Do you belong to a book club, or are you thinking about it? If you do, or are, there are plenty of ideas and resources on the world wide web to help you pick excellent books to discuss. 

Here are some things to think about when choosing books:

• – a book that’s really good doesn’t necessarily make a good book club book: pick a story with a subject that would be interesting to talk about (21st century pirates, global warming, World War II, feminist issues in the 19th century);
• – popular books might have a long waiting list at the library, so best not to pick those unless people own their own copies;
• – pick titles that the library has several copies of (including e-books and audio books), unless you’ve all got them, of course;

For book ideas:

• – The amazon.com Book Club Picks for Teens: including, for example, The Maze Runner, The Book Thief, The Iron Queen, Andromeda Klein.
• – The teen blog book list pages
• – The goodreads.com popular book club books list: this has some young adult titles, and others that you might find interesting, like Life of Pi, The Kite Runner.

For discussion ideas:

You should be able to find discussion questions for a lot of books on the world wide web. Some publishers have study questions on their websites (for example, The 10pm Question by Kate de Goldi, or The Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner), some books come with discussion questions at the back (like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies). A list of questions is a good idea, in case your discussion hits a flat patch, or someone gets sidetracked.

The New Zealand book council has got a page devoted to reading groups, including a guide on how to get one started. There’s also a list of discussion guides (including the always-present Book Thief).