Ah the old book conversation! Let me see what books I can recommend!
***time passes***
Conversation 1
You might try Cheryl Strayed's Wild. Like Eat, Pray, Love there is a strong element of unhappiness and sadness that kicks the book off along with a journey of self-discovery. Wild is a memoir as well and was quite popular for while. I think your whole book club would enjoy it and I think it lends itself well to being outdoors when you discuss it. Maybe have the book club meeting in a park or on a porch this time, mix it up. But I'm sure you will enjoy this book.
Conversation 2
I might recommend a cross-section of vampire stories. A good place to start would be with the original: Bram Stoker's Dracula. It's hard to go wrong with such a classic, though it can be a little dense at times. Another good one would be Anne Rice's An Interview with a Vampire. You might have heard of that one. They made a movie out of it a few years back featuring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. You could even watch the movie after you've read the book and compare the two. There are also several good graphic novels that would be worth looking into. The first one that comes to mind is Blade which is about a half-vampire who kills other vampires. That one was also made into a movie series with Wesley Snipes. I think those three would be a great way to get back to the roots of vampires with some really well developed characters and settings.
Conversation 3
A few books come to mind. Fast paced historic works can be hard to come by, but one good one is Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. It is a semi-biographical work on Sir Thomas Cromwell set during Henry VII's reign and discusses the rise and fall of Cromwell in association with Anne Boleyn. Now, for a completely non-fiction choice, I might recommend The Map Thief. The subject of the book is a man who got in over his head and started taking rare and old maps from libraries and selling them on the black market. And some of the maps are a little ridiculous! There are even some that show California as an island!
How did I do?
It's hard to tell. I'm not good at being objective of myself for some fairly obvious reasons. In any case, I definitely think I could have done better if I had more material to work with. Some of these book I am recommending, I have not read because they're no necessarily the kinds of books I usually read. But they're ones that I've heard of and know at least a little about. The third one was the hardest.
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