February 2007

It's gotten really cold here in New York, and they are saying snow is on the way. I have decided in my next life I want to be a weatherperson. Think about it. You can declare it's going to snow, or rain, or be sunny, be wrong and keep your job. You can get jazzed by the potential for bad weather. Seriously, I think it's amazing that these folks can send an entire city of people out of the house with umbrella in hand. Hmmmmm...and to think all I want to do is send you out of the house --- or into the house for that matter --- with a book you love in hand!

This weather has me indulging in two of my favorite activities --- reading and knitting. I've become a regular at my favorite yarn shop, A Yarn for All Seasons. Between making a blanket for the new baby of an old friend and putting the finishing touches on my most ambitious project yet --- a cozy and winter-worthy sweater --- my friends, family and staff often shake their heads and wonder aloud "Where do you have the time?" I just remind them that I'm the Queen of Multitasking. I knit and read at the same time!

Speaking of multitasking, my radar has been turned up recently to the popularity of knitting-themed books hitting stores in the last few months. From How-tos and guidebooks like the just-published When Bad Things Happen to Good Knitters: An Emergency Survival Guide by Marion Edmonds and Ahza Moore to novels like The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs, knitting is quite in vogue, and, more importantly, it seems I truly AM able to combine two of my preferred pastimes. Flipping the pages and clicking the needles makes you think how a good book is really quite similar to an expertly-woven scarf or sweater --- complex, colorful and just the thing to keep you happy and warm on a cold winter day.

Continuing with our knitting theme --- I am THRILLED to be featuring The Friday Night Knitting Club as one of our special opportunities for Registered Book Groups. We have six (yes six!) this month and they are all pretty wonderful. While we have author chats and book giveaways for Nicholas Evans, Elizabeth Gilbert, Lalita Tademy and Robert Alexander, we also have two very different offers.

For The Friday Night Knitting Club we are giving 10 groups the chance to win not only a signed copy of the book, but an official "Friday Night Knitting Club" Tote bag stocked with goodies like needles and yarn. Being a huge fan of Mary Kay Andrews, my other favorite offering is the chance for one VERY lucky group to win up to 20 copies of Savannah Breeze (one for each member of their group), a set of all of Mary Kay Andrews's backlist titles --- including Blue Christmas, Hissy Fit, Little Bitty Lies and Savannah Blues --- as well as Mary Kay Andrews's signature Lemon Cream Cheese Pound Cake personally baked by the author, which will be a perfect treat for your book club meeting. In December, Mary Kay baked this cake and sent it to the office for a holiday gift. Take it from me --- it was a HUGE hit.

Our ReadingGroupGuides.com Newsletter prize is Family Tree by Barbara Delinsky, a book I'm really looking forward to diving into. 

We also added 27! new guides this month and updated some of your favorites, like The Year of Magical Thinking and The Space Between Us to paperback. I'm always curious to know whether groups wait until books come out in paperback to select them for reading and discussion. Does your group prefer to wait? And if so, is this simply due to budgetary concerns? Or do you and your members not care either way? If you want to drop me a note, you can send to my trusty sidekick Jen Krieger at [email protected] who will tally up responses and pass on to me --- we love hearing what you have to say.

If any groups are reading, or have read/discussed Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck, can you send me a note at [email protected] by Friday of this week? Curious as to why? You'll hear more about this book next month.

Another opportunity for you to weigh in is our Poll. This month we want to know whether you and your group would travel for one of your favorite authors and why/why not. Be sure to let us know your thoughts!

February is Black History Month and it seems perfectly appropriate that Oprah's Book Club Selection is The Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier. In this age of self-indulgent and over-the-top memoirs, Poitier's is really remarkable both in the topics it addressees and the humility of his narrative voice. Truly something special.

My son begins college visits this week --- you can imagine I'll be knitting my way through the tours, listening to bright-eyed young guides describe the joys of collegiate life. I can remember the excitement of being his age and seeing a world of possibilities opening up to you. It's bittersweet knowing he's going to be off on his own in less than two years, but I also have total faith in his ability to pick out his own colors, select the perfect-sized needles, plot the design and create something truly remarkable with his life.

Stay warm readers. If you are in the New York area snow MAY be on the way, but good books definitely are on your radar below.

Carol Fitzgerald ([email protected])

Click here for details about our Newsletter Contest.

Now Available in Paperback: EAT, PRAY, LOVE by Elizabeth Gilbert

In Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert leaves behind an excruciating divorce, tumultuous affair, and debilitating depression as she sets off on a yearlong quest to bridge the gulf between body, mind, and spirit traveling to Italy, India and Indonesia. Part self-deprecating tour guide, part wry, witty chronicler, Gilbert relates this chapter of her life with a compelling, richly detailed narrative that eschews the easy answers of New Age rhetoric. Happiness, Gilbert comes to realize, "is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it."

This title has a special Registered Book Club Opportunity being offered. For details click here.

Click here to read the guide for Eat, Pray, Love.

ALPHABET WEEKENDS by Elizabeth Noble 

Click here to read the guide for Alphabet Weekends.

FAMILY TREE by Barbara Delinsky

Dana Clarke always has longed for the stability of home and family --- her own childhood was not an easy one. Now she has married a man she adores who is from a prominent New England family, and she is about to give birth to their first child. But what should be the happiest day of her life becomes the day her world falls apart. Her daughter is born beautiful and healthy, but no one can help noticing the African American traits in her appearance. Dana's husband, to her great shock and dismay, begins to worry that people will think Dana has had an affair.

Barbara Delinsky's Family Tree is an utterly unforgettable novel that asks penetrating questions about race, family, and the choices people make in times of crisis --- choices that have profound consequences that can last for generations.

Click here to read the guide for Family Tree.

LIPSHITZ 6, OR TWO ANGRY BLONDES by T. Cooper

Upon landing at Ellis Island in 1903, Esther and Hersh Lipshitz discover their son Reuven is missing. The child is never found, and decades later, Esther becomes convinced that the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh is her lost boy. Esther's manic obsession spirals out of control, leaving far-reaching effects on the entire Lipshitz lineage. In the present, we meet T Cooper --- the last living Lipshitz --- who struggles to make sense of all that came before him and what legacy he might leave behind.

RASPUTIN'S DAUGHTER by Robert Alexander

From the author of the breakout bestseller The Kitchen Boy, a new novel delving into the mysterious life and death of the notorious Rasputin. With the same riveting historical narrative that made The Kitchen Boy a national bestseller and a book-club favorite, Robert Alexander returns to revolutionary Russia for the harrowing tale of Rasputin's final days as told by his youthful and bold daughter, Maria.

With Rasputin's Daughter, Robert Alexander once again delivers an imaginative and compelling story, fashioned from one of history's most fascinating characters who, until now, has been virtually unexplored in fiction.

This title has a special Registered Book Club Opportunity being offered. For details click here.

Featured Viking Flights of Fiction Title: THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL by Elif Shafak

Nineteen-year-old Asya, like many teenagers, is full of rage. Feeling like an outsider in a family of suffocating women, she rebels against everything she thinks her family and culture expect from her. Born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey, Asya is the youngest female of the Kazancý family.

Shafak has created an intricately woven tale about the very different but equally difficult struggles of living with the past and trying to survive without one. Full of bold, unforgettable characters, The Bastard of Istanbul reveals that even the worst events are important ingredients in the recipes that make each of us who we are.

-Click here to read more about Viking's Flights of Fiction series.

Click here to read the guide for The Bastard of Istanbul.

PATRIOT HEARTS by Barbara Hambly

When Martha Dandridge Custis marries her second husband, George, she never suspects that the soft-spoken Virginia planter is destined to command the founding of a nation --- or that she is to be "Lady Washington," the woman at the first President's side. Only a select inner circle of women will know the cost of sharing a beloved man with history...and each will draw strength from the unique treasure given to them by a doomed queen.

A lushly written novel that traces the marriages tested by the demands of love and loyalty, Patriot Hearts offers readers a dazzling glimpse behind the scenes of a revolution, from adversity and treachery to teatime strategies, as four magnificent women shape a nation's future.

Featured Viking Flights of Fiction Title: PETROPOLIS by Anya Ulinich

In her stellar debut novel, Russian émigré Anya Ulinich paints a vivid, beguiling, and funny portrait of post-Soviet Russia and turn-of-the-century America. Petropolis is a richly layered and luminous emotional epic in the mode of great Russian novels. From perpetually gray Asbestos 2 to the shocking green lawns of Paradise Valley, Arizona, where Sasha lands as a mail-order bride; from wealthy suburban Chicago to the streets of Brooklyn, New York, Petropolis takes on motherhood, religion, the promise of love, and cross-cultural perplexity, all set against Sasha's harrowing yet hilarious search for a place to call home. The result is a magnificent work that will stand alongside the likes of Gary Shteyngart's The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Gish Jen's Typical American in scope, immediacy, and sheer talent.

-Click here to read more about Viking's Flights of Fiction series.

THE BEST RECIPES IN THE WORLD by Mark Bittman

Mark Bittman traveled the world to find and bring back the best recipes of home cooks from 44 countries. This bountiful collection of new, easy, and ultra-flavorful dishes will add exciting new tastes and cosmopolitan flair to your everyday cooking and entertaining.

The Best Recipes in the World is a perfect resource for book clubs that like to coordinate what they're reading to the food they serve at their meetings. Here are some suggestions for regions, dishes and the books that go perfectly with them.

Region: Greece and Turkey
Recipe: Spanakopita: Cheese and Spinach Pie
Book: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Region: Italy
Recipe: Risotta alla Milanese
Book: Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes

Region: Mexico
Recipe: Pollo con Salsa Verde: Chicken in Green Sauce
Book: The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende

Featured Viking Flights of Fiction Title: THE DEAD FATHERS CLUB by Matt Haig

The plot may strike one as oddly familiar. Following the premature death of his beloved father, a young man is visited by the father's ghost. The spirit urges the youth to take vengeance upon a morally ambiguous uncle, who may have had a hand in the father's death and who now has romantic designs on the dead man's widow. Torn between loyalty to his father and his moral obligations to the living, the young man is plagued by indecision. Although he yearns to bring peace to his father's soul by killing the apparent murderer, he hesitates, wondering what kind of peace can truly be won by giving the wheel of violence another turn.

-Click here to read more about Viking's Flights of Fiction series.

IN THE COUNTRY OF MEN by Hisham Matar

This complicated story of deception, pride, nationalism and sacrifice is a searing portrait of Muammar Qaddafi's Libya as viewed through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy. Shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, In the Country of Men is both timely and poignant, and delivers an important message that is likely to resonate deeply with readers the world over.

-Click here to read our One to Watch Feature for Hisham Matar on Bookreporter.com.

Special Opportunities for Registered Book Groups --- SIX New Offers!!!

This month we have six very special opportunities for Registered Book Groups. Our featured titles are The Divide by Nicholas Evans, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs, Rasputin's Daughter by Robert Alexander, Red River by Lalita Tademy and Savannah Breeze by Mary Kay Andrews. Registered groups have the chance to win author chats, free books and some other amazing prizes. Groups that are registered by Thursday, February 15th will receive our Registered Newsletter with all the details for how to enter your group to win.

-Click here to read all the details for our special offers for Registered Book Groups.

Click here to register your group.

New Guides Now Available

The following guides are now available on ReadingGroupGuides.com:

Alphabet Weekends by Elizabeth Noble
Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk
Astrid and Veronika by Linda Olsson
The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak
The Dead Fathers Club by Matt Haig
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Family Tree by Barbara Delinsky
The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
I Love Claire by Tracey Bateman
In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
Knitting Under the Influence by Claire LaZebnik
Lipshitz 6 by T. Cooper
Literacy and Longing in LA by Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack
London is the Best City in America by Laura Dave
Patriot Hearts by Barbara Hambly
Petropolis by Anya Ulinich
Red River by Lalita Tademy
The Ruins of California by Martha Sherrill
Rasputin's Daughter by Robert Alexander
Savannah Breeze by Mary Kay Andrews
Send Me by Patrick Ryan
The Sisters Mortland by Sally Beauman
The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis
Veil of Roses by Laura Fitzgerald
Wedgewood Grey by John Aubrey Anderson
When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago
The Why Cafe by John P. Strelecky

Please note that these titles, for which we already had guides when they appeared in hardcover, are now available in paperback:

The Divide by Nicholas Evans
In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant
The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
 

Poll and Tip

Which of the following would apply to your group taking a trip like this? (Check as many as apply.)

-We would only want to go places we can drive to.
-We would take a day trip.
-We would take an overnight trip. 
-We would travel domestically.
-We would travel internationally.
-Perhaps not all of our group members would go.
-We are not interested in meeting authors, but would like to see literary sites. 
-Budget concerns would influence our doing this.
-We have already taken literary-related trips. 
-This would not be of interest to our group.
-I do not belong to a group. 

-Click here to answer our Poll.


Tip for March
This year the clocks change on March 11th so think about reading a book with "time" in the title: The Time Traveler's Wife, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Love in the Time of Cholera, or even Dickens' Hard Times.