THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN: One Book Club's Discussion

Today, ReadingGroupGuides.com contributor Heather Johnson takes us inside her book club's discussion of Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain, a story of family, love, loyalty and hope as told by canine narrator Enzo. Appropriately, a few dogs were present at the gathering. We're wondering if they had anything to add to the discussion in the form of barks or yips, or if they were just channeling their comments to Enzo.


On a lovely summer day earlier this month seven members of my book club met to discuss Garth Stein's novel The Art of Racing in the Rain. This book is different than anything we've read before and none of us knew what to expect. A story told from the viewpoint of a dog? And with a car racing theme? REALLY?! But two members of our group have lobbied for it over the past six months, and the rest of us finally gave in to their pleas.

All of us who read the book enjoyed it to varying degrees. We agreed that having a dog tell the story brought a completely new perspective to what would otherwise have been a common tale (and one that we would not have wanted to read).

Some LOVED the book. They felt that Enzo, the dog, was brilliant; his theories on life were simple yet profound. Others enjoyed the book for its "different-ness" from the books we've read in the past. Of everyone at the meeting, I was the most ambivalent about the book, feeling that is was a bit too simplistic for my tastes. I was the minority opinion, but I usually am anyway so it doesn't bother me in the least. That said, I can think of many friends who would love this book and I'm definitely going to recommend that they read it.

Because of this book, those in the club who are not "dog people" gained an appreciation for the unique bond many have with their dogs. We do have a few true "dog people" in our club --- plus there were three dogs at the meeting --- so that part of the discussion was very enlightening. "Dogs are not like cats," one gal stated unequivocally, but another disagreed saying that "some cats do behave like dogs." But the point remains the same --- a typical dog is a much better friend than a typical cat. At least in the opinion of the Storie delle Sorelle Book Club gals.

The most interesting part of the discussion for me was the debate over what the zebra stands for in the story. We all differed in what we thought and we didn't come to any solid conclusions, but we did have a good time sharing our opinions.

Then it was time for dessert --- homemade brownies, vanilla ice cream, and chocolate syrup. Aah, the joys of book club!

---Heather Johnson


More about The Art of Racing in the Rain:
Garth Stein's guest blog post, "The Art of Visiting a Reading Group"
Bookseller Debra Linn's take on the book
Carol Fitzgerald's interview with Garth
Bookreporter.com review

Sharon Kay Penman: Books in Troubled Times

Books open a door to the past, writes historical novelist Sharon Kay Penman in today's guest blog post. And what's more, they can help see us through difficult times, as they once did for her.

Sharon's most recent novel is Devil's Brood, the concluding volume in a trilogy about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. The previous two books are When Christ and His Saints Slept and Time and Chance.


I am going to begin with a confession: This was my first visit to ReadingGroupGuides.com, though it definitely won't be my last. Sadly, I am not a child of the Computer Age; I've been known to have trouble with electric can-openers, and I have a love-hate relationship with my computers, as their names reveal --- Lucy, short for Lucifer's Hand Maiden, R.B. for Rosemary's Baby, two Dells from Hell, and Merlin, who mocked his optimistic name by going over to the dark side like the others. So my ventures into cyberspace have been sporadic and hesitant. But I now have my own blog, and I've loved interacting with my readers so much that I hope to make up for lost time.

I am delighted to have this opportunity to write a blog for ReadingGroupGuides.com. I have long been a fan of book clubs, and I've had some lovely experiences with them over the years. I remember a visit to the Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, Pennsylvania, where I had dinner with the members of one of their book clubs. We had a lively discussion about the characters in my books --- Joanna's infidelity in Here Be Dragons, Ellen de Montfort's capture by pirates in the pay of the English king, Henry II's clandestine meeting with Eleanor of Aquitaine in a Paris garden. My fictional people were flesh and blood to them, just as they are to me. We agreed that books are a form of time-traveling, for they open a door to the past.

But books also provide a life-line to get us through troubled times in our own lives. I have been told by readers that they found solace in one of my books during an illness or a family crisis, and that means more to me than I could ever express. My own experiences are just the same. During my father's brave and prolonged battle with Alzheimer's, I turned to books for comfort, sometimes reading them aloud to him, for he'd always been an avid reader, too. Books offer us a refuge from reality. They entertain and educate us. They give us a sense of solidarity with others, reminding us, as John Dunne did, that no man is an island. So I refuse to believe that books will ever become obsolete, as some predict, and I see book clubs as a means of improving their survival odds!

---Sharon Kay Penman

Mary Jane Clark: How About Picking a Page-Turner?

Suspense writer Mary Jane Clark knows that book clubs can have the best of both worlds: a page-turner that also has plenty of topics for discussion. In today's guest blog post, she shares talking points for two of her novels featuring television reporter Eliza Blake --- the most recent, Dying for Mercy, and It Only Takes a Moment. If you're interested in having Mary Jane join your book club discussion by phone, click here for details. Watch for her on ABC's Good Morning America on August 12th.

What mysteries and thrillers has your group read lately? Which ones garnered good discussions? We'd love to know about some of your experiences, if you'd like to share them in the comments section.


I'd always been under the impression that mysteries and thrillers are not appropriate book club selections. People think beach reads, airplane stories, the types of books you just can't put down, aren't discussable enough. They don't have enough texture. They aren't relevant to the lives of book club members.

My suspense novels have been called page-turners. People express how much they enjoy reading them, tell me they can't wait for the next one, they ask if I can write faster. A book that engenders that sort of response has to have something going for it. And I know, as the person who wrote it, how much thought and research and imagination went into making the book what it is.

Dying for Mercy, along with providing a fast-moving story, has many general themes for discussion. A mother's struggle to balance family and career, the public's insatiable appetite for sensationalism, marital infidelity, Italy's rich artistic and religious history, political ambition, the effects of religious conversion, children with disabilities, the desire to be accepted, the worldwide appeal of St. Francis of Assisi, suicide, puzzles and crimes buried in the past. All of those subjects and more are aspects of the novel.

It Only Takes a Moment focuses on kidnapping, dreams, the loss of a child, the role of psychics in police work, the effects of infidelity on a relationship, immigration, pedophilia and the justice system, the danger faced by TV personalities from their fans, the invasiveness of the media and the consolation of friends and neighbors when tragedy strikes. (For a list of specific discussion questions for both books go to MaryJaneCark.com.)

With all that happening between the covers, I'm puzzled. Why don't I get more requests to speak with book clubs? It concerns me, especially since I have learned that my initial assumption is not necessarily true. ReadingGroupGuides.com recently conducted a survey about book clubs, with almost 7,500 members completing it. It turns out mysteries and thrillers are popular---almost half of the groups read them.

Then why don't I have wonderful book club experiences and anecdotes to share? Do readers assume that my media thrillers are only action driven? Do they doubt that there would be depth to the characters? Do people think that the situations and problems the characters encounter won't be interesting or complicated enough? Or that there will be no absorbing conflict or heartfelt emotion in the book?

Given the chance, I'd like to prove myself. I think I can win you over. Just give my books a try. What do you have to lose?

Please. Don't reject a book just because you can't put it down.

---Mary Jane Clark

Teri Coyne: Discussing THE LAST BRIDGE

Teri Coyne, today's guest blogger, talks about the elements that, for her, would add up to the ideal book club gathering. It would center on a discussion of her debut novel, The Last Bridge, and include Oreos and sharing secrets. There would likely be some laughs, too, as Coyne is a former stand-up comedian.

The Last Bridge is the story of Cat Rucker who, after a decade-long absence, returns to her Ohio hometown, where her mother has died and left behind a mysterious suicide note. As she seeks to unravel the circumstances of her mother's death, Cat must also revisit her family's dark past.


If you were to ask me what my ideal book club experience would be, I would have to start with the refreshments. I'm sorry but it is virtually impossible to have a good discussion without something to snack on, so if you were coming to my house I would probably create a signature drink of some sort from The Last Bridge (we would be discussing my book if you came to my house that only seems fair, right?) The signature drink wouldn't be hard to come up with since Cat, my main character, does like her Jack Daniels (she likes it straight though, so a cocktail might be better.) She also likes chocolate milkshakes, onion rings and Oreos so I think you can guess what kind of spread I might put out.

Since The Last Bridge is an intense and many have said, dark, story I would get the discussion moving by talking about some of the lighter aspects, like Cat's sense of humor and how it helps her navigate through the trauma of her life. We would talk about how important it is to always try to see the humor in everything and I mean everything. Then I would ask you about the people you know who you think are funny and maybe share some stories about times in our lives when, in spite of the darkness, humor helped us see the light.

I guess the theme for my book club conversation would be about the light. What I learned writing a story as intense as The Last Bridge is that the only way to dispel the darkness is to shine a light on it. I didn't set out to write a story that was dark. I was writing about a woman who was struggling with reconciling her past. While we may not have all experienced the same things Cat has, we have all had experiences that have been hard to integrate into our histories. Some may say these are the "darker" aspects of our lives; others may refer to them as our "skeletons." I say these are our stories and we should own them and share them.

Cat is a wild, complicated, damaged, funny, intense, creative and strong woman and although she is fictional, I would do my very best to bring her to life as I know she will illicit strong emotions from everyone. Strong emotions are good. I want you to tell me how you feel about her. Do you think she does the right thing in the end? What would you do if you were in her situation? What do you think her feelings are for Addison? Is Cat capable of love? Is everyone? or are some people too damaged?

By the time we all got into a great groove, we would realize hours had gone by and we still hadn't gotten past the first discussion point. I would put on a pot of coffee and water for tea and insist that everyone eats more Oreos. As we wrapped up, I would thank you all for coming, for sharing your feelings and reaction to the book and for being my guest...and, I would insist you take some of the leftovers home with you!

Food, drinks, deep conversation and lots of laughter --- that's my recipe for a great book club meeting for The Last Bridge.

---Teri Coyne

Joyce Maynard: Chance Encounter

Reading groups have been known to foster camaraderie and forge friendships. Today, novelist Joyce Maynard shares a true-life tale about how a book club brought her together with someone who is now a close friend --- a chance encounter since neither ever attended the group again.

Joyce is the author of nine books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel Labor Day, on sale this Tuesday, August 28th. It's the story of Henry, a lonely and friendless teenager living in New Hampshire, whose life is changed when a mysterious man arrives on the eve of Labor Day weekend.

Joyce also runs the Lake Atitlan Writing Workshop in Guatemala.


It was the summer after I'd published a novel called The Usual Rules, and I was living --- then as I am now --- in my house on the side of a mountain in Northern California, a beautiful but somewhat solitary spot. I received a call from a woman who'd read the novel, to say she was a member of this really special book club whose members had been getting together to share books for close to fifteen years. They were reading this new novel of mine, and since I didn't live all that far away, they wanted to invite me to join them for the night they'd be discussing it.

Now, I liked this idea. The one part about my life as a writer that really doesn't fit my temperament and nature is the way a writer has to be alone all the time, to write her books. One thing about a book club is that a writer gets to be with other people. People who love books.

And I’m a talker. Also a listener, mind you. To me, there's not much that's more fun than being in a roomful of intelligent, curious women (men too, but that's not so likely to happen at book clubs), talking about reading, and all the other topics --- love, loss, joy, sorrow, work, children, food, home, our bodies --- that conversations about books so often open up. If the book they're talking about is mine, of course, that's the best of all.

What I love about book clubs is the way they get us past the small talk and open up discussion about the things that matter most in life. A good book has a way of raising as many questions as it answers. A good book club is a place to go to share them. Which is just what a person like me longs for, in a life where sometimes days may go by during which I hardly get to see another human being, and the only voices I may hear come through the telephone, or from my characters on the pages I write. Those, and that of the UPS man.

I told my caller I'd be happy to accept her invitation. There was just one problem. Her book club met an hour’s drive from me, and I'm a terrible driver. No problem, she said. Her friend Susan lived near me, and though she didn't normally attend the book club, they'd ask her to come down with me and serve as my chauffeur. So, an hour before the appointed meeting time, this woman showed up at my door to take me to Burlingame.

Now, a little background here. Another aspect of a writer's life that I've gotten used to over the years is that for the vast majority of fulltime writers (particularly one like me, who relies on her writing for her livelihood), things can get a little dicey in the financial department on occasion. That particular summer, for instance, I had felt the need to rent out my house, to cut expenses, and was living in a basement apartment under my own home. This was where Susan showed up to bring me to the book club.

Our destination was one of the more affluent communities surrounding the San Francisco Bay area, and in fact, I knew --- from her car, and the general look she had of being significantly less rough around the edges than I was --- that Susan herself lived a life considerably different from mine. I had selected an outfit for the evening that was meant to make me look like the sort of person who hangs out in Burlingame, but I don't think I had succeeded all that well in concealing the fact that I'd fit in better at a square dance in New Hampshire, or at a market in Guatemala, than in a 4,000-square-foot home located down the street from a golf club.

Susan was married to a man she adored, and was the most passionate dog-lover I had ever met. I'd been divorced (and dogless) for many years, with a spotty relationship history that had featured a pretty diverse assortment of characters but none who'd worked out for the long haul. Susan and I shared a love of art, and a certain kind of unfussy but good cooking --- she made soups, I baked pies. She grew roses. Though in my New England days I'd grown vegetables, I had no garden.

She loved staying put with her husband. I travelled now almost as much as I was home. She was organized, practical, and realistic. I was impulsive, messy, and a hopeless romantic. My children were grown. She was the stepmother of a teenage daughter, and in fact, it was this --- the recognition that my novel was one she could share with a fifteen-year-old with whom she had a complicated relationship, at times --- that had made her so passionate about my novel in the first place. None of this mattered. What I recognized, within the first four minutes of our drive, was that I'd found a wonderful friend.

Topics we covered over the next forty nine minutes: Her relationship with her stepdaughter (big surprise: it was complicated); and mine with the daughter I gave birth to (also far from easy). Her years as a single woman, before meeting the man she called her soul mate; my own ongoing search. We were not even close to the exit for our hostess's house by the time we'd gotten to sex, money, aging, and food. If I'd been the one driving, we might have had an accident, we laughed so hard. But among our many interesting differences was the fact that Susan’s a much better driver than I.

Here's one thing about putting two women in a car together for a long drive: If they're book club types --- which is to say, women who've already identified they'd rather talk about things that matter than things that don't --- they get right down to it. So by the time we pulled up in front of our hostess's house to join the rest of the book club, I felt as if Susan and I had known each other all our lives. Or rather, that we would.

The book club was also good, though more formal. As I'd anticipated from my conversation with its organizer, this was a group of dazzlingly well-read women whose questions got me thinking about aspects of my story I'd never considered before. The ninety minutes flew by. So did the drive home with Susan.

That was five years ago, and we are the best kind of friends now. Two very different women who share a common sense of values, sense of humor (crucially important), and intense appreciation and interest in the world, in stories, and each other's lives.

We've lived through a lot since then. The novel that brought us together that night sold well enough to get me out of my basement apartment and back upstairs into my own home, where I went on to publish another three books since --- the latest of them, a novel called Labor Day. (And, by the way, it's a perfect book club selection, in my opinion. Also --- though she's been known to disagree with me plenty over the years --- in Susan's.)

Our friendship is one of the better stories in my life. For all those years her marriage has remained steady and good, I've gone in and out of more than a few relationships (my current rule being to run any prospective sweetheart past my friend before things get serious, her instincts being clearly superior to mine in certain crucial ways.)

When I'm in a writing jag, and holed up at my house for days on end, Susan brings by jars of her root vegetable soup, with stock made from scratch, and flowers from her garden. I bring her pies and odd carved or painted renderings of dogs from third world places I travel (where she can never accompany me, because the sight of hungry dogs there would upset her too much). When I need to go to New York City and look presentable, she leads me into her closet and picks out an outfit for me. When I come home --- having managed to get a stain on the front --- she forgives me. She's younger than me by two years, but what she says is that she's my mother figure, and since it's been twenty years since I had one of those, this is welcome news.

In all the years of our friendship, there was only one time, ever, when our friendship was truly, sorely tested. It was the fall of Hurricane Katrina, and Susan had been suffering so much over the knowledge that hundreds of dogs had been abandoned there, and were wandering the streets looking for food --- that she volunteered to go to New Orleans to help feed them. I came along, partly to write about what was happening and partly to offer support to my friend, knowing that for her, the sight of a suffering dog would be almost unbearable.

I'd gotten an assignment from a newspaper to cover what was going on there with the dog rescue operation, and so there was a photographer following us around. And in the course of our days together I'd also witnessed some actions on the part of the well-meaning dog rescue groups that seemed, to me, irresponsible and extreme. I wrote about those things. And Susan, reading what I'd written, was incensed. Maybe what I'd described was true, but she believed that my publishing this would not be good for the dog-rescue people, and where, for me, the bottom line had always been to write the real and true story (even when it's not the one you want to hear), for her the bottom line was always: what's best for the dogs?

Late one night, in the streets of that hurricane-ravaged city, at the end of another twelve-hour day of wandering the streets feeding packs of abandoned pets, we had it out. Both of us cried. Then we had a drink at one of the few bars that remained open, and flew back to California. I changed my story enough that it didn't make a problem for her, and didn't compromise my standards either. Though in the end, I chose the friendship over total, unblinking journalistic objectivity. And harbor no regrets that I did.

What all this has to do with book clubs may not be readily apparent, but in fact, it is thanks to a book club that I owe the existence, in my life, of one of my dearest friends --- one of the two women I would call first if anything ever happened in my life where I needed someone at my side right away. Wherever Susan was at the time, I know she'd get to me if I needed her. We weren't even members of the book club that brought us together, of course. It was a terrific book club, but neither of us ever returned.

Still, it is not a coincidence that we met on our way to a discussion about books. Because neither one of us would have been in that car that day --- Susan as the driver, me as her passenger, both of us talking double time and laughing our heads off --- if we hadn't shared an abiding love of stories, and the way that talking about other people's stories (people who may not even be real) allows us to see our own in new ways, and to connect with the stories of others.

That's why Susan reads. That's why I write. To make the connection. Here is my story, I'm saying, on every page. Now let me know what you think.

---Joyce Maynard

Joshua Henkin's Book Club Adventures: The Latest Chapter, June 2009

Each month novelist and creative writing professor Joshua Henkin shares behind-the-scenes stories about his meetings with reading groups to discuss his novel Matrimony. Today he answers a question that he has been asked by book club members --- whether or not he selected the cover for Matrimony --- and takes a journey through an important aspect of the publishing process. For more about Josh and his books, visit his website.


June's Condensed Statistics
Number of Book Groups Visited: 12
Number in Person: 4
Number by Phone: 6
Number by Skype: 2
Number of States Represented: 6 (New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan)
Total Number of Participants, not including author: 118
Total Number of Male Participants, not including author: 3


A Popular Book Group Question in June: Did you Choose the Cover for Matrimony?

Readers are very interested in covers, and why shouldn't they be? The cover is the first thing they see. And the cover is a visual representation of what is otherwise a non-visual experience. (Good fiction, of course, is visual in that it should appeal to the senses, and reading itself is a visual experience: you're using your eyes. But adult novels don't generally contain pictures, so the cover is in another medium, is a different sort of avenue to what's inside the book.). Writers, too, are interested in covers --- in large part because we want our books to look good and because we want the cover to be representative of what's in the book. Also, while it may be true that you can't judge a book by its cover, people do judge books by their covers. The cover is the first thing a reader sees, and a good cover will make someone pick your book up, whereas a bad cover won't. In a recent issue of Poets and Writers, a bunch of agents lamented the state of book covers. They said not enough money was being spent on cover design and that the publishing industry should hire designers from the independent music business. I tend to agree. In fact, if I were given a certain amount of money to spend on publicizing a book, probably the first thing I would spend it on would be focus-grouping potential covers.

Many authors will tell you that they had absolutely no say in their cover design --- absolutely no say in anything about the book other than the writing of the book itself. I was a lot more fortunate than that. I was included in the process all along. The hardback cover for Matrimony is a bathroom with two toothbrushes, and while I certainly can't take credit for designing the cover, the idea itself was mine. The art department at Pantheon came up with four possible covers, one of which was my toothbrush idea, and everyone involved thought that treatment was far and away the best; in fact, we were all quite taken by it.

With the paperback, it was more complicated. I wanted to keep the hardback cover for the paperback, and so did my agent, but my paperback publisher generally likes to do a different cover for the paperback. The paperback audience is different from the hardback audience, and putting a new cover on a book makes the book itself feel new. The art department did at least ten possible covers, all of which my agent and I hated. Then they came up with the cover with the two pairs of shoes, and we were on board. I can't say I'm in love with the paperback cover the way I was with the hardback, and I know some readers have wondered about the woman's shoes, which, since the picture is taken from a bird's-eye-view, look small, as though the shoes belong to a child. But it's a striking cover, I think, and in a lot of ways striking is more important than good: you want someone to notice your book when it's lined up next to so many others in the bookstore. If someone notices your book, they'll pick it up. After that, the book itself must do the work.

---Joshua Henkin

Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Recommendations

Elizabeth Strout was awarded a 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for Olive Kitteridge, a collection of 13 short stories set in a small Maine town. The prize committee describes it on the organization's website as packing "a cumulative emotional wallop, bound together by polished prose and by Olive, the title character, blunt, flawed and fascinating."

Today, Elizabeth shares some of her favorite Pulitzer Prize-winning titles. To read her previous guest blog post, click here.

For information on participating in the Twitter Book Club's discussion of Olive Kitteridge on August 17th at 9:00 p.m., click here.


ELIZABETH STROUT'S PULITZER RECOMMENDATIONS:

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Here is a love story that will break your heart. Wharton knew her subject, which was not only thwarted love, but the effects of society on the freedom to love. At a time when divorce could get one thrown out of "respectable" society, this novel shows the struggles of those involved as they try and live as courageously and honestly as possible --- a fairly impossible task no matter what time we live in, and Wharton has presented a timeless story. The final scene is especially haunting.

American Pastoral by Philip Roth
This is another side of America, told as only Roth can tell it. Perhaps his most compassionate book, this is the story of a Jewish man who marries a beauty queen, and as they try and live the American dream they lose their daughter --- and perhaps themselves --- to the history of the times.

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
This is a huge book in the sense of all it carries, and it is remarkable how Stegner creates people one believes in entirely the whole way through. We watch a couple's marriage evolve over the years (in the last part of the 1800s) and watch the trials and desires and loyalties and fractures --- as the real world of the west brings them hardships of its own. All this is told by a narrator who is their grandson, reporting to us their imagined story many years later, and so the scope of what is revealed is magnificent.

Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter
Almost impossible to describe, and very varied in their subject matter and location, these stories are some of my favorites because of Porter's incredibly sharp eye. She can conjure up an entire world in a single short story and make you feel things you recognize and also didn't know you could feel. You may not like every single one of them, but there is enough here to make you feel you have traveled the world of human emotion.

Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
This book throbs with a drumbeat, a heartbeat, and the strain of deep love, as it swoops through the life of a Cuban American musician; I found it astonishing. It is sensuous and kind, honest and large-hearted, flinching from nothing. It took me entirely into another world, one not familiar to me, and I did not want to leave. I fell in love with everyone.



Others I recommend: Rabbit at Rest by John Updike and Empire Falls by Richard Russo.

(And while Summer by Edith Wharton, and The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner are not on the Pulitzer list, they are a couple of my favorites as well.)

Sarah Dunant: Bringing the Past Alive

Sarah Dunant's vibrant historical novel The Birth of Venus is set in Florence, Italy, and In the Company of the Courtesan uses Venice as its backdrop. She returns to Italy in her latest novel, Sacred Hearts, the story of a defiant 16-year-old girl who is confined to a convent --- against her will --- in 1570. Today, Sarah shares how she brings the past alive in her fiction.

To watch a video of Sarah talking about Sacred Hearts and to view a trailer for the book, click here.


Imagine yourself in an old church in a town in northern Italy. The wall behind the altar is a grille too fine to see through, with a small opening, just large enough to let a chalice pass through. Now close your eyes. On the other side you hear a shuffling of feet, a cough, the clearing of throats. An organ sounds a couple of notes. You are about to hear the voices of a choir of enclosed nuns...

Bringing history to life depends on many things. Once you've done the research and found your story, you then have to paint it in Technicolor. It's a writer's job to use words to make pictures, but when it comes to the past, they need to be the kind you can walk into, a virtual reality of the senses. In Florence, where I wrote The Birth of Venus, I used to wander dark alleyways in the middle of the night noting the way voices might bounce up off a canyon of high buildings, disturbing the peace as powerfully as they would have done five centuries before. In Venice, where I set In the Company of the Courtesan, the water was my sensual gateway. When it was hot, even without the sewage of the great Renaissance city, the canals stank, and when the fog came down sound played such mad tricks that my own footsteps would become an errant heartbeat tracking me from behind.

When I started Sacred Hearts the challenge was greater because the history was more hidden. In the late 16th century, huge numbers of women --- almost half of the daughters of noble Italian families --- were in convents from the age of 15 until their death. Their lives were ruled by ritual and repetition: eating, working and of course praying, even in the middle of the night. How could I bring alive this strangest of all strange existences?

In retreat at a convent near Milan my senses did some of the work for me. After a week I was so tired during the night service that my mind started wandering. Turn off the heating, take away the electric lights, add a few days' fasting and who knows what images the darkness might conjure up. Ferrara, where I set my story, had once been full of convents. Most are long gone and the two that remain are "clausura," which means you cannot go further in than the nuns' chapel. Remains of convent architecture, however, are everywhere: walls, churches, gardens and the most exquisite collection of cloisters, with the tread of a million footsteps on the stone stairs, the swish of robes, the ghosts of a hundred veiled figures.

Then there was the singing. Ferrara was a great musical centre, known for its composers and concerts, even down to the appearance of castrati as the newest fashion of the day. And the convents were renowned for their choirs of angels. The more I read, the more enthralled I became. Inside those walls, it seemed, were nuns who wrote music and played instruments, while their performances were said to make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.

That was when I found Musica Secreta: a group of English women singers who researched the hidden history of nuns' choirs. When I heard their recordings and watched them perform I understood something I had never realised before: that whatever those women felt about their incarceration (and many were there against their will), there was a deep pleasure and satisfaction to be had in the making of the music itself. In an environment where so many kinds of sensuality were forbidden, there was always the possibility of opening your mouth and feeling your voice mingle and soar... even if you might want to fall asleep during the night service.

At the end of my research I went back to the convent that had inspired my story. The old nun who showed me the chapel this time told me that they still performed Vespers and that I could sit in the outer church and listen. Sacred Hearts was almost finished by then. I was so excited. In my mind I had filled this church on both sides of the grille.

In the public church I sat with four others as the nuns shuffled out. When the organ sounded I closed my eyes. The thin, reedy voices of seventeen older women straggled out through the grille, some with barely enough vocal power to hold the phrases to the end. By the time they had finished, three of the other listeners had left. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Thank heaven for history. At least we can still imagine what we have lost.

---Sarah Dunant

The Pulpwood Queen's Best Summer Reads

Looking for a few good books to read this summer? Kathy L. Patrick, author of The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life and founder of the Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Clubs, has some suggestions.


THE PULPWOOD QUEEN'S BEST SUMMER READS FOR THOSE TOO POOR TO DO ANYTHING ELSE OR BOOKS TO READ THAT ARE NOT, AND I REPEAT NOT, HOMEWORK!

Caution: These books may cause you to stop doing anything else for hours but read!

This 4th of July I could hardly wait for my three days off in a row. Three! That usually never happens, and I planned to purchase more bookshelves for my library and to really organize the books I would keep and those I would put in a yard sale and donate to local charities.

I put together the bookshelves and now had a room that was a real library. I took out the spare bed. Placed a desk, chair and another chair for reclining and reading in the room. I went around the house and literally, began moving stacks and stacks of books from all the rooms in the house.

I had books piled everywhere, by my chair in the entertainment room, in my bedroom by the bed and stuffed under the bed, by my favorite wingback chair in the living room. If there was a counter or tabletop with space, I had stacked books.

As I began to look at all the new empty shelves and began alphabetizing the books as I put them on the shelves, I would stop to remember a story. Oh, my gosh, that book scared me half to death. That book I couldn't put down, I have to read it again. Old favorites that made me laugh and new ones that me cry buckets, I had bought or been given that I had not had time to read.

As I finished I knew what I had to do with the books that I could not part with for a second. I had to share all of them with you. Some of these are brand new books, but most are books that I had forgotten about but could hardly wait to read again. I would make up a list, a summer time reading list.

This summer there have been no plans for a summer vacation. With one daughter in college and one in high school that will be soon needing her own car, and a roof on our house that was leaking, a vacation was just not in the summer picture. That got me thinking if I really had some time off this summer, what would I do. It was simple really: I would read and go to the places I dreamed of going. It wouldn't cost me anything as I had already purchased or been given the books. So I took my vacation this summer. I missed the big fireworks in town, but my books put on a fantastic visual show in my head!

Now I have also been reading all the suggested books for summer and quite frankly, reading Hemingway, who I adore, seemed more like homework during the summer. These books I have selected are NOT and I repeat NOT homework. They are pure escapism for the summer time, empty pocket blues.

Do yourself a favor and go to your local library or independent bookstore and order some of these incredible reads. And just remember you are checking out or purchasing a gift that keeps on giving. Share your books with others, if not by giving them a good read, by giving them a reading list! The best books I have ever read were recommended to me by someone else.

So find you a comfy seat, a refreshing drink, and slip away for a while on an adventure for a lifetime.

Tiara wearing and Book sharing,
Kathy L. Patrick


The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells
The very first book my book club read was Rebecca Wells' Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. We are getting ready to celebrate our 10th anniversary this January with her latest book, The Crowning Glory of Calla Lilly Ponder. Calla dreams of being a hairdresser like her mother, a mother she loses too soon and then a first love who disappears. Love is lost, then found, in the most unlikely places. I won't give the story away, but it will capture the most jaded heart. It did mine. Her book is more than just words. It's a book that captures all the senses: sight, scent, taste, song and touch all wrapped up in one the best stories I've read in a long, long, time.

Secrets of the Tsil Cafe by Thomas Fox Averill
In Kansas City, Wes Hingler lives with his passionate but eccentric parents who run two separate kitchens of their cafe. His father cooks Southwestern/Native American cuisine, and his mother runs an eclectic catering called Buen AppeTito. This book is a culinary delight to read and will make you want to slow down and really cook something that is historic. The food is the story, one that you will have your mouth watering --- and one that you will want to share with others.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
When I was on book tour, I asked booksellers at every store for one book that he or she recommend. This is one of the books I bought. I turned to the first page and read the first line" "I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time." I was hooked, and you will not be able to turn the pages fast enough. This book truly has something for every reader, and it's one that I will read again and again.

Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore
This was another book that was handed to me on book tour as a must-read, and I can honestly say it has changed my life for the better. If not for this book --- which is about a Fort Worth international art dealer, his wife and their unlikely friendship with a modern day African-American slave who was homeless --- I would not be teaching a life writing class at at homeless shelter or starting a book club there as well. I think everybody should read this book as it gave me a far greater purpose than just promoting literacy. It gave me a purpose to no longer want more in life but to be truly happy and blessed with what God has given me. You'll need at least one box of Kleenex for this one, but everybody always needs a good cry.

Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence by Paul Feig
Everybody also needs a really good laugh. When my friend Carol and I spied the book Kick Me by Paul Feig thrown down on the floor of the Pack and Ship room at BookExpo, we both grabbed for it. It had this really cheesy photo of the author with his family from the '70s on the cover. We read that book together on the plane home from New York and almost got kicked off because we laughed so hard. I even peed my pants a little as the flight attendant keep telling us to "Hush!" like school children. Do I need to say anything more?

The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman
I ordered and bought this book because the author, who I admire, spoke out about a critic who reviewed her book. The critic gave away the ending. I just had to read this book and found it to read like a modern fairy tale --- dark, grim, highly anticipating the next page, I was lost in the story. I forgot time and place. Never have I found a book as engrossing as the story of these modern-day princesses, where evil and unlikely white knights are just a page away. I could tell that critic a thing or two myself!

The Church of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyns
Every once in a while a book comes along that hooks me from the start to finish. I have recommended this book for years to mystery lovers, and to this day nothing comes as close to scaring the living bejesus out of me. Young girls who look remarkably similar start disappearing, one by one, from a small town in upstate New York. Wilkipedia could have this book listed under the definition of psychological thriller supreme. Don't read this book alone at night! I kind of see this book as the adult version of the campfire horror story. Good grief, it's broad daylight and I've got the shivers!

Sally Gunning: Author's Turn...

In today's guest post, historical novelist Sally Gunning shares her thoughts on meeting with book clubs --- the things she expected and the "delightful surprises" that she didn't.

Sally is the author of The Widow's War and, most recently, Bound. Set in pre-Revolutionary New England, Bound is the story of Alice Cole, who after a series of misfotrunes is placed as an indentured servant at the age of seven. Eight years later, caught up in dire circumstances, she escapes and seeks refuge in Cape Cod. But in a time of personal and political unrest and uncertainty, she discovers that freedom, friendship, trust and love each have a price far greater than she ever imagined.


As the paperback edition of my second historical novel, Bound, hits the shelves and I embark on a second round of real or virtual visits to reading groups I find myself reflecting on the many delightful surprises this experience has brought my way. I had hoped that my characters and stories would speak to my readers and inspire lively debate and was thrilled when these things did indeed happen. I had expected to answer questions about the genesis of my ideas, share something of my writing process and answer questions about the intensive research that has gone into each book, and all those things happened as well. I didn't expect to gain insight into myself and my writing life or to make real friends across the country, sometimes in places I'd never been. All these things happened too.

It took a phone meet with a book group in North Carolina for me to realize that the widow I had encountered in my research was only half the inspiration for The Widow's War, that in fact the widows in my own family inspired my character in equal measure. It took my New York readers' personal struggles with Alice Cole, the indentured servant in Bound, for me to look anew at some of those struggles. As I thought out loud with Cape Cod readers about my work-in-progress, The Seeming Truth, I discovered false trails and new avenues to pursue. From everywhere I received such enthusiastic support and encouragement that it floated me over more than one boggy day at the computer. With each group I got to indulge in my favorite sport --- laughter. I met many, many intelligent, fascinating and insightful readers (and writers!) whose comments continue to keep me company when I retreat to my solitary writer's den.

I've received your heartfelt thank-yous for writing my books and sharing my time, but here is my thank you to you. Thank you for reading, thinking, talking. Thank you for caring about my characters and their stories (and me). Thank you for laughing at my jokes. Thank you for being there. Don't go away!

---Sally Gunning

Annie Barrows: Literary Meandering

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows unfolds the story of a group of residents on the English Channel island of Guernsey, who formed a book club as an alibi while the isle was occupied by Nazis during World War II. Today's guest blogger, Annie reveals what line spoken by the novel's character Juliet Ashton really resonates with her.

To read Annie's previous guest blog post, click here, and to watch a video of her talking about the novel, click here.


I am a natural born meanderer. When allowed to follow my own inclinations, I take the overgrown path, the long way around, the back stairs, the murky hallway, the door that leads to the wrong room, and the route through rather than around the woodpile. I also like tangents and people who don't get to the point. The results are sometimes alarming --- when the path is overgrown with poison oak, say --- and occasionally sublime. Most often, the reward is merely the feeling I have along the way, the feeling of possibility.

The meandering impulse must be heritable, because it runs in my family. Not all of us spend our lives traipsing down tree-throttled lanes. Some of us are literary meanderers: we find, in every book we read, dozens of threads --- names, events, dates, references to works we never heard of before --- that lure us onto our next book. My aunt Mary Ann Shaffer was a great literary meanderer, and our book, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, is, in some way, an ode to the joys of whimsical reading. Our heroine Juliet Ashton takes the words right out of my mouth when she says, "That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you on to a third book. It's geometrically progressive --- all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment."

Me too. I love that about reading too. All my reading life, my curiosity has been piqued from one book to another. Like Juliet, I found Charles Lamb through Leigh Hunt, but I found Leigh Hunt through Charles Dickens. When I was younger, I was very susceptible to pronouncements like "All truly refined people read Stendahl," and even now, I sometimes find myself in the middle of a seven-hundred-page tome on the Black Death and wonder how I got there, but in general, following the hints and clues dropped along the wayside by authors I adore has brought me to cobwebby, overlooked worlds that I would otherwise have missed. And, as a meanderer, I love cobwebby, overlooked worlds.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society itself is based on a meandering philosophy. Rather than reading one book as a group, each member reads a book of his or her choosing and then gives a talk about it, either praise or condemnation. Then the rest of the group can choose whether to pursue it or leave it alone. The Society's meetings are no more --- or less --- than a series of doors that its members may elect to open and, possibly, meander through.

---Annie Barrows

Randy Sue Coburn: A Writer's View

Randy Sue Coburn's novel A Better View of Paradise unfolds the story of 36-year-old landscape designer Stevie Pollack, whose professional and personal lives unravel. Leaving Chicago behind, she returns to her roots on an Hawaiian island. When she learns that her father is dying, what began as a holiday escape becomes a chance for transformation. In today's guest blog post, Randy Sue talks about some of the real-life inspiration she drew on for the novel. She is also the author of Owl Island and Remembering Jody.


My new novel, A Better View of Paradise, spins out of a complicated father-daughter bond. I had focused so much on mothers and daughters with my last novel, Owl Island, and when it came time to start a new novel, there was nothing I wanted to explore more than the importance of that other primal relationship, and how it sets a template of behaviors and expectations that affect a woman later in life.

Like Hank, the father in Paradise, my dad was a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan and had a terminal illness in the fall of 2003, when it looked like the Cubs had their best shot at the World Series in many years. I knew it was probably his last chance to see his team go the distance. I gave to Stevie, my Paradise protagonist, all my own hopes that Cubs wins would extend my dad's life. Which is not quite so insane as it sounds, when Wrigley Field is your father's only church of the resurrection. It was such an intense time! We would watch games together when I visited, and we'd talk on the phone between innings when we were apart. Of course, the Cubs didn't make it that year and, of course, they broke our hearts. But then the Cubs aren't sports, they're tragedy, so it wasn't much of a stretch to intertwine their demise that season with that of a difficult, demanding father who has a whole lot of trouble expressing love.

The novel's protagonist, Stevie Pollack, owes much of her professional success as a landscape architect to the high-octane doggedness that her father Hank infused her with at an early age. Yet in order to please Hank, she's submerged huge chunks of her own intuition as well as anger, which I think is a syndrome to which many women can relate. In Stevie's case, this is part of why she's drawn to difficult, demanding men whose love she feels she has to earn by performing. Expressing her own needs in an intimate relationship has never really felt safe for her. And before Hank dies, she struggles to gain a better understanding of the forces that shaped her father and, in turn, herself, in order to outgrow what has become a stultifying pattern. Her relationship with Japhy, the vet she meets on the Hawaiin island of Kaua`i, becomes a crucial testing ground.

The primary setting of Kaua`i stems from my falling in love with the island over the course of numerous visits and always wondering what it would have been like to grow up there, on a dot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. How would that affect one's sense of direction in life, both literally and figuratively? What kind of conflict would arise from being nurtured by the beauty of Kaua`i, yet being trained by your father to achieve in the more competitive mainland world?

Even though Hank is Chicago born and bred, and a supreme rationalist to boot, his home in Kaua`i is where he has gone to die. A place where the culture is so imbued with spirit that the dead are often spoken of in the present tense. Stevie, with fractional Hawaiian blood from her mother's side, is far more attuned to this aspect of the island than Hank, and in her last months with him she looks beyond all the aloha and tourist industry kitsch to delve into the island's powerful heritage of myth and mystery. Forces that will help her deal with his death.

My fabulous editor at Ballantine, Linda Marrow, suggested this novel's title, and I couldn't be happier with it. But my working title was A Girl at Her Volcano, which reflects the influence of the Hawaiian volcano goddess Pele, also known as "she who shaped the sacred land." Stevie is a land-shaper herself, by profession --- a landscape architect --- and like the volcano goddess, she was exiled from Kaua`i, Pele's first creation. In the course of my research, I read dozens of fascinating accounts in which Pele appeared to islanders in various forms --- often as a beautiful young woman, often as an elderly crone. Sometimes she wanted a hotel room. Sometimes she wanted a ride or cigarettes or whiskey. But always, Pele asked something of those to whom she appeared, and always, she disappeared just as mysteriously as she had arrived. This is the first piece of the book that came to me --- a mysterious, Pele-like woman asking something of Stevie when she's just a girl that takes her the whole course of the novel to understand.

I hope to return to Kaua`i so Pele can lend a hand in dreaming up my next book. And while I haven't been to Wrigley Field since my dad died, I plan to sneak in a handful of his ashes to scatter under the bleachers next time I go.

---Randy Sue Coburn

Miles Kington's Final Musings

Every once in a while a book comes along that gives me pause and makes me appreciate the little --- and big --- things in life a whole lot more. How Shall I Tell the Dog?: And Other Final Musings by Miles Kington did that as I spent an afternoon in late May reading an advance copy. After Kington, a humor columnist for a London newspaper, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he began writing down the thoughts that came to him as he mused on his exit from this world. The book is funny, witty and thought-provoking. It certainly gave me a lot to think about, especially how important it is to make every day count.

How Shall I Tell the Dog? is written as a series of letters to Kington's literary agent and friend, Gill Coleridge. I had the pleasure of meeting Gill last month when she (I confess I thought Gill was a he; it's pronounced Jill) came to New York. For about an hour she shared the back story of Miles' work and when she was finished I knew I wanted her to write a piece for us that would introduce Miles to you, which we could bring you on the day the book hit bookstores. Thus in today's guest blog, Gill tells us about Miles and what his hopes were for his final literary work. I envy her; I would have enjoyed meeting Miles. Enjoy.


It's strange to think it was just about two years ago, on a very hot sunny day, that Miles first indicated to me that he had some strange and indefinable illness. He hadn't been feeling well, said he was turning yellow, and had been in and out of hospital. Of course, I immediately feared the worst, and, sadly, I was right.... I guess it was early August that he told me he had the dreaded cancer.... But, said he, in his characteristically cheerful voice, "Don't worry, Gill, I've been thinking about this and reckon I can make something out of it; perhaps rather crudely I can make cancer work for its living." Gulps from me on the end of the phone in my office, unable to take in the enormity of what he was telling me. "They can't do anything about it," he said, "nor will they tell me how long I've got, so what I'm going to do is write you some letters about it all and then maybe, Gill, you can sell these and make a bestselling book for me. After all, others who had cancer have done that, haven't they?"

I met Miles back in the mid-eighties, at a lunch hosted by Private Eye (the British satirical magazine). As we left, we walked together through Soho, he pushing his bike (he went everywhere by bike), and he said to me, "Hmm.... Literary agent? Well, just how literary do I have to be to have a literary agent?" "Not very," was my reply. "Though it helps if you write books." "I do write books," he said. "I've written all those Franglais books. Though I suppose funny books about how to speak French don't count." "Yes, they do," I replied. "But if you could think of an idea for a British book that would be perfect." So then, he said, "Well, I've always wanted to do a book about jokes around the world, i.e., what each nation thinks of each other, which I'd thought could be called A World Atlas of Prejudice. Do you think that's a good idea? Might it be a bestseller?"

Well, of course, I said it would be, and he was delighted. So off I went and got him a huge deal for many thousands of pounds. But as it happened, though he took years researching it, he eventually abandoned it, saying, rather regretfully, that he'd come to realise that all the jokes were pretty much the same. But from then on we did many books together, some more successful than others, and each one provoked the same initial conversation: "Will this one be a bestseller?" He was practically my first client, and we became close friends for the rest of his life.

Although he wrote a column every day of the working week, first for The London Times and then for The Independent (a total of nearly thirty years), and was read by thousands and thousands of people, he always longed to have a book that would sell really well and, importantly to Miles, would sell in America.

Two years ago, knowing he had little time left, he sat down and wrote me all these wonderful letters. Of course, they were written with the express intention of publishing them, but nonetheless they are so true to Miles' voice, I can hear him talking to me through all of them; they are funny, witty, and so poignant. He was incredibly brave throughout his illness. He told few people, mostly just close family and friends, and never told The Independent, to whom he continued to deliver a sharp and brilliant piece every day. Even during the very last three days of his life, when he was just a bit late getting his copy in for the first time, he told them he'd had a bout of flu. That was a Monday, and then on the Wednesday, he delivered his last piece and died, at home, on his bed with his devoted wife, Caroline, and his son, Adam, in the house. It fell to me to tell The Independent, who were aghast that they had never known or suspected he was so ill.

He died more quickly than any of us had expected, and immediately after his death Caroline got going finding many of the letters, because although he'd sent some, many were still unsent, in draft, some on his computer, some on bits of paper under his bed, all over the place. Caroline was always his first editor and read everything he ever wrote, so she brilliantly managed to get all these letters together. Then I went to Andrew Franklin at Profile Books, who I believed would be the perfect publisher, and badgered him till he'd read them and agreed he wanted to publish them. Together with Caroline, he and his editor Paul Forty assembled the collection and got the letters in the right order. And, of course, it was Caroline who knew what Miles and she had always wanted to call it, such a fabulous and moving title, How Shall I Tell the Dog?.

So it's ironic as well as rewarding that How Shall I Tell the Dog? should be not only a bestseller in Britain, but also the first book of his to be published in America. Over here in the UK, we sit with fingers crossed, hoping it will reach the audience there that it deserves, hoping Miles somewhere knows how much this book has become loved and cherished.

---Gill Coleridge

Talking with Laura Dave

Laura Dave's novel The Divorce Party is the story of two women at opposite ends of marriage, one on the brink of divorce after 35 years and the other engaged. Today we talk with Laura about how reading groups have responded to the two main characters, some of the research she did for the novel and the increasing media attention for real-life divorce parties.

Laura is also the author of the novel London is the Best City in America.


ReadingGroupGuides.com: A little over a year ago you wrote a guest blog post for us, around the time The Divorce Party was first published. Can you tell us about some of the memorable discussions you've had with book clubs about the novel since then?

Laura Dave: I have had so many amazing discussions with book clubs. This week alone, I attended a very fun dinner with a book club in San Diego. And I spoke with a lovely book club in Ohio by phone. Each club brings something different to the discussion --- and we inevitably speak about many of the issues that permeate both the book and our lives: we discuss marriage and relationships, sacrifice for family and independence. I have yet to leave a book club discussion without learning something really interesting.


RGG: Real-life divorce parties have been reported by the media, including CBS' The Early Show, on which you appeared recently to talk about the subject. Do you think your book helped inspire --- or at least bring more attention to --- this trend? What are your thoughts on divorce parties?

LD: Divorce parties seem to be gaining a strong momentum --- places as varied as CNN, Salon and CBS are covering their growing popularity. On one level, the concept of having a divorce party makes sense to me as a way to find a sense of peace as opposed to encouraging more acrimony. But, on another level, I think marital break-ups are difficult for a reason: they are supposed to be. Something sacred has broken down. I wanted to explore this idea within the context of one family.

I also think in some ways the title of my book is misleading. While there is a divorce party in the novel, my book's primary focus is on marriage and lifelong love, and asking the questions: what is required in today's world to make a lifetime commitment? And to stay devoted to that commitment?


RGG: It's interesting that you did research for The Divorce Party by talking to couples at all stages in their marriages. What did you learn from them that helped you craft the story and the characters?

LD: I learned that there is no weakness in forgiveness. Being able to truly forgive is necessary in order to stay with one person over the course of a lifetime. My conversations while working on the book helped me to understand this in a way I wouldn't have been able to articulate before. It is brave to figure out how to stay together, even on the days it is the last thing a couple may want. In fact, in today's society, where everything is growing more and more disposable, it feels honorable to me.


RGG: The two main characters, Gwyn and Maggie, are in different places in their lives. Gwyn is divorcing after 35 years of marriage, and Maggie is engaged. Do book club members seem to be identifying most with the character closest to their own age, or has it been mixed?

LD: It is always amazing to me --- and very humbling --- how much people care about both Gwyn and Maggie. (And sweet Georgia, for that matter!) But I think, at the end of the day, book club members of all ages seem to identify most strongly with Gwyn, the family matriarch: a woman who has sacrificed so much for her family, and who is beginning the hard-earned process of figuring out how to take care of herself as well.


RGG: What is the question that book club members ask you the most frequently when you're speaking with them about The Divorce Party?

LD: They ask me a question about the book's ending. I can't really go into detail without spoiling an important plot twist, but, once you finish, feel free to email me and I'll gladly answer!

Jonathan Tel: Photographs and Fiction

In The Beijing of Possibilities, a collection of linked stories, Jonathan Tel chose to intersperse black-and-white photos in with the text. In today's guest blog post he talks about why he wanted to do this and how it enhances the stories --- and about the trip he took to Beijing special to shoot the images.


Let me tell you my favorite part of creating The Beijing of Possibilities. It was all rewarding --- the time I spent living and traveling in China, the research, the actual writing --- but what I enjoyed most was taking photographs to accompany the text. I made a special trip to Beijing in order to do this. The idea is to give the readers a bonus --- not just fiction set in China, but pictures of it too.

Photography is an art that appeals to me, but I'm no expert. I made certain decisions: I'd use an inexpensive digital camera; I'd photograph what presented itself to me, not posing or orchestrating the scene, nor would I Photoshop the images afterward. Also my publisher said the photographs had to be in black and white, which is fine by me; I like the way the pictures seem at once contemporary and historical.

The book is made up of separate stories linked together to form a kind of novel. I describe a wide range of Beijingers, young and old, rich and poor, female and male, those born in the capital and those who migrated there from elsewhere in China. Likewise I was looking for visuals that would capture the variousness of Beijing. I wasn't trying to "illustrate" the text, rather for the pictures to imply an extra set of open-ended stories, running in parallel to the written ones. And so I strolled mindfully around the city, camera in hand, alert for what might appear.

For example, the first story in the book is about a man whose job requires him to bicycle about the city dressed in a gorilla suit, stopping off at offices to sing to employees "Happy Birthday" and "Congratulations On Your Promotion." What could I find visually to echo that? I noticed a clown on a bus, but by the time I'd whipped out my camera, the bus had gone by. I saw a boy in a Halloween cape and mask, but this image was a bit scary, not corresponding to my story. Finally I saw a dwarf walking along, and meanwhile other people were busy with their own affairs; I liked the way the viewer can imagine this scene as the opening of many possible scenarios.

Another story of mine has a touch of magic: a contemporary Beijing man is cyber-dating a beautiful virgin who lived four hundred years ago. I sought an image in the modern city that would imply both those worlds. An art student offered to show me a wall that had, he said, the best graffiti. On it I noticed a stencil of a woman reclining in an Old Master pose, as if inspired by Goya, adjacent to tags in English and Chinese. I took the shot.

The culmination of the book is a story called "The Most Beautiful Woman In China." I rework an ancient legend about a lovely woman who is scorned by the Emperor, placing her in modern Beijing, and I give it a bittersweet ending. I came across a street salesman who had posted the head of a mannequin on a stick, out in a square next to a subway station. He was selling hairclips; he kept attaching and detaching the hairclip from the mannequin's ponytail. I took many photographs. Finally I obtained one in which he was out of frame: all we see is the isolated female head, ignored by passersby. This picture is mysterious and poignant, just what I was looking for.

I'm left with many photographs that speak to me, but that I couldn't find a place for in the book. Perhaps they'll inspire me to write more fiction.

---Jonathan Tel

Reading and Discussing Nonfiction Part II

Yesterday we shared a list of 15 nonfiction books that reading group members are discussing. Here are some comments about specific titles they shared with us.


"Last month we read The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls. This book really makes you think about how resilient kids can be and how hard it is to work and overcome adversity. Even more so when the adversity stems from your own parents, who you are raised to trust more than anyone else. Jeannette and her siblings are amazing. I'm so glad she finally told her story." ---Carrie Jordan, TriBeta Girls, Raleigh, NC

"This year we read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow. The majority of us really enjoyed the book, and several of us watched Randy Pausch's 'last lecture' (delivered at Carnegie Mellon University) on YouTube.com as well." ---Sharon Long, Book Banter, Lone Tree, CO

"Our group, The Sophias, read The Soul of Money: Reclaiming the Wealth of Our Inner Resources by Lynne Twist.... Everyone enjoyed this book, and we had a lively and thoughtful discussion about our relationship to money. It made us more aware of what money can mean, our family issues with money and what changes we might make based upon what we learned about our relationship to money. We were all very touched by the story of Lynne's mother in her dying days when she gave away everything she owned not only to relatives and friends but also to those with whom she dealt with at the grocery store, the dry cleaner, the hairdresser and the local restaurant that she frequented, leaving just enough for her funeral." ---Bonney Parker, Ocean County, NJ

"Our book group is currently reading Thunderstruck by Erik Larson (author of The Devil in the White City). It's a great read, set at the turn of the 20th century, a story of murder and the advent of wireless communication. If history had been this exciting in school we would all be at the head of the class!" ---Jeanne Johnson, Pageturners, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR

"We have just recently read a nonfiction for the first time in our group --- The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life by Ben Sherwood. Very interesting, great discussion. We have not planned anymore nonfiction yet but will in the future. It changes things up and keeps us talking!" ---Cheryl, Livonia, MI

"Since we're located in the heart of the corn belt, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals held special interest for our book club. A large part of the book is devoted to an explanation of corn economics and the domination of the American diet and American farming by corn and corn syrup. Even though it was a very long read, we were all fascinated by Michael Pollan's insights into American food culture and his experiences with experts in hunting, mushroom gathering and natural farming.

Our book club had mixed reactions to How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else. As a mother with a daughter who has worked at Starbucks in Minneapolis and in Madison, Wisconsin and loved the job and the company, I was excited about reading this book and wasn’t disappointed. I thought Michael Gates Gill’s anecdotes about famous people, such as Ernest Hemingway and Queen Elizabeth, whom he had met in financially better times, added to the book’s interest, but some of our members felt like he was just namedropping. Still, the book definitely kept everyone’s attention and made for some good discussion." ---Diane Richardson, CU@Bookclub, Champaign-Urbana, IL

"Mildred Armstrong Kalish, the author of the memoir Little Heathens, lived through the Great Depression in Iowa. She has written a warm, humorous book about her experiences. After a successful career as an English professor, we have been blessed by her decision to share her childhood memories with us. The word was spread in our town that this was a 'good' read, and we had a full attendance of 12 people show up at the library for the discussion. Two people made recipes from the book and brought those to share. A few of the elderly women could relate to the story and remembered the Depression. I found it interesting that she came to Miami University in Ohio for her training for her World War II duties." ---Carolyn Rector, Tipp City, OH

"The group found The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom by Simon Winchester easy to read as well as interesting. Many of us had been to China and visited the places mentioned. The Appendix provided many interesting lists." ---Joy Martineau, Huntington Beach, CA

From Teresa Thompson, Pat's Page Turners, Apple Valley, CA:

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson --- "Eerie and fascinating at the same time; a very good read."

The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeanette Walls --- "Have to love this author's ability to live and love and let go. All thumbs up on this one."

Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen --- "An unforgettable book. Loved it."

A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance by Marlena de Blasi --- "A delightful amble through life's choices mingled with food and Venice."

Reading and Discussing Nonfiction

What nonfiction books are reading groups discussing? In a recent ReadingGroupGuides.com newsletter we asked you to tell us --- and did you ever. We received more email responses than for any question we've asked to date. Well over 100 titles were mentioned. Here are the top 15 (in alphabetical order), including established reading group favorites along with lesser-known books. Tomorrow we'll share comments from group members on specific titles.


The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls

How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else by Michael Gates Gill

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez and Kristin Ohlson

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow

Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan

The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman

Monica McInerney: Writers and Readers

Today's guest blogger, novelist and book club member Monica McInerney, talks about how her life as a writer has changed her as a reader. Her latest book is Greetings from Somewhere Else, and she's also the author of Upside Down Inside Out, The Faraday Girls, Family Baggage and The Alphabet Sisters.


I once had the disconcerting experience of sitting on a bus beside someone reading one of my novels. It was the longest journey of my life. I don't think I breathed for the first hour. I read every word and every line with her. I had to dig my nails into my hands to stop myself asking, "Did you like that page?" "Was that joke funny enough?" "How are you enjoying it so far?" She's lucky I didn't get off at the same stop and follow her home.

I'm having that same feeling now, in the week that my new novel Greetings from Somewhere Else is published in the USA. It's the story of Lainey, an over-efficient event organizer who is wrenched from her Melbourne home to take charge of a run-down B&B in Ireland. Meanwhile, back home, her father's taken to his bed, her mother is up the walls, her three brothers are running amok, and her boyfriend is causing more problems than she could have imagined...

I live in Dublin, and unfortunately it's not going to be possible for me to trawl the transport systems of America in search of someone reading my book. That's why I love reading groups so much. Like all authors, I write in isolation, but I write for readers. I long to know if my stories have struck chords, if my characters have come to life. It's an honor, as exciting as it is nervewracking, to have the opportunity to talk either by phone or in person with a group of readers who have given my book their time, energy and thought. It's a special feeling to hear readers talk about my characters as though they are as real to them as they were to me.

I'm now a full-time author, spending my days juggling plot twists, researching locations, moving my characters from one family drama to another. Once a month, though, I join the real world and metamorphose into a full-time reader, heading into the centre of Dublin to meet with my own reading group.

In the four years our group of six women and two men have been meeting, we've read and passionately discussed classics, modern novels, non-fiction, poetry and memoirs, by writers from Ireland, Australia, America, Britain, Germany, France. I look forward to every meeting. I've been an avid reader since I was a child, and even now I average two or three books a week.

It was only after I joined the discussion group, however, that I realized how my life as a writer had changed me as a reader. Like a sorcerer's apprentice, I now had an inkling of the secrets behind the story, the techniques, the plotting, the characterization, the dialogue, the language. I was reading each book as if I was there beside the author.

It made my reading experience so much richer, but there was an unfortunate side-effect: I couldn't criticitize a novel, because I knew how hard it was to write one. If another group member found fault with a character or a plot twist or even a line of dialogue, I would spring to the author's defense. I must have been exasperating. "Have you ever read a book you didn't love?" one of them finally asked me. "There must have been something you didn't like about this one."

It was what I needed to hear, as a reader and as a writer. Because it made me think and finally articulate at the next meeting what I believe to be the truth and the magic of reading. No book is perfect. No author is perfect. No reader is perfect. People bring their own lives, theories, imperfections, hopes and dreams to every book they read, as every author brings all those qualities to each book she or he writes. Reading and writing are creative, challenging, ever-changing activities. No two people read the same book in the same way. One person may love every word of a book, another will loathe it. That's the magic of stories --- they somehow change shape in the hands of the many different people who read them.

I know my reading group experiences have helped me as a writer. I've heard passionate readers tell me what they long for in a book –--- heart, action, intelligence, humor. I've heard what they don't like in a book --- stilted dialogue, implausible plots, unlikeable characters. When I sit at my computer and start to invent my own fictional worlds, characters and lives, I no longer think of those voices as critical or negative. I think of them as future readers, cheering me on, encouraging me, reminding me to write from the heart, to mean what I say, to pour as much life and soul as I can into every page.

---Monica McInerney