 |
|
ReadingGroupGuides.com Newsletter |
January 2006
|
|
|
|
|
|
Happy 2006 -- A New Year of Reading!
|
 |
Happy New Year! I hope you had a terrific holiday. I spent a chunk of Christmas week on the Outer Banks knitting and reading --- often simultaneously. I like this way to multi-task! One quick note: I noticed that when I am reading "the exciting parts" I pick up stitches. I have learned to put down the knitting when I am at those points. At one point I had added TEN extra stitches to a twenty stitch wide scarf!
One book that I read that I want to be sure is on book club radar screens is just in stores today. It's called The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar. For those of you who enjoyed Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and The Kite Runner, mark this one down. We will add the guide next month.
My January resolution --- I like to think month by month instead of getting too far ahead of myself --- is to read Outside My Comfort Zone. Curious as to what that is? Then read my blog here.
We know that many of you only are comfortable discussing books when there are discussion guides available. We also know that often you write to request guides and they are not available. A few years ago we created a generic guide for a fiction discussion. This month Shannon McKenna also created guides in nine other genres: Biography, Christian Fiction, Classics, Current Events & Politics, Historical Fiction, History, Mystery & Thriller, Memoir, Fiction and Religion & Spirituality. We hope that these guides will encourage you to explore titles when guides are not available. Please reach out to share these with your local booksellers and librarians, who I am sure see many of the same requests that we do.
We have one very exciting offer for our Registered Book Clubs this month --- an opportunity to chat with Jean Hanff Korelitz, the author of The White Rose, which is a sweeping tale of love and deception, wealth and beauty, obligation and desire. Groups registered by Sunday, January 15th are eligible to enter in this drawing where 10 groups will win books and author chats!
Also, please remember that each month we profile different book clubs. Interested in completing our interview questions on behalf of your club? Then please click on the "Want Your Group to be Interviewed" button below this note.
Enjoy our latest update. And here's to a great month --- and year --- of reading.
Carol Fitzgerald ([email protected])
|
Click here to register your reading group.
|
|
|
|
|
Special Feature and Contest: THE CONJURER'S BIRD by Martin Davies
|
The Conjurer's Bird is a beautiful story inspired by one of the great puzzles of natural history: that of the Mysterious Bird of Ulieta. Seen only once, in 1774, by Captain Cook's second expedition to the South Seas, a single specimen was captured, preserved, and brought back to England. The bird was given to famed naturalist Joseph Banks, who displayed it proudly in his collection until its sudden, unexplained disappearance.
Two hundred years later, naturalists continue to wonder if the world will ever get another glimpse of the elusive bird. Were it not for a colored drawing done by the ship's artist, there would be nothing to say that the bird had ever existed.
|
Click here to read our guide for The Conjurer's Bird.
|
|
|
PREP by Curtis Sittenfeld
|
|
Curtis Sittenfeld's debut novel is a delightful coming-of-age story that focuses on Lee Fiora, an intelligent and observant young lady who leaves her family in South Bend, Indiana to attend the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Lee's experiences coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.
|
|
Click here to read our guide for Prep.
|
|
|
LOVE WALKED IN by Marisa de los Santos
|
|
An acclaimed poet, Marisa de los Santos writes with a careful grace that illuminates the losses and joys of life. Witty and fresh, glowing with big-screen magic moments, Love Walked In marks the arrival of a gifted storyteller and proves that while love is always unpredictable --- a dizzying, astonishing turn --- it could be as close as your very own front door.
|
|
Click here to read our guide for Love Walked In.
|
|
|
IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW by Cecelia Ahern
|
|
In her third novel, bestselling author Cecelia Ahern introduces us to two sisters at odds with each other. Elizabeth's life is an organized mess. The organized part is all due to her own efforts. The mess is entirely due to her sister, Saoirse, whose personal problems leave Elizabeth scrambling to pick up the pieces. One of these pieces is Saoirse's six-year-old son, Luke. Luke is quiet and contemplative, until the arrival of a new friend, Ivan, turns him into an outgoing, lively kid. And Elizabeth's life is about to change in wonderful ways she has only dreamed of.
With all the warmth and wit that fans have come to expect from Cecelia Ahern, this is a novel full of magic, heart, and surprising romance.
|
Click here to read our guide for If You Could See Me Now.
|
|
|
THE MASQUE OF THE BLACK TULIP by Lauren Willig
|
|
Stewart Dubinsky knew his father had served in World War II. And he'd been told how David Dubin (as his father had Americanized the name that Stewart later reclaimed) had rescued Stewart's mother from the horror of the Balingen concentration camp. But when he discovers, after his father's death, a packet of wartime letters to a former fiancée, and learns of his father's court-martial and imprisonment, he is plunged into the mystery of his family's secret history and driven to uncover the truth about this enigmatic, distant man who'd always refused to talk about his war.
|
Click here to read our guide for The Masque of the Black Tulip.
|
|
|
LIGHTING UP by Susan Shapiro
|
|
In her hilarious, illuminating new memoir, Lighting Up, Susan Shapiro rejects five self-destructive substances. This difficult quest for clean living starts with Shapiro's shocking revelation that, at forty, her lengthiest, most emotionally satisfying relationship has been with cigarettes. Never has the battle to stem substance abuse been captured with such wit, sophisticated insight, and candor. Lighting Up is so compulsively readable, it's addictive.
|
|
Click here to read our guide for Lighting Up.
|
|
|
MARY AFTER ALL by Bill Gordon
|
|
By turns hilarious and deeply moving, Mary After All is the perfect novel for anyone who has ever felt they needed a second chance at life --- and set out to get it. Mary Nolan (née Marelli) is a tough-talking Jersey City native who grew up surrounded by her doting Italian relatives. Though her parents' marriage was turbulent, Mary never forgot the love she received from formidable figures like her grandpa Louie, Tony the Horse, and Charlie Cupacoffee. Yet the man who would become her husband, Bobby Nolan, shattered everything she had believed about relying on men to protect her. In the end, it's the women in her life who rescue her --- a madcap group including her Aunt Dot and Aunt Loretta (who get Mary started as a bookie) and the ex-nuns who listen to her troubles even as they ask her for relationship advice.
|
Click here to read our guide for Mary After All.
|
|
|
THE TEMPLE OF MUSIC by Jonathan Lowy
|
|
A vivid, gripping historical novel, The Temple of Music recreates the larger-than-life characters and tempestuous events that rocked America at the turn of the century. It tells the tales of murder and romance, of robber barons, immigrants, yellow journalists, and anarchists, all centering around one of the most fascinating and mysterious events in American history: the assassination of President William McKinley. Sweeping in scope, The Temple of Music is a rare literary achievement that intertwines history and fiction into an indelible tapestry of America in the Gilded Age.
|
Click here to read our guide for The Temple of Music.
|
|
|
|
|
For Registered Book Groups --- THE WHITE ROSE Special Author Chat Opportunity and Book Giveaway
|
This month ReadingGroupGuides.com is offering 10 registered book groups the opportunity to chat with Jean Hanff Korelitz and each win 12 copies of her book The White Rose, which comes out January 19th, for their group. Groups must be registered by January 15th to be eligible.
More about The White Rose:
A sweeping tale of love and deception, wealth and beauty, obligation and desire, The White Rose is as seductive a story as the flower for which it's named. Marian Kahn, a forty-eight-year-old professor of history at Columbia University, is in the midst of an affair with a man twenty-two years her junior. Although Oliver's wish for commitment is genuine, Marian knows the day will come when they must part ways. With The White Rose, which was inspired by Richard Strauss's opera Der Rosenkavalier, Jean Hanff Korelitz has crafted both a thought-provoking treatise on social mores and a compelling page-turner.
-Click here to read our guide for The White Rose.
|
|
Click here to register your group.
|
|
|
|
|
This Month's Poll: Author Favorites
|
|
Once your group has read an author and enjoyed his or her work, are you more apt to select another title by this author for discussion?
Yes, we have done that.
No, we do not like to repeat authors.
No, we do not use that as criteria for selection, but it's a good idea.
No, we do not do that.
|
|
Answer our poll here.
|
|
|
|
|
Tip of the Month for February
|
|
Since winter can be cold and blustery in so much of the country, think about reading a title set in a warm place or with a summer theme to think about warmer carefree summer days.
|
|
|
This Month's Contest: LOVE WALKED IN by Marisa de los Santos |
|
A subscription to our newsletter is all you need to be entered in our monthly contest. This month, one lucky reader will win up to 20 copies of Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos for his or her entire reading group.
-Click here to read more about Love Walked In.
|
Read contest details here.
|
|
Do you like what you see here, and want to forward it to a friend? Then click our link on the bottom of the page to do just that!
Happy reading. We'll see you next month.
Don't forget to visit our other websites from TheBookReportNetwork.com: Bookreporter.com, AuthorsOnTheWeb.com, FaithfulReader.com, AuthorYellowPages.com, Teenreads.com, and Kidsreads.com.
Carol Fitzgerald ([email protected])
The Book Report Network
250 W. 57th Street - Suite 1228
New York, New York 10107 |
|
|
