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This Month on ReadingGroupGuides.com
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| Our New Look! |
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Lots of news this month. First I am sad to share word that Liz Keuffer, who has been our ReadingGroupGuides.com Editor since our launch in May 2000, is leaving us. Liz pulled back on her responsibilities over the past nine months due to a family emergency, and now she has decided that she wants to spend more time offline with her family, giving up her role here completely. I know you join with us in thanking her for all she has done to create this great online haven for reading groups.
We promise to keep the momentum going!
This month we are pleased to share two guides that you have been writing to ask for --- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.
One quick request. Many of you write each month asking us to find you a guide. Many already are on the website. Before you write, can you check for the guide by clicking on either the Search by Title or Search by Author links in the top of this newsletter? This will give us more time to spend developing new content and programming.
If there is no guide available, don't despair. Instead click on our new home page button, which connects you right to our page with an outline of what to do "When No Guide is Available." These tips should help you lead your discussion.
Now onto this month's lineup.
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Read The Lovely Bones guide here
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| A Guide You Wanted: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd |
The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd
Set in the American South in 1964, the year of the Civil Rights Act and intensifying racial unrest, Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees is a powerful story of coming-of-age, of the ability of love to transform our lives, and the often unacknowledged longing for the universal feminine divine. Addressing the wounds of loss, betrayal, and the scarcity of love, Kidd demonstrates the power of women coming together to heal those wounds, to mother each other and themselves, and to create a sanctuary of true family and home.
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Read The Secret Life of Bees guide here
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| New In Paperback: Sophie and the Rising Sun by Augusta Trobaugh |
Sophie and the Rising Sun
by Augusta Trobaugh
Salty Creek is a sleepy Georgia town where everyone knows everyone else's business, along with their place in the hierarchy of color, class, and family history. Strangers rarely enter their midst, and a mysterious arrival in the spring of 1939 soon sets tongues wagging.
A quiet, unassuming man with a secret history of his own, Mr. Oto is taken in as a gardener by Miss Anne, the town's conscience-and its heart-with no illusions about Salty Creek or its inhabitants. One of these is Sophie, who lost her love during World War I and has resigned herself to a passionless existence taking care of her mother and maiden aunts. Then one day, she and Mr. Oto speak for the first time. To Mr. Oto, whose heart has been full from the moment he saw Sophie, it is one of life's miracles-when they finally break the silence of "the beauty of words unspoken."
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Read the Sophie and The Rising Sun guide here
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| New and Notable: The Sunday Wife by Cassandra King |
The Sunday Wife
by Cassandra King
In the tradition of Patricia Gaffney's Saving Graces -- a captivating novel about one woman's journey toward independence and the life-changing friendship that guides her there.
Married for 20 years to the Reverend Benjamin Lynch, a handsome, ambitious minister of the prestigious Methodist church, Dean Lynch has never quite adjusted her temperament to the demands of the role of a Sunday wife. When her husband is assigned to a larger and more demanding community in the Florida panhandle, Dean becomes fast friends with Augusta Holderfield, a woman whose good looks and extravagant habits immediately entrance her. As their friendship evolves, Augusta challenges Dean to break free from her traditional role as the preacher's wife. Just as Dean is questioning everything she has always valued, a tragedy occurs, providing the catalyst for change in ways she never could have imagined.
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Read The Sunday Wife guide here
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| New in Paperback: Getting to Lamma by Jan Alexander |
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Getting to Lamma
by Jan Alexander
Madeleine Fox, a 35-year-old New Yorker, has dreamed of exotic escapes all her life, a fantasy fueled by her off-the-wall upbringing at the hands of a roving-eyed father and a Southern belle leftist mother. Now in serious need of flight from her cocaine-crazed ex-husband, Madeleine decides to follow the married foreign correspondent who has cajoled her for years to "come run away with me," but after a disastrous rendezvous in Hong Kong she goes on by herself to spend a year teaching English in Shanghai.
Alone in a threadbare hotel room, Madeleine plots revenge against men who cheat. Then, in a bicycle accident, she meets brash Shanghai dissident David Li, who wants to defect from China and leans on her. Though helping David means dipping into her life savings, letting him wound her ego, and, ultimately, embarking on a dangerous sailing trip, Madeleine finds herself propelled into a series of adventures that change her life in some highly unconventional but satisfying ways.
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Read the Getting to Lamma guide here
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| This Month's Interview |
Thanks to Pamela of O'Fallon, Illinois for sharing her group "We're Booked" with us.
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Read the Interview here
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| Questions of the Month |
October Question of the Month
In October, we'd like to know how you decide if a book will make a good discussion book as opposed to just being a good read? Do you read reviews? Require that one of your group already has read it? How do you determine which books are worthy of being reading group selections?
Please send your comments to Contact@readinggroupguides.com .
Replies to September Question
In September we asked you about reading plays. Several of you have tried this with your reading group, and many more were intrigued by the idea and wanted to know what others had read. Here's what some of you had to say.
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Check out our Roundtable questions here
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| Our Monthly Contest |
A subscription to our newsletter is all you need to be entered in our monthly contest. This month, one lucky reader will win enough copies of Peace Like A River by Leif Enger for his or her entire reading group.
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Read contest details here
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| Want to promote a guide on ReadingGroupGuides.com? |
Are you an author or a publisher who wants special promotion for your title on ReadingGroupGuides.com? We write guides --- and then promote them.
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Click here for promotion opportunities
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Happy reading. We'll see you next month.
Carol Fitzgerald (Carol@bookreporter.com)
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