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Home » 2010 Great Group Reads
Logo that says Great Group Reads in large font on right with National Reading Group Month and a stack of orange books on left and Women's National Book Association written at bottom

2010 Great Group Reads

The 2010 Great Group Reads graphic shows all of the books covers for the list.

Our second annual Great Group Reads list features 13 literary fiction and memoir titles.

We hope you’ll read as many books as you can and enjoy them as we do. If you talk about them on social media, use #GreatGroupReads.

And if you are looking for a book club to join, the Bookwoman Book Club exclusively reads books from the GGR lists.

We hope you’ll join us in celebrating these fantastic reads!


The book cover for Blame is black with a broke wine glass with shards flying everywhere.

Blame

by Michelle Huneven

HC 978-0374114305

Picador

Publication Date: September 1, 2009

Fiction

Categories: literary

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

Patsy MacLemoore, a twenty-eight-year-old history professor with a brand-new Ph.D. and a wild streak, wakes up in jail — yet again — after another epic alcoholic blackout. This time, though, a mother and daughter are dead, run over in Patsy’s driveway. Patsy will the next decades of her life atoning for this unpardonable act. She goes to prison, sobers up, marries a much older man she meets in AA, and makes ongoing amends to her victims’ family.

Then, another piece of news turns up, casting her crime, and her life, in a different and unexpected light. Brilliant, morally complex, and often funny, Blame is a breathtaking story of contrition and what it takes to rebuild a life from the bottom up.

Reading Group Discussion Guide; Reading Group Choices Guide

The book cover for the Blessings of the Animals shows a woman hugging a horse.

The Blessings of the Animals

by Katrina Kittle

TP 978-0061906077

Harper Perrenial

Publication Date: August 3, 2010

Fiction

Categories: general, family

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

From Katrina Kittle, the critically acclaimed author of The Kindness of Strangers, comes The Blessings of the Animals — a wry, engrossing, and moving story of a veterinarian’s journey through the aftermath of divorce amidst a motley crew of beasts.

Reading Group Discussion Guide; Reading Group Choices Guide; Reading Group Guides

The book cover for Cheap Cabernet shows to women standing back to back in a field. Several circular wine stains are adorn the image.

Cheap Cabernet

by Cathie Beck

TP 978-1401341541

Hyperion

Publication Date: July 1, 2010

Nonfiction

Categories: memoir, women

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

I didn’t know that people come into our lives, and sometimes, if we’re terribly lucky, we get the chance to love them, that sometimes they stay, that sometimes you can, truly, depend on them.

Cathie Beck was in her late thirties and finally able to exhale after a lifetime of just trying to get by. A teenage mother harboring vivid memories of her own hardscrabble childhood, Cathie had spent years doing whatever it took to give her children the stability — or at least the illusion of it — that she’d never had. More than that, through sheer will and determination, she had educated them and herself too.

With her kids in college, Cathie was at last ready to have some fun. The only problem was that she had no idea how to do it and no friends to do it with. So she put an ad in the paper for a made-up women’s group: WOW . . . Women on the Way. Eight women showed up that first night, and out of that group a friendship formed, one of those meteoric, passionate, stand-by-you friendships that come around once in a lifetime and change you forever . . . if you’re lucky.

Reading Group Choices Guide

The book cover for Eternal on the Water shows water with an oar and parts of two yellow boats.

Eternal on the Water

by Joseph Monninger

TP 978-1439168332

Gallery

Publication Date: February 16, 2010

Fiction

Categories: literary, romance, illness

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

Cobb, a devoted teacher and nature-lover, takes a sabbatical from his New England boys prep school seeking to experience what Henry David Thoreau and the transcendentalists did in the early nineteenth century. 

Kayaking to the last known spot where the American writer and philosopher camped four years before he died, he encounters the beautiful free-spirited Mary. Also a teacher, avid bird-watcher, and deft adventurist, Mary is flirtatious and beguiling, and the two soon become inseparable. Mary is like no one Cobb has ever met before, but he gets the feeling that she is harboring a secret. Eventually she shares her fears with Cobb — that she may be carrying the gene for a devastating, incurable illness that runs in her family. Finding strength in their commitment to one another, the two embark on a journey that is filled with joy, anguish, hope, and most importantly, unending love.

Set against the sweeping natural backdrops of Maine’s rugged backcountry, the exotic islands of Indonesia, scenic Yellowstone National Park, and rural New England, Tender River is a timeless and poignant love story that will captivate readers everywhere.

Reading Group Choices Guide; Reading Group Guide

The book cover for The Girl Who Fell from the Sky shows a greenish blue cover with an outline of a girl falling. In the outline, is a blue sky with clouds.

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

by Heidi W. Durrow

TP 978-1616200152

Algonquin Books

Publication Date: January 11, 2011

Fiction

Categories: literary, coming-of-age, Black and African American

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

Winner of the Bellwether Prize

Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy after a fateful morning on their Chicago rooftop.

Forced to move to a new city, with her strict African American grandmother as her guardian, Rachel is thrust for the first time into a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring a constant stream of attention her way. It’s there, as she grows up and tries to swallow her grief, that she comes to understand how the mystery and tragedy of her mother might be connected to her own uncertain identity.

This searing and heart-wrenching portrait of a young biracial girl dealing with society’s ideas of race and class is the winner of the Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice.

Reading Group Discussion Guide; Reading Group Choices Guide

The book cover for Little Bee shows a black silhouette with curly hair. The background is yellow.

Little Bee

by Chris Cleave

HC 978-1416589631

Simon & Schuster

Publication Date: February 10, 2009

Fiction

Categories: literary, immigration, racism, coming-of-age, women

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

February 2009 Indie Next List

Millions of people have read, discussed, debated, cried, and cheered with Little Bee, a Nigerian refugee girl whose violent and courageous journey​ puts a stunning face on the worldwide refugee crisis​.

The lives of a sixteen-year-old Nigerian orphan and a well-off British woman collide in this page-turning #1 New York Times bestseller, book club favorite, and “affecting story of human triumph” (The New York Times Book Review) from Chris Cleave, author of Gold and Everyone Brave Is Forgiven.

We don’t want to tell you too much about this book. It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this: It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn’t. And it’s what happens afterward that is most important. Once you have read it, you’ll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don’t tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

Reading Group Choices Guide; Reading Group Guides

The book cover for the Lotus Eaters shows a woman's back. Her hair is up with a flower in it. She is wearing red.

The Lotus Eaters 

by Tajana Soli

HC 978-0312611576

St. Martin’s Press

Publication Date: March 30, 2010

Fiction

Categories: literary, historical, war, artists, women

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

Winner of UK’s James Tait Black Prize; Finalist LA Times Book Award; April 2010 Indie Next List

In the final days of a falling Saigon, The Lotus Eaters unfolds the story of three remarkable photographers brought together under the impossible umbrella of war: Helen Adams, a once-naïve ingénue whose ambition conflicts with her desire over the course of the fighting; Linh, the mysterious Vietnamese man who loves her, but is torn between conflicting loyalties to his homeland and his heart; and Sam Darrow, a man addicted to the narcotic of violence, to his intoxicating affair with Helen and to the ever-increasing danger of his job. All three become transformed by the conflict they have risked everything to record.

In this much-heralded debut, Tatjana Soli creates a searing portrait of three souls trapped by their impossible passions, contrasting the wrenching horror of combat and the treachery of obsession with the redemptive power of love.

Reading Group Discussion Guide; Reading Group Choices Guide

The book cover for Molly Fox's Birthday shows a bed with a variety of masks hanging on the wall above it.

Molly Fox’s Birthday 

by Deirdre Madden

TP 978-0312429546

Picador

Publication Date: April 27, 2010

Fiction

Categories: literary, artists, psychological thrillers

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

A Finalist for the Orange Prize

It is the height of summer, and celebrated actor Molly Fox has loaned her house in Dublin to a friend while she is away performing in New York. Alone among all of Molly’s possessions, struggling to finish her latest play, she looks back on the many years and many phases of her friendship with Molly and their college friend Andrew, and comes to wonder whether they really knew each other at all. She revisits the intense closeness of their early days, the transformations they each made in the name of success and security, the lies they told each other, and betrayals they never acknowledged.

Set over a single midsummer’s day, Molly Fox’s Birthday is a mischievous, insightful novel about a turning point — a moment when past and future suddenly appear in a new light.

Reading Group Discussion Guide; Reading Group Choices Guide

The book cover for The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake shows a slice of layer cake with chocolate icing and yellow sponge.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake 

by Aimee Bender

HC 978-0385501125

Doubleday

Publication Date: June 1, 2010

Fiction

Categories: literary, coming-of-age, women, fantasy

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

June 2010 Indie Next List

On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the slice. To her horror, she finds that her cheerful mother tastes of despair.

Soon, she’s  privy to the secret knowledge that most families keep hidden: her father’s detachment, her mother’s transgression, her brother’s increasing retreat from the world. But there are some family secrets that even her cursed taste buds can’t discern.

Reading Group Discussion Guide; Reading Group Choices Guide

The book cover for the Queen of Palmyra shows a girl on a tree swing.

The Queen of Palmyra

by Minrose Gwin

TP 978-0061840326

Harper Perennial

Publication Date: April 27, 2010

Fiction

Categories: historical, science fiction, racism

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

May 2010 Indie Next List

An atmospheric debut novel about growing up in the changing South in 1960s Mississippi in the tradition of Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees and Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. In the words of Jill McCorkle (Going Away Shoes), “Minrose Gwin is an extremely gifted writer and The Queen of Palmyra is a brilliant and compelling novel.”

Reading Group Discussion Guide; Reading Group Choices Guide; Reading Group Guides

The book cover for Room is white with the title written in capitals in a child's handwriting with each letter a different color.

Room

by Emma Donoghue

HC 978-0316098335

Little, Brown and Company

Publication Date: September 13, 2010

Fiction

Categories: literary, thrillers, family

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

September 2010 Indie Next List

Held captive for years in a small shed, a woman and her precocious young son finally gain their freedom, and the boy experiences the outside world for the first time.

To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world . . . It’s where he was born, it’s where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it’s the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack’s curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.

Room is a tale at once shocking, riveting, exhilarating — a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child.

Reading Group Choices Guide

The book cover for Safe from the Sea shows a coastal pictures with surf crashing on rocks.

Safe from the Sea

by Peter Geye

HC 978-1609530082

Unbridled Books

Publication Date: November 5, 2010

Fiction

Categories: literary, family

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

October 2010 Indie Next List

Set against the powerful lakeshore landscape of northern Minnesota, Safe from the Sea is a heartfelt novel in which a son returns home to reconnect with his estranged and dying father thirty-five years after the tragic wreck of a Great Lakes ore boat that the father only partially survived and that has divided them emotionally ever since. When his father for the first time finally tells the story of the horrific disaster he has carried with him so long, it leads the two men to reconsider each other. 

Meanwhile, Noah’s own struggle to make a life with an absent father has found its real reward in his relationship with his sagacious wife, Natalie, whose complications with infertility issues have marked her husband’s life in ways he only fully realizes as the reconciliation with his father takes shape. 

Peter Geye has delivered an archetypal story of a father and son, of the tug and pull of family bonds, of Norwegian immigrant culture, of dramatic shipwrecks and the business and adventure of Great Lakes shipping in a setting that simply casts a spell over the characters as well as the reader.

Reading Group Discussion Guide; Reading Group Choices Guide

The book cover for Up from the Blue is black and white and shows a girl's face. She is looking down.

Up from the Blue

by Susan Henderson

TP 978-0061984037

Harper Paperbacks

Publication Date: September 21, 2010

Fiction

Categories: historical, mental health, family

Bookshop
Indiebound
Amazon

The gripping debut novel from Litpark.com founder and Pushcart Prize-nominee Susan Henderson, Up From the Blue is a dazzling tour de force that unfolds against the backdrop of 1970s America — a tumultuous era of desegregation, school busing, and the early rise of modern-day feminism.

The story of an imaginative young girl struggling to make sense of her mother’s mysterious disappearance, Up From the Blue is enthralling fiction that delves into complex family relationships, in the vein of Jennifer McMahon, Katrina Kittle, and Laura Kasischke.

Reading Group Discussion Guide; Reading Group Choices Guide

About Great Group Reads

Started as an initiative in 2009 for the Women’s National Book Association’s National Reading Group Month program, Great Group Reads is a list of recommended books perfect for shared reading. The list is released annually in time to celebrate National Reading Group Month in October.

GGR Resources

  • 2010 Great Group Reads Flyer
  • 2010 GGR Press Release
  • Shop all of the Great Group Reads

See the inaugural Great Group Reads list!

Showcase Your Book

Women in the Literary Landscape

Women in the Literary Landscape

Karmafornia, by NC Weil

Karmafornia, by NC Weil

Just Show Up, by Dottie Joslyn

Just Show Up, by Dottie Joslyn

Dads for Daughters, by Michelle Travis

Dads for Daughters, by Michelle Travis

Betrayal on the Bayou, by Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte

Betrayal on the Bayou, by Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte

Two Murders Too Many, by Bluette Matthey

Two Murders Too Many, by Bluette Matthey

Genomics: A Revolution in Health and Disease Discovery, by Whitney Stewart and Hans C. Andersson, M.D.

Genomics: A Revolution in Health and Disease Discovery, by Whitney Stewart and Hans C. Andersson, M.D.

Despite the Buzz, by Tamara Miller Davis

Despite the Buzz, by Tamara Miller Davis

Journeys with Fortune, by Elizabeth Bodien

Journeys with Fortune, by Elizabeth Bodien

The Italian Prisoner, by Elisa M. Speranza

The Italian Prisoner, by Elisa M. Speranza

Song of Redemption, by Malika J. Stevely

Song of Redemption, by Malika J. Stevely

The Silence in the Sound, by Dianne C. Braley

The Silence in the Sound, by Dianne C. Braley

To Kingdom Come, by Claudia Riess

To Kingdom Come, by Claudia Riess

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