Book recs for a book club?

[coronado]

I'm in charge of book discussion groups. In three out of four of them, the members all take turns picking a book to suggest. The last one... well... they like to give me a challenge...

The age range is mid-30s to... I think some are in their 80s. Mostly retirees. They read adult fiction, but they're not against non-fiction. By no circumstances will I hand them any romantasy, and I stay away from those popular trade paperback rom-com... books. The ones that aren't romantasy but still have a lot of smut. Lol. I don't think that is to their tastes. They are mostly discerning readers so it can be hard to find a crowd-pleaser! We do have a separate classics club so I try not to overlap with those picks too much either.

Remarkably Bright Creatures got rave reviews from most of them though. So they're not shutting out contemporary lit, they're just picky. I'd like to convince them to read When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén at some point because I enjoyed that too. Books with older protagonists seem to please them, but that's not a must...

My criteria for selecting books for them is a matter of what I can pull from interlibrary loans: are there enough copies (so, older and more niche books tend to be in short supply as collections are weeded), is it available in large print (I really try to have it available because most of them prefer it), and can I get it in a timely fashion (e.g. it can't have 300 holds on it, so no new or popular books like Project Hail Mary, which I think one of them inquired about... at least not until later... I made it work with Remarkably Bright Creatures though). But if you have suggestions and you're not sure where they'd fall on any of these scales, don't worry too much about it, I'll figure it out and go from there.

And don't think I haven't asked them for what they'd like to read! They always say they don't care and that I can pick anything, but sometimes when I pick 'anything' they're disgruntled by it!!

My flaw is I haven't been on top of new-ish releases or well-reviewed books. I've been reading Japanese detective/thriller fiction from like 2006. And I don't think they would like those because a lot of the ones I've read in my free time aren't even that good. (I heard good things about Keigo Higashino so I gave it two honest attempts, but I don't like how objectified the women in his books are, to like an almost cartoonish degree. The crimes themselves weren't interesting enough for me to put that writing flaw aside. Tangent. Oh well.)

In general I'd like to expand my horizons and get better at readers' advisory... Anywho, thoughts and suggestions would be much appreciated!

 

[Tsushi]

I'm gonna recommend Greenteeth by Molly O'Neill, which is fantasy, but pretty grounded more like real world folklore, I think an older crowd might enjoy it just as much as younger. Otherwise I have mainly been reading sci-fi and fantasy, I can give recommendations for those if they're open to that. Of those the one I've liked best was Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie. Also A Memory Called Empire is also good.

If you're down with horror, I loved Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle.

 

[Detectivemelon2514]

I’m gonna have to go with the hardcover book Sergio Leone by himself written by Leone scholar Sir Christopher Frayling which chronicles the life and the career of the man who pioneered the spaghetti western, where in 1960s he brought to life with the iconic dollar’s trilogy and up until in the 1980s his career lasted with his final film Once upon a time in America, it’s a wonderful book that provides new details on his life while accompanied by archival interviews and very high quality never before seen production photos, I would highly recommend someone who’s a diehard spaghetti western fan or just a film buff

 

[Seroster]

Yeah my problem making recommendations is that I mostly read science fiction and fantasy and I'm pretty far down the rabbit hole. SF and fantasy set not-now have to set up a different world and that is not something which people used to reading more standard fiction don't practice much. Or they may use special terms for things you are supposed to pick up on through context, again, something unusual. For instance, The Goblin Emperor has a bunch of untranslated elvish terms and it can even get a bit much for me to keep them straight in my head. A GREAT book, but I don't think I'd recommend it to someone who doesn't read SF/fantasy.

I mean, I could mention This Is How You Lose The Time War, a science fiction novella about two people on the opposite side of a time war who leave each other letters in the most bizarre places, but... ehhh again, I think it'd be too much of an acquired taste.

I've also been reading a bunch of old Dorothy L Sayers mysteries, and ones by Josephine Tey. Do you think they'd be interested in a "classic" era mystery novel?

If anything actually comes to mind I'll try to post it.

 

[The Gentleman Thief]

I would have to second Seroster on Golden Age Mystery Novels. I think that you absolutely cannot go wrong with Agatha Christie who is definitely not "classic literature" but also usually writes way higher quality stuff than contemparary mystery authors (I say usually some modern authors surprise me with quality). Mystery books are also great for discussion because everyone has a theory on who did it. I would see who's read what Agatha Christie and pick based on that my top ones with Poirot (her most famous detective and "Sherlock Holmes")

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Murder on the Orient Express
The ABC Murders
Peril at End House

You could also do anything featuring Miss Marple. A nice old lady who solves crimes because nice old British ladies understand people because of all their gossiping.

Or if you want something a little bit more modern and slightly on the nose there is this highly regarded that recently became a movie on Netflix called "The Thursday Murder Club" about a bunch of old people who meet up to solve crimes. Only thing with that is that they may have either seen the movie or read the book as it was pretty popular back when it came out in 2020. It should be easy to get enough of now though.

 

[coronado]

See, I don't want to stereotype them as being set in their ways, but the thing is at that age they at least know what they like and some of them don't care to try new things anymore. This is also something I know because they've told me as much haha. I'm never going to please all of them, though...

So, yeah, I'm not sure about any high concept fantasy or sci-fi. I appreciate all of the suggestions regardless! If not for them, I can always save them for myself or other people... I'm full of hubris and have been playing around with the idea of starting a fifth book club, and that crowd does prefer sci-fi/fantasy.

But for my retired ladies, they've read some Hercule Poirot so I could sneak in another Christie. I know they'll read mysteries, so thank you for the author recs! I forgot about The Thursday Murder Club though I've seen those books in the stacks too. I try to rotate the genres or the subject matter in the books from month to month so at least it's not all mysteries or all sad old man on hospice stories or dual timeline the power of family stories so it doesn't get too repetitive.

I think if I wanted to test the waters with fantasy I'd go for a magical realism type of book first. But that's also something that hadn't considered before, so thanks for getting my brain working...

Lately I've been leaning into picking out some non-fiction because I feel like there's less to fuss about there. I wanted to pick something of local interest, but then some of them are in pretty small print... I think I might order or pull some single copies of things in advance for them to appraise at their next meeting, in the past I've just given them a list of titles that I assume they look up on their phones anyway. But maybe having something physical to flip through will give them a better idea of if they want to read it or not.

 

[The Gentleman Thief]

Try conspiricy stuff maybe for nonfiction? Not like tinfoil hat cloud seeding frogs gay conspiricies but secret government programs that got shut down for ethical reasons and stuff. I remember reading about a US program trying to master psychic abilities with the help of this mad scientist crackpot who's idea was to just use psychedelic drugs. It was a good book. That's the sort of nonfiction that I think would work in group discussions really well and is also probably popular enough to be found easily.

 

[Seroster]

I would have to second Seroster on Golden Age Mystery Novels. I think that you absolutely cannot go wrong with Agatha Christie who is definitely not "classic literature" but also usually writes way higher quality stuff than contemparary mystery authors (I say usually some modern authors surprise me with quality). Mystery books are also great for discussion because everyone has a theory on who did it. I would see who's read what Agatha Christie and pick based on that my top ones with Poirot (her most famous detective and "Sherlock Holmes")

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Murder on the Orient Express
The ABC Murders
Peril at End House

You could also do anything featuring Miss Marple. A nice old lady who solves crimes because nice old British ladies understand people because of all their gossiping.

I gotta say though, I've read a lot of Agatha Christie, but really all of the classic "Queens of Crime" are worth reading - not just Christie! They have their own takes and styles... in one of Josephine Tey's novels, she "breaks a rule" and introduces new information late in the story - the puzzle element was not as important to her. But it's still a very good read.

 

[The Gentleman Thief]

I gotta say though, I've read a lot of Agatha Christie, but really all of the classic "Queens of Crime" are worth reading - not just Christie! They have their own takes and styles... in one of Josephine Tey's novels, she "breaks a rule" and introduces new information late in the story - the puzzle element was not as important to her. But it's still a very good read.

I agree on principle but libraries seem to stock one above all others. If I had access to all books my personal favorite author is Dorothy L Sayers who I think writes better stories with mysteries in them whereas Christie writes better mysteries overall.

 

[Seroster]

I agree on principle but libraries seem to stock one above all others. If I had access to all books my personal favorite author is Dorothy L Sayers who I think writes better stories with mysteries in them whereas Christie writes better mysteries overall.

I just finished watching both the 1970s and 1980s BBC production of Dorothy L Sayers' novels I'm thinking I really have to read Gaudy Night now because I think they have to have cut a lot.

You're right about what gets stocked, and coronado made that point in the first post.