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ReadingGroupGuides.com Newsletter |
May 2008
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Bookish Excitement in May Warms Us Up!
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I hear the birds in the morning these days, but the temperatures still are in the 40s. Hmmmm, this is not a very merry month of May in the New York area. This weekend I am taking a welcome break to guaranteed warm weather as I head to Grand Cayman and Coral Gables to participate in book club events for Books & Books, one of my favorite independent bookstores. In Grand Cayman, Lisa See, the author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love, will be the author guest. I had the pleasure of hearing Lisa speak at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books with her mom, Carolyn See (author The Handyman, among other titles) last month. Their dialogue was such fun that I felt like I was sitting across the kitchen table from them. You can read more about my adventures at the book festival here and here, as I wrote two blogs about this trip. I know Lisa is close to completing her next book, and I hope to have more to share with you about it next month.
For the Coral Gables event I will be joined by Kristy Kiernan, author of Catching Genius and the forthcoming Matters of Faith. Debra Linn, one of our ReadingGroupGuides.com bloggers, is coordinating these events, and she has the BEST ideas to get people mixing it up. I love clever people, and Debra is one of the most clever people I know!
Speaking of our new blog feature, it's been fun seeing how the traffic on this has been growing. I love reading comments. Shannon McKenna and I are having a lot of fun coming up with themed topics like our look at mystery titles and books for moms this month. Stop by and take a look each weekday, or settle in with a cup of your favorite beverage (mine is Diet Coke these days) to read the entire months' worth of posts. We continue to reach out to authors and others to guest blog with us. In upcoming weeks Mitch Albom, the author of book club favorites For One More Day, The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie, will be our featured guest.
We love when we hear about books picking up momentum with book clubs. This happened to me with Loving Frank by Nancy Horan this month. My mom suggested it for her book club, and two other members of her group rapidly chimed in that they too felt this was the perfect read. The other night at my son's baseball game, another mom mentioned that her group had just read it. When we have discovered a book like this before it even was published, it's really nice to hear a groundswell of attention for it like this. It's just one of the reasons that sharing books with you is such fun. One never knows what will resonate and take on a life of its own!
Lots of GREAT reading and suggestions for book clubs this month, so read on. Oh, and for those of you who love contests, besides the ones mentioned in this newsletter, we will be kicking off our Bookreporter.com Beach Bag of Books promotion on Bookreporter.com this Friday, and next week we will share our Father's Day titles. You can sign up for the Bookreporter.com newsletter here to stay in the loop on these contests.
Carol Fitzgerald ([email protected])
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Now Available in Paperback: LOVING FRANK by Nancy Horan
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In this ambitious debut novel, fact and fiction are brilliantly blended in the dramatic story of Mamah Borthwick Cheney and her lover, the renowned American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. More than a poignant and engaging love story, Loving Frank is a novel about breaking old rules and living new ideas. Nancy Horan portrays the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose among her roles as a mother, wife, lover and intellectual.
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Click here to read the guide for Loving Frank.
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Now Available in Paperback: GARDEN SPELLS by Sarah Addison Allen
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In a garden surrounded by a tall fence, tucked away behind a small, quiet house in an even smaller town, is an apple tree that is rumored to bear a very special sort of fruit. In this luminous debut novel, Sarah Addison Allen tells the story of that enchanted tree, and the extraordinary people who tend it.
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Click here to read the guide for Garden Spells.
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FRIDAY NIGHTS by Joanna Trollope
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It's Eleanor who began the Friday night get-togethers. What started as three women gradually grows to include six different and disparate women, who become a circle of friends. They include one wife, three mothers, three singletons and five working women. All of them, variously, value Friday nights.
And then one of them meets a man --- an enigmatic, significant man --- and the whole dynamic changes.
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Click here to read the guide for Friday Nights.
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Now Available in Paperback: THE PRINCE OF NANTUCKET by Jan Goldstein
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Teddy is a successful Los Angeles lawyer whose charm and political skills have made him a leading U.S. Senate candidate. But behind the golden public persona lie some darker truths: his teenage daughter has barely spoken to him since his divorce from her mother, and he has long been bitterly estranged from his own mother.
When an urgent phone call from his sister brings Teddy back to Nantucket, he unexpectedly finds the life he never knew he wanted.
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Click here to read the guide for The Prince of Nantucket.
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KEEPER AND KID by Edward Hardy
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Eight years ago, James Keeper fell in love with his upstairs neighbor in Boston. The two eventually married, but conflicting schedules and a real estate deal gone bad took its toll on the twenty-somethings in love.
But one phone call from his former mother-in-law changes everything. And so days later, Keeper comes away with a son he never knew he had, and life all of a sudden takes on a new meaning.
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Click here to read the guide for Keeper and Kid.
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Now Available in Paperback: THE ARCHIVIST'S STORY by Travis Holland |
Moscow, 1939. In the recesses of the infamous Lubyanka prison, a young archivist is sent to authenticate an unsigned story confiscated from one of the many political prisoners there. The writer is Isaac Babel. The great author of Red Cavalry is spending his last days forbidden to write, his final manuscripts consigned to the archivist, Pavel Dubrov, who will ultimately be charged with destroying them. The emotional jolt of meeting Babel face-to-face leads to a reckless decision: he will save the last stories of the author he reveres, whatever the cost.
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Click here to read the guide for The Archivist's Story.
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NOTES ON A LIFE by Eleanor Coppola
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Eleanor Coppola's first book, Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now, was hailed as “one of the most revealing of all first hand looks at the movies” (Los Angeles Herald Examiner). In Notes on a Life, Coppola shares her extraordinary life as an artist, filmmaker, wife and mother in a book that captures the glamour and grit of Hollywood and reveals the private tragedies and joys that tested and strengthened her over the past 20 years. |
Click here to read the guide for Notes on a Life.
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Now Available in Paperback: LITTLE HEATHENS by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
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Author Mildred Armstrong Kalish grew up on her grandparents’ Iowa farm during the depths of the Great Depression. In Little Heathens, Kalish offers a loving but realistic portrait of a “hearty-handshake Methodist” family that gave its members a remarkable legacy of kinship, kindness and remembered pleasures. Recounted in a luminous narrative filled with tenderness and humor, Kalish’s memoir of her childhood shows how the right stuff can make even the bleakest of times seem like “quite a romp.”
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Click here to read the guide for Little Heathens.
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Registered Book Club Offers
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For May we have TWO very special opportunities for Registered Book Groups. Our featured titles this month are The Safety of Secrets by DeLauné Michel and The Space Between Before and After by Jean Reynolds Page. Groups who have registered with us by Wednesday, May 14th have the chance to win author chats and free books. If your group is not registered, and you are interested in future monthly contests, click here to register.
The Safety of Secrets by DeLauné Michel --- Author Chat and Book Giveaway: Five groups will have the opportunity to chat with DeLauné Michel and receive 12 copies of the book.
More About The Safety of Secrets:
Fiona and Patricia's friendship began in the first grade in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Their bond was forged ever closer by Fiona's abusive mother and Patricia's neglectful one. Decades later, when husband and career pressures exact a toll, the women wonder if their friendship can survive. Then a dark secret from their past emerges, threatening to destroy not only their bond, but all they've worked for as well.
The Space Between Before and After by Jean Reynolds Page --- Author Chat and Book Giveaway: Five groups will have the opportunity to chat with Jean Reynolds Page and receive 12 copies of the book.
More About The Space Between Before and After:
Forty-two and divorced, Holli Templeton has begun to realize the pleasures of owning her life for the first time. But when she learns that her son Conner has unexpectedly fled college and moved to Texas with his troubled girlfriend, Kilian, she must once again put her family’s needs before her own.
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Click here to register your group.
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This Month's Book Club Interviews
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This month we are sharing two new interviews with book clubs on ReadingGroupGuides.com:
Andrea Harper began her book club in Londonderry, NH in the fall of 2005. In this interview, Andrea explains how diverse personalities within the group as well as the recent addition of a male’s perspective have led to livelier discussions. She also offers an amusing anecdote in which she had to improvise a meeting after most of the members canceled at the last minute.
Nola Tininenko is a facilitator of The Library Cards in Mesa, AZ, which has been meeting for 33 years. In this interview, Nola discusses some of the group’s memorable experiences together as well as the extensive book list they have maintained over the decades. She also talks about the many activities they have organized, including author luncheons and vacations, and describes their thorough system of title selection each April.
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Click here to see all our interviews with book clubs.
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Book Sense's List of Reading Group Picks: Spring - Summer 2008
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The Reading Group Picks list is the brainchild of indie booksellers --- launched at their suggestion --- and it is one of the most popular lists of the year. The American Bookselling Association consistently receives the most requests for additional copies of the Reading Group List and hears about the many ways in which booksellers use the list --- from in-store distribution and handouts to reading group leaders to take-away components in special in-store displays. The list features a wide range of popular fiction and nonfiction, with a special eye toward titles booksellers believe will stimulate especially lively discussion for book groups.
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Click here to see the Book Sense Reading Group Picks list.
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This Month's Poll and Tip
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Poll:
If you know you are not going to be able to make your book club meeting, do you still read the selected book
Yes, I try to read it by the discussion date.
Yes, but I am not on a deadline to get it done.
Sometimes
Never
Do you ever skip a meeting just because you do not like the book that is planned for discussion?
All of the time
Some of the time
Never
Tip for May:
Read a book where the relationships between mothers and daughters are a theme. We suggest Things I Want My Daughters to Know by Elizabeth Noble, The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs and The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty.
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Click here to answer the poll.
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This Month's Contest Book: BELONG TO ME by Marisa de los Santos
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Win a copy of Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos 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 June 1, 2008. If you are receiving this newsletter in your mailbox, you already are signed up!
More about Belong to Me:
A devoted city dweller, Cornelia Brown surprised no one more than herself when she was gripped by the sudden, inescapable desire to leave urban life behind and head for an idyllic suburb. Though she knows she and her beloved husband, Teo, have made the right move, she approaches her new life with trepidation and struggles to forge friendships in her new home. Cornelia's mettle is quickly tested by judgmental neighbor Piper Truitt. Perfectly manicured, impeccably dressed, and possessing impossible standards, Piper is the embodiment of everything Cornelia feared she would find in suburbia. A saving grace soon appears in the form of Lake. Over a shared love of literature and old movies, Cornelia develops an instant bond with this warm yet elusive woman who has also recently arrived in town, ostensibly to send her perceptive and brilliant son, Dev, to a school for the gifted.
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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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