From Mother to Daughter

With this being a hugely transitional year for me, (my daughter is about to leave for college), and with Mother’s Day fast approaching I couldn’t help but reflect on the love of reading that my mother passed to me and of course I passed to my daughter.

My mom is the consummate learner. For as long as I can remember she was off to a class or a lecture. And still to this day, she is taking classes and pursuing learning. And I don’t just mean a pottery class one day and a macramé class the next, I mean she delves into a serious subject like ageing or a discipline like ballroom dancing and studies; takes classes, goes to lectures, travels to conferences, and of course reads.

So, being the goofball I am who mostly wants to escape with a good story, my mom and I generally don’t read the same things. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t her influence that got me reading in the first place. You see one of my mom’s big passions is health. Just as she gently nudged my hand away from the bag of chips and towards the granola, she also turned off the TV and shooed me into my room with a book.

Now, her plan for a healthy mind and body for her daughter didn’t entirely work as I do still love me some chips and a healthy dose of TV, but I also (as you probably know) love books. And though we often try to do the opposite of what our parents did, I often found myself shooing my daughter off to her room with a book.

And it worked. My daughter loves books too. (I’m sure it didn’t hurt that she spent many of her childhood hours roaming her mommy’s bookstore and even working behind the counter). Of course when she was small I read to her, but once I stopped reading to her, I started reading with her. Not always of course, but if she loved a book or series (like Harry Potter, for example) I would read it too. I loved being able to talk about the characters with her and being a part of a world she loved. This tradition has continued into her teen years, but now we recommend books to each other. The most recent book we shared was Jasper Fforde’s SHADES OF GREY. It's a great book, by the way and I have found myself referring back to in other conversations with my daughter.

I expect over the next few years, my daughter won’t have too much time for extracurricular reading, but I hope in and between and when college is done we’ll continue to share our love of books. And I know just as my Mom gave the gift of reading to me, I was able to give it my daughter and she will take that with her wherever she goes.

And to my mom this Mother's Day; my heartfelt thanks.

-- Dana Barrett, Contributing Editor

Book Clubs in the News

What do robots, dogs, singers and financial columnists have in common? They all have book clubs and they are all featured in this month’s Book Clubs in the News!

NewScientist.com: The Robots’ Book Club
Who knew computers could read books? Well apparently they can. They can even tell you what the book is about and identify central themes. Sort of. What’s next, robot book clubs?

KitSapSun.com: Reading Dogs?
I know I made an April Fools joke about reading dogs, but this time I’m serious. All across the country, programs are springing up where kids gain confidence in their reading skills by reading aloud to their fuzzy four legged friends.

WashingtonPost.com: Color of Money Book Club
Book clubs are not just for fiction anymore. There seem to be book clubs out there for every kind of book you can think of, from software manuals to law books to your more obvious genre specific clubs. Check out this online book club run by Personal Financial Columnist Michelle Singletary of The Washington Post. Read the best books on managing your money and your life and discuss them online. You can even win a free book!

MySpace.com: Like to Read? And Sing? Have I got the book club for you!
The Bushwick Book Club in Brooklyn is in their own words “Songwriters who will read a book and write songs about/relating to it and play them for an astounded and appreciative audience. And other people who like books and music and nights involving books and music at the same time.” I’m astounded. And wish I lived closer ‘cause I’d totally go.

Is your book club doing something totally different? We want to hear about it! Feel free to comment here on the blog, or email me at dana@bookreporter.com.

-- Dana Barrett, Contributing Editor

Authors Helping Authors

In today's guest post, regular contributor Denise Neary shares a really cool author helping author story she came across. I hope I would be willing to go out of my way for someone like Jennifer Weiner does in this story no matter how successful I became. Not everyone would. But of course, that's what makes this story so special.

I love reading Jennifer Weiner’s funny, smart, and insightful blog, A Moment of Jen and was intrigued by this comment on the site in early March:

"If I’ve got one regret about my career, it’s that I’ll never get to be a debut novelist again, never feel the excitement and the terror that goes with it being your first time out of the gate, when you’ve got no audience, no track record, nothing but hope, and a willingness to do whatever you can to get your book into readers’ hands."

Weiner urged her readers to help spike the sale of Sarah Pekkanen’s debut novel, THE OPPOSITE OF ME. And, thanks to the considerable forces that are Weiner and Pekkanen, the book was a bestseller before it was officially published.

How did that happen?

Serendipity, talent, hard-work and generosity all around.

Writers Weiner and Pekkanen share an editor, Greer Hendricks, but don’t know each other. Pekkanen was weepy when Hendricks told her that Weiner liked the advance copy THE OPPOSITE OF ME.

Pekkanen, working hard to promote her new book, created a contest, “Sarah Spike Day” on her website to encourage people to order the book on a certain day. She announced some great prizes (As an aside, when did authors turn into human public relations machines?)

Weiner heard about the contest, and upped the ante. Weiner offered to send a signed copy of one of her books to each person who pre-ordered the book on March 3. At first, Pekkanen wrongly assumed that Weiner was generously offering to give away one copy of each of her seven best-sellers. Wrong. One copy per order. Weiner gave away hundreds of her books---all to help a new writer start off on the right foot, to share her readers with another audience, and to take delight in helping a new writer succeed.

A great book started its life as a best seller. A debut author had the moment of a lifetime. And a generous experienced author had the thrill (and the significant associated postal duties) of helping make that all happen.

It is goodness with a capital G.

-- Denise Neary, Regular Contributor

Library Lovers Unite

Earlier in the week I gave a shout out to my hometown library and libraries in general in honor of National Library Week. I was trying to keep it light and fun 'cause that's how I roll. But there are serious funding issues libraries are facing right now and if we want to keep the doors open for our children and our children's children, we need to step up. Mary Bonelli from Charlotte, NC wrote telling me about the library situation in her hometown and I thought it was something you should all be aware of. Her letter is today's post:

About a month ago, the Charlotte City Council announced that they were closing 12 of the 24 branches in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library system. The book loving community in Charlotte were completely taken by surprise and shocked at this announcement. They had previously talked about cutting hours and closing on certain days. They needed $2,000,000 in two weeks to keep the libraries open through the end of the fiscal year; June 30th.

The community rallied to do the best the could to raise this money and to voice their sadness, concerns and disappointment about the closings. The community was able to raise approximately $235,000; not enough to save the libraries. But because to the community's outrage, City Council held an emergency meeting and came up with a plan. They went back to their original thinking and have cut 85 of the original 140 jobs, each branch will be closed 2 days a week and will have shorter hours.

This will keep the libraries safe until the next fiscal year begins on July 1st. If the funding is not available in the new fiscal year, they are saying they will only be able to keep the main branch in Uptown Charlotte open and the children's library, ImaginOn, also in Uptown Charlotte.

How sad and scary that this is happening in a city like Charlotte, NC that has enjoyed being such a boom town for the 20 years that I have lived here. We are a fairly wealthy and philanthropic city, but this is a reality for us. With the way the economy has been over the last several years, I have personally seen a huge jump in library usage. I have always used the library to get a large percentage of my reading material to keep my personal budget under control. In a time when others are looking to save money, it is truly sad that this important resource could be gone.

For more details on this story and how you can help, visit the library's website. To donate, click here.

Thanks for bringing the importance of community libraries to our attention on your website and wish us luck in getting some budget money come July!

Sincerely, Mary Bonelli

Jeffrey Stepakoff: FIREWORKS OVER TOCCOA

Today's guest author is Jeffrey Stepakoff whose debut novel FIREWORKS OVER TOCCOA is quickly becoming a bestseller. I met Jeffrey last week and liked him right away. We had one of those "small world" moments when you realize you know some of the same people and have probably unknowingly crossed paths in the past. As we talked I could see that Jeffrey was a rare breed. A guy that not only talks but actually listens. And as you'll see in this post, also one that believes in love (and will openly admit it!).

Do you believe in love at first sight? Or to put a finer point on it, do you think you know when you’ve met “the one?” I guess I’ve always been a bit of a romantic. Still, I never really believed in such things – until I met my wife. Or maybe I should say, met her the second time.

One beautiful summer night, when we were in our twenties and just starting our careers, we both went to a party and ended up sitting right next to each other outside on the patio of a restaurant in Atlanta. It was the first time we met. We talked that night, and there was a spark, but in the morning I left for Los Angeles to start a job, and she settled into a job and a life in Georgia.

Eight years later, through a series of entirely unforeseen events, she moved to Los Angeles, to an apartment right around the corner from me. A mutual friend gave her my number, which she held onto for six months. But she finally called me and we talked on the phone one night for over three hours.

We made a date for a few days later and when she opened the door, I remember thinking that I now knew what the word breathless actually meant. We sat together on her sofa for a few minutes and she showed me some photographs of our mutual friends. I just smiled and nodded, my heart pounding, as I realized that never in my life had I ever met a woman who made me feel this way. It was an instinctive involuntary thing, like breathing, only at that moment I was aware of it.

We had dinner at an Asian restaurant in Venice and we were so engulfed in conversation they had to kick us out so they could close the place.

There was a kiss, and not long after we were married.

My wife is convinced that we were meant to be together, that it was inevitable, you know, destiny. I can’t refute that. But I also wonder about why we met, but it then took destiny eight years to bring us together.

In FIREWORKS OVER TOCCOA, Lily wonders a lot about “the simple timing of things.” She wonders about how timing played a part in everything from what happened to her brother to when she met Jake.

Do you believe in true love? Do you think timing plays a part in our how things play out in our lives? How did you meet your partner? These are some great questions to consider, along with the others in the FIREWORKS OVER TOCCOA Reading Group Discussion Guide.

And when you do start thinking about these things, send me an email. I’d love to know your thoughts!

Here’s to always believing in fireworks!

--Jeffrey Stepakoff, Author ( http://jeffreystepakoff.com/)

Love Thy Library as Thyself

It's National Library Week! Woo hoo... So, roll out the barrels, grab your party hats and run, don't walk to your nearest library.

This year National Library Week's theme is "Communities thrive @ your library" and we here at ReadingGroupGuides.com love reading and love reading communities so we're happy to take part in the celebration.

I have so many fond memories from my childhood of being in The Springfield Township Library or the library at my elementary school. I remember being kind of in awe of the quiet and the books and feeling so lucky to have a library card. I remember the librarians as being so nice and helpful, and so very, very tall behind that big checkout counter.

And though I certainly go to the library a bit less now than I did then, I want to make sure they continue to thrive. Especially in these tough economic times when our libraries provide free access to books and computers, homework help, assistance with resumes and job searches, accurate financial information, adult education courses, assistance for new Americans, CDs, DVDs and much more.

Be a part of National Library Week by visiting your local library. And hey, take a friend a long, or your kids.

Another way you can participate is to help libraries in the US get the funding they need. There are only two days left to get in touch with your senator and ask them to sign the "Dear Appropriators" letter that will go to the Senate Appropriations Committee asking them to support the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) and the Improving Literacy Through School Libraries (ILTSL) program in the FY2011 budget. Learn more about the budget and get instructions on how to contact your Senator by clicking here!

Discussing THE HELP

This month, regular contributor Heather Johnson shares her book club's discussion of THE HELP by Kathryn Stockett. Have you read it yet? Let us know what you think!

This month my book club met to discuss Kathryn Stockett’s bestseller, THE HELP. Two members nominated it in our last round of book-choosing (that has never happened before) so we were all expecting it to be really good. This book seems to be everywhere right now! Several of our members were approached in the salon while reading it; people wanted to say either that they loved the book or that they couldn’t wait to read it. These comments from complete strangers definitely added to our high expectations.

Eight members of the club got together over brunch on a lovely, Spring-y Saturday afternoon and we jumped right in to our discussion of the book …

We all agreed that Stockett did a wonderful job with most of her characters, especially Aibileen and Hilly. Some of us felt that Skeeter’s character needed “something more” to make her completely believable, and we all wanted to see more about Celia (who we loved!)

As the conversation continued, we realized that we each had different perceptions of racism based on where we were raised. The women who were raised in Northern states felt that racism today is a far cry from what is described in the book; they view modern racism as an underlying current rather than an in-your-face reality. Those raised in Southern states disagreed. One gal shared that in her Southern hometown the local high school still has separate proms – one run by the school and one run by a parent committee – and that students understand implicitly which one they are to attend, based on their race. This was absolutely shocking to some members while others had heard of this practice. Our discussion then detoured to the current trend of racism toward people of Hispanic and Middle Eastern descent before we pulled the conversation back to the book.

We went on to discuss some of the historical events going on around that time (the murder of Medgar Evers, the murder of the New York Civil Rights workers in Mississippi, and so on) and how we expected more violence to be present in the book. We discussed whether this absence was a strength or a weakness (ie. Did Stockett cop out?), but we didn’t really come to a solid conclusion.

My club rates the books we read on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest). Each member uses her own criteria and usually compares the current book to others we’ve read. This book received an 8 from almost every member – it was definitely a hit with my club.

I didn’t think of this ahead of time, but this would have been a great book to pair up with a non-fiction account of the Civil Rights movement in the South. That would have given an entirely new dimension to the discussion, don’t you think?

-- Heather Johnson, Regular Contributor