions of parenthood, this is a book almost overflowing with ideas. Because of how much was going on in the book, club absolutely whipped by with us talking about characterization, comparisons to other alien books, and whether or not certain plot beats were believable in the context of the book. And of course we had to talk about an interspecies queer sex scene where one of the characters can do a “pretty good approximation of tentacles.” An excellent example of the two poles of love and hate, this was one of the most fun books I’ve ever led a discussion about.
Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk
This whole article was spurred by my experience leading book club for this text earlier this week. Even Though I Knew the End is an adorable little novella where detective noir meets deals with the devil mixed with wizard lesbians and it absolutely stole my heart, and the hearts of everyone else at book club, too. I’m including it in this list not only because we had such a fantastic club, but also as proof that books don’t have to be thiccc and chonky to have enough content to talk about for the length of a meeting. This was a prime example of how I just had to wind everyone up and let them go. We talked about generic conventions, world building, representations of the Bible, historical homophobia, etc., etc. When you have something that is just simply fantastic it can power a trip to the moon. When I told the club there was a full-length novel set in this same universe, there were gasps and cheers. If I were to recommend only one book on this whole list to pick for your own book club, it would be this one.
