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ReadingGroupGuides.com Newsletter |
October 2007
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And The News Keeps On Coming....
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There are some months where news that we think is of interest to book clubs keeps coming and coming. Reacting to this, I delay sending the newsletter time and again as "one more item of note" keeps coming our way! This was one of those months.
Let me start with the results of last month's poll where 950 of you --- our second highest response ever --- weighed in on the question, "Be honest. Have you ever not finished a book that your group was discussing?" and "How do you feel about people who have not read the book attending your book group discussions?" Clearly these questions struck a chord with you. You can see the results here. This month's question is "When does your group usually meet?" Let us know here. If you have an idea for a poll question, please send your suggestion to [email protected].
Last Friday Oprah did an entire hour with Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. Discussion of this book among book clubs has been growing since it was released in paperback. Borders is featuring it as their book club title this month, and you can see a video of the Borders Book Club talking about it here. I did a quick suvey of our Most Requested Guides and saw that "EPL" first hit our "Top 25 Most Requested Guides" list in February when we offered our Registered Book Clubs a chance to chat with Elizabeth and win free books! Since July it's been climbing up the list. If your group has read it, drop me a note with feedback on what they had to say about it.
Oprah picked Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez as her next book club pick. It's a timely pick as the movie releases in theaters on November 16th. Can we see a book club discussion followed by a night at the movies, or vice versa, in your future? We have a discussion guide here.
Keeping our movie theme going, I wanted to be sure that you saw that the release of the movie adaptation of The Kite Runner has been delayed until December 14th as the film's creators work to ensure the protection of the child stars who may be victimized by their roles in the movie. I am attending a screening on October 15th, and I will share my thoughts about it in the November newsletter.
I will be on the road this month doing two very special book club events. The first will be at Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida, where I will be participating in their 25th Anniversary Book Club Twister Mixer on Sunday, October 21st from 11AM-1PM. Then on Monday, October 29th from 6-9PM I will be emceeing an event for book clubs being organized by the Women's National Book Association at the Small Press Center in New York in celebration of October as National Reading Group Month. This is part of a multi-city celebration. Read on for more information about both of these events --- and I hope to meet many of you at these special celebrations of book clubs. Be sure to introduce yourselves if you are there. I love meeting book clubs, so if there are other stores out there offering opportunities like this, I would love to know more about them so I can share them with our readers. We love being your destination for news of interest to book clubs.
Readers seem to be inspiring all kinds of ideas. At Costco this month, Pennie Clark Ianniciello, their book buyer and the woman behind their Pennie's Pick, selected The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield as their latest selection. Describing herself as "an evangelist for reading," Clark is encouraging book clubs and book-club members to purchase the title by selling The Thirteenth Tale individually and in six-packs, an idea she got from a club member. The way we see it at ReadingGroupGuides.com: The members who did not go shopping saved their gas money and have more dollars to buy books! For the record, I call myself "A Book Concierge!"
Each of this month's featured titles will spark great conversation as well as bring lots of hours of fun reading. I found myself swinging in a hammock this weekend as I celebrated what felt like an "endless summer" in New Jersey with this month's selections stacked on the table beside me. As I moved from title to title in what was a book lover's delight, I looked forward to sharing EACH of these books with you for the distinctively different stories each tells. The way I see it, some women love shoes the way I love books. Seriously I was drooling over the new Richard Russo like some women faint over a pair of Jimmy Choos!
My travel schedule next month takes me to the Miami Book Fair from November 8th-11th. This is the third year that I will attend this weeklong event, which always inspires me as I see the readers enthusiastically filling the venues for these author talks. Tickets for their special events will be available beginning October 24th, and the complete schedule of author events will be posted by mid-October. I already am lamenting that I arrive too late to see Russo on Wednesday evening! This year my sons are off from school for these four days for a teacher's break, so they will be joining me. They are intrigued after two years of my telling great stories of the authors who I have heard speak at the Fair. If you live in the area --- or if you enjoy bookish travel --- may I suggest you attend the Fair?
We are pleased to share four book group interviews this month with The KHRS Book Club, The Page Turners, Wednesday Morning Butler Book Club and The Bluestocking Society. Carol Stickney of Sparta, NJ gets together with some of her co-workers at Kittatinny Regional High School to form The KHRS Book Club, whose members are especially interested in books with a cultural theme. Darlene Reilly --- founder of The Page Turners in Dodge, ND --- talks about her group's focus on books that address current issues relevant to females. Rhoda Haeberle, a member of the Wednesday Morning Butler Book Club in Butler, NJ, explains how valuing everyone’s opinion while not being too serious helps invigorate their discussions. And Chanon Collins of The Bluestocking Society in Tifton, GA emphasizes the importance of meeting authors and talks about her group's yearly weekend getaway to a member’s beach house.
In a previous newsletter, I mentioned that I never have read Jane Austen. Many of you told me that you were in the same boat. Others admonished me to read Jane NOW. With this in mind, we had Cindy Crosby create an entire Jane Austen feature for us, which talks about ALL the Jane Austen books currently in stores. Read on Jane-ites and ENJOY!
Here's to a great rest of the month. May no more news arrive to keep me from hitting "send" on this newsletter!
Carol Fitzgerald ([email protected])
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Click here to read all our Book Club interviews.
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Two Events to Note: National Reading Group Month and the Books & Books 25th Anniversary Celebration
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This month, the Women's National Book Association is launching National Reading Group Month to mark the 90th anniversary of the association's founding.
-Click here to see a schedule of WNBA-NRGM-sponsored events.
Also, on the weekend of October 19th through 21st, Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida, will be celebrating its 25th anniversary with a series of events, including a Book Club Mixer. Living in this area? Be sure to keep tabs on the Books & Books website for details on this event.
-Click here to see a schedule of events for the Books & Books 25th Anniversary Celebration.
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BRIDGE OF SIGHS by Richard Russo
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Louis Charles “Lucy” Lynch has spent his whole life in Thomaston, a small town in upstate New York. At 60 years old, Lucy and his wife Sarah are planning their first-ever trip away from home, forcing him to reflect upon his town, his family and his own life. As Lucy reminisces, his thoughts inevitably turn to Bobby Marconi, Lucy’s oldest friend. In high school, Sarah, Lucy and Bobby were an almost inseparable threesome. But Bobby had troubles that no amount of friendship could solve, and at 18 he fled Thomaston forever. After years of minimal communication with their childhood pal, Sarah and Lucy are planning to visit him in Venice. For all three, there are not only ties to rebind, but also questions to resolve.
This novel from the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire Falls, a perennial book club favorite, is a title that is sure to inspire conversation about love, fidelity, duty and obligation.
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Click here to read the guide for Bridge of Sighs.
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New in Paperback: AFTER THIS by Alice McDermott
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Winner of the National Book Award, Alice McDermott has captivated countless readers with her tender portrayals of family life in America, from Irish-Catholic suburbia to the beaches of Long Island and Manhattan's historic streets.
Bringing those cultural shifts vividly to life, McDermott introduces us to Mary and John Keane, a middle-class couple raising four children as the country arrives at historic crossroads. Michael and Annie test the boundaries of their changing world, while the eldest and most cautious sibling, Jacob, is sent to war. Young Clare proves to possess a worldliness that belies her innocent sensitivity. Together, the Keanes navigate the clashes of a traditional life and modern freedom.
Portrayed by McDermott through a serious of seamless, beautifully wrought vignettes, their story opens our hearts to new understandings of fate and everyday mercy.
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Click here to read the guide for After This.
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THE UNCOMMON READER by Alan Bennett
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The author of the Tony Award winner The History Boys, Alan Bennett is one of Britain’s best-loved literary voices. With The Uncommon Reader, he brings us a playful homage to the written word, imagining a world in which literature becomes a subversive bridge between powerbrokers and commoners.
By turns cheeky and charming, the novella features the Queen herself as its protagonist. When her yapping corgis lead her to a mobile library, Her Majesty develops a new obsession with reading. She finds herself devouring works by a tantalizing range of authors, from the Brontë sisters to Jean Genet. With a young member of the palace kitchen staff guiding her choices, it’s not long before the Queen begins to develop a new perspective on the world --- one that alarms her closest advisers and tempts her to make bold new decisions.
Brimming with the mischievous wit that has garnered acclaim for Bennett on both sides of the Atlantic, The Uncommon Reader is a delightful celebration of books and writers, and the readers who sustain them.
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Click here to read the guide for The Uncommon Reader.
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MATRIMONY by Joshua Henkin
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It’s 1987, and Julian Wainwright, aspiring writer and Waspy son of New York City old money, meets beautiful, Jewish Mia Mendelsohn in the laundry room at Graymont College. So begins a relationship that spans 20 years, as it takes Julian and Mia across the country and through the depths of family tragedy, love and friendship, money and ambition, desire and tensions of faith.
Starting at the height of the Reagan era and ending in the new millennium, Matrimony is about love and friendship, about money and ambition, desire and tensions of faith. It asks what happens to a marriage when it is confronted by betrayal and the specter of mortality.
-Click here to see our One to Watch feature on Joshua Henkin and Matrimony on Bookreporter.com.
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Click here to read the guide for Matrimony.
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OUTSIDE IN by Courtney Thorne-Smith
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On the outside, Kate Keyes-Morgan seems to have it all. At the age of 30, she has a starring role on the hit television series “Generations,” a handsome husband who is also her manager, a model-thin figure, and a career that, after an earlier slide, is finally back on track.
But when her husband leaves her for another actress, Kate suddenly finds herself in charge of her own life. Now she must decide whether she’s ready to stop playing by the Hollywood rulebook and discover who she really is. With the help of her friends, Kate begins to question her role in an industry that venerates appearance, money and fame above all else, and that applies ceaseless pressure on women to always be thinner, younger and more beautiful, at any cost.
-Listen to an interview with Courtney Thorne-Smith in QuickTime or Windows Media Player.
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Click here to read the guide for Outside In.
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TRESPASS by Valerie Martin
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Chloe Dale’s life is in good order. Her only child, Toby, has started his junior year at New York University; her husband, an academic on sabbatical, is working at home on his book about the Crusades; and Chloe is busy creating illustrations for a special edition of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Yet Chloe is disturbed --- by the aggression of her government’s foreign policy, by the poacher who roams the land behind her studio punctuating her solitude with rifle fire, and finally, by Toby’s new girlfriend, a Croatian refugee named Salome Drago.
Raised in the Croatian expatriate community of New Orleans, Salome is a toxic mix of the old world and the new: intelligent, superstitious, sly, seductive and confident. But Salome’s past is a mine of dangerous secrets, and the violence that destroyed her homeland is far from over. Chloe distrusts her on sight, and as Toby’s obsession with Salome grows, Chloe’s mistrust deepens, alienating her from her tolerant husband and besotted son. Rich with menace, the novel unfolds in a world where darkness intrudes into bright and pleasant places, a world with betrayal at its heart. In shimmering prose Valerie Martin raises the question: who shall inherit America?
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Click here to read the guide for Trespass.
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WATERCOLORED PEARLS by Stacy Hawkins Adams
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Serena never thought she’d have children. Now she has two active two-year-old boys. But instead of being overjoyed, she’s overwhelmed. Did she make the wrong choice in giving up her successful career to be a stay-at-home mom?
Tawana, an ambitious new lawyer, is trying to pull her life together, but her past keeps getting in the way. An incredible opportunity at a prestigious law firm forces her to confront her demons. Can her new responsibilities fit with her growing faith?
Erika’s estranged and once-abusive husband wants her back. He says it will be better. He’s even going to church. But has he truly changed? Or is he just smooth talking her back into a bad situation?
Watercolored Pearls is a story of three women who discover that, though their pasts aren’t perfect, their God will make things right.
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Click here to read the guide for Watercolored Pearls.
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Special Feature: Spotlight on Jane Austen
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Everything is coming up Jane Austen recently, with the release of Austen-themed movies Becoming Jane and The Jane Austen Book Club, accompanied by a landslide of related books. Although Austen, a literary icon --- and arguably one of the greatest literary novelists in the English language --- wrote only six books in her lifetime (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion), the number of spin-off titles continues to boggle the minds of book lovers. Jane-ites just can't get enough. With this in mind, Bookreporter.com's Cindy Crosby takes a look at 15 recently published books --- both fiction and nonfiction --- that celebrate all things Austen. If you can't decide what to try first, look for Cindy's picks at the end to discover which ones are don't-miss, hands-down favorites. Intrigued? Read on, Austenophiles…
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Click here to read our Jane Austen feature.
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Registered Book Club Offers
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For October we have two very special opportunities for Registered Book Groups. Our two featured titles this month are Paint it Black by Janet Fitch and Just Beyond the Clouds by Karen Kingsbury. Groups who have registered with us by Friday, October 12th have the chance to win author chats and free books. If your group is not registered, click here to register.
Paint it Black by Janet Fitch --- Author Chat and Book Giveaway: 20 groups will have the opportunity to chat with Janet Fitch and receive 12 copies of the book.
More about Paint it Black:
Josie Tyrell, art model and denizen of LA's rock scene, finds a chance at real love with art student Michael Faraday. A Harvard dropout and son of a renowned pianist, Michael introduces Josie to his spiritual quest and a world of sophistication she had never dreamed existed. But when she is called to identify her lover's dead body, Josie's bright dreams all turn to black.
As Josie struggles to understand Michael's death and hold onto the true world he shared with her, she finds herself both repelled by and attracted to his pianist mother, Meredith, who holds Josie responsible for her son's torment. Soon, the two women find themselves drawn into a twisted relationship that reflects equal parts distrust and blind need.
-Click here to visit Paint it Black's MySpace page.
Just Beyond the Clouds by Karen Kingsbury --- Author Chat and Book Giveaway: 10 groups will have the opportunity to chat with Karen Kingsbury and receive 12 copies of the book.
More about Just Beyond the Clouds:
Still aching over his wife's death, Cody Gunner can't bear the thought of also letting go of his Down Syndrome brother, Carl Joseph. Cody wants his brother home, where he will be safe and cared for, not out on his own in a world that Cody knows all too well can be heartless and insecure. So when Carl Joseph's teacher, Elle, begins championing his independence, she finds herself at odds with Cody. But even as these two battle it out, they can't deny the instinctive connection they share, and Cody faces a crisis of the heart.
What if Elle is the one woman who can teach Cody that love is still possible? If Cody can let go of his lingering anger, he might see that sometimes the brightest hope of all lies Just Beyond the Clouds.
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Click here to register your group.
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This Month's Poll and Tip
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Poll:
When does your group usually meet? (Please select one.)
Afternoons during the week
Afternoons on weekends
Evenings during the week
Evenings on weekends
We have no set time for our meetings.
Tip for October:
With the spirit of "trick or treat" in mind, each bring a book to your meeting that you want to pass along. Have a grab bag where each person picks one. For the recipient, may it always be a treat.
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Click here to answer the poll.
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This Month's Contest Book: THE REST OF HER LIFE by Laura Moriarty
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Win a copy of The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty for your reading group!
To be a group to win 20 free copies of this book, all you have to do is sign up for the ReadingGroupGuides.com newsletter by November 1, 2007. If you are receiving this newsletter in your mailbox, you already are signed up!
More about The Rest of Her Life:
Leigh is the mother of high-achieving, popular high school senior Kara. Their relationship is already strained for reasons Leigh does not fully understand when, in a moment of carelessness, Kara makes a mistake that ends in tragedy --- the effects of which not only divides Leigh’s family, but polarizes the entire community.
We see the story from Leigh’s perspective, as she grapples with the hard reality of what her daughter has done and the devastating consequences her actions have on the family of another teenage girl in town, all while struggling to protect Kara in the face of rising public outcry.
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Click here to read contest details and rules.
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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
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