The best books to pick for book club

Once in a while, a book club lands on a pick that is so universally loved, so joyous and fun, that its joys resonate out for years, and bond the club in the ongoing conversation, inside jokes, and memories of reading and discussing that book. A Confederacy of Dunces was that book for my club. We read it right before the pandemic, and the laughter from that night, as we read the absurd, offensive, brilliant passages aloud, over gumbo, and bourbon, carried me through the darkest days locked inside. This book is wild, and yet it delivers, with a cast of unredeemable characters and anti-heroes, and a tale of decadent antics that earned it the legendary status it holds onto, half a century later. A crowd-pleasing, hilarious classic for good reason. Keep it in your pocket when everyone in the club needs a pickup.

I have always been fascinated with Russia, and love reading any book about Russia and Russians, whether the classic fiction of Dostoyevsky, or the absurdist work of Gary Shteyngart. But for insightful political analysis of Putin’s destruction of Russia’s democracy and society, written with a love for the people and country, and a keen eye toward their humanity, nothing beats this dead-eyed read from the great Masha Gessen. Her analysis of modern Russia under Putin’s grip came out a few years before the invasion of Ukraine, which is sort of a culmination of the ideas and stories here. This book is a portrait of individual tragedies woven together as a collective, where the historical resentments of one man (Putin) doom the future of an entire people. If you want to understand how Russia got here. Or what it might feel like to be a young Russian, caught up in this hell, this is a good place to start. Bonus points if your book club discusses the book in a banya (a Russian bathhouse, which exists in most major cities with a sizeable Russian émigré population). 

Often, there’s a bias when picking book club books to go big. Big stories. Big titles. Epics. Challenges. But sometimes, the best read is something smaller. Shorter. More personal. Crossing to Safety is a book like that…a perfect, beautifully written story about the friendship between two couples over the course of their lives. Read this book, and inevitably the book club discussion will turn to the very nature of your own relationships, friendships, and how those evolve and change over the decades, as people age, circumstances change, and the bonds are tested. There aren’t a lot of books in our club over the years that were universally loved, but this one was up there. 

Many people will talk about Michael Pollan’s ideas, but not actually read his books. This goes for people who have read interviews with him or articles by him, and a whole cadre of young men in business who listen to podcasts at twice the recorded speed. They will tell you they don’t have time to read his big books, and they got the ideas from these interviews, but they are wrong. Michael Pollan is many things. An amazing thinker. A prescient analyst of unfolding future trends (invest in whatever he’s writing about). A keen observer of science, and a talented journalist. But more than anything, the man is just a baller of a writer, and his books are a master class in how topical non-fiction should be done.

This book is incredibly challenging. There are dense pages of neuroscience, and long passages about chemistry and the brain that had me rereading, but there is magic here, and it is irresistible. Pollan reopens the debate around the medical and long-term value of psychedelic drugs, and he does it with humor, passion, rigor, and humanity. Will you want to take LSD or mushrooms after reading this book? Probably. But even if you don’t, your mind will already be changed. That’s how powerful this book is. It’s a good dose of fabulous writing with a mission, and it’s a trip worth taking.

Science fiction, for those who don’t read it regularly, can seem decadent and superfluous. What’s with all these ridiculous names and funny descriptions? Why do we need all this? But the good stuff (and Le Guin is possibly the best there was) uses all that unrestricted fiction to make a bigger point. The Left Hand of Darkness is a book about two worlds on the same planet, a sort of cold war analogy, complete with gulags and secret police. But the heart of this story is a very modern meditation on gender. In this world, gender is a very fluid concept. And that truth, as it collides with the circumstances unfolding in the plot, makes for a terrific launch pad for discussing gender and its role in our contemporary world. Read it with the most open mind, and you will be richly rewarded.