Sunday Salon: October is National Reading Group Month

October means fall. It's pumpkin patches and brightly colored leaves. It's football games under lights and Halloween trick or treats. It's also National Reading Group Month. DO you know National Reading Group Month? It's an initiative of the Women's National Book Association to "celebrate the joy of shared reading." Each year a carefully curated list of books, called Great Group Reads, is selected to draw attention to some wonderful books that might not otherwise find the book club audiences they deserve. The books are varied in topic and scope. Some are fiction and some are non-fiction. All are well written and will provoke discussion beyond that second glass of wine. In the interest of full disclosure, I have been on the reading selection committee since the inception of the list in 2009 and this year I was also Co-Manager. So I am a bit biased but I think we created a fantastic resource for all sorts of book clubs. In fact, I still recommend many books from past year's lists as well. They really are that good. And now that everything's public, feel free to ask me about any of the books on the list because I'm happy to natter on about them. But now please excuse me while I send the list off to my own book clubs and convince them that they need to read these asap!

2016 Selections

Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett
The Book of Harlan by Bernice L. McFadden
Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman
Charmed Particles by Chrissy Kolaya
The Cosmopolitans by Sarah Schulman
The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick
The Drone Eats with Me: A Gaza Diary by Atef Abu Saif
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Heat and Light by Jennifer Haigh
The Honeymoon by Dinitia Smith
The Measure of Darkness by Liam Durcan
Miss Jane by Brad Watson
A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold
Orhan’s Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian
Over the Plain Houses by Julia Franks
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald
This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! by Jonathan Evison
This Side of Providence by Rachel M. Harper
300 Days of Sun by Deborah Lawrenson
The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories by Anthony Marra
What Comes Next and How to Like It: A Memoir by Abigail Thomas