A Plug for Online Reading Groups

I recently compiled a list of the best books I've read since joining an online book group. The group turned out to be an excellent way to find fellow readers and discuss books. Over the years—I joined in 1999—I've read and discussed a bunch of books and just made a quick list of some of my favorites. The group reads a different book every two weeks. Just about anything currently in print is eligible to be chosen. While most selections are fiction, some are non-fiction. We've even read children's books and one cook book.

These are the 20 of the most rewarding books I first encountered and read with this group:
· Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami
· Stones in the River by Ursula Hegi
· Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
· Underworld by Don DeLillo
· Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
· Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
· Mercy Among the Children by David Adams
· A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
· Regeneration by Pat Barker
· The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
· Independent People by Haldor Laxness
· When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
· Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
· The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
· True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
· The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
· House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
· Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
· The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
· Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Honorable mention goes to a couple of books the group read before I joined but that were mentioned so often that I had eventually to read them. I loved both of them:
· A Fine Balance by Robinson Mistry
· Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

The group doesn't read just new books and I re-read a bunch of favorites with this group as well, including the following:
· Bleak House by Charles Dickens
· Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
· Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
· Absolam! Absolam! by William Faulkner
· The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
· Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
· Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
· Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
· The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkein
· The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
· All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
· The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
· Moby Dick by Herman Melville

If you're interested, the group can be found on Yahoo Groups. It’s called The Book Group List. It has a separate website with lists of books read and links to past discussions.