What other book clubs have been reading

I was doing a little web browsing this afternoon, while thinking about the recent changes I made to the What's Next page, and thinking about an email Susanna sent yesterday about Garcia Marquez.

First, she pointed out that "Love in the Time of Cholera" is on the Oprah's Book Club list, as is "Hundred Years of Solitude", both of which quite surprised me.  When I think of Oprah's list, I think of the Franzen "kerfuffle", and James Frey, I suppose because those are the books and authors that got sensationalized air time on whatever media I was into back then.  I was also leery of what I feared would be books that made the best sellers' lists not on their own merits, but on the strength of an Oprah endorsement, which is backward thinking really as Oprah would presumably not select a book that didn't have sufficient merit to belong on a best seller list anyway, right?

I figured Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou would be there, for their influential works in womens' and race issues, and yes they are both there.  I did not expect Leo Tolstoy or Charles Dickens, as I thought of the Oprah list as containing only contemporary works, not canonical classics.  I also found it interesting that Steinbeck and Faulkner are both represented on her list.

Well, you learn something every day if you aren't careful.

The second thing Susanna commented on is Garcia Marquez is suffering from Alzheimer's, and has since mid-2012.  He will turn 87 next month.  Looking at his bibliography, the publishing dates stop around 2004, with new translations appearing in 2005.

The Oprah's club thing got me thinking about what other book clubs have been reading.  The site from which I get the review questions, LitLovers, has a list of top 50 "most popular books on LitLovers" though I note the date last updated says January 20th, 2013.  I wonder if that's a typo.

I also found this list, with books arranged by genre or other category, which might have some interesting choices to offer.

I invite everyone to check out these lists, and see if anything sparks an interest.