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Last Day to Enter the ReadingGroupGuides.com Survey
ROOFTOPS OF TEHRAN
RGG.com contributor and book club facilitator Esther Bushell weighs in on Rooftops of Tehran, Mahbod Seraji's novel about growing up, discovering love and awakening to the reality of life in Iran on the verge of revolution in the 1970s. One of the things I love best is connecting authors with readers who I think will love them, which you'll see from Esther's post below. Insider scoop moment: Rooftops of Tehran is my next Bookreporter.com Bets On pick. More on that next week.Would you like to win copies of Rooftops of Tehran for your group? Today is the last day to enter. And click here to find out how you can schedule a chat between Mahbod and your reading group. I just finished Rooftops of Tehran by Mahbod Seraji. Last October, at BookGroupExpo in San Jose, Carol Fitzgerald and I had lunch with Mahbod, and I've been waiting for the book since then. It didn't disappoint, and it was particularly relevant to me on many levels. First of all, if I were still teaching at Greenwich High School, I'd require my juniors to read the book as a companion to their social studies unit about the revolution in Iran. There seems to be mass amnesia about that time in history, and we never hear about it or read about it. The kids would find this fascinating because history is presented in the context of a novel. Also, after the Shah died, his wife and children settled here in Greenwich; they were a presence in town, and I taught the son of the assassinated chief of the (entire) Iranian military in one of my English classes. This young man had grown up in the royal palace, and his family was on the Shah's plane when it left Iran and came to America. The publication date of Rooftops of Tehran is next Tuesday, May 5th, and along with book clubs I would recommend it to high school and college students as well as their parents. I am not going to relate the plot because you can find that out online, but I hope that you will read this fascinating, layered novel that is about the personal as well as the politically charged 1970s in Tehran. It's important that this time in history is neither forgotten nor overlooked. ---Esther Bushell Labels: Mahbod Seraji, Rooftops of Tehran
Sean Dixon: The Book Club in Fiction & Reality
Sean Dixon's The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal features a women's book club in Montreal. Today's guest blogger, Sean reveals what happened when he decided to give a friend's real-life reading group an early look at the novel.  I have a friend, an actress in LA, who is part of a book club comprised more or less entirely of fellow actresses. There are ten of them, just the same amount, coincidentally, as there are in the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women's Book Club, if you include Runner's younger brother Neil but exclude the hexapod and two hangers-on who both happen to be male. I think that's right.
The members of the Lacuna Cabal are not themselves actresses but one of the ways in which they explore and otherwise get into the books they read is by performing favourite scenes with a level of commitment that would rival Robert DeNiro's.
What's an example, let's see...
The DaVinci Code includes a break-in to the Louvre, doesn't it? So, for example, the members of the LC might themselves attempt to break into a museum. They wouldn't travel to France, of course, but they might try to break into a museum in their home city of Montreal.
Not that the Lacuna Cabal would read The DaVinci Code. Too pulpy. Too thrillerish. They've got higher brows than that. To them, there's got to be a more compelling reason to keep a reader's attention than someone's life being in danger, you know?
Still, the members of the LC, though not themselves actresses, are like actresses.
So it was my thinking --- given I had a friend, an actress, who was a member of an LA book club --- that I might interest this same book club in these characters and this book. They might appreciate an advance look at the galley.
So I offered to send ten to my friend, a few months in advance of publication. And she enthusiastically agreed.
The books were sent and a session was scheduled for February 14th, providing plenty of time for the membership to ruminate over plot, character, themes.
I heartily anticipated the accolades that would arrive in my inbox on the 15th, the 16th, and for several days thereafter, perhaps all the way to the official pub date on April 28th, and beyond, for the rest of my life.
I felt confident. I trod upon clouds. When the day finally came, I brought home flowers. Went out for a nice dinner with my wife. She was maybe a little preoccupied with work problems, I can’t remember, I was myself somewhat preoccupied with thoughts of the approaching tsunami of acolada.
I didn't hear anything though. Not that night. Well, weren't they three hours behind me? I hadn't expected to hear anything until the next day. Go back three paragraphs and there's proof.
But I didn't hear anything the next day either.
Or the day after.
I looked at my friend's Facebook page. She'd written something about how much she loved David Sedaris.
Does David Sedaris even write fiction? Doesn't he just take stuff from his own life?
The point is. I began to lose confidence.
David Sedaris. If I had worked as an elf at Macy's, funny things would probably have happened to me too.
Several weeks went by.
Some time in the middle of March, I sent an email to my friend.
Was it a disaster?
Didn't hear back.
La la la.
I began to think that, with my little book about a book club, I had perhaps shown too much disrespect to the institution of the book club.
Maybe my characters were too unpleasant? Too flawed? President Missy Bean too much of a bitch? I thought I had explained that. Cross-dressing Aline too pitiful? But she ends up a hero of the book! Runner too foul-mouthed? Emmy too mopey? Romy too self-destructive? My narrators unable to keep their facts straight?
Upon further reflection, I came to suppose I wasn't very respectful to the institution of the book club in America. Or really in Canada, but let's call it America in celebration of the U.S. edition that came out yesterday.
Finally, I could not take it anymore and composed the following note:
Dear X,
I'm sorry if I embarrassed you in front of your book club.
I really thought you knew what you were getting into, since you know me and everything.
Be that as it may, it makes a great story that my story of a Montreal young women's book club was rejected by an LA young women's book club. People just love to hear it at all my readings in New York and Philly and Chicago and Miami, etcetera...
I just wish I knew a few of the facts so I could improve the quality of my storytelling a little bit, and add a little bit of verisimilitude, in the manner of, say, David Sedaris... Yours, S
Later that day, my friend wrote me back.
Oh My God no! I am so sorry...
She said they had loved the book. No, that wasn't quite true. Some of them didn't like the sex in the book (Me thinking, Is there sex in the book?) but most of them loved the book.
And she further explained that she'd come down with bronchitis and was going through a rotten break-up.
I checked her Facebook page again. The comment about David Sedaris was still there. There were also some lines from a song about a break-up.
I felt bad.
Turns out David Sedaris does write fiction too. Short stories. I've read a few. They're funny. But the members of the Lacuna Cabal would never read David Sedaris. They've got higher brows than that. In The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal, they read the Epic of Gilgamesh in its original Cuneiform. I'll bet David Sedaris has never written about anything like that. No. And you know why?
Because something like that has never happened to him.
But it happened to the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women's Book Club.
---Sean Dixon
Labels: Sean Dixon, The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal
Joshua Henkin's Book Club Adventures: The Latest Chapter, March 2009 Part II
 Yesterday Joshua Henkin, author of the novel Matrimony, answered one of the questions he's sometimes asked by reading group members: "How did you come up with the names of your characters?" Today he answers another question popular with the book clubs he has met with to talk about Matrimony .Another Popular Book Group Question in March: Does Teaching Writing Help Your Own Writing?The short answer is yes. I teach undergraduates and MFA students at Sarah Lawrence College and MFA students at Brooklyn College. Prior to that, I taught at Trinity College in Connecticut, and at the University of Michigan. I've also taught writing at the 92nd Street Y in New York. In one way or another, I've been teaching fiction writing since I was a graduate student, which is more than fifteen years ago now. Most writers can't make a living from their work alone, so we have day jobs. We're lawyers, doctors, secretaries, teachers, waiters, you name it. Teaching writing isn't the most lucrative option, but it has its advantages. My schedule is such that I don't have to be at an office all day; in fact, the actual number of hours I teach a week is relatively few. There's certainly a lot of work; anyone who takes teaching writing seriously has to do a lot of preparation for class. But that preparation can come late at night, after the kids have gone to bed, or any other time, really. So there are ways to carve out time to write. Even on teaching days, I'm usually able to get some writing done, and certainly on days when I don't teach. And vacation, particularly summer vacation, gives me large chunks of time when I can focus exclusively on my writing. So it's a schedule that's relatively flexible, and this is important for a writer. Then there's the question of the work itself. Different people feel differently about it. There's a certain kind of intuitive writer who, pedagogical gifts aside, wouldn't begin to know how to teach writing. You show them what they're doing right in their fiction, and they just shrug. Look, Ma, no hands, they seem to be saying. They're doing it right, but they don't know why they're doing it right; they don't even realize that they're doing it right in the first place. There's a kind of savantism at work here. That's not me. I needed to teach myself to become a more intuitive writer. That was one of the reasons I went to graduate school. And it's one of the reasons I teach writing now. For me, the way you learn to be a better writer is by reading widely, deeply, endlessly. And part of the reading I do is the reading of student work. My students aren't Chekhov, even the best of them, but some of them are very good, and even the less good ones have something to teach you. For me, figuring out what's not working in someone else's story helps me figure out what's not working in my own story. What's more, teaching is interactive, it's social, and I'm a relatively social person. Writing, on the other hand, is solitary. I spent ten years writing Matrimony, and so I was living for ten years with this small set of characters. It was incentive to make them interesting. Still, it's good to have some real people in your life as well. I have my wife and children, and my friends, but my students, thankfully, are real people too, and what's more, I get to talk with them about writing. ---Joshua Henkin Previous RGG.com Posts by Joshua Henkin: Book Club Adventures, March 2009Book Club Adventures, February 2009Book Club Adventures, February 2009 Part IIBook Club Adventures, January 2009Book Club Adventures, January 2009 Part II
Joshua Henkin's Book Club Adventures: The Latest Chapter, March 2009 Part I
 "How did you come up with the names of your characters?" Author and creative writing professor Joshua Henkin answers this question, one he has been asked by reading groups members he talked with about his novel Matrimony. Check back tomorrow for more of Josh's behind-the-scenes stories of the groups he met with in March.
March's Condensed StatisticsNumber of Book Groups Visited: 9 Number in Person: 4 Number by Phone: 4 Number Online: 1 Number of States Represented: 6 (New York, Illinois, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) Total Number of Participants, not including author: 84 Total Number of Male Participants, not including author: 1 A Popular Book Group Question in March: How Did You Come up with the Names of Your Characters?The "how did you" questions, just like the "what did you intend" questions, are very good at making a writer feel stupid. Why did you do what you did? How did you do what you did? When it comes to these things, writers are about as clueless as can be. We proceed intuitively, without a plan. It's a dream-like state, writing; you're in a kind of trance. At a reading once, someone asked me why I named the female protagonist of Matrimony Mia. The most basic --- and most obtuse --- answer is that I needed to name her something, and if I'd named her Susan, someone else would have wanted to know why I'd named her Susan. But why Mia, specifically? And why did I name my male protagonist Julian? In Julian's case, the answer is simple. In the summer of 1997, I was visiting New York, where I grew up, to give some readings from my first novel, Swimming Across the Hudson, which had recently been published, and I was invited to the Hamptons for the weekend by some friends. Staying at the same house was a couple with a five-year-old named Julian, and for some reason, that just struck me as the right name for my protagonist. What that "some reason" is is hard to say. Why do we like some names and not like others? We just do. And different names have different cultural associations. "Tiffany" suggests a different kind of character from "Priscilla" from "Jane." And cultural associations can change. I was once writing a short story with a character named Monica, and then Monica Lewinsky came along and ruined everything --- not just for Bill Clinton but for my story. I couldn't call my character Monica any longer without evoking Monica Lewinsky, and so I changed her name. The wonderful novelist Robert Cohen (read his novel Inspired Sleep) wrote an essay recently about being stuck on his new novel because he can't find the right name for his character. I sympathize. Until I get a character's name right, he or she just doesn't come into focus, and sometimes it takes months and months for me to get that name right. I've actually resorted to a baby-naming book. My wife and I used it to name real babies, but now I use it to name fictional babies, and adults. It's proved incredibly valuable. In some ways, it's the writer's best tool. ---Joshua Henkin Previous RGG.com Posts by Joshua Henkin: Book Club Adventures, February 2009Book Club Adventures, February 2009 Part IIBook Club Adventures, January 2009Book Club Adventures, January 2009 Part IILabels: Joshua Henkin, Matrimony
Vacation Reading and Other Book Selections
Jamie Layton, RGG.com contributor and manager of Duck's Cottage bookshop in North Carolina, shares some of the books she and her family enjoyed on a recent vacation --- including her book club's most recent selection and some others that would great discussion picks. Reading this post made me smile, as Jamie and I seem to travel the same way. The last rental house we were in actually had a room with bookshelves, and I was all too happy to have a place to arrange my books. Unlike Jamie, we toted everything --- and more we picked up along the way --- back with us. Whenever my family travels, be it by plane, train or automobile, we have a tendency to lug along a good twenty pounds of books. Depending on our destination and its wealth or dearth of local bookstores, we've also come home a time or two with more books than we started out with. A recent spring break to Puerto Rico was no exception.  On the five-hour drive to Washington Dulles Airport I read Giulia Melucci's I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti (which I'm also reviewing this month over on Bookreporter.com). Suffice it to say I Read It, I Loved It, I'll Be Making Spaghetti. Really, its a great little memoir of life, love and relationships interspersed with simple, scrumptious-sounding recipes I can't wait to try. This will be a great summer read! On the plane, I started The Ten-Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer, now  out in paperback and hitting bestseller lists everywhere. A very interesting look at a small group of friends who, having stayed home to raise their babies who have now reached elementary school, are discovering what comes next. I predict seeing this in many, many beach bags this season. While I was reading these books, my husband was finishing up Loch Ness Monsters and Raining Frogs: The Worlds Most Puzzling Mysteries Solved (he's into that type of thing) and then he got started on Brimstone, one of the Agent Pendergast mysteries by the team of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. We took four of these babies along, so once we hit the beach I pulled out Relic which starts the whole Pendergast series off and introduces the reader to a very interesting cast of uber-intelligent (for the most part) characters. Finishing that one up, I moved right on to book number two, Reliquary, taking a break here and there to work my way through this month's Vogue and Vanity Fair. Charlie (14) read Max, James Patterson's fifth novel in the Maximum Ride series, on the way down and was content to play on his I-touch the rest of the trip. Sarah (10) is a huge Rick Riordan fan and, since book five of his Percy & The Olympians series isn't due until May, she made due with a companion piece, The Demigod Files, sort of a guide to the whole series. She also got most of the way through book two of The 39 Clues series, One False Note.  On the first leg home I read the April book selection for the reading group we have here at Duck's Cottage. A Mercy by Toni Morrison is incredible. I loved everything about it --- the story, the setting, the characters and, omg, the voices. Morrison is a master of the written voice, and it is stunningly evident in this slender tome. It's a bestseller in hardback and will probably be even more so when it arrives in paper. The good news was that the night before we left a young couple from Philly arrived at the guest house where we were staying. One of their first questions was whether, on this tiny Puerto Rican island, we had found a bookstore. Unfortunately, there were only about six stores period on Culebra and none of them catered to the literary traveler. So before we left, we gave them everything we had finished up to that point, including the magazines. Why is this good news? Because even though this wasn't one of those trips where we bought more books on the road, we needed the room for the ten pounds of beach glass, coral and seashells that we were lugging home! ---Jamie Layton
Frank Huyler on RIGHT OF THIRST and More
Frank Huyler's novel Right of Thirst is the story of a successful cardiologist who, shattered by his wife's death and his part in it, volunteers to assist with earthquake relief in an impoverished Islamic country and instead becomes swept up in circumstances he didn't expect. In today's guest blog post, Frank shares some of his global adventures and his thoughts on reading and writing literary fiction.An emergency physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Frank is also the author of the essay collection The Blood of Strangers and the novel The Laws of Invisible Things . I think most writers rely heavily on personal experience when writing fiction, and I'm no different. I had an odd upbringing in many ways; my parents were teachers who spent their careers at various international schools, and as a result I moved around a lot to different countries, each profoundly different from the other. I had a lot of wild experiences as a kid --- listening to the crowds chanting "Allah Akbar" (God is Great) every night for hours during the Iranian revolution while the army fired automatic weapons wildly into the air; or camping in the African bush near a pride of lions, one of whom walked right by our tent in the middle of the night, breathing heavily and thoroughly terrifying my brother and me; or sailing down both the Amazon and the Nile; or climbing mount Fuji by moonlight, surrounded by pilgrims in white robes and carrying lanterns; or getting caught in a stampeding crowd in a soccer stadium in Brazil; or seeing a child struck and severely injured by a car in Bombay --- the list goes on. And yet it's a list, a random collection of experiences that remained, and perhaps still remain, in many ways unprocessed. It was all very bewildering, and though perhaps it sounds romantic, only some of it was. A lot of it, as I remember, was hot, dirty, shocking, and troubling. It gave me a strong sense that the world is a very small place, and though cultures differ, often profoundly, they are informed by basic human traits that vary little no matter where one is. As an American, much of my adult life has been defined, in various ways, by the American achievement culture. I became a doctor, a conventional choice for middle-class achievers, and soon reached my limits in that profession. Along the way, I've become increasingly suspicious of, and I think wearied by, the idea that relentless hard work, drive and discipline will lead to a successful life. I'm guilty of this myself, but as an organizing principal, it's pretty thin and narrow. A great many people in this country spend their lives competing for nebulous goals, sacrificing the present for the future with only the dimmest understanding of what it is they are sacrificing for. This collective behavior has resulted in great national prosperity relative to the rest of the world, but as recent events have shown we may not in fact be as prosperous as we thought, and all that work comes at a heavy price. For the vast majority of us, no amount of striving is likely to get us all that far in the end, yet as a culture we've fallen wholesale for the idea that individualism and relentless competition are unequivocally good things. Of course, a great many people are just trying to get by, to make their bills at the end of the month. I see more and more of them every day at work. But the goal in America is never to get by --- it's to win. Losing gets old quickly, as everyone knows, but it seems to me, in middle age at least, that winning for its own sake gets old as well, it just takes a little longer to see this and many never do. If winning gets old, then, why is there so much individual and national ambition everywhere one looks? The obvious, and perhaps easy, answer is that it’s human nature --- it's hard-wired into us. The concept of the American dream resonates because it is a human dream, not simply an American one. Unsurprisingly, China and India and all the other rising powers are now trying to do exactly what the western world has done, and they’re not asking questions either. People, it seems to me, are capable of wondrous complexity in the aggregate, but as individuals the vast majority of us really aren't very complicated at all; our hopes, desires, and fears, far more often than not, are common ones. As the saying goes, yes, you are unique --- just like everyone else in the world. One of the things I see every day as an ER doctor is how patterns of human behavior repeat themselves over and over again. The screaming, spitting drunk, tied to the gurney? Almost certainly a male between the ages of 15 and 40. Suicidal gesture? Most likely a female of the same age. Gunshot wound? Another young man, nine times out of ten. Blood test after blood test, CAT scan after CAT scan --- the counts are identical, the liver hasn't moved, the brain looks exactly like it did at the dawn of history. What does all this have to do with literary fiction? Well, for me, at the risk of seeming hopelessly earnest, fiction is serious --- it's not simply meant to entertain and amuse, but also to provoke, question, search, and ultimately synthesize experience. In many ways, I think the purpose behind reading a serious novel and writing one is the same; novels are about more than entertainment or aesthetic pleasure, although those elements are important. They are also about emotional engagement, about making sense of things, about trying to lead examined lives, perhaps even about trying to be better than we are, because after all those are human desires as well, and are arguably what’s best about us. I frankly loved writing Right of Thirst, and trying to explore themes of this sort in fictional form --- it was a great challenge and a huge amount of fun --- and I can only hope that some of you reading this will be prompted to give Right of Thirst a try. I can be contacted through my website, FrankHuyler.com, or directly at rightofthirst@gmail.com, and I'll do my best, schedule permitting, to reply to any emails I get. ---Frank Huyler
Coming Soon on the RGG.com Blog
Along with posts by our regular contributors, we'll be featuring pieces from these guest bloggers over the next several weeks... Tomorrow: Frank Huyler, author of Right of ThirstWednesday, April 29: Sean Dixon, author of The Last Days of the Lacuna CabalThursday, April 30: Deborah Johnson, author of The Air Between UsTuesday, May 5: C. W. Gortner, author of The Last QueenClick here to read Gortner's previous guest blog post. Wednesday, May 6: Brian O'Dea, author of High: Confessions of an International Drug SmugglerThursday, May 7: Julie P., founder of the Booking Mama blogFriday, May 8: Lynne Griffin, author of Life Without SummerClick here to read Lynne's previous guest blog post. Monday, May 11: Donigan Merritt, author of The Common Bond, reports from the Argentina Book Fair Tuesday, May 12: Janelle Brown, author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO
Heather Johnson's book club had a change of scenery for their last gathering. They attended an event featuring Junot Diaz, whose novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was their most recent selection. Heather recalls Diaz's colorful talk and what insight it provided for their discussion of the book. Quick personal note here. Last November I wanted to see Junot Diaz at the Miami Book Fair, but the room was filled to capacity before I got to that panel and thus I missed seeing him. Last week he spoke at Fordham University, where my son is a freshman. It was a wonderful opportunity for the students studying the book to hear from him about what informed his writing --- and interact with him, but since it was a class event I could not attend. (For the record, his language was just as salty there as he was in the post that Heather describes below, which amused my son given the academic setting.) He will be appearing at the American Library Association conference in Chicago this July. I plan to attend. May the third time be a charm.
 My book club's most recent read was The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and, as luck would have it, Junot Diaz was scheduled to speak at the CityLit Festival in Baltimore this month. We decided to plan our meeting to include his talk, followed by lunch and discussion at a nearby restaurant. This is definitely a departure from our normal meeting style, but we figured we were due for a change.
I don't think any of us knew what to expect when we began reading Oscar Wao. We knew it was getting lots of buzz in the book community, we knew it had won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2008, and we knew it was about an overweight Dominican sci-fi nerd...but that's about it.
The reality is that this book almost defies explanation. It is the story of Oscar, but it is also the story of his family. It is the story of his family, but it is also the story of the Dominican Republic under the dictator Trujillo. It includes a host of sci-fi and fantasy illusions, but it relates them to reality, to Trujillo, to every aspect of Oscar's --- and his family's --- life. It is a Dominican story, complete with an abundance of Spanish and traditional Dominican stereotypes. It is a story of the streets, full of profanity and slang. The title is a nod to Ernest Hemingway's The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Talk about some strange and varying elements, right?!
Diaz was certainly a big draw for the Festival. The auditorium was packed to the gills, and the audience was very interested and engaged. People of all ages (excluding small children) were there, including a 9th grade English class brought by their teacher. I was a bit shocked by Diaz's language --- he's just as "colorful" in person as his narrator is in Oscar Wao --- but I really enjoyed myself all the same.
One of the things our club found challenging was the profusion of Spanish in the text. During his talk, Diaz addressed this issue. He joked that the Spanish wasn't there to make English-speakers "FEEL the immigration, sucka!" Rather, it was there as an invitation to engage other people who are out of your normal circle. He explained that his mom would understand all the Dominican references but that she'd never get all the sci-fi stuff --- she'd have to talk to a "geek" to understand that part of the story. "Groups that wouldn't normally interact are forced to talk to each other to understand the novel," said Diaz. For me, this was a very intriguing thought and it definitely added to my understanding and appreciation of the book.
After hearing Diaz speak we walked from the huge downtown library where the event was held, on a gorgeous spring day, to a local pub. Over lunch we discussed both the book and what Diaz had to say. Some of our topics were the use of sci-fi/fantasy allusions, writing about a culture you are familiar with, the use of street slang, the character of Beli (Oscar's mother), the treatment and imagery of women, and the meaning of the book's title. One gal pointed out that, for her, this book had the same subversive feel as The Catcher in the Rye. We all agreed that hearing an author talk about his book provides a great deal of insight into the novel and that the trip was well worth our time.
Has your club ever attended an event like this as a group? Or maybe you've done it on your own? Did hearing the author change your impression of the book for better or worse? Late summer and early fall are the times for most book festivals across the country...maybe your club would consider attending a local festival together or reading a book whose author will be featured at that event. There's certainly time enough to plan ahead!
---Heather Johnson
Repeat Authors
In conjunction with this month's poll on ReadingGroupGuides.com, we asked recipients of the registered book clubs newsletter if they have ever selected more than one work by an author. We share the top five repeat authors below, along with some book club members commentary. If you'd like to take part in the poll, it's open until the end of April. Many thanks to everyone who sent us their repeat author picks! Does your group have any others to share? Please let us know in the comments section. TOP 5 REPEAT AUTHORSJodi PicoultSue Monk KiddWilla CatherSandra DallasAnne TylerBOOK CLUB COMMENTARY  "Our book club has read a number of Lorna Landvik's books: Patty Jane's House of Curl, Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons and Oh My Stars (one of my favorites). Next month we'll be reading The View from Mount Joy. We have also read both of Sue Monk Kidd's books and Anita Diamant's The Red Tent and The Last Days of Dogtown. Most of the time our book selection is by recommendation or the books talked about on your site, but Lorna Landvik's books are probably a favorite among some of our members." --Janet "Our book club is the French River Readers, and this is our sixth year! We read all types of books, but we've only re-read a few authors. One is a Minnesota author William Kent Krueger, who writes a series set in northern Minnesota, very close to where we all live; most of us have actually read his entire work, and we've discussed two of them in book club. We also have read multiple books by Nevada Barr, who sets her stories in national parks. This month we are reading our second book by C. S. Lewis: The Screwtape Letters. Earlier we read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." --Carol
Borders Hosts Discussions of THE FRIDAY NIGHT KNITTING CLUB
 Do you want to talk about The Friday Night Knitting Club with other bibliophiles? Borders and WaldenBooks stores nationwide are hosting discussions of Kate Jacobs' bestselling novel next Thursday, April 23rd, at 7 p.m. All readers are welcome, whether members of a book club or not. The event is part of an initiative to reinvigorate and expand the Borders Book Club program. Their website features book club resources and video interviews with Kate Jacobs, Kelly Corrigan --- author of the memoir The Middle Place --- and other writers. Click here to read a Q&A we recently did with Kate Jacobs. She talks about friendship, knitting and much more.
Vanora Bennett: Breaking the Glass Ceiling in the Middle Ages
Historical novelist Vanora Bennett muses on what modern-day women have in common with the main character in Figures in Silk, a successful London businesswoman during the Middle Ages. Vanora is also the author of Portrait of an Unknown Woman, a novel set in sixteenth-century England. However comprehensively our consciousnesses have been raised by generations of feminism, women still have a way to go. We still don't quite have half the top jobs, or half the wealth. This may be because we're still running into glass ceilings put in place by other people, which stop us reaching the heights we aspire to in the workplace. Or, with some women, it may be because the glass ceilings are inside their own heads. Sometimes, if you ask a woman about her work, she'll react with self-deprecating murmurings, a dismissive flap of a hand, and a faint pinkness about the cheeks --- a response that looks almost like shyness. What, li'l old me? Perhaps because I've occasionally caught myself doing this shy, modest thing, I really enjoyed writing the heroine of my current novel, Figures in Silk. Isabel is a gutsy gal. After an early brush with tough career women, she decides her best chance of happiness in life is not through love, but through building an adventurous business of her own. Then she goes out and does it. She's often baffled by love, when it does come into her life, but she embraces her own bright, enterprising, creative ruthlessness right from the start. I think this quality in Isabel makes her attitude to her working life, and the emphasis she places on it, a good subject for reading groups --- something that is still of concern to every woman, more than five centuries later. Isabel's business acumen is a rather surprising attribute for a character in a story about the Middle Ages. The story is set in medieval London --- not a place you'd normally associate with enlightenment and opportunity for women. But, strangely enough, it turns out that the fifteenth century was rather a good time to be female and ambitious. The Black Death a century earlier had shrunk the population of Europe by a third. There'd been wars across the continent ever since, wiping out swathe after swathe more men. So there were scarcely enough people, of either sex, to do the jobs and trades that still needed doing. And as a result, women got more of a crack at doing them than usual. I was already aware that, with the husbands away at war, wives of the knightly class might run family estates that were the medieval equivalent of a sizeable business, and appoint priests, and preside at the local law court. But what I didn't realize until I started researching this book was that this freedom sometimes also extended to the women of the middle classes of the day --- the merchant caste, living in towns. One of the leading merchant trades was that of mercery, trading in cloth. Because the top end of the mercers' trade was the luxury textile product of the fifteenth century, silk, and women with delicate fingers were dominant as silk workers, it wasn't uncommon for mercers to be married to silkwomen. The silk-women, just like their men, took on apprentices (girls in the silk business) and trained them for a decade or more. They might trade "couvert de baron" --- with their husbands responsible for their debts --- or, more daringly, as "femmes soles," responsible for themselves. And, in the case of several real-life women who made a lot of money for themselves out of the silk trade in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, among them Isabel Fleet, Isabel Frowyck and Alice Claver, they got the biggest, most prestigious contracts of their day --- with the court --- and made fortunes that set them at the forefront of the City's male oligarchy. This female breathing-space came to a natural end when the Tudor dynasty came to the throne of England at the tail end of the fifteenth century. The Wars of the Roses ended. And the return of peace and prosperity, for men, meant, paradoxically enough, that there were fewer opportunities for women. They had to wait till the late nineteenth century for their next attempt to get economic and political freedom. It's still sometimes suggested that modern women would be happier performing "traditional" roles in the home, rather than trying to go out into the "world of men." I liked the quiet way that this story turned that notion on its head, reminding us that, right through the ages, there've also been women with a dream they wanted to follow at any price. ---Vanora Bennett
Sarah Addison Allen: Magical Comforts
Sarah Addison Allen, today's guest blogger, talks about how the comforts of books, food and friendship enjoyed by the characters in her most recent novel, The Sugar Queen, are the same ones that hold many book clubs together. And be sure to visit Sarah's website, where five winners will be able to indulge their sweet tooth with the Sugar Queen Candy Contest. Now who can resist that? Food always seems to find its way into what I write. My first novel, Garden Spells, involves the culinary art of edible flowers. My third novel, scheduled for release in 2010, explores the decidedly unique experience of North Carolina barbeque. But it's The Sugar Queen, my second novel now out in paperback, that will always hold a special place in my heart...because it is my ode to candy. I am a candy addict. It's my comfort. My stress reliever. I remember once, after a particularly bad day at work, I couldn't wait to get home to a new pack of red licorice I knew I had there. Seriously. I daydreamed about it all day. Visions of Twizzlers danced in my head. But for some, it's not candy but books that give comfort. For these people, it's the thought of that new release waiting for them on the night stand that gets them through the day. For others, stress relief comes in the form of camaraderie with friends, looking forward to that upcoming girls' night out. I explore all three of these comforts, with a magical spin, in The Sugar Queen. There's a character in the novel who is so embarrassed by her passion for sweets that she feels she has to hide what she loves most. Another character mysteriously attracts books. And another strange character with a fairy godmother complex brings them all together to forge surprising friendships. The nice symmetry here is that books, food and friendship are not just magical comforts found in The Sugar Queen --- they are the magic behind every book club I've ever been a part of. It's not just the book discussion, it's the eating and the camaraderie, the magic that comes when three of life's greatest pleasures come together. So, in celebration of food, friendship and books --- and just in time for the new paperback release of The Sugar Queen --- I'm giving away autographed bookplates and party favors to spring and summer book clubs. I'm also holding a contest open to everyone to give away free candy. It's all on my newly redesigned website SarahAddisonAllen.com. Come check it out. Happy reading, and may your summer be filled with delicious anticipation. ---Sarah Addison Allen
Lynne Griffin: Writing LIFE WITHOUT SUMMER
Today's guest blogger, Lynne Griffin, is a family life expert, a parenting columnist and the author of Negotiation Generation: Take Back Your Parental Authority Without Punishment. Here she shares why she chose to write a fictional story, Life Without Summer, rather than a self-help book on grief --- and why some readers find solace in the pages of novels. I've been a family life expert for more than twenty years, and there's so much about my work counseling women, teaching parents and observing children that inspired my first novel. Life Without Summer weaves together the lives of Tessa, a young mother who has lost her four-year-old daughter in a hit and run accident outside her preschool, and Celia, the grief counselor who tries to help her put her life back together. As Celia struggles to keep Tessa from getting caught up in a bleak crusade for answers, she finds that their sessions open the door to emotions she's spent years ignoring. As a parenting columnist and the author of a nonfiction parenting guide, Negotiation Generation, I always knew I would write a book about the different kinds of loss that affect parents, though I thought for sure it would be nonfiction. Then the idea for Life Without Summer came to me in its entirety, a story about two women who had experiences that echoed one another's. From day one, I knew the first line and the last line of the novel, and they've never changed. I also knew right from the beginning who was responsible for the chain of events leading up to the tragedy. Though it was a difficult character to assign the role to, I've never wavered in my commitment to tell the story as it came to me. Many women turn to self-help books, and for them, there are a lot of wonderful resources about loss available. Yet some women look for solace in relating to fictional characters, ones who give voice to how they feel; who allow them to escape from their own pain and at the same time still feel connected. I've always sought out reading fiction for that purpose, and I guess I wanted to explore this type of loss without being prescriptive. With something as deeply personal as losing a child, I wanted to write my way to the heart of the experience. I believe Life Without Summer captures the authentic experience of grief, both the universal and personal aspects of it. Though I've never lost a child, I admit to being gripped by the fear it could happen to me. What ifs have been known to have their way with me. I've felt the foreboding a mother feels when her daughter sniffles, coughs, trips or falls. I understand the woman who panics when her son is late coming home from school. Writing this story gave me the chance to explore the fears that plague mothers. In this fictional account of the very real experiences two women face when their parental identity is shaken and loss threatens to break up more than just one family, parents can learn so much about healthy coping, what it takes to live again after the death of a child. In truth, Life Without Summer started off as a portrait of two women whose lives converge unexpectedly after a tragedy, but it became so much more. It's about the choices people make when faced with unbelievable pain. It's about what really holds relationships together when they're tested. It's about the choice we all have to forgive. As a counselor, I've always been struck by the healthy and unhealthy ways grief work gets done. As a novelist, I found a way to offer hope to others who may be afraid and to comfort those who know loss intimately. Readers ask me why the novel is told through Tessa's and Celia's journal entries. The act of journal writing has its roots in cognitive-behavioral counseling. When a counselor wants to encourage internal reflection, he or she often recommends writing down thoughts, feelings and actions. It gives the person journaling an outlet for intense emotion, and it gives them a chance to reflect later, on personal growth over time. I love to journal, and I've used it a great deal in my work with families, so I wasn't surprised that this was the way the story came to me. I chose it because it allowed me to give readers a very up close and personal account of the grief experience, from not one, but two different women's points of view. Like the women in my novel, I've felt the incredible longing to be whole again after losing a loved one, to be the person I was before grief introduced herself to me. Whether you've experienced loss or know someone who has, I invite you to escape into a story that reverberates universal themes about the connections between love and marriage and truth and forgiveness. In Life Without Summer, the strongest message is that there is hope in healing. ---Lynne Griffin
Talking with Kate Jacobs
Today we have a Q&A with Kate Jacobs, the author of Comfort Food, The Friday Night Knitting Club and its sequel, Knit Too, who talks with some 40 book clubs every month. She reveals how chats have differed depending on what sections of the country book clubs are in, what she has discovered about the camaraderie of reading groups...and whether she minds if readers knit during discussions of her novels. ReadingGroupGuides.com: You've talked with hundreds of reading groups about your three novels. What do you enjoy most about interacting with book clubs?
Kate Jacobs: About forty clubs each and every month --- that's how many I call. That's a lot of women when you think that clubs can often have 10 or even 20 members. And I love how we have an opportunity to make that personal connection, even find common experiences. I'm very open about my life and that I think of myself as a Canadian-born New Yorker who just happens to live in the Southern California suburbs with her husband and dog. I learn so much from book groups, about what aspects of the story resonated most or more personal anecdotes about their joys and struggles. Though the chitchat depends on the group; sometimes I hear "you remind me of my daughter!" and they give me sage advice on how to make my husband pick up his socks; other times I chat with women who are in their thirties as I am, and we share many of the same cultural references. We typically end up laughing a lot. Clubs are similar --- the power of women coming together --- and yet each is unique. It's a wonderful treat to be able to talk to so many different groups from all over. RGG: Why do you think your stories have struck such a chord with book clubs? What themes and topics do they particularly like to discuss from your novels?
KJ: My books treat women's friendship as a relationship that is just as important as family relationships, as romances. Friendship is deserving of attention and exploration --- and so we often talk about their friendships and how their groups formed. The manner in which th  e characters connect can sometimes mirror how these real women come together; that brings in a personal aspect. I also write a lot about career --- especially in Comfort Food --- and about how hard it is to be understood when you are a smart, strong woman. Sometimes during book clubs we talk about the lure of reconnecting with old friends, as Cat and Georgia do in The Friday Night Knitting Club. In fact, several readers have shared how reading that book inspired them to contact friends they hadn't spoken to in 10, 20, even 30 years! One reader told me that Comfort Food made her realize that waiting too long can make you miss life's chances. For any writer, it is moving to know that your words have affected another person. It means so much. RGG: All of your books explore the importance of women's friendships. What have you discovered about the camaraderie of reading groups and what they have to offer beyond book discussions?
KJ: I think we're all overwhelmed with the work-life juggle. I know I am! I always write "take a nap" on my to-do list, but somehow that's the one thing that rarely happens. It's hard to get away from what you "have to do" and find time for a little of what you "want to do." Reading groups provide a place to get together and be yourself --- not somebody's boss, not somebody's employee, not somebody's wife, not somebody's mother --- but just you. That inner person who thinks and has ideas and loves to laugh and could also use a little support from other women who are dealing with the same issues. Absolutely, the readers talk about the books in detail. They explore themes, they disagree about plot points and they differ in their favorite characters. But they also talk about real life, and they see each other through the ups and downs of life. Eventually, when you meet with the same group on a regular basis, you all grow to know each other well. And that provides a comfort all its own. RGG: You've mentioned that your chats with clubs can differ depending on what region of the country they're in. What can you tell us about this?
KJ: It intrigues me how our regional differences come across not just in our accents, but in topic. Clubs in the South always want to talk about what the characters eat --- or what special dishes they have made for club --- and they frequently invite me to stay at their homes when I do book signings nearby. I'm not joking! They are truly that welcoming. Midwestern clubs often give me a weather report before we begin talking --- it's snowy today, sun came out, and so on. Now, I'm originally from Canada, and all Canadians begin conversations with a discussion of the weather, so this strikes me as quite normal. But it's consistent, and that's what really gets my attention. New Yorkers? I love New Yorkers. Straight to the point, and they don't mince words. They let me know any time a character does something they don't agree with --- and they also are effusive in their praise. When they like a book, they love a book, and they cheer me on all the way. Quite frankly, all of the clubs I telephone are terrific: I'm delighted to have a chance to thank them personally for reading my novels. And they kindly let me into their lives for a little bit, and that's a generous gift.  RGG: Knitting is a key theme in your books. Does this come up as a topic when you meet with groups? Have any of the women in the groups been knitting during your meetings?
KJ: Women knit everywhere --- so it's no surprise that they knit during reading groups and during book signings. And I wouldn't have it any other way! A reader once asked me if I minded that she did her knitting while I spoke; I told her that if no one was knitting in the crowd I would wonder if I'd gone to the wrong place! Some book clubs have learned to knit together after reading The Friday Night Knitting Club and Knit Two; others have simply learned to appreciate a passion of one of their members. RGG: What one or two especially memorable book club moments can you share with us?
KJ: Recently, I called a group and the hostess answered the phone and announced, "This is Kate Jacobs" because she had wanted it to be a surprise. Well, one of the club members shouted, "I know that's Marie. It sounds just like her! Pretending to be the author..." and grumbling so on and so forth. So there I was, insisting I was really me, and for several moments no one --- other than the hostess, with whom I'd been emailing --- believed it. That was pretty funny. We had a huge laugh once I'd convinced them it was me on the phone!
Sandra Gulland: How a Book Club Changed Me as a Writer
 Book clubs typically read and discuss an author's work after it's published. Sandra Gulland calls on some lucky groups to offer feedback on her novels before they hit the shelves --- including her latest, Mistress of the Sun, which imagines the life of Louise de la Valliere, mistress of Louis XIV. In today's guest blog post, she shares why she finds these book club critique sessions so important.
Sandra is also the author of a trilogy about Josephine Bonaparte: The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B., Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe and The Last Great Dance on Earth. And if you're planning a book club jaunt to France, on her website she shares suggestions for places to visit related to her novels.
A meeting with a particular book club in 1997 was enormously important for me, a turning point in the way I worked as a writer. My first novel, The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B., had been published a few years before and I was in the last stages of writing the second in the trilogy, Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe. I'm in the habit of giving the manuscript to readers at various states for critical feedback, but somehow, I didn't feel it was enough. Long before, in my previous life as an editor of novels for young adults, I would pull together groups of teens to discuss a manuscript. What I learned from these discussions invariably astonished me. I wanted that intense editorial focus now, for my own novel. Driving home from the book club meeting, it suddenly came to me: book clubs were what I was looking for. Book clubs were ideal critical readers. I contacted my publisher the next day: would it be possible to set this up? No problem! A group was contacted: they were thrilled. My publisher made the required number of copies and sent them off. As with my teen reader groups, I instructed the book club to tape-record their discussion. I sent them a letter, briefly telling them what I needed to know: where the story slows down, where the reader begins to skim. Of course I also wanted to know the parts of the story they loved, but that would come of itself, in their talk. A month or so later, I got a slim cassette in the mail. Anxiously, I put it into the tape player and listened --- listened to a book club discussing my book. I listened without moving through all of it. There was joy expressed, squeals of shared delight over certain scenes, but there were also groans of dismay over certain sections. I felt sick. I went to bed and hid under the covers. The manuscript was due in a few days: how could I fix it? As the sun came up the next morning, I grabbed the manuscript, pulled it into bed with me and began reading. Suddenly, I understood. "No wonder they were having trouble!" I thought. The opening chapters were turgid, slow-going. That day, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. The opening chapters were slashed. I retrieved an earlier, better opening, revised it and set it in place. I went through the tape a second time, listening for other spots of difficulty. I read through my pages, evaluated, decided and revised. In days, a new, and much, much improved Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe was ready to send out. I have since made it a practice to have not one but two book clubs review a manuscript at the very last editorial stage. My editor tells me I'm brave. Rather, I'm a coward. I would hate to have a novel go out into the world without first having being strengthened by this "test of fire." Better before publication, than after, when it's too late to make changes. ---Sandra Gulland
Robert Goolrick: Writing A RELIABLE WIFE
Robert Goolrick's A Reliable Wife has garnered a lot of fans here at ReadingGroupGuides.com and elsewhere. Last month librarians Sonja Somerville, Robin Beerbower and Elizabeth Hughes shared their opinions of the novel. I've selected it as my latest Bookreporter.com Bets On title --- it has a plot that continually delivers and propels the story faster and faster until the final page. It's a brilliant book. Read on to find out what insight Goolrick has to share about A Reliable Wife . I believe that goodness is the only thing that matters. It is the only thing we have to give to our friends and lovers; it is all we will be remembered for after we're gone. It is the soul's wallet, all we have to spend on any given day. In A Reliable Wife, I wanted to write a novel about lives that yearn for goodness the way plants bend toward the light. These people are not, at the outset, good people. They have done bad things, they have lived thoughtlessly and they find themselves bankrupt, with only the faintest glimmers of hope left in their hearts. For Ralph Truitt, that hope comes in the form of an ad he places for a mail order bride, not because he has any hope left for romance, but because he wants to restore something that was lost to him, a home, a household, a family. For Catherine Land, her hope takes the perverse form of pure greed. She will not live, she says, without love or money. But what she truly wants --- to find a lost sister and to redeem a ravaged childhood --- are not the things she thinks she wants. And Antonio Moretti is also looking for vengeance for his lost childhood. Of them all, he is the one who has most completely abandoned hope, and thrown himself into a life of transitory pleasures. But what he wants, as they all do, are the simplest things. They want to be clean again, they want the honesty and simplicity of love. The story plays out in the bleak winter of 1907 in the barren snowy landscape of Wisconsin, a landscape that amazed me during my trips there --- the lack of comfort, of warmth --- and it was created both out of personal experience, and through a rereading of Michael Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip, first published 35 years ago, a brilliant and important work. I didn't intend A Reliable Wife to be an historical novel. The fact that it's set in 1907 is merely a device to isolate the characters in a temporal as well as geographical way. It was a time, like ours, when madness and machinery were baring their fangs, but it is not meant to be an explication of that or any period in our history. The loss of innocence in childhood is a subject which moves me deeply, as anybody who has read my memoir, The End of the World As We Know It, can understand. Childhood was lost to me, and can never be replaced, as it can never be fully restored to Catherine, Ralph and Antonio. No matter how hard they try. But other things can fill the void. When I was a child, I read one of my sister's books, The Park that Spring Forgot, first published in the early '40s. In it, there is a bleak garden to which spring, for some inexplicable reason, does not come one year. The narrative is about the effort to find Spring herself, and bring her back to the garden. In the end, she returns and, as she walks over the dead grass, the garden miraculously returns to life. This scene stuck in my mind, a symbol that what was lost to me could somehow miraculously be restored, and became the final scene in A Reliable Wife. It is not just greenery and blossom that return; it is hope and order and possibility. The syntax of the book was also heavily influenced by the great American poet Walt Whitman, whose work I devoured in the course of writing the novel. There is no one more expansive, more loving of the universe as a whole and America in particular than Whitman. He wrote the words I use as an epigraph of the book: Be not dishearten'd --- Affection shall solve the problems
Of Freedom yet;
Those who love each other shall become invincible.Life is ambiguous, and goodness is often elusive. It usually takes unexpected and more muddled forms than we had hoped for. But, in even the most damaged and corrupt soul, it still lies waiting, like the wintry park in my sister's book. Its return, its springing to life again, in all its simplicity and affection, is everything. Not everyone can be saved. For some the effort is too great and the chance comes too late. But some can. And when the moment of saving grace comes, it comes to stay, and it is the great miracle. The great, great miracle. ---Robert Goolrick
Stefan Merrill Block: Stories Waiting to Be Told
Stefan Merrill Block's debut novel, The Story of Forgetting (on sale today in paperback), depicts one family's poignant battle with Alzheimer's. In today's guest blog post, Stefan shares what interests him the most about The Story of Forgetting being discussed by book clubs.  Again and again, in these weeks leading up to the paperback release of The Story of Forgetting, I find myself launched into flashback, conjuring an image of myself just four years ago: a broke 23-year-old Texan, renting half a bed in a shabby Brooklyn apartment, daily burying myself deeper in pages and in debt. It's hard to convey the vertiginous mix of gratification and gratitude I feel, four years later, to have my book read and discussed by thoughtful readers and their book clubs. As an avid reader myself, I see the rising popularity of book clubs as a powerful, hopeful rebuttal of the common, cynical lament that, in this culture of distractions, literary fiction is a dying form; the success of sites like this one prove that readers, in large numbers, still want books that will surprise and challenge them. Though The Story of Forgetting is about many things --- family, inheritance, isolation, Texas, adolescence, lost love (to name a few) --- again and again, in bookstores, in literary festivals, in emails from readers, and in book clubs, people have approached me to tell me about their own experiences with Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Many of these readers, I think, share with me the fundamental feeling that compelled me to produce this book: the lonely sense that stories dealing with dementia are too rarely represented in mainstream media, the frustration that there is little with which I can compare the dark pathos, occasional humor and deep meaning I've found in my own experiences of losing loved ones to Alzheimer's. The relative lack of depictions of dementia in novels and in films still baffles me, as it seems that nearly everyone has their own stories of witnessing or experiencing major mental deterioration, stories that can often transmit (even to those who don't have personal experience with neurological disease) major insight into how our minds are formed. This is what excites me most about the possibility of The Story of Forgetting being read by book clubs: that, by discussing my particular story of Alzheimer's in these public forums, it could provide an opportunity to release many, many extraordinary stories of harrowing loss that I know are waiting to be told. ---Stefan Merrill Block
Walking & Talking About Books
General book discussion groups are cropping up everywhere --- informally talking about a range of books rather than one specific title. I recently had an impromptu chat on Facebook with several people about Robert Goolrick's A Reliable Wife. (Look for Robert's post here on the blog later this week.) And the Somerset Public Library in Somerset, Massachusetts, recently launched an informal book chat group. Today we hear from Patti McFarland, the owner of Book Tales in Encinitas, California, who has started The Literary Walking Companions. Participants burn off calories while discussing whatever books they'd like. Patti tells us about their inaugural outing and what advice she has for those might want to start their own "walk and talk" group.ReadingGroupGuides.com: What inspired you to start The Literary Walking Companions?Patti McFarland: I was inspired to start the Literary Walking Companions as a spin-off of the Used Bookstore Crawls that I hosted last year. People enjoyed them so much. I thought, with everyone saving a penny here and there, that a free thing to do would be good. Everyone who attended our first walk enjoyed it greatly. So, a good start! RGG.com: What is it about the combination of walking and talking about books that you think appeals to participants? PM: The ambiance and safety of walking in downtown Encinitas certainly helps maintain a relaxed mood. The Companions feel that they can freely talk about their favorite books and authors while doing something healthy for themselves. RGG.com: What books were discussed? PM: I was interested to find out that the favorite was The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, with The Red Tent by Anita Diamant close behind. I discussed David Gemmell's new historical trilogy, Troy. Also, Neuromancer by William Gibson got some talking time. RGG.com: Did people tend to stay on topic? How did you steer the conversation back to books, if necessary?
PM: After introductions by the participants, it was fairly easy to stay on topic as everyone had something to say about it, even to the point of casting the actors for the film versions. If some group wanted to gather for walking and talking sessions about books, don't talk about just one book, as in a reading group, but let everyone free-wheel. People and what they read are fascinating, amazing and enjoyable. And they feel the stories, profoundly. I can't fail to be interested. RGG.com: What advice or tips do you have for groups of individuals who would like to start their own walk-and-talk book sessions?PM: A safe place to walk for an hour is very important, as it is difficult to focus if one has to watch out for pan-handlers and inebriated folk; yes, even in the morning! I can't read everything (who can?), and so I appreciate the opinions and insights that the Companions express.
What You're Reading: Spring and Summer Picks
Creating Community with Laurie R. King's Virtual Book Club
 In a guest post on ReadingGroupGuides.com, Laurie R. King talked about the Virtual Book Club (VBC) on her website. Today Vicki VanValkenburgh, the administrator of the VBC, shares her story with us --- her lifelong love of reading, why she had to be  convinced to read Laurie's novel The Beekeeper's Apprentice and how she came to helm the online book club.The Beekeeper's Apprentice , Laurie R. King's first Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes novel, is available as a free PDF download at TheBeeisFree.com until April 15th. It's part of "Fifteen Weeks of Bees," a celebration commemorating the 15th anniversary of the novel's publication. The next book in the series, The Lanfuage of Bees , arrives in store on April 28th.When I tell people that I run an online book club for mystery author Laurie R. King, I usually get asked some variation on the question "How on earth did you fall into that?" I mean, it's not like being a lawyer (been there, done that), an accountant, a nurse or any of the more customary jobs, after all. The answer is specific to my own experience, but it reflects more generally the amazing power of the Internet to bring books, authors and readers together in a way that was never possible before. But the Internet was not even on the horizon when I was born in 1966. Paper technology ruled the day, and I soon realized that those symbols the grown-ups peered at in books and newspapers meant something. And I wanted to know the secret of decoding them! After plowing through alphabet and phonetics sufficiently to crack the code, my life --- on a certain level --- really began. I read everything I could get my hands on. If there wasn't a book, I'd read a magazine. If no magazine, then a newspaper. If no newspaper, I'd make do with the small print and lurid warnings of bug-spray cans from under the sink. I read until the wee hours in the shaft of hall-light that fell across the end of my bed. I read with a book perched under my desk in class. I read in the car (motion sickness notwithstanding), and even in the bathtub, discovering that if you apply heavy rocks to a drenched library book, it tends to dry with pages that are about one-half as wavy as the pages in books left to dry on their own (if also somewhat harder to separate). Books took me all over this world and to others as well. They took me to places in the past, present and future, to events real and imagined. But what I loved best about books were the wonderful people in them. Fierce, intelligent Jo March and her sisters; spoiled Mary Lennox and her equally insufferable and neglected cousin, who helped and healed each other by tending a secret garden; gawky, insecure Meg Murry and her brilliant little brother Charles Wallace, who leapt through dimensions on the backs of angels to save their father. But there was always one thing missing in reading, and that was a sense of shared experience. Part of the fun of seeing a new movie, for instance, is comparing impressions, exchanging favorite scenes or quotes, getting a t-shirt and showing your support. Much of the allure in being a sports fan is in gathering with other fans to cheer on the team, wearing the team colors, doing The Wave. There simply wasn't any equivalent in books for that sort of thing. I knew other book-mad kids, of course, but they usually liked different sorts of books, hadn't read my favorites, or had read them so long ago, their enthusiasm had dimmed over time. It was very disheartening. Even when I joined book groups as an adult, while I found stimulating discussions and books that stretched my reading muscles, I still never found exactly what I'd long found missing from the reading experience --- that contagious sense of enthusiasm and excitement about particular books. But in the late 1990s, two things combined to create a seismic shift in my world. First, home Internet access became easier to obtain for technologically-challenged folks in flyover country, so I ordered my dial-up access and started finding my way around. Second, I read an article about a children's book series storming the country by way of little more than playground word-of-mouth. It featured a young orphan who discovers that he is a wizard and is whisked away from his horrible guardians to a wizarding school. The funny thing was, the article noted, parents were reading the books, too and even going online to talk about them with kids and other parents. So I got the first two Harry Potter books, enjoyed them to bits, and went online looking to see what people were saying about them. One of the first sites I found was the Unofficial Harry Potter Fan Club (may it rest in peace) where there were hundreds of discussions on different aspects of the Harry Potter series --- spells, quidditch, character relationships and speculations about what would happen in future books. And in a matter of moments, the Internet morphed in my mind from a place to shop, read the news, get email and find movie gossip to the sort of living, social extension of my reading life I'd wanted from the time I could stumble through a Dr. Suess book. It was my first real revelation of what the internet could make possible for readers. One of the discussion threads I joined at the Harry Potter forum was based on Philip Pullman's fascinating His Dark Materials trilogy. The thread itself became a mini-community, and eventually its own forum, with a hundred or so kids and moms jabbering about HDM and other books. In early 2001, we heard that Philip Pullman himself would be visiting a site called Readerville.com, a large community of book lovers, to talk about the HDM trilogy, and we flew over to join in the fun. There, I saw the power of connecting readers not only to other readers but also to their most beloved authors. For those of us who had never dreamed of talking to an author outside of the occasional book-signing, that was an astonishing thing. After the Philip Pullman visit, many of us from the HDM forum stayed at Readerville and formed the core of what would become its Young Adult Reading Group. It grew to several hundred members, and we began voting on our monthly selections, with the authors of the chosen books invited to join. It was about this time that several of the teens in the group started twisting my arm to read The Beekeeper's Apprentice. This was not something I wanted to do, given that I had a TBR skyscraper of books that I actually wanted to read. I reasoned with them: I hate bugs, I said, especially the ones that sting. I's not really about bees, they said. I don't read mysteries, I said --- if somebody's murdered, call the cops and leave me out of it. You'll like it anyway, they said. Sherlock Holmes is in it, I said. Sherlock Holmes is a jerk. No, he's wonderful, they said, guaranteeing that I'd like him before the first chapter was done. I'm so behind on my other books, I said. Just try one chapter, they said. So I did --- and was absolutely hooked from page one by the story of young Mary Russell and her mentor, Sherlock Holmes. I didn't stop reading until I had to get the kids ready for school the next morning. That night, I went out and bought the rest of the series and read them all in every available second I had free, after which I was a staggering, sleep-deprived, but very happy biblio-zombie. In Russell, I met another literary orphan who, like Harry Potter, burst forth fully formed from the author's head, with her own scars, insecurities and even her own horrible guardian. And as Harry does at Hogwarts, she finds a form of salvation and escape through her training with Holmes, training that develops her brilliant mind and enormous abilities, putting them to good use. And also like Harry, Mary Russell would have an impact on my own journey. When The Beekeeper's Apprentice was chosen as a monthly selection, we invited the author, Laurie R. King, to participate. She did so, and was an outstanding guest, offering thoughtful and and informative answers to questions, keeping everyone laughing and involved, and even fending off a Sherlockian heckler with good-natured aplomb. Several years later, Laurie emailed me to see if I might be interested in running a book club on her site, as I'd helped lead the discussion she visited at Readerville. Being in a transitional phase of sorts at the time, I jumped at the chance. And the Laurie R. King Virtual Book Club was formed, bringing together Laurie's readers from all over the world to discuss her books and many others. We have a wonderful time talking online and even have real-life meetups at events like Bouchercon and Left Coast Crime. And it's funny, but when we get together, it really is like we've known each other for years and years --- even if we've never met face to face. There is a spirit of kinship and community that comes not only from being readers, I think, but also from what draws us to Laurie's writing --- a good sense of humor, curiosity, an appreciation for intelligence, learning, history and ideas, as well as a sense of adventure and of being part of a bigger world. They are "my people" in a fundamental way that is rare to find in any group. I feel lucky not only because I'm alive in a time when this kind of community is possible, but also because I know what it's like not to have such an amazing ability to connect with other readers and authors. Because of that, I don't think I'll ever take it for granted --- I'll always have a little piece of the wonder I experienced the first time I visited that Harry Potter forum and realized that the walls between readers were gone. That if I wanted to talk about a favorite book, author or character, it was likely that I might never have to go wanting again. And as icing on the cake, I can finally have those bookish t-shirts I always wanted! Do any of you have online book groups that have had a big impact on you or changed your life? I'd be interested to hear some of your stories, too. ---Vicki VanValkenburgh
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What is your book club reading? How often and where do you meet? Do you enjoy speaking with authors? We'd love to know!
