Seeking Novel Recs for Our Neighborhood Book Club
Last year my housemate and I started a neighborhood book club that has been a huge success, and as we're getting ready to choose our next few months of books, I'm looking for book ideas. To choose what we're going to read next, we have anyone who wants to nominate a book, and then everyone votes on the books that sound interesting to them, and the top three end up being our books for the next three months.
Thus far we've read and (for the most part) really enjoyed:
- How to Stop Time by Matt Haig
- The Frozen River by Ariel Lawton
- Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
- Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
- The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
The group is currently all women (although we're open to men and gender diverse folks joining) between the ages of 30-70.
Our parameters for books are: nothing overly smutty (although some romance is ok), nothing too preachy or super religious, and books that generally have a 4 star rating or higher on StoryGraph or Goodreads.
It seems like the group is ok diving into difficult topics, but generally doesn't like books that are written in a super dark tone. The group doesn't seem to be super into sci-fi or fantasy, although some magical realism is ok. We've especially enjoyed the historical fiction we've read!
We try to choose books that will have at least a few copies at the library for ease of borrowing so we don't want anything too obscure. And in looking back at that list, I'm noticing that everything we've read thus far is by a white author, so I'd love to nominate a book by an author of color!
So what would you recommend for our book group? I'm also totally open to answering any questions you might have about the logistics of running a neighborhood book group!