How to pick a book club book
The single best filter is moral disagreement. A book where the protagonist's choices are clear-cut produces a thirty-minute discussion. A book where the protagonist's choices are debatable produces two hours.
Michael Cunningham's The Hours triggers a structural argument (does the triple-helix work, do the three women earn each other's narrative weight). Rita Mae Brown's Venus Envy triggers a moral argument (is Frazier's letter-writing project actually defensible, or is it cruelty dressed as honesty). Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian triggers a representational argument (who gets to tell whose story, especially in light of the 2018 Alexie allegations).
For groups that read genre
Megan Abbott's Bury Me Deep is the best contemporary noir for book clubs. Marion's complicity in the violence is the question. There is no clean answer. Warren Adler's The Casanova Embrace is the better-known choice and produces good discussion of mid-1970s American gender politics in ways most book clubs find genuinely surprising.
For groups that read nonfiction together
Bill Clinton's My Life is unwieldy but produces real discussion when the group is willing. Atomic Habits is the productivity book most book clubs accidentally pick and end up discussing more seriously than they expected. Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room! reads as fiction but produces nonfiction-style discussion of climate, overpopulation, and the gap between the 1966 prediction and the present.
For groups looking for an easy first pick
Microserfs (Douglas Coupland) is the easy entry. Funny, smart, finishable in a week, and produces good discussion about labor, identity, and the 1990s without anyone needing to do background reading.