Book Club Books - My Reading Group's Book List

My book club's many-year reading list. Book ideas for book clubs and reading groups.

Because books clubs are so popular, especially among women and especially (I believe) among food bloggers and food-blog readers, I'm sharing the books my reading group has read -- we've been reading together since 1994!

Our book club is plenty social, but at the same time, serious about our reading. We hire a 'professor' and we read books in series, by theme. So our list may well inspire other reading groups, both new book clubs thinking about what books to read and established groups looking for new book ideas.

Naturally, we're always looking for new themes, new book ideas. If you've got a favorite, please leave a comment. If your own book club publishes your reading list online, let me know and I'll add a link here. The more the merrier!

More About the Red Wine Book Club

"Writers we admire and reread are absorbed into the fine print of our consciousness, into the white noise of our thoughts, and in this sense, then can never die."

- Ian McEwan on the death of Saul Bellow

#1 19th CENTURY WOMEN AUTHORS
Ethan Frome- Edith Wharton
The Bell Jar- Sylvia Plath
Their Eyes Were Watching God- Zora Neale Hurston
Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte
Wide Sargasso Sea- Jean Rhys
The Yellow Wallpaper- Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Awakening- Kate Chopin

#2 MORE WOMEN AUTHORS
Frankenstein- Mary Shelley ♥
Beloved- Toni Morrison ♥
The Woman Warrior- Maxine Hong Kingston
Housekeeping- Marilynne Robinson
The Country of the Pointed Firs- Sarah Orne Jewett

#3 AMERICAN AUTHORS
Bastard Out of Carolina- Dorothy Allison
The Worn Path- Eudora Welty
Why I Love at the P.O.- Eudora Welty
A Good Man Is Hard to Find- Flannery O'Connor
also Good Country People & The Artificial Nigger
Betsey Brown- Ntozake Shange
Native Son- Richard Wright ♥
My Antonia- Willa Cather ♥
Written on the Body- Jeannette Winterson

#4 SENSUALITY
The North China Lover- Marguerite Duras ♥
Madame Bovary- Gustave Flaubert
The Immoralist- Andre Gide
The Vagabond- Colette
Giovanni's Room- James Baldwin
A Year in Provence- Peter Mayle (GUY THING)

#5 OFF-THEME
Sense and Sensibility- Jane Austen
Animal Dreams- Barbara Kingsolver ♥

#5 WAR
Red Badge of Courage- Stephen Crane (Civil War)
Goodbye to All That- Robert Graves (WWI)
All Quiet on the Western Front- Maria Remarque (WWI)
Testament to Youth- Vera Brittian (WWI)
The Caine Mutiny- Hermann Wouk (WWII)
Dispatches- Michael Herr (Vietnam)

#6 AFRICA
Heart of Darkness- Joseph Conrad ♥
Things Fall Apart- Chinua Achebe ♥
Out of Africa- Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) ♥
The Joys of Motherhood- Buchi Emecheta
July's People- Nadime Gordimer ♥
The Famished Road- Ben Okri
Middle Passage- Charles Johnson (GUY THING) ♥

#7 MEMOIRS
The Liar's Club- Mary Carr
A River Runs Through It- Norman McLeod
An American Childhood- Annie Dillard
This Boy's Life- Tobias Wolff
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood- Mary McCarthy
King of the Hill- AE Hotchner
Angela's Ashes- Frank McCourt

#8 HISTORICAL NOVELS
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil- John Behrendt
Paradise- Toni Morrison
A Take of Two Cities- Charles Dickens
Jewel in the Crown- Paul Scott
Corelli's Mandolin- Louis de Bernieres ♥
Angle of Repose- Wallace Stegner ♥ ♥
The Confessions of Nat Turner- William Styron
Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood- Rebecca Wells

#9 JEWISH LITERATURE
The Shawl- Cynthia Ozick
The Dean's December- Saul Bellow
American Pastoral- Philip Roth
My Name Is Asher Lev- Chaim Potok ♥
The Assistant- Bernard Malamud

CLARKSVILLE RETREAT
Einstein's Dreams- Alan Lightman

#10 ASIA
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China- Jung Chang ♥ ♥
The Joy Luck Club- Amy Tan
Some Prefer Nettles- Junichiro Tanizaki
Kitchen- Banana Yoshimoto
The God of Small Things- Arundhati Roy
Leave It To Me- Bharati Mukherjee

#11 CANADIAN FICTION
The Stone Angel- Margaret Laurence ♥
The Handmaid's Tale- Margaret Atwood ♥
The Stone Diaries- Carol Shields
The Beggar Maid- Alice Munro
Herland- Charlotte Perkins Gilman ♥
The Love of a Good Woman- Alice Munro

#12 NATIVE AMERICA
Black Elk Speaks- John Neihardt
Yellow Raft Blue Water- Michael Dorris
Ceremony- Leslie Marmon Silko
The Man Who Killed the Deer- Frank Waters (GUY THING)
House Made of Dawn- N. Scott Momaday
Education of Little Tree- Forrest Carter ♥
The Lake Dreams the Sky- Swain Wolfe
The Quiet American- Graham Greene

#13 ON OUR OWN
Half a Heart- Rosellen Brown ♥
The Poisonwood Bible- Barbara Kingsolver ♥

#14 IRISH AUTHORS
Dubliners- James Joyce
The Woman Who Walked into Doors- Roddy Doyle
House of Splendid Isolation- Edna O'Brien
The Last September- Elizabeth Bowen
Inland Ice- Eilis Dhuibhne
Van- Roddy Doyle

#15 GOOD BOOKS
A Town Like Alice- Nevil Shute ♥
The Adventures of Huck Finn- Mark Twain ♥
To Kill a Mockingbird- Harper Lee "MOM THING" ♥
Anne of Green Gables- Lucy Montgomery
- Charles Dickens
The Sun Also Rises- Ernest Hemingway

MISSOURI SELECTION
Farewell to Manzanar- Jeanne Wakatsuki ♥

#16 BLOOMSBURY
Mrs. Dalloway- Virginia Woolf
The Hours- Michael Cunningham
Seabiscuit- Laura Hillenbrand (GUY THING) ♥
A Room with a View- EM Forster
A Room of One's Own- Virginia Woolf

#17 SCIENCE FICTION - we loved this entire series!
Stranger in a Strange Land- Robert A Heinlein
The Time Machine- HG Wells
Left Hand of Darkness- Ursula Le Guin
Brave New World- Aldous Huxley
The Sparrow- Mary Doria Russell ♥ ♥
Children of God- Mary Doria Russell ♥ ♥

#18 MAGICAL REALISM
Leaf Storm - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The House of the Spirits- Isabel Allende
Like Water for Chocolate- Laura Esquivel
A Wild Sheep Chase- Haruka Murakami (GUY THING)
East, West: Stories- Salman Rushdie
Love Medicine- Louise Erdrich
Balzac & the Little Chinese Seamstress- Sijie Dai ♥

#19 MYSTERY
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd- Agatha Christie
The Alienist- Caleb Carr
Thus Was Adonis Murdered- Sarah Caudwell
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman- P.D. James
Devil in a Blue Dress- Walter Mosley

#20 "CROSSROADS"
Mrs Caliban- Rachel Ingalls
The Life and Loves of a She Devil- Fay Weldon
Excellent Women (Penguin Classics)- Barbara Pym
The Secret Life of Bees- Sue Monk Kidd
Blue Shoe- Anne Lamott
The Dogs of Babel- Carolyn Parkhurst (GUY THING)

#21 LOST & CONFUSED
Life of Pi- Yann Martel
One So Bad We Won't Admit to Reading It!
Traveling Mercies- Anne Lamott ♥
Patron Saint of Liars- Ann Patchett

#22 UNDERGROUND THINKERS
The Bluest Eye- Toni Morrison ♥
Notes from the Underground- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Slaughterhouse - Five- Kurt Vonnegurt
Beneath The Wheel- Herman Hesse

#23 SUMMER OF FAULKNER
As I Lay Dying- William Faulkner ♥
The Sound and the Fury- William Faulkner ♥
Light in August- William Faulkner ♥ ♥

#24 INSIDE OUT
"The theme flips the phrase 'on the outside looking in'. In each work, the narrator is physically, psychically or socially detached. In addition, these are touchstone authors and texts on the themes of time, memory, and place. In a topsy-turvy way, these books are literary window peeping."

Sula- Toni Morrison
A World of Love- Elizabeth Bowen
Portrait in Sepia- Isabelle Allende
Jacob's Room- Virginia Wolf
Summer- Edith Wharton
Cat's Eye- Margaret Atwood

#25 ISLAM
Minaret- Leila Aboulela
Midnight's Chidren- Salman Rushdie ♥
Reading Lolita in Tehran- Azar Nafisi
The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseini ♥
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close- Jonathan Safran Foer

#26 FAMILY
The History of Love- Nicole Krauss ♥
Gilead: A Novel- Marilynne Robinson ♥ ♥
On Beauty- Zadie Smith
Three Junes- Julia Glass ♥
The Memory Keeper's Daughter- Kim Edwards

#27 Canonical Classics
The Memory Keeper's Daughter- Emily Bronte
Lady Chatterly's Lover- DH Lawrence
Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen
Howard's End- EM Forster

#28 Vampires
Dracula - Bram Stoker
I, Vampire - Michael Romkey
Salem's Lot - Stephen King
Interview with a Vampire - Anne Rice

#29 Christmas
Peace Like a River - Leif Enger

#30 Looking Back: The Narrative Art of Remembering
Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway
Here is Where We Meet - John Berger
Running in the Family - Michael Ondaatje

#31 Booker Prize Winners
The Gathering- Anne Enright
The Inheritance of Loss- Kiran Desai
The Sea - John Banville

#32 Mark Twain
(The Entire Mark Twain Collection (300+ Works) is available on Kindle for just $.99, no I didn't misplace the decimal point, for a buck.)
The Diaries of Adam and Eve and Other Stories
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
Life on the Mississippi
The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

JOINT BOOK CLUB & POTLUCK
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals- Michael Pollan

CHRISTMAS
A Christmas Memory- Truman Capote

#33 ALL-MALE AMERICAN REVIEW
The Sun Also Rises- Ernest Hemingway
Tender Is the Night- F. Scott Fitzgerald
East of Eden- John Steinbeck
Catcher in the Rye- JD Salinger

#34 ANTEBELLUM FICTION: FROM BATTLEFIELD to HOME FRONT
"Historical fiction has long been a popular genre; it attempts to capture the manners and spirit of period with exacting detail. In particular, antebellum ('before the war' - usually references the American Civil War) fiction focuses the readers attention on not only the battle itself, but imagines the psychological and philosophical struggles of its protagonists. This series is a collection of novels that go beyond the battlefield to capture the struggles on the home front. " ~ Kami Hancock

Cold Mountainby Charles Frazier
Little Womenby Louisa May Alcott (also available free for Kindle)
March: A Novelby Geraldine Brooks
The Shackby William P Young (Christmas book)
The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil Warby Howard Bahr
Clotel: Or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States by William Wells Brown

#35 Defining Home
"Is it the places from which we come, or the soil where we plant our roots that defines who we are becoming? These novels offer insight into the human condition–its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires." ~ Kami Hancock

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
Home: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

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About the Red Wine Book Club
When I moved to St. Louis, I left behind friends I loved, many in the book club started by Lisa from My Own Sweet Thyme and me. (Imagine: the host was expected to mail reminder invitations! Via the post office!) Nearly immediately after arriving here, I was invited to join a wonderful book club, a men's and women's group with high intellectual aspirations. Its reading rhythm however, didn't work for me and I missed the camaraderie of a women's reading group.

So I gathered my best friends, we hired a 'professor' (usually a grad student) to help us select our books and guide our discussions. Fourteen years and four professors later, we're still intact, we're still reading and we're still ... drinking red wine. (Yes, ours is a social as well as intellectual group.)

'GUY THINGS' Ours is a women's book club but every so often, we invite/prevail upon the men in our lives to join us for a special "Guy Thing" book club. These gatherings are often as much party as book club but we always do hold a book discussion.

Enjoy! ~ Alanna

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Sweet Potato Casserole

I'm on cloud nine having just had a small helping of my sweet potato casserole. It's perfect and I'm making a second batch on Wednesday to bring to Thanksgiving dinner. I'm sure to get lots of complements with this one!

I began my quest for the perfect sweet potato casserole last weekend when I saw a picture of a sweet potato casserole recipe in one of the many magazines I subscribe to. I was dying to make it. The picture was mouth-watering and how could any sweet potato casserole be bad?

I remember that I was surprised that the recipe called for cream, but no butter. There were no eggs to give it structure. I should have trusted my instincts - it was a clunker! There simply must be butter! Also, the sugar just has to be brown sugar. So I tossed the batch and I started over this weekend on my pursuit of an acceptable sweet potato casserole to share with you.

Now, there are sweet potato casseroles with pecan crunchy toppings (struesels), and there are those with the mini marshmallows. I am combining them here and using a special little twist that came from the recipe I tried last weekend: the pecans are toasted in butter and sugar, and they have a little zing and smokey flavor from our spice rack friend, Mr. Chipotle Chili Powder.


And you can make the pecans days ahead of time. In fact, you may like the pecans so much that you make them and keep them for snacks! I have been picking at the ones that broke and weren't photogenic.

I baked my sweet potatoes days ahead of time. Bake them at 350 degrees. Mine were large, so they took over an hour. If you aren't familiar with baking them, just make sure you poke them with forks and I recommend putting them on tin foil. As they become good and cooked, the sugars will escape through those holes. So if you don't have the tin foil underneath them, the sugars will clump up and stick to the oven grate and drop to the bottom. Then, every time you turn the oven on, they will re-burn and stink up your house.

After I made my sweet potatoes, I stored them in the fridge for a number of days. So as I began preparing the casserole this morning, I took off the skins, and I reheated the sweet potatoes in the microwave.

By the way, I won't feel guilty eating this entire batch throughout the week because I cut back on the typical amount of butter and sugar that most other recipes have. Sweet potatoes are a wonderful thing, and they don't need that much sweetening. The butter is great, but let's not overdo it! Baked sweet potatoes are creamy enough with less butter.

Without further ado, here's the recipe. Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Sweet Potato Casserole

For The Sweet Potatoes:
3 cups mashed sweet potatoes (from baked sweet potatoes)
½ stick butter, melted
1 tsp. vanilla
½ cup brown sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten


For The Topping:
1 (6-oz) bag of pecan halves
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup honey (I used chestnut honey)
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon chipotle chile powder
salt

Let's begin with the topping.

Melt the butter in a pan. Add the pecans, sugar, honey, and chile powder. Toss them around for about 8-10 minutes so that the sugar and honey caramelize around the pecans. Empty out the mixture onto parchment paper so it can cool. Store the pecans in an airtight container till you are either ready to eat them or put them on this special casserole!

The only utensil you will need to mash the sweet potatoes is a fork. In fact, you won't need to even mash them, just cut them into large chunks with the fork and ass you mix in the butter, vanilla, and brown sugar, they will fall apart into the perfect consistency.

Add the eggs once everything else is mixed.

If your sweet potatoes are especially hot, you should temper the eggs. That means, that you take a hunk of the hot sweet potato and mix it into the eggs separately. That evens out the temperature before you add it to the rest of the sweet potatoes. By doing this, you prevent cooking the eggs before they are mixed in. If that were to happen, you'd have scrambled egg hunks in your casserole, and that wouldn't be pleasant.

Coat a 9 x 9 inch baking dish with cooking spray and spread the sweet potato mixture evenly throughout the dish. Top with the marshmallows. Personally, I think I had too many marshmallows on mine (just a bit too may). I would have one layer of marshmallows - no extra. Place the pecans on top with plenty of space between them.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 40-35 minutes. Check toward the end so that the marshmallows brown, but do not burn.

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Celery, Date & Walnut Salad ♥ Recipe

Today's Thanksgiving salad idea: A simple yet festive salad made with celery, dates and toasted walnuts.

The first year in my own home, I signed up to host Thanksgiving dinner for a fair-sized crowd, fourteen. Like all good guests, people offered to bring a dish, my sister the salad. But when she arrived, the salad had been completely forgotten, not left behind, mind you, forgotten -- we've laughed about it ever since. (Trust me, there's little that escapes my sister, so it's useful to have 'something' to hold over her. For. Life. 80K. For Life.) Ever since, salad rarely finds its way to Thanksgiving dinner, there are just sooo many other foods, we'll be back to lettuce soon enough.

Still, especially for small Thanksgiving gatherings, a salad can be a welcome respite from all the rich, plenteous food. I loved this salad and think it would be perfect for Thanksgiving. Think Crunch. Think Color. Think 'autumn flair'. Perhaps a Thanksgiving salad isn't optional after all.

CELERY, DATE & WALNUT SALAD

Hands-on time: 15 minutes
Time to table: 15 minutes

DRESSING (enough for 4)
1/2 a shallot, minced very fine
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar or any good vinegar
1 tablespoon good olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste

SALAD (per SERVING)
1 - 2 ribs celery, sliced thin on the diagonal
1/4 - 1/2 of a date, sliced thin
2 - 3 toasted walnuts, chopped
2 - 3 shavings from good Parmesan

Whisk together the dressing ingredients. Toss with the salad ingredients. Serve alone or atop a bed of fresh arugula or other salad greens.

TO PREP AHEAD
DAY BEFORE Assemble dressing. Toast the walnuts.
MORNING OF Prep the celery and dates.
BEFORE DINNER Assemble salad ingredients, toss with dressing.

NUTRITION ESTIMATE Per Serving: 181Cal; 13g Tot Fat; 2g Sat Fat; 2mg Cholesterol; 97mg Sodium; 13g Carb; 3g Fiber; 10NetCarb; 9g Sugar; 4g Protein; Weight Watchers 4 points

TODAY'S VEGETABLE RECIPE INSPIRATION
Food & Wine, November 2008

KITCHEN NOTES
Use any good vinegar but sherry vinegar is definitely one of my favorites because it's smooth and sweet, while still completely vinegar.
No dates? Substitute golden raisins or another dried fruit. The dates do add sweetness so if you elect to skip the fruit entirely (or use one that's not so sweet), you might stir a teaspoon or two of maple syrup into the dressing.
For 12 servings, Food & Wine uses 2 tablespoons of sherry vinegar, 2 tablespoons walnut oil and 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, a 1:2 vinegar:oil mix. It may be the classic proportion but is rich-rich mixture for my taste. Do, of course, mix the dressing to your own taste.

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MORE THANKSGIVING SALAD IDEAS
~ Celery & Apple Salad ~
~ Classic Seven-Layer Salad ~
~ Festive Celery, Cauliflower & Apple Salad ~
~ Festive Holiday Salad from Kitchen Parade ~

~ more green salad recipes ~
~ Thanksgiving Vegetable Recipes 2008 ~

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Here at A Veggie Venture, vegetables are the real stars of the Thanksgiving table. So watch for new Thanksgiving recipes all November long, new additions to my collection of Thanksgiving vegetable recipes. Whether it's 2006's famous World's Best Green Bean Casserole or 2007's favorite Cauliflower Cream or a brand-new recipe which catches your fancy, this year, move vegetables to your center stage.
© Copyright 2008

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