Great American Read List discussion

Hey everyone. The poll about our 2020 plans ended in a tie between "keep going as usual" and "just one book per month". So I'll go with the "keep going as usual" option. I guess there's still enough interest to keep doing both standalone reads and series reads, so we'll keep doing both! Thanks to everyone who voted.

And I've just posted polls for both the standalone and series reads for January.

The standalone poll can be found here and includes the following books:

1. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
2. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
3. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
4. The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah
5. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The series poll can be found here and includes the following series:

1. Kingsbridge by Ken Follett
2. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
3. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
4. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
5. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Both polls are set to close on Saturday, 12/28.

Please use this topic to discuss both the standalone and series read polls.

For anyone interested in the Kingsbridge series, it's worth noting that the Kindle version of the first book, The Pillars of the Earth, is on sale for $1.99 today.

Andrew wrote: "For anyone interested in the Kingsbridge series, it's worth noting that the Kindle version of the first book, The Pillars of the Earth, is on sale for $1.99 today."

Thanks, I'm kind of leaning toward this selection (and the sale might be a deciding factor), or Hitchhiker's Guide (because my son recommends it) or Little Women since the movie just came out.
We will see.

The Hitchhiker's Guide series is one of my favorites! I started reading those back in high school and really enjoyed them. The original radio series was great too.

The polls for our January 2020 group reads have ended. Thank you to everyone who voted!

The winner for our standalone read is The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale was originally published in 1985, and gained a lot of popularity recently due to the television adaptation that started airing in 2017. There was a sequel, The Testaments, published just a few months ago.

And the winner for the next series read is the Kingsbridge series by Ken Follett. So we'll start that with The Pillars of the Earth in January, then follow it with World Without End, and A Column of Fire. (There's a fourth book coming in that series, The Evening and the Morning, but it's not due to be released until September 2020.) The Kingsbridge books are pretty long, so I'm going to set those up as two-month reads.

Thank you Andrew. I'm excited about both choices. I've never seen the The Handmaid's Tale on t.v., I think it will be good to read the book first. Until now I'd never really heard of The Pillars of the Earth, it sounds like something I'll enjoy. Best part is I have them both on my Kindle.