Book Clubs :: Virtual Meetings Continue, Book Pitch Long List

For the second month in a row, thanks to COVID and #shelterinplace, our book club met virtually. April is “book pitch month” for our book club, where each member pitches 2 or 3 (or 6 – you know who you are) books for our next year’s reading. Then, we enter a voting period that can get as dicey as the 2000 hanging chads fiasco, but viola – at the conclusion we have a list of ten books that will get us through the next year.

In this year’s book pitch, we had a number of books that were put forth by multiple people and so we ended up with a shorter long list than usual. It remains to be seen if this will make the voting easier or harder.

With that, I present our 2020-2021 Long List.

1. 11.22.63 by Stephen King
2. A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne
3. A Prayer for Owen Meany (audio version) by John Irving
4. Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antoinette by Sena Jeter Naslund
5. All of our Worldly Goods by Irène Némirovsky
6. American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
7. Animal Farm by George Orwell
8. Circe by Madeline Miller
9. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
10. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
11. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
12. Native Son by Richard Wright
13. Nothing to See Here by Kevin Smith
14. Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
15. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
16. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
17. Say Nothing by Patrick Keefe
18. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
19. The Giver of Stars by Jo Jo Moyes
20. The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
21. The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
22. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
23. The Tenth of December by George Saunders
24. When All the World Was Young by Ferrol Sams

Which books would you vote for?