The most recommended book club books

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1,503 authors created a book list connected to book club, and here are their favorite book club books.
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Book cover of The Overstory

Heidi Wedd Author Of The Flower Codes

From Heidi's 3 favorite reads in 2024.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Plant whisperer Flower lover Nature course facilitator Herbalist Homeopath

Heidi's 3 favorite reads in 2024

Heidi Wedd Why did Heidi love this book?

While it took me awhile to get into this book with all the varying characters, I loved the epicness of it. The beauty of weaving in so many different and varied characters to come together, sometimes indirectly, into one big mission for the planet and the trees. It explores so many themes and opinions and versions of reality, but underlying it is the web of connection that lies between all humans, of which trees are so representative. This book is an inspiring piece of epic art.

By Richard Powers,

Why should I read it?

36 authors picked The Overstory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of-and paean to-the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers's twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see…


Book cover of The Light Pirate

Steve M. Easterbrook Author Of Computing the Climate: How We Know What We Know About Climate Change

From Steve's 3 favorite reads in 2024.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Steve's 3 favorite reads in 2024

Steve M. Easterbrook Why did Steve love this book?

By Lily Brooks-Dalton,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked The Light Pirate as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Set in the near future, this hopeful story of survival and resilience follows Wanda—a luminous child born out of a devastating hurricane—as she navigates a rapidly changing world: A “symphony of beauty and heartbreak” (Associated Press).

A Good Morning America Book Club pick · #1 Indie Next pick · LibraryReads pick · Book of the Month Club selection ·  Marie Claire #ReadWithMC book club selection · 2022 NPR “Book We Love” · New York Times Editors’ Choice

Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on the state’s infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches…


Book cover of The Wall

Debbie Urbanski Author Of After World

From my list on showing humans aren’t the only species that matter.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been a hiker for a long time, but it wasn’t until COVID-19 that I began to pay attention to the forests I was hiking through. I started with field guides to edible plants, then used Seek and iNaturalist apps to identify more species, and started taking macro photography of what I found. The more I paid attention to the minutiae of the natural world, the more I fell in love with every part of it. I’m worried our current priorities for climate change (preserving our way of life) are misguided. I’m worried about the future of all species. Every insect and every plant I’ve looked at close up is breathtakingly beautiful and worth saving. 

Debbie's book list on showing humans aren’t the only species that matter

Debbie Urbanski Why did Debbie love this book?

What will happen to the world if most of us—everyone except one or two humans, in fact—disappear?

According to Marlen Haushofer, the world will continue on just fine. I find that idea to be a little shocking, sure, but also comforting: maybe humans aren’t essential to the world’s existence after all. Maybe the world doesn’t need humans for drama, love, heartbreak, or healing.

This is what I would call an anti-post-apocalyptic book, one in which no one is a hero because humanity is beyond saving. Instead, the narrator has deep relationships with several animals—a dog, some cats, and a cow—animals that aren’t anthropomorphized in the slightest but treated with dignity, love, compassion, and complexity. I reread this slow and meditative page-turner every few years. I’m going to keep reading it for the rest of my life.

By Marlen Haushofer,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Wall as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“I can allow myself to write the truth; all the people for whom I have lied throughout my life are dead…” writes the heroine of Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall, a quite ordinary, unnamed middle-aged woman who awakens to find she is the last living human being. Surmising her solitude is the result of a too successful military experiment, she begins the terrifying work of not only survival, but self-renewal. The Wall is at once a simple and moving talk — of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the…


Book cover of Dinosaurs

Chuck Augello Author Of The Revolving Heart

From Chuck's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Wildlife enthusiast Vonnegutian All around human being

Chuck's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Chuck Augello Why did Chuck love this book?

I’ve always been drawn to lonely characters.

Gil, the protagonist of Dinosaurs, has two good friends and a live-in partner, but one feels his essential aloneness, and when his girlfriend suddenly abandons him, he leaves home in New York and walks to Arizona. After his arrival, a family moves into the glass-walled house next door and Gil soon becomes enmeshed in their lives.

This might seem far-fetched, but Millet captures the reader through close observation and empathy for her characters. The friendship between Gil and Tom, his adolescent neighbor, is the most surprising fictional friendship I’ve read in years.

The need for community and connection in a precarious world is the underlying theme, and I left Dinosaurs feeling more hopeful than I had before.

By Lydia Millet,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Dinosaurs as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Over twelve novels and two collections Lydia Millet has emerged as a major American novelist, writing vividly about the ties between people and other animals and the crisis of extinction. Her exquisite new novel, the first since A Children's Bible (ISBN 978 0 393 86738 1) ("a blistering little classic"-Ron Charles, Washington Post), tells the story of an Arizona man's relationship with the family next door, whose house has one wall made entirely out of glass.

The story delivers attraction and love, friendship and grief. But Millet also evokes the uncanny. Through close observation of human and animal life in…


Book cover of Limberlost

Julie Brooks Author Of The Secrets of Bridgewater Bay

From Julie's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author History nerd Storyteller Traveler Coastal dweller Passionate Aussie

Julie's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Julie Brooks Why did Julie love this book?

I read Limberlost in an Asian city far away from its Tasmanian setting of orchard, forest and river. But still, sitting in the tropical heat of Kuala Lumpur, I was transported home to Australia. The author conjured the swirling flow of our rivers and the majesty of our eucalypt forests so lyrically that they were bright in my memory.

This story of a boy on the cusp of manhood, where he dreams big in the face of loss and war, was told on an intimate scale, yet felt far larger to me. Limberlost was so very human.

I kept expecting that other characters would respond to the boy with anger, dishonesty, or even violence but at every turn there was compassion and understanding. It was the world in its even-handed harshness that was determined to hurt him. A really beautiful, moving novel.

By Robbie Arnott,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Limberlost as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2023

'Arnott has an eye and an ear for description that can elevate otherwise quiet moments to something genuinely transcendent... A luminously told, whole-life story of a young boy discovering how to be his own man.' Guardian

Ned West dreams of sailing across the river on a boat of his very own. To Ned, a boat means freedom - the fresh open water, squid-rich reefs, fires on private beaches - a far cry from life on Limberlost, the family farm, where his father worries and grieves for Ned's older brothers. They're away fighting in…


Book cover of North Woods

Rosalyn W. Berne Author Of When the Horses Whisper

From Rosalyn's 3 favorite reads in 2024.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Rosalyn's 3 favorite reads in 2024

Rosalyn W. Berne Why did Rosalyn love this book?

The historical and mystical elements combined to keep me enthralled. Clearly the author did his research as the history seemed authentic and accurate, and it spanned a wide swath of time, which I appreciated. "The Sixth Sense" aspect made an otherwise fine work of historical fiction particularly enticing.

By Daniel Mason,

Why should I read it?

26 authors picked North Woods as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—“a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic” (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.

“With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell’s fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason’s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that’s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders.”—San Francisco Chronicle

New York…


Book cover of How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Drew Pendergrass Author Of Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics

From my list on environmental crisis and how to solve it.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a climate scientist at Harvard and an environmental activist. In my day job, I use satellite, aircraft, and surface observations of the environment to correct supercomputer models of the atmosphere. What I’ve learned has made me feel that I can’t just stay in the lab—I need to get out in the world and fight for a future that’s just and ecologically stable for everyone. My writing and activism imagines how humanity can democratically govern itself in an age of environmental crisis.

Drew's book list on environmental crisis and how to solve it

Drew Pendergrass Why did Drew love this book?

Despite the title, this book is not literally about how to blow up a pipeline. Instead, it asks why, if the fate of the world is at stake, so few climate activists have turned to sabotage. Perhaps it should have been called, “Why isn’t anyone blowing up a pipeline?”

In my activism, I have always organized and joined non-violent actions and protests, but Malm raises a powerful point: historical movements, like the fight for women’s suffrage or the end of apartheid in South Africa, have used violence and sabotage. Only after the fact are these movements whitewashed into something peaceful and cuddly. Reading Malm’s short but powerful book left me with more questions than I started with, but the best books often don’t provide the right answers; rather, they ask new questions.

By Andreas Malm,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked How to Blow Up a Pipeline as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The science on climate change has been clear for a very long time now. Yet despite decades of appeals, mass street protests, petition campaigns, and peaceful demonstrations, we are still facing a booming fossil fuel industry, rising seas, rising emission levels, and a rising temperature. With the stakes so high, why haven't we moved beyond peaceful protest?

In this lyrical manifesto, noted climate scholar (and saboteur of SUV tires and coal mines) Andreas Malm makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to escalate its tactics in the face of ecological collapse. We need, he argues, to force fossil fuel…


Book cover of The Vegetarian

Brinda Charry Author Of The East Indian

From Brinda's 3 favorite reads in 2024.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Brinda's 3 favorite reads in 2024

Brinda Charry Why did Brinda love this book?

I’ve read few that pack so much into this length. This compact novel by the Nobel Prize Laureate is disturbing (terrifying, actually), tragic, powerful and beautiful.

By Han Kang, Deborah Smith (translator),

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked The Vegetarian as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people. He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and mild manners; she is an uninspired but dutiful wife. The acceptable flatline of their marriage is interrupted when Yeong-hye, seeking a more 'plant-like' existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares. In South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision is a shocking act of subversion. Her passive rebellion manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, leading her bland husband to self-justified acts of sexual sadism. His cruelties drive her towards attempted suicide…


Book cover of When I Sing, Mountains Dance

Bobby Palmer Author Of Small Hours

From my list on talking animals for grown ups.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a British author who has always had a fascination with magical realism and novels that blend the serious with the strange. For that reason, though I write literary fiction for adults, I take so much of my inspiration from children’s literature. There’s something so simple about how kids’ books stitch the extraordinary into the every day without having to overexplain things. I now live not far from the forest that inspired A. A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood, and my latest novel is set in and inspired by this part of rural England–with all the mystery and magic that a trip into the woods entails.

Bobby's book list on talking animals for grown ups

Bobby Palmer Why did Bobby love this book?

One of the most inventive novels I’ve read in recent years, this beautiful Pyrenean patchwork is supposed to evoke the orchestra of voices of the mountain region in which the book takes place.

Thus, you have the points of view of local farmers and their families, but also of the mountains themselves, of storm clouds and baskets of mushrooms and plenty of animals, wild and domesticated. The Deer takes us on a delightful tangent, but the most memorable chapter might be the one from the point of view of the spirited, breathlessly energetic dog.

By Irene Sola,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked When I Sing, Mountains Dance as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Sola pushes past the limits of human experience to tell a story of instinct and earth-time that is irresistible in its jagged glory." - C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills is Gold

When Domenec - mountain-dweller, father, poet, dreamer - dies suddenly, struck by lightning, he leaves behind two small children, Mia and Hilari, to grow up wild among the looming summits of the Pyrenees and the ghosts of the Spanish civil war.

But then Hilari dies too, and his sister is forced to face life's struggles and joys alone. As the years tumble by, the…


Book cover of Pod

Danielle Clode Author Of Koala: The Extraordinary Life of an Enigmatic Animal

From Danielle's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Zoologist Writer Nature lover Gardener Armchair time traveller

Danielle's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Danielle Clode Why did Danielle love this book?

Trying to write from a non-human perspective is a tricky decision for a writer as I think we find it easier to read and write about our own species.

So I really admire Laline Paull’s non-human stories (like Bees and Pod) and the way she writes from the most difficult first-person point of view. While it is impossible to truly understand what goes on in an animal’s head, Paull does an incredible job of pulling us away from our own narrow window on the world and making us to look at ourselves from the diverse perspectives of the marine animals and the dramatically changing world we’ve forced them to live in.

Be warned though, this book may appeal to younger readers, but it also has some quite confronting scenes.

By Laline Paull,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Pod as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION, 2023

'Knocked my socks off . . . it is set entirely in the ocean. It's not science fiction. It's realistic. It's set in the here and now . . . And it's fascinating' Barbara Kingsolver in the New York Times

'A pacy, provocative tale of survival in a fast-changing marine landscape' Daily Mail

Bestselling author Laline Paull returns with an immersive and transformative new novel of an ocean world - its extraordinary creatures, mysteries, and mythologies - that is increasingly haunted by the cruelty and ignorance of the human race.

Ea has…


Book cover of The Overstory
Book cover of The Light Pirate
Book cover of The Wall

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