Monthly Book Club Theme Ideas For Any Book Club

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**Update March 2022** I am no longer doing this monthly book club, though you can join my Facebook group to share memes and ask questions and whatnot.

I decided to update this post with just a ton of other monthly book club theme ideas and you can kind of build-your-own book club. I’ve kept the months in here and just added alternate theme ideas so there is more than one per month to choose from.

Of course, things can be swapped around between months to make it perfect for you, these are just some ideas.

If I haven’t linked to a whole list post under the quick suggestions, there will be one coming this year. I’ve got a mountain of drafts and these are all in on that mountain.

A lot of these are overlapping and could work for multiple themes so there’s even more mixing and matching you can do!

I also like to think there’s a good variety of genres for the different themes and in each theme, too, YA, adult, fiction, non-fiction, all that. This way there is something for everyone but plenty to choose from if you want to try reading new things, too.

• If you want to listen to some of these, consider trying Audible! You can get your first month free (one free book) plus tons of others they have for free.  Get that Audible deal here.
• If you’re on more of a budget, try Scribd!  You can get your first month free there. You can read books and listen to audiobooks. It is unlimited (especially the reading) but if you listen to tons of new audiobooks you may be restricted after a few. I don’t listen to enough to confirm this, but I do use Scribd myself and like it a lot. Sign up for Scribd here!
• Shop my collection of bookish goodies on Etsy! These aren’t my shop items, but other shops I’ve curated into a book-themed collection. Shop my Etsy bookish goodies here!
• If you want to read more on your Kindle but don’t want to buy books, Kindle Unlimited is a wonderful option. It’s $9.99 a month but if you read a lot and like to read more than just new releases, it could be worth it. Get Kindle Unlimited here!
• Get $5 off of $25 from BookOutlet! This is a great place to find new books for pretty cheap. They also have sales quite a bit, so keep an eye out for those. I tend to check here for books I want if they’re more expensive other places. They don’t have everything but they do have a lot. Shop BookOutlet here!
• Thrift Books has become my go-to when I’m looking for a book and want it cheap. It’s great if you like buying used books. With this you can get a free book after spending $30!
• Shop my book lists here! You can find every book list I have on Bookshop.org (except my monthly round-ups) and I add everything I can but they occasionally won’t have some. I do occasionally add extras though. If any lists are empty, they’ll be filled in shortly! Shop my bookshop.org book lists here.
• Shopping internationally? Check out Book Depository!

Here I’ve given each month’s theme with a few different options on what to read for that theme! It gives you options if you’ve read one or more of them and maybe you can read more than one if you want.

January

OWN Voices novel

• With the Fire on High
• I Wish You All the Best
• Cemetery Boys
• Homegoing
• Girls of Paper and Fire
• These Violent Delights

I made a whole list that you can find here.

Snowy thriller

• Rock Paper Scissors
• The Hunting Party
• Five Total Strangers
• The Dark
• The Sanatorium

You can find my whole list of winter thrillers here.

Book set in Japan

• Pachinko
• Villain
• Hard-Boiled Wonderland at the End of the World
• The Daydreamer Detective
• The Traveling Cat Chronicles

February

Solo female travel memoir

• A Thousand New Beginnings
• Miss-adventures: A Tale of Ignoring Life Advice While Backpacking Around South America
• Alone Time: Four Seasons, Four Cities, and the Pleasures of Solitude
• Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents
• How Not to Travel the World

You can find a few more ideas from what I read in August 2020. I wrote a home post about solo female travel memoirs, too.

Book about moving abroad

• Under the Tuscan Sun
• Toujours Provance
• Paris, I Love You, but You’re Bringing Me Down
• Apologies to my Censor
• Slipping Into Paradise

Book about a TV show

• I’ll Be There For You
• The Office
• Breaking Bad: The Official Book
• Golden Girls Forever: An Unauthorized Look Behind the Lanai
• Seinfeldia: How A Show About Nothing Changed Everything

March

Graphic novel

• I Was Their American Dream
• An Embarrassment of Witches
• Banned Book Club
• Quince
• Almost American Girl
• The Customer is Always Wrong

You can find more graphic novel suggestions here. And allllllll the ones I read in March here.

Peace Corps memoir

• Between Inca Walls: A Peace Corps Memoir
• The Couscous Chronicles: a Peace Corps Memoir
• The Ponds of Kalambayi: a Peace Corps Memoir
• River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze
• Taxi to Tashkent: Two Years with the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan

Here you can find a ton more Peace Corps memoirs to choose from.

Book turned movie

• I’m Thinking of Ending Things
• No Exit
• Capsized
• The Weekend Away
• Red Sky in Mourning (the movie is Adrift)

April

YA dystopian

• Internment
• Bumped
• Blue Ticket
• Aberrant
• Sanctuary
• Hush

You can find a million more dystopian books here.

Locked-room Mystery

• An Unwanted Guest
• Cruel is the Night
• The Dying Game
• Death in the Family
• The Marvelous

Find more locked-room mysteries here.

Book about magic/with magical powers

• Magic for Liars
• The Boneless Mercies
• The Atlas Six
• Fire Becomes Her
• The Embroidered Book

May

Set in a state you haven’t visited

This will obviously be different for everyone but I have a list that will help you find one easily! Here is my 50 states reading challenge where you can find 3-8 books set in each state.

Book written in an unusual format

• House of Leaves
• Hopscotch
• Shikasta
• Ella Minnow Pea
• The Unfortunates

Book that starts with the letter M

• Marcus Vega Doesn’t Speak Spanish
• Malice: A Mystery
• My Best Friend’s Exorcism
• Miracle Creek
• Mother of God

June

Historical fiction set in the Middle East

• To Keep the Sun Alive
• Rooftops of Tehran
• The Septembers of Shiraz
• The Stationery Shop
• Homesick
• A Pigeon and a Boy

Book about sailing around the world

• Red Sky in Mourning
• Love With a Chance of Drowning
• Maiden Voyage
• Plunge: One Woman’s Journey of a Life Less Ordinary
• All the Colours of Polynesia

Here are even more books about sailing around the world.

Book set in Brazil

• The Deep Blue Between
• The Invisible Life of Eurdice Gusmao
• Ways to Disappear
• I Didn’t Talk
• Dancing With the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro and the Olympic Dream

Don’t like these? I’ve got more books about Brazil for you!

July

Set in the South Pacific

• Tiare in Bloom
• Breadfruit
• Frangipani
• The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific
• All Good Things: From Paris to Tahiti: Life and Longing

See more South Pacific books here.

True survival story

• Ruthless River: Love and Survival by Raft on the Amazon’s Madre de Dios
• Fatal Forecast: An Incredible True Tale of Disaster and Survival at Sea
• When I Fell from the Sky: The True Story of One Woman’s Miraculous Survival
• Jungle: A Harrowing True Story of Survival in the Amazon
• Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home

Read even more true survival stories here.

Book with a stormy setting

• The Perfect Storm
• Ten
• The Nesting
• Wilder Girls
• The Lying Game

Find more books for a stormy day here.

August

Fairytale retelling by an author of color

These aren’t all specifically fairytale retellings, but retellings of myths, folklore, fairytales and other things like that.

• Cinderella is Dead
• The Magic Fish
• This is All Your Fault
• Bestiary
• Legendborn

YA fiction about traveling in Europe

• 9 Days and 9 Nights
• Love and Luck
• Love and Olives
• Anna and the French Kiss
• Wanderlost

Find more books like Love and Gelato here.

YA summer book

• The Unexpected Everything
• Love and Gelato
• Second Chance Summer
• Changes in Latitudes
• Since You’ve Been Gone

September

Book about food

• Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
• Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of an All American Meal
• The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School
• Pandora’s Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal
• The Hundred-Foot Journey

You can see more suggestions on books about food here (specifically foodie travel).

YA thriller

• A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder
• Good As Gone
• That Weekend
• I Killed Zoe Spanos
• The Window

Space book (fiction or non-fiction)

• Illuminae
• Kartega
• Apollo 8
• Aurora Rising
• The Case for Mars

October

Set in a haunted house

• Twelve Nights at Rotter House
• The Family Plot
• The Graveyard Apartment
• The Grip of It
• The Women in the Walls

Find more haunted house books here.

Book about Witches

• The Year of the Witching
• These Witches Don’t Burn
• The Babysitter’s Coven
• Price Guide to the Occult
• Grim Lovelies

Find more perfectly witchy books here.

Horror that isn’t Steven King

• The Troop
• 12 Nights at Rotter House
• Penpal
• The Ruins
• Into the Drowning Deep

Find more actually scary books here.

November

Nordic Noir

• I’m Traveling Alone
• Marked for Life
• The Lost Woman
• The Missing
• The Chestnut Man

You can find suggestions for this month AND next month in my Finland, Iceland, and Greenland book posts. They aren’t all Nordic Noir, but I usually mention if they are.

Non-Violent true crime

• The Library Book
• Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art
• The Dinosaur Artist
• American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road
• Duped: Double Lives, False Identities, and the Con Man I Almost Married

Find more non-violent true crime books here. Books about the felonious arts are for sure one of my favorite genres.

Book set in Norway

• Doppler
• I Will Miss You Tomorrow
• The Orange Girl
• The Boy at the Door
• The Bird Tribunal

Find more Norwegian books here.

December

Set in a snowy location

• The Silent Land
• Life as We Knew It
• Midwives
• Polar Dream: The First Solo Expedition by a Woman and Her Dog to the Magnetic North Pole
• Odd and the Frost Giants
• The Impossible First: From Fire to Ice – Crossing Antarctica Alone
• Surviving Antarctica: Reality TV 2083

Here are some snowy books (lots of cozy and romance on this list if that’s your thing).

Book set in Antarctica

• Terra Incognita
• Forgotten Footprints: Lost Stories in the Discovery of Antarctica
• Among Penguins, a Bird Man in Antarctica
• How the Penguins Saved Veronica
• The Dark

Mountaineering book

• Into Thin Air
• Peak
• Eiger Dreams
• No Summit Out of Sight
• In the Shadow of Denali

There you have it! 36 whole monthly book club themes to choose from to build the perfect book club ever!