<p>My favorite thing!</p>
<p>Quick reply would be YEAR OF WONDER, APRIL 1865, KATHARINE GRAHAM’s PERSONAL HISTORY and yes! WILD SWANS is amazing and i loved RED TENT!</p>
<p>May think of more later, i’m off to the last evening of the last performance of my DD… so thanx for getting my mind of my list of lasts!</p>
<p>klc, Enjoy!</p>
<p>I made some headway with Kavalier last night. 
It reminds me of a bit of slogging I did with Corelli’s Mandolin a few years back and then after 100 pages it just flew!</p>
<p>1776 or Blink</p>
<p>The Gatekeepers by Jacques Steinberg, Admissions Confidential by Rachel Toor …- whoops, just kidding!</p>
<p>My book club has read a number of the books already mentioned here. We all thoroughly enjoyed the book version of Memoirs of a Geisha. We also enjoyed Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahirii, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier, Kiterunner (excellent), Khaled Hosseini , The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime,Mark Haddon, and the Secret Life of Bees,Sue Monk Kidd.</p>
<p>We’ve also enjoyed Life of Pi,Yann Martel, Middlesex,Jeffrey Eugenides, Three Junes,Julia Glass, The Hours,Michael Cunningham, Disgrace, JM Coetzee, Empire Falls by Richard Russo, Atonement, Ian McEwan - powerful, and memorable but not exactly light hearted vacation material, Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis DeBernieres,The Book of Salt by Monique Truong and Wicked by Gregory Maguire. We’ve also read a number of the Barbara Kingsolver novels.</p>
<p>Our club read but agreed with previous posters on the Davinci Code as well as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay -we also thought plot fell apart in both as others have suggested. </p>
<p>For lighter vacation type reading though, I would probably go with something like Geisha. Another suggestion for a quick reading, escapist type of novel is The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory -historical fiction. Another one that I really enjoyed (and good for vacation type reading as well) was Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, I’d highly recommend this to you cangel, for a book set in India, that is also an easy(but great) read. Some more in this category would be The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffennegger or the Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter ( I loved this one).</p>
<p>Last month’s selection was I Am Charlotte Simmons - there are whole threads on CC devoted to that one! This month at my house we discussed the nonfiction books Blink and Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, which we all enjoyed for a change.</p>
<p>Two more worth adding on are Bel Canto by Ann Patchett and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells, if you haven’t read that one already!</p>
<p>Great list, Roshke…all the bookclubs around the world seem to steer in similar directions…Our group is multicultural, with varied religious and political affiliations and from a lot of countries as well, so we are pulling from a range of experiences…makes it fun- </p>
<p>Didn’t "Sister of My Heart’ have a follow on book as well??I loved the first one, not so keen on #2…it would be a great read for Cangel, you are right- given the criterion.</p>
<p>Thanks, guys, I’ll wait for anymore replies and print this out. I looked at A Suitable Boy last night at bookstore, but I’m going to need a vacation for that one. I have read a couple of Flashman - one of my husband’s favorites.</p>
<p>robyrm, Thanks! Yes, the sequel to Sister of My Heart is Vine of Desire and you are right, it didn’t match up to the first book. </p>
<p>I, too have read all the Anne Tyler books - Patchwork Planet and Ladder of Years were my favorites. I also love Jane Austen, Henry James and Edith Wharton. Pride and Prejudice is my favorite in this genre.</p>
<p>My book club is scheduled to read Million Little Pieces next month, don’t ask me why they still want to after it’s been revealed the author made up most of it! Running with Scissors was enough for one year in terms of dealing with authors with deep psychic scars from their upbringing. One of our book club members worked with the author years ago - her stories about him were fascinating!</p>
<p>One more - hands down winner for offbeat and wacky was How The Dead Live by Will Self. Funny, off the wall and totally unlike anything I’ve ever read. Our group still talks and laughs about this one years later!</p>