Favorite Books Club Selections of 2024
I am in two book clubs. This year I read 21 unique books and two rereads. These are my favorite book club selections based on themes and discussions. As in years past, I asked for input from other club members.
1. The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese - The Covenant of Water has everything I like in a book: a detailed plot -- in this case one which covers three generations of a family and many/many side characters; characters who are fully fleshed out, not one-dimensional beings; a theme which is very evident throughout the whole text; literary quotes and thoughts interspersed throughout; an author who treats his readers as intelligent and knowledgeable -- in this case about medical and genetic issues; AND, this may not surprise you, one which clearly has a very spiritual, often scriptural, message. This was the #1 favorite book of the RHS Ladies book club. (Fiction)
2. Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See - Lady Tan's Circle of Women is tremendously interesting and scrupulously researched. This is the third book I've read by Lisa See and I felt the same way about the other two books. I learned so much and had my eyes opened about aspects of history I knew nothing about. The existence of women in the 15th century in China (and all around the world) was so bleak. They had few rights and were never thought of as equals with men. Yet, here is Lady Tan, an amazing woman and physician that defies all expectations and lives an important life, one that matters even today. This was another favorite book for the RHS Ladies book club and maybe one of the best discussion books I've ever encountered. (Fiction based on the life of an actual person)
3. The Huntress by Kate Quinn - The Huntress was SOTH Gals February's book club selection. There was a bit of anxiety among members because the the book is over 540 pages long. But once women started reading it, the page length anxiety evaporated. To a person everyone spoke about how much they liked the plot and the pages just flew by. Mid-month I talked to one club member who was upset because she didn't have any time that day to read. This has NEVER happened before and our club has been around for almost thirty years. (Yes, you read that right. 30 years.) Our discussion reflected the enthusiasm for the book. It shouldn't surprise you, therefore, this was the club's favorite book of the year. (Fiction)
4. House Lessons: Renovating a Life by Erica Bauermeister - House Lessons was an unlikely book club 'best book.' We all had so much fun with our discussion over this half memoir, part house restoration, part history/information book! All of the ladies in the book commented on the writing and the organization. For example, in the chapter 'Architects and Builders' readers not only meet the professionals the Bauermeisters hired for their house restoration project but we learn information about famous architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe and some of their famous projects. We also learned about why there are so many lovely, aging Victorian houses in Port Townsend, a small, artsy town on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. For a book none of us had ever heard of before we were all pleasantly surprised by this little gem and I think to a woman we would recommend it to you. It was tied as the 3rd favorite book of the SOTH Gals club. (Memoir, nonfiction)
5. The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende - Three people: Irina Bazili, Alma Belasco, and Ichimei Fukuda are all victims of war and politics. They live in a world blinded to their predicaments, too. The story has many plot lines and moves forwards and backwards in time but eventually everyone's story comes out and the reader is left with a sense of the lingering sadness in all three characters lives. Allende does a masterful job drawing all the lives together into a touching story. It was rated as the SOTH Gals second favorite read of the year. (Fiction)
6. Plainsong by Kent Haruf - Kent Haruf reveals a whole community as he interweaves the stories of a pregnant high school girl, a lonely teacher, a pair of boys abandoned by their mother, and a couple of crusty bachelor farmers. It's as if Haruf has conjured up a whole community in the fictional town of Holt in eastern Colorado and then immersed the reader in its dramas. Every women in the SOTH book club really loved this book. No one could really put their finger on it but all loved it. And we had a fantastic discussion more about our lives when we were growing up than the book. I recommend it as a club selection if you are looking around for a good book. Bonus: it is short also. (Fiction)
7. West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge - All the gals in the RHS book club loved the book, and picked as their third favorite of the year, saying that it struck the exactly right tone. It told two stories really. The first and obvious story was the trip of the giraffes who started their journey very precariously by being trapped aboard a ship when a hurricane hit off the East Coast of the USA. The second story was the story of the dust bowl and the Great Depression. Woody Nickel was a dust bowl orphan who was just trying to get to California, when he was tapped to drive the giraffes across the country with a zookeeper. Stories about people's lives during such desperate times emerged as they made their way from state to state aiming for San Diego. Headlines taken from newspapers served as chapter dividers so that readers could get a feel for how much energy and excitement these two, rare beast caused in the lowdown lives of people along the way. (Fiction based on actual events.)
8. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer - Back in 2015 a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer, published Braiding Sweetgrass. In 2023 she published a young adult version of the book, which is what I read. As a botanist Kimmerer was trained to observe nature through science. As a member of the Potawatomi Nation she knew that plants and animals are some of our oldest and best teachers. In her book she brings together these two types of knowledge to share the ancient wisdom in a way that it even makes sense with science. This book tied for third place with the SOTH Gals club. They read the adult version and liked it but when I told them about the YA version with its illustrations, they wished they had read it instead. (Nonfiction)
9. The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty - The Rabbit Hutch weaves together the daily dramas of tenants in a run-down apartment complex in a run-down fictitious town named Vacca Vale, Indiana. They are all living down-and-out lives in their down-and-out apartments in the #1 Dying City in America. "Set over one sweltering week in July and culminating in a bizarre act of violence that finally changes everything, The Rabbit Hutch is a savagely beautiful and bitingly funny snapshot of contemporary America, a gorgeous and provocative tale of loneliness and longing, entrapment and, ultimately, freedom" (Publisher). When I told the club this was my third favorite selection of the year everyone at the meeting moaned. To be clear, two members loved the book, two hated the book, and the rest fell somewhere in the middle. Afterwards all admitted that we had a fantastic discussion, even those who didn't like the book. So don't be afraid to pick this book for your future club meetings. You might want to start by reading my review, linked above, and make copies of the discussion questions we used since the publisher provided none. (Fiction)
10. The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck - The Women in the Castle was November's SOTH book club selection. Every gal who braved the windy forecast for a 'bomb cyclone' said they really enjoyed the book. So did I. Oddly and to a person, we all noticed the similarities between the politics of Germany in the 1930s and 40s under the Nazis and what we are experiencing today in American politics. Most WWII books stop at war's end. This book is mainly set after the war's end when Marianne sets out to find and protect the other resister's widows. She finds two and brings them and their children to live with her in the old family castle that is a cold and leaky place. The stories of these three women, and to a smaller degree their children, populate the book. War has all kinds of victims. Some die in the fighting, others can't seem to make sense of their lives after it is over. This book addresses those grey zones of life in the shadows and aftermath of war. It was another third place favorite of the SOTH Gals, tied with Plainsong and House Lessons. (Fiction)
It was another strange year for me concerning book club selections. In my RHS group we picked five or six books ahead of schedule and I read them out of order, whenever they arrived from the library. Sometimes it was months before that book was discussed at a meeting and I found I'd lost a lot of the details in my brain by then. The last book we discussed, Sipsworth by Van Booy, I'd almost completely forgotten all the details. Now maybe that says more about me than the books but I do want to give a shout out to two additional books that probably would have fared better on this list if I read them in a timely manner: The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters and Go As a River by Shelley Red.
Interested in all the books we read this year? Here is a link to all my book club book reviews.
Looking for even more suggestions?
Click links to check my past book club favorites by year:
