Book Club Suggestions: 29 of the Best Book Club Books

Whether you’re picking your book club suggestions as a group or looking for the best book club books to choose from for an individual choice, these 29 options will have you covered! From chick-lit to historical fiction to non-fiction that reads like a novel, there’s a book here for every book club!

Is there anything that puts fear into your heart like having to choose a book for book club? I think not.

Of course, maybe you are braver than I am. Nothing puts fear into MY heart like that annual sign-up sheet asking for my best book club suggestions.

Here are 29 book club suggestions that I think most people will enjoy reading, ones that will spark interesting discussions, and ones that you’ll feel good about having forced other people to read.

Some of these are the best book club books from my own book clubs over the years and others are ones I WISH my book club had read.

This list of book club books has non-fiction, chick-lit, young adult and middle grade titles, history books and parenting books. There are new titles and ones that are bit older.

Whatever you’re looking for, I hope you’ll find a few perfect book club suggestions on this list for your group.

If you’d like to start your own book club, pop in your email address and I’ll send you my best tips for getting one started!

My Favorite Book Club Suggestions

• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi – This memoir published after the author’s early death from lung cancer will basically rip your heart out, but also make you so glad to be alive. In the past, we’ve done family reunion book clubs and if we did another one, this would be in my top three book club suggestions for sure. (Full review here)

• I’ve Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella – If you’re looking for funny and fluffy book club books, it’s hard to beat Sophie Kinsella. I laughed my head off reading this book about a woman who loses her cell phone and finds another one in a garbage can, accidentally taking on the role of secretary for the businessman who owns the phone (Be warned that there is some swearing). (Full review here)

• The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin – This is one of those book club suggestions that was just MADE for book lovers and while I usually shy away from books described that way (they always seem so pandering), this one is just spot-on. I couldn’t love this story of a grumpy old book shop owner who finds himself the caretaker of a little baby who is left in his store. (Full review here)

• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson –  When I shared this book on Instagram, SO many people responded telling  me that their book clubs had read this title and had amazing discussions. It’s all about the American justice system, especially how the racial bias in it. I wished on every page that I had a book club to discuss it with. (Full review here)

• Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese – A quick read with all sorts of funny stories about food, cooking, and raising animals sprinkled with lots of recipes. Bonus, it’ll be easy to pick refreshments to go along with this book! (Full review here)

• The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak – A really elegantly written young adult book about an orphan girl in Germany during WWII and the family that takes her in. One of the best books I’ve read. (Full review here)

• Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies by J.B. West – I read this more than three years ago and I still think about it ALL the time. It’s chatty and easy to read without being gossipy. (Full review here)

• How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids by Jancee Dunn – Despite the click-bait title, this book is SO good. I felt like it was packed with helpful ideas and research, and it was super fun to read. If you invite me to join your book club this year, odds are good that I’ll choose this one. (Full review here)

• The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan – This one is pretty hefty, but it’s so interesting that no one in our group seemed to have too much trouble getting through it. And wow, did we have a fascinating discussion about the food sources in our country, the organic industry, and a multitude of other topics.

• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport – This book is one that I kind of need to go back and read about every six months to help me refocus. I’d love this as a book club pick and then to come back and revisit it a few months later to see how everyone was doing.

• Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool – One of my favorite Newbery winners in recent years, this story is told by two different voices – a young girl during the Great Depression and a young boy just before WWI breaks out. (Full review here)

• This Is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live by Melody Warnick – This book would be an especially good book club suggestion if you were in a book club with mostly transitory people, say students or expats. (Full review here)

• Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey – This book about a family of twelve children, being raised in a home with an efficiency-expert father is sweet, hilarious, and just plain interesting. The sequel, Belles on Their Toes, is just as good. Nothing to do with the embarrassingly bad Steve Martin movie. (Full review here)

• These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine by Nancy E. Turner – The first thirty pages are a bit slow, but after that this diary-style novel really gets going about Sarah, a teenager growing up in the West, trying to educate herself, and, of course, falling in love. This book is deeply romantic, but to call it only a romance would be to sell it far too short. (Full review here)

• What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty – My favorite chick-lit book of all-time, about a woman who wakes up after a fall at the gym to discover that, instead of being pregnant, twenty-nine, and deeply in love with her husband, is thirty-nine, the mother of three and on the verge of divorce. As she tries to get back her memories of the past ten years, she also struggles to figure out what has changed her life (and marriage) so drastically. And, more importantly, can that marriage be saved? (Full review here)

• Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chau – This is my pick for my bookclub this year (I’m leading the discussion in December) and I am just really excited to see how everyone feels about this book about Chinese parenting – or at least one woman’s take on it – and how it works in America (Full review here)

• Nutureshock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman – One of my book clubs picked this a few years ago and I loved the amazing discussion about sleep, racism, praising children, and a whole slew of other parenting topics. (Full review here)

• Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand – This book is non-fiction but it’s so amazing, it’s hard to believe someone didn’t make it up. Olympic runner Louis Zamperini’s plane is shot down in the Pacific during WWII and after surviving on a tiny inflatable raft for 47 days, he’s taken prisoner by the Japanese. And compared to being a POW, the raft time looks like vacation. Probably the best WWII book I’ve read. (Full review here)

• Wonder by R.J Palacio – A remarkably done middle-grade novel about a boy with severe facial abnormalities who begins attending public school for the first time in middle school. Moving, well-written, and full of things to talk about, which is why it’s one of my favorite book club suggestions.

• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier – This book would be especially fun if you were choosing for October – kind of a gothic thriller/romance. The first chapter (about 30 pages) is a smidge slow, but after that, it is hard to put down! It ollows a young woman who marries a very rich widow and feels like she can’t escape the shadow cast by his larger-than-life first wife who died in a boating accident.

• The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had by Kristin Levine – This middle-grade historical fiction title is set in Alabama during WWI. Dit is anxious for the new post master to arrive, since rumor is that he has a son Dit’s age, but when the post master’s family arrives, Dit can’t decide whether he’s more surprised that the family is black or that the promised friend is a girl. (Full review here)

• If I Stay by Gayle Forman – This is YA fiction at its best. After a horrible car accident, the course of Mia’s life is drastically changed and all the plans she’s had for her future are called into question. It’s not a very long book, but it is beautifully written. I cried both times I read it. (Full review here)

• The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls – One of the best book club books that makes your own childhood look really really easy, this is a memoir about growing up in a completely dysfunctional family, where the family keeps moving in the middle of the night and the children eventually realize that the parents are never going to pull themselves together. (Full review here)

• Red China Blues by Jan Wong – In college, I read this memoir about a Canadian girl (of Chinese descent) who goes over to China during the Cultural Revolution, on fire with Mao’s vision. During the years she spends there, she comes to realize that Mao’s ideas for China might not be all that she’s hoped. This book is absolutely fascinating – I even sent my mom a copy for her birthday a couple of years ago (she loved it too).

• Room by Emma Donoghue – Horrifying, but ultimately full of hope, this book about a little boy raised by his mother in a single room where she is kept by her kidnapper and their eventual escape, explores what happens when the whole world opens up before you. (Full review here)

• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart – One of my very favorite YA books of all time about a very smart girl at a boarding school who discovers her boyfriend belongs to a secret boys-only society and is determined to get in. This is one of those book club suggestions that is easy to read but has TONS to chat about when you meet. (Full review here)

• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance – I basically made Bart have our own little book club for this one, since I read it on a long car trip and then proceeded to read huge sections aloud to him and discuss each chapter, while he probably wondered how many more miles until we got home. (Full review here)

• All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know about Getting and Spending by Laura Vanderkam – This book was just MADE for reading in a book club. It’s broken up into short, readable chapters and each one is full of interesting conversations all about how we choose to spend our money and what actually makes us happy.  (Full review here)

By the way, our book club has tossed around the idea of doing a theme for the year, whether it was books written by women, fiction only, children’s lit, etc. I think that might be a fun idea, since it’d make it at least slightly easier to choose a book. But I think other people might find that too restrictive.

And if you’d like a printable copy of this list that you can take to your library or screenshot on your phone for easy access, just pop in your email address below and it’ll come right to your inbox!

And please tell me your best book club books that have been big hits in YOUR book clubs! I’m always looking for more book club recommendations.

If you liked this post about book club suggestions, you might also enjoy these:

• 25 MORE book club books
• How to start a successful book club
• Hosting a one-time book club