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Your next favorite book
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Looking to start 2020 off right with some excellent book club selections? We're here to help. All of these books received positive reviews from BookBrowse and are coming out in paperback in the first three months of 2020, and all but one has a reading guide. So if your New Year's resolution is to be more prepared (or if this was your resolution last year, but you never got around to it), take this opportunity to start planning ahead for a great year of lively book club discussions!
There are options for readers of all tastes and interests, from historical fiction to novels examining social issues, to nonfiction investigative reporting. Many of these books involve complex female characters, from Madeline Miller's Circe to the Korean seafood divers in Lisa See's The Island of Sea Women. Both Alan Brennert's Daughter of Moloka'i and Myla Goldberg's Feast Your Eyes examine mother-daughter relationships, though the authors approach their subject from vastly different angles. Sarah Bird's Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen is a fictionalized version of the life of an American heroine with grit and heart in equal measures. These and more to explore below!
Dear BookBrowsers
It's that best of time again! The time when we stand still for a minute, turn back around and take a look at what has unfolded over the course of the year. It feels like the blink of an eye, doesn't it? From January until now? Don't you wish you could somehow slow it down?
There's a theory about time passing called the perceptual theory of time which offers that it seems to speed up as we get older because we continually evolve our perception of the world. Specifically (according to psychologist Robert Ornstein), our sense of the speed of time is determined by how much information our minds are absorbing. The more we take in, the slower time seems to pass. This is why children tend to sigh and exclaim Aren't we there YET? over and over again. They are taking in so many details that they perceive the ticking of time as endless. So how do we adults reclaim some of that leisurely pace?
One way is by reading really good books that engage our minds with dynamic story-lines, empathetic characters and fascinating details. Reading a book demands that we sit still and focus because there is so much rich information inside its pages.
And here we are in December. Turned and gazing back at the year. We're sure you've read a bunch of great books over the last 11 months, but if you missed some, if you want to slow down time in this last month of the year, then we suggest you take a look at our best of list.
There's really no better way to be sure that a book is right for your book club than being a "fly on the wall" at an actual discussion--such as for the fifteen books we discussed in BookBrowse's Book Club during 2018.
What sets our Book Club apart from other online forums is the quality of the discussion. Participants, mostly BookBrowse members, come together with the intent of sharing and learning from each other's views just as they would if they were physically in the same room.
To help you decide which books are right for you and your book club, you can read more about the books and "listen in" to the discussions from our book club discussion page.
From the early 20th century to our contemporary time, from California to Georgia to Washington D.C., from Israel to India and to Ireland, and from the voices of a six-year-old boy to a young newlywed woman to a recent widowed man, the books we've picked for the coming year are diverse and powerful. Whether you love an intimate focus on the heart, like Only Child, An American Marriage and The Story of Arthur Truluv; or the panoramic exploration of a point in time such as Code Girls or The Woman's Hour, there is something for everyone.
All twelve books have 5-star BookBrowse reviews and are already, or soon will be, published in paperback (and are already available in hardcover and e-book.) You'll find everything you need to decide which are right for you and your book club here on BookBrowse, including reviews, discussion guides, excerpts and "beyond the book" articles.
Dear BookBrowsers,
BookBrowse's annual Best of the Year awards are an excellent barometer of great reading. The awards are particularly noteworthy because voting is only open to BookBrowse subscribers - so no vote stuffing by rabid fan bases; and instead of just voting for a book (which favors the most widely read books) subscribers rate each book they've read that is on the shortlist, and the winners are the books with the highest overall rating. Such considered selection results in truly outstanding books being feted every year. 2017 is no different in that regard. Over 7,000 votes were cast on 67 books (12 nonfiction, 51 fiction and 4 YA).
We know. Among the many hundreds upon thousands of books that are published every year, it is difficult to select just a few that will make worthy additions to your book club lineup. So we've done the legwork for you. These fourteen books offer engaging and powerful stories and plenty to discuss. We have included a good mix of fiction and nonfiction and tossed in a mystery and a thriller while we're at it. After all, variety is the spice of life -- and of any respectable book club. If you've got suggestions to share, please do post at the bottom!
