An Ignoble Experiment: Book Club News: Discussion-Ready Featureds and Favorites

Book Club News: October Issue

Hello Book Clubbers,

Did you know you and your book group can access rotating displays of featured and popular titles with accompanying discussion questions on the BookBrowse Discussion Guides page?

And if you could use some fun "getting to know you" activities for new clubs or members, look no further than our book club icebreaker games.

How are your autumn book club reads shaping up? Let us inspire you with 9 recent and upcoming fall books we think you'll love, from Sally Rooney to Danzy Senna to Elizabeth Strout and more.

Plus, enter our latest giveaway for a chance to win copies of Jesmyn Ward's acclaimed Let Us Descend for yourself and your book club!

With best wishes,

The BookBrowse Team

Discussion Guides for Book Clubs

What if you could browse possible book club reads knowing they all came with handy discussion questions and were highly recommended or popular with others? You can!

On our Discussion Guides page, all visitors can access our current featured reading guides as well as the 10 most-viewed book club books from within the past week.

Featured Reading Guides

BookBrowse presents a rotating selection of featured reading guides for titles we've reviewed to help you with ideas for possible book club reads and to keep your discussions running smoothly.

Top 10 Book Club Recommendations

The next time you and your book club need ideas for good discussion books, just browse our numbered list of the current 10 most-viewed book club titles (paired with discussion guides anyone can use).

Click to see what's popular right now!

View Discussion Guides

Book Club Icebreakers

At your first book club meeting, or whenever new people join your reading group, it's good to spend a bit of time getting to know each other. Or, if this sounds a bit intimidating, or you just like the idea of getting to know people in a different way, an alternative is to play a game!

Click below to see a list of icebreaker games for your book group.

See Games

Want more book club tips and resources? Check out our book club advice page for information on starting or finding a book club, leading a discussion, choosing books, inviting authors to your club, and much more.

9 New Books for Fall

With longer nights, cooler days, and sweater-appropriate weather, the final months of the year are a great time to crack open some books and get reading.

To help you and your book club curate your fall TBR list, we've selected 9 titles that are either newly released or being published this fall, all of which are or will be reviewed by our readers and reviewers — read on for the full list! ... continued

See List

Giveaway

Let Us Descend

by Jesmyn Ward

From the Jacket

From Jesmyn Ward—the two-time National Book Award winner, youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for Fiction, and MacArthur Fellow—comes a haunting masterpiece, sure to be an instant classic, about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.

Praise

"[A] wrenching and beautifully told story...Throughout, Ward uses stark and striking language to describe Annis's pain...Readers won't be able to turn away." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[W]hat gives this volume its stature and heft among other recent novels are the power, precision, and visionary flow of Ward's writing, the way she makes the unimaginable horror, soul-crushing drudgery, and haphazard cruelties of the distant past vivid to her readers." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Alongside the bleak reality of her life, readers grow up with Annis, hearing her interests and her desire for freedom, seeing how what freedom means to her evolves." —BookBrowse review

About This Sweepstakes

We have up to 30 hardcover copies of Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward to give away. If a winner is in a book club they will receive a copy for each member of their group (up to a maximum of 10 copies); if a winner is not in a book club they will receive 4 copies (one for themselves and three to share with friends).

This offer is open to residents of the USA, except for BookBrowse members, who are welcome to enter wherever they live. If a member not resident in the US wins, they receive an extension to their membership.

Giveaway ends October 15, 2024

Enter Giveaway

Discussions

Discussions are open to all, so please join us! If you would like to receive a message when a particular discussion opens, you can sign up for a one-time notification.

You can also find inspiration for your book club among our more than 200 past discussions.

We're currently discussing Evie Woods' The Story Collector. Starting November 28, we feature Nancy Jensen's In Our Midst.

See All Discussions

Resources

BookBrowse offers a cornucopia of resources for book clubs including recommended books by genre, time period, setting and a wide range of themes; advice on starting and running a book club and much more!

Go to Book Clubs

Usually published once a month, Book Club News is one of BookBrowse's four free newsletters. We also publish BookBrowse Highlights every Thursday, Publishing This Week every Sunday; and Librarian News monthly. We also offer occasional emails focusing on specific genres.