First off: this question assumes that at least one of the main purposes of a book club is to discuss a book with friends and acquaintances whose opinions and ideas you respect. Other purposes can certainly include wine, cheese, chocolate, gossip, etc., but in the context of this post, “book club” refers to a group whose members read (at least partially) and discuss (at least for a while) books on a semi-regular schedule.

 So you are in, or want to start, a book club: how do you choose a book? There are all kinds of processes, from democratic to dictatorial, but I’m not going into that here. Whatever your process, the real question is: how do you make sure your selected book can fuel a discussion?

There are books I have enjoyed, but about which I have had very little to say; there are books I have loved, but have not been able to talk about well. It is often easier to identify what you dislike about a book, and harder to say what makes you love one; however, you don’t want to choose a book you think you’ll hate, just for the purpose of discussion.

In the best book club discussions I’ve been part of, there have been lots of mixed opinions. A character might inspire sympathy in some readers, indifference in others; an author’s writing style might be praised as poetic by some, while others will dismiss it as too flowery. Differences in opinion drive discussion, but these differences have more to do with the book’s readers than the book itself.

What about the book itself? I look for the thought-provoking book: the book with a central moral dilemma, where the characters must make difficult decisions or deal with unfamiliar situations. Ann Patchett is one author who excels at putting wonderfully real characters into settings that are strange or uncomfortable for them: a Jewish woman from Los Angeles in Nebraska with her in-laws, a shy scientist searching for her lost coworker in the Amazon, opera lovers held hostage in a South American country. Chris Cleave, on the other hand, is a master of the moral dilemma: family or ambition, sacrifice or cowardice?

Other books explore the future, or alternative versions of the present, and these books are thought-provoking in their own ways. Examples of these are A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker, and The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (nonfiction). The beauty of these books is that they subtly encourage you to put yourself in the character’s shoes, to compare the character’s actions and thoughts with what you imagine your actions and thoughts might be in his or her place.

 Other books are simply unique in some way. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell has an inventive structure: it consists of six related narratives told in halves (in the first half of the book, each narrative is interrupted by its successor; in the second half of the book, “each interruption is recontinued, in order”).

Other stories are unique because of their premise: Room by Emma Donoghue not only features a five-year-old narrator, but one who has lived with his mother in one room for his whole life. Arcadia by Lauren Groff is the story of Bit, a child born on a commune, who at age fourteen is plunged into the real world when the utopian community dissolves.

 Depending on the preferences of your group’s members, you might decide to focus on a subset of literature. You might choose a nonfiction area like science or history, or decide to revisit the classics, or read just one author’s work. “Not so young adult” groups read books aimed at teens or children (e.g. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky). The book clubs I’ve been part of have focused on contemporary fiction, with occasional classics and nonfiction. Some of the criteria we consider are:

-Page count: most people don’t have the time for thousand-page tomes.

-Availability: Are your book club members willing to buy the book, or is everyone going to get it from the library? Something to consider before choosing that brand-new hardcover bestseller.

-Description/interest: the description of the book should appeal to a majority of the group; reviews need not be stellar but should be at least promising.

-Awards: If you have no idea where to start, there are plenty of awards lists, including the Pulitzer, the Booker, and the National Book Award, as well as genre awards like the Hugo, Edgar, and Nebula. Remember that awards are a good guideline, but they are also subjective.

-New vs. re-reading: book clubs can be great for re-hashing old favorites, but they’re also a great place to try new things and tackle challenging works that wouldn’t appeal to you solo. I might never have read Cloud Atlas on my own, but I loved it. Also, with a well-read bunch, it can be hard to find a book that everyone is interested in reading but that no one has read yet, so a willingness to re-read is a plus.

What are your book club success stories? Flops? What books do you think inspire discussion? Add suggestions and discuss in the comments.

M.L. Stedman’s debut novel The Light Between Oceans is published today. I had the opportunity to read an advance copy of the book this past spring, and it was fantastic; I reviewed it on Goodreads at the time, but here it is again for those who are interested:

In the aftermath of the Great War, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia, and works alone on an island as a lighthouse keeper. On occasional trips back to the mainland, he meets and then marries Isabel Graysmark; they return to the island together, where Isabel conceives and miscarries three times.

Shortly after the third miscarriage, a boat washes up on the island, containing a dead man and a living baby. Isabel persuades Tom not to report it – to bury the man and keep the baby as their own. He uneasily agrees; but back on the mainland, the baby’s mother grieves for her lost husband and son.

The Light Between Oceans is an extraordinary story of the difference one decision makes; how the future must be lived when the past cannot be changed; of right and wrong and love. Not only is it a beautiful book with strong characters, its thought-provoking central dilemma makes it a great discussion starter and excellent book club pick. Also: bonus points for a gorgeous cover.

Last night, I went to listen to Chris Cleave talk at the Brookline Booksmith, an excellent independent bookstore. (Earlier in the day, Cleave spoke at Porter Square Books, another lovely indie.) The talk was completely worth the crosstown trip in rush hour. Cleave is a delightful speaker; he’s energetic, articulate, intelligent, funny, and self-effacing. He talked about his writing process and about the research he did for each book, and then read a little bit from his newest, Gold, and answered questions from the audience.

Cleave’s approach, as a journalist-turned-author, is to investigate “timeless questions in a timely manner.” For Incendiary, the question was, “Why do governments take better care of rich people than poor people?” For Little Bee (published as The Other Hand in the U.K.), the question was, “Should we step outside our comfort zone to bring others into it?” And for Gold, the question was, “How much ambition should we give up in the name of love?”

Olympians, Cleave pointed out, have “a different scale of ambition.” For Olympic athletes, unlike the rest of us, it is “necessary for everyone else in the world to fail” for them to win. Rivalries are intense; but rivalry is similar to “romantic love…[it] lifts both people up better than they could have been individually.” In Gold, Zoe and Kate train together and push each other to be their best, each hoping that her best is the best.

In researching Gold, Cleave interviewed top-level athletes, as well as doctors and nurses at a children’s hospital. “These people operate at such emotional extremes….It’s my job to describe indescribable things…[to visit the] extreme edges [of] exceptional lives and report back.” Cleave also trained on a bicycle himself, discovering a “savage joy” in winning (“That’s why you do the research, to go out and find things you weren’t expecting”), as well as the “unbridgeable gulf” between top athletes and the rest of us. Cleave said that the race scenes between Kate and Zoe are the heart of the book (“reclaiming action for literary fiction”). As a reader I’m not sure I agree, though the race scenes are well-written and intense.

Of the two high-level struggles in Gold – Kate and Zoe’s rivalry, eight-year-old Sophie’s fight against leukemia – Cleave said, the characters either see the difference or they don’t. Kate, as Sophie’s mother, has more often sacrificed ambition for love than love for ambition; Zoe is the opposite, and whether she will or can change is one of the central questions of her character and of the book.

After Cleave read a brief passage from Gold (Kate and Zoe’s coach Tom Voss speaking with Zoe’s agent on the phone, early in the book), there was a Q&A period. The first question was, “How do you write children well?” As a father of three children (or “experimental subjects”), he observes closely, with special attention to speech patterns; Charlie, from Little Bee, was closely modeled on Cleave’s eldest son. “Moments are ephemeral, you have to preserve them,” he said. “I’m nostalgic for the present even before it’s become the past.”

Why, I asked, did all three of his books contain infidelity? “I’m interested in people who are in transition,” he answered. People in steady states aren’t interesting; you don’t see many novels about happy marriages. When characters are in flux/in crisis/changing, “there’s only so much you can change” – your city, your job, your partner. Infidelity isn’t one of Cleave’s “timeless questions,” and his writing about it is remarkably free of judgment.

Another woman in the audience asked how Cleave wrote women characters so well. “Well there is a lot of dressing up involved,” he joked. Asking taboo questions during interviews was one successful tactic; wearing headphones (sound off) in public was another. He then explained an early rule he set for himself: “[I’m] not writing about me.” Counter to the common advice to “write what you know,” Cleave sets out to “cross a boundary every time” he picks up a pen. “I’m very curious about people,” he said, and one can tell from his books that he is a careful listener and close observer indeed.

During the book signing after the reading and Q&A, Cleave was polite and engaging. When I asked him if he had ever considered another outcome for Sophie, he said right away that he had, in the first draft, but he changed it. “Sensitive readers,” however, will pick up on certain sentences that are so full of foreboding that they have nearly the same impact as another outcome would have done. (Sorry if that’s vague; I’m trying to avoid spoilers.)

All in all, I now have even more respect for this author than before. If he comes through your city or town on his tour, I encourage you to go see him, and of course I highly, highly recommend picking up a copy of Gold.

Read the Goodreads interview with Chris Cleave.

Chris Cleave’s books on Goodreads: