Schedule ideas for 2014

As we will be deciding our books for the first half of 2014 at our November meeting, here are some suggestions to consider (including recommendations added after this was initially published):

New books from some of our BIG authors:

• Richard Flanagan's The narrow road to the deep north
• Roger McDonald's The following
• Alex Miller's Coal creek
• Christos Tsiolkas' Barracuda
• Alexis Wright's The swan book
• Tim Winton's Eyrie

Booker Prize Winner for 2013:

• Eleanor Catton's The luminaries

Debut novels:

• Hannah Kent's Burial rites

Other novels:

• Aminatta Forna's The Hired Man (set in modern Croatia with an English family renovating a house in a village previously affected by the recent war) or The Memory of Love (set in Sierra Leone, the birthplace of the author's father)
• Mohsin Hamad's The reluctant fundamentalist
• Lloyd Jones' A history of silence
• Anthony Marra's A constellation of vital phenomena
• Ann Patchett's Bel Canto (won the 2002 Orange Prize)
• JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy (dark modern Britain, deeply insightful) 
• Amy Waldman's The submission

Classics: Do we want to do a classic?

• Wallace Stegner's Crossing to safety 

Translated book (or book in English from a non-English background writer): I think it would be good to try to do at least one non-anglo book each year - but that may just be me

• Jonas Jonasson's The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared

Non-fiction: 

• Janet Butler's Kitty's war
• Nicholas Carr's The shallows 
• Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad

And of course there are some books under Suggestions in the sidebar.