| Rank | Book | % Respondents |
| 1 | A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (2016, Viking) | 14.6% |
| 2 | Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (2018, Putnam) | 12.0% |
| 3 | All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2014, Scribner) | 7.4% |
| 4 | Educated by Tara Westover (2018, Random House) | 6.5% |
| 5 | The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (2015, St Martin's Press) | 6.0% |
| 6 | Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (2009, Knopf) | 3.8% |
| 7 | A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (2014, Atria) | 3.1% |
| 8 | Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate (2017, Ballantine) | 2.9% |
| 9 | The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2006, Knopf) | 2.8% |
| 10 | Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (2017, Pamela Dorman) | 2.7% |
It would be tempting to glance at a Top 10 list like this and assume that book clubs are a homogeneous bunch all cycling though the same books but, in fact, that is far from the truth. While a handful of the titles in the list above clearly stand head and shoulders above the others in terms of the percentage of book clubbers rating them as favorites, book club reading is as diverse as the people in them, as shown by the fact that, in total, respondents named well over 800 different titles as all-time favorites.
With that said, it is interesting to note how consistent the list has remained since we asked this same question two years ago. Only three of the 2018 Top 10 are not on the 2020 list, and two of those only narrowly missed making the cut: Boys in the Boat (#5 in 2018, #13 in 2020) and The Help (#8 in 2018, #11 in 2020). The remaining 2018 title was Our Souls at Night which was at #9, perhaps boosted by the 2017 movie adaptation.
| 2020 Rank | 2018 Rank | Book |
| 1 | 1 | A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (2016) |
| 2 | - | Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (2018) |
| 3 | 3 | All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2014) |
| 4 | - | Educated by Tara Westover (2018) |
| 5 | 2 | The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (2015) |
| 6 | 6 | Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (2009) |
| 7 | 4 | A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (2014) |
| 8 | 10 | Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate (2017) |
| 9 | 7 | The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2006) |
| 10 | 40s | Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (2017) |
It is also interesting to see how contemporary the list is. A number of factors likely contribute to this, not least the fallibility of the human brain. A book read years ago has to be extraordinarily powerful to stay top of mind and ready to be recalled at a moment's notice for a survey of this type, which make the inclusion of Cutting for Stone and The Book Thief particularly notable.
Another factor is that we specified that respondents could only vote for books that they had personally discussed in a book club setting. Because most book clubs tend to focus on discussing relatively recently published books, many respondents would not have had the opportunity to discuss the older titles that did receive votes in our survey but not enough to push them into the Top 10. Sometime in the not too distant future, we'll revisit the survey data and publish a longer list of favorites in the hope of inspiring book clubs to explore some of the older but still excellent books that show up further down the list.
While there's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all book club book, there are certain criteria that most book clubs look for in their reading, the most fundamental of which is, of course, that there's plenty to discuss! For more on this topic, see The 13 Things Book Clubs Look for When Picking Books.
Please do share your all-time favorite book club books by posting below!
