The novelist Henry Miller once observed that “a book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you.” If you’re sitting in a café, someone might strike up a conversation by asking about what you’re reading; a kindred spirit on the train might wave the same title that you’re holding; an office book club could lead to lasting friendships. Reading in public, far from being “performative,” instead marks you as belonging to a particular, enthusiastic society that recruits from all walks of life, in all parts of the world.
Over the past few years, many people have been pushing to make reading social: Book-club listings on Eventbrite have grown by 24 percent, celebrities including Dua Lipa and Reese Witherspoon have invited fans to join their own circles, and book-themed social gatherings have popped up across the United States. But to properly commune over literature, you need the right book—something that excites you and makes you think. The ideal choice is fun to discuss with both friends and strangers. If you’re looking for a pick that will encourage deep contemplation with a pal, a date, or fellow guests at a dinner party, the following books will give you ample opportunities to talk.
Clutch, by Emily Nemens
The five women at the center of Nemens’s second novel—Carson, Gregg, Hillary, Bella, and Reba—have just turned 40. In the months after a celebratory weekend getaway to Palm Springs, middle age hits hard; each friend sees her life either begin to fall apart or finally coalesce. Each comes from a different background: Carson is a Brooklyn-based writer finishing her highly personal second novel, Gregg is a feminist politician in Austin, Hillary is a doctor in Chicago whose husband struggles with addiction, Bella is an ambitious Manhattan-based litigator in a teetering marriage, and Reba has recently left the corporate world and is facing infertility. But the questions they ask themselves and one another concerning the arcs of relationships, the experiences of motherhood, and the difficulties of having careers feel universal. Like Mary McCarthy’s The Group, Rona Jaffe’s The Best of Everything, and even top-tier Sex and the City episodes, this story casts a smart, sociological eye on ambitious American women’s experiences while also being a compulsive page-turner.
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë
Last month, after I saw Emerald Fennell’s new adaptation of Brontë’s Gothic tragedy, my fellow filmgoers all seemed to be asking one thing: So, how much of that appeared in the book? The answer is not much—Fennell makes explicit, via sadomasochism, the power differentials and emotional degradations that are so often ambiguous in the original. Brontë’s novel is much weirder and more subtle than virtually all of its screen adaptations, most of which ignore the book’s violent second half entirely in favor of the more straightforward, though doomed, love affair between Cathy and Heathcliff. Readers will soon discover that this is only part of the plot, as the book introduces their respective children; then, cycles of abuse repeated across generations become integral to the novel’s twisting story-within-a-story. Reading it offers the chance to confirm definitively to your group chat that, no, BDSM-style power plays do not show up in the original—but there are enough disinterments, shocking turns, and ghost sightings to make up for them.
Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival, Christopher Marlowe, by Stephen Greenblatt
Greenblatt, a literary historian best known for his 2004 biography of William Shakespeare, here turns his attention to the Elizabethan playwright—and Shakespeare competitor—Christopher Marlowe. In this moody biography, paced as though it were a spy thriller, Greenblatt effectively captures the political paranoia and religious violence that suffused England during the reign of Elizabeth I, and makes a convincing case that Marlowe—the famed author of the tragedy Doctor Faustus, who died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 29—might have conducted espionage for the Queen. If the surprisingly rough-and-tumble world of 16th-century playwrights doesn’t immediately compel you, know that this is the kind of book in which every page is filled with an unexpected twist or insight (however speculative or hard to prove these conclusions may turn out to be). His descriptions of the public animal fights that were popular entertainment in England, and the horrified responses they provoked in mainland Europe, lend a new dimension to the era’s diplomacy; his analysis of Marlowe’s origins as the son of a provincial cobbler underscores the rigidity of the era’s class system and the exceptional arc of Marlowe’s career. Once you’re finished gasping, you’ll want to discuss it with everyone you know.
Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career, by Kristi Coulter
Coulter’s candid 2023 memoir about more than a decade spent working for Amazon is blunt—the company’s punishing work hours and flippant attitude toward its employees are made clear—but it is also literary in its execution. Coulter pairs straightforward recollection with unconventional approaches. The book’s fourth chapter, “Events in the History of Female Employment,” lists facts concerning American women at work in the second half of the 20th century, alongside sexist treatment that Coulter experienced as a child and an adult during those same years. The book’s clear-eyed dissections of the atmosphere of overwork, anxiety, and panic allow Coulter to question at what point ambition tips over into masochism. The result, both cathartic and thought-provoking, might prompt conversations about what you get out of working versus what it takes from you.
You Didn’t Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip, by Kelsey McKinney
This witty exploration of the history of gossip comes from a good authority on the subject; McKinney is a co-creator and the former host of the popular podcast Normal Gossip, in which guests and listeners submit anonymous scuttlebutt about regular people that range from the juicy to the bizarre. Hearing innocent rumors about strangers can be surprisingly fun, and in the same vein, this survey of the role of gossip in human relationships is more enjoyable than mean-spirited. Ultimately, McKinney casts the activity as essential to the human condition: “Without the self-awareness gained by gossiping, we would become husks of ourselves, so uninterested in the world around us that we become separated from it entirely,” she writes. This is a big claim, but gossip is a big topic, as McKinney successfully shows in, for example, a chapter that analyzes its role in the history of Christianity and her own youthful rebellion against her strict religious upbringing. When not used maliciously, gossip is expansive in the same way faith can be: “To embrace gossip as a concept is to extend your arms as far as they can go and still not grasp it all.” Upon reading this rallying cry, you might even be inspired to indulge in some scandal-mongering of your own.
By Kelsey McKinney
Adrift on the Nile, by Naguib Mahfouz (translated by Frances Liardet)
“He does not read newspapers or magazines,” Mahfouz writes of the main character, an idle civil servant, in this 1966 novel. “Like Louis XVI, he knows nothing of what goes on in the world.” In these two brief sentences, Mahfouz—the first writer in Arabic to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature—captures his target’s social sphere. He’s skewering a very particular environment, one in which the members of the Egyptian upper-middle class whittle away their time by drugging themselves nightly on a houseboat, ignoring the quickly shifting political realities of the world outside. Adrift on the Nile is a sardonic work that unwinds with the same indolent pacing as life on that boat, but it’s also a collection of dinner-party discussions that might provoke similar conversations among its readers: Is it worth making art for art’s sake? What is the relationship between history and the future? Is it better, after all, to live one’s life as though nothing matters? And when the “alarmingly serious” journalist Samara suddenly arrives in the middle of those chats, you and your friends may ask: What are her intentions? She’ll soon act, but you can argue over her motivations as long as you like.
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