Family Book Club Ideas

An upper school parent just emailed to ask for reading suggestions for their grandparent/teenager "virtual" book club.   What a great idea -- the grandparents are staying isolated for health reasons, the teens are avid readers, and a shared book discussion can be Zoomed with plenty of prompts to keep the conversation going.

Here's what I came up with, a mix of fiction, non-fiction, classics & contemporary, adult & YA, that ought to offer enough choice to keep the family book club going until we can ALL go out again.

Paideia's junior high book club is having our first "virtual" meeting on Tuesday.  The book is Graceling, which is far too good to skip discussing just because we can't talk in the same room.  We're all set to Zoom!

If you have any favorite multi-generational reading ideas, share in the comments below!

---

Books for a Family "Virtual Book Club"
(title with * can be borrowed from our Sora digital collection

• Any of Jules Verne's adventure novels (Around the World in 80 Days; 20,0000 Leagues Under the Sea*, and others)

• A Study in Scarlet, by Arthur Conan Doyle, the novel that introduced Sherlock Holmes to the world, or any of the Sherlock Holmes short story collections*

• Dread Nation* by Justina Ireland. Nominally YA alternate Civil War history with zombies, but it's really an a subversive action/thriller about race, passing, societal expectations by class & gender, and weapon-wielding girl power!  A New York Times YA bestseller, with the sequel just released this spring.  

• The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane* by Kate DiCamillo.  It's theoretically elementary, but author Ann Patchett just wrote an essay for the New York Times declaring it a "life changing book." 

• True Grit by Charles Portis

• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

• Frankenstein* (Mary Shelley) or Dracula* (Bram Stoker)

• The Boys in the Boat* by Daniel James Brown (non-fiction) -- I'd go for the Young Reader's edition.  It took me FOREVER to read the original adult edition. It's good, but so detailed.

• The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind* by William Kamkwamba & Bryan Mealer- -- non-fiction, either the adult or Young Reader edition

• All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries #1 by Martha Wells  -- short sci-fi novel starring a self-aware cyborg unit discovering its humanity

• Tom Sawyer* by Mark Twain (not Huckleberry Finn, leave that for lit class or college)

and I should also add

• Becoming*, the bestselling autobiography/memoir by Michelle Obama.

Enjoy!!