Time to Make Reading Lists for New Year!

This is the week when I do book discussions, and I've been working on reading lists for the season that will begin in September. Here's a preview:

2011
September
Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
A runaway best seller about adoption, ethnicity and family love

October
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronté
A classic novel that means more with each reading

November
The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
The "back story" of Jane Eyre, told by a master stylist of the 20th century

December
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
A landmark novel by Africa's most read author

2012

None of the groups meet in January, because January in Montreal is really January

February
The Way to Paradise by Mario Llosa Vargas
A novel about Gauguin and his militant grandmother Flora Tristan by the Nobel winner.

March
The Bridge at San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder
An Inca suspension bridge collapses: a novel about destiny by the American novelist and playwright

April
The Postman's Round by Denis Thériault
A short novel about poetry, letter carriers, and love

May
The Sentimentalists by Joanna Skibsrud
Surprise winner of the 2010 Giller prize by the young Montreal writer

June
The Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
The fictional autobiography of a Roman emperor by the French writer

Plus a list of other good reads suggested by book group members:

The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
Scarlet and Black, Stendahl
Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgeral
Portnoy's Complaint, Phillip Roth
The Long Song, Andrea Levy
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Shaffer
The Empty Family Stories, Colm Toibin
Girl in a Blue Dress, Gaynor Arnold
Black Girl in Paris, Shay Youngblood
Little Bee, Chris Cleave
Changes, Ama Ata Aidoo
A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner,
Khaled Hosseini
Trinity by Leon Uris
Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Mistress of Nothing by Kate Pullinger
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Family Matters by Rohintin Mistry
Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
A Student of Weather by Elizabeth Hay
The Stonecutters by Jane Urquhart
The Siege by Helen Dunmore
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Dirt Music by Tim Winton
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Madame Bovary by Flaubert
Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
Pride and Prejudice by Austen