Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Young adult novels are underutilized by book groups and that’s a shame. They aren’t just for kids and they have several characteristics that make them outstanding book group choices: they tend to be quick reading, they’re loaded with issues, and they feature strong emotions and relationships in transition. As an added bonus, many book group members love finding new reads they can recommend to children, grandchildren, and other young friends.

My latest young adult find is Unwind by Neal Shusterman. It’s set in an alternate future where the argument between pro-life and pro-choice forces escalated to outright warfare. As a compromise, the two sides accepted a deal where abortion is banned, but parents can choose to have difficult teenagers “unwound,” a euphemism for harvesting all of the teen’s limbs and organs for transplant. If all of the teen’s body is used, the twisted reasoning goes, the teen is still alive and hasn’t been killed.

The novel is told from alternating perspectives, but mostly those of Connor and Risa, two teens scheduled to be unwound, and Lev, another boy whose parents are offering their tenth-born child as a “tithe,” a voluntary, honorary procedure, but one with the same result. As the novel opens, the three go on the run from the juvenile police who would take them to their end.

While some might find the premise a bit fantastic, the ideas and emotions Shusterman taps are real and highly believable. The three protagonists run a gauntlet of nightmarish experiences on the way to a shocking ending. This is a novel marketed to young adults, but sophisticated enough to support adult reading and discussion.

If you’re interested in a different take (from the adult section) on organ transplants gone wrong, try Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, a heartbreaking tale of three young people in an alternate future where Britain has decided to clone people to make organ transplants readily available. Kept in a boarding school with other cloned children who face the same fate, the tragedy in this book is that most of the kids can’t even conceptualize that their fate is unfair.

A third possibility is Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper, in which a girl sues her parents for the right to choose not to donate a kidney to her cancer-plagued sister. Picoult always takes her ideas from the headlines, but her treatment of the issues is on the border of literary fiction and light melodrama, a zone that puts her right in the sweet spot for many book groups.

A reader of this blog queried some time back about the additional resources that were shared at a discussion of Mary Doria Russell’s Dreamers of the Day, which I had talked about in one of my posts.  I had mentioned how book discussions can be enhanced when the leader brings additional resources to the meeting, to encourage participants to delve deeper into the book’s subject matter.

Here, then, are those titles, for any of you who are planning to utilize Dreamers of the Day in an upcoming discussion program — or for your own personal sampling, if you’ve read the book and would like to explore further.

Desert Queen: the Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell, Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia, by Janet Wallach.

Lawrence of Arabia: the Battle for the Arab World (a DVD videorecording).

Lawrence of Arabia: the Life, the Legend, by Malcolm Brown.

The Middle East: the History, the Cultures, the Conflicts, the Faiths (a Time publication).

Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T. E. Lawrence.

And then, of course, there’s the DVD of David Lean’s prizewinning film, Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O’Toole.  That’s a masterpiece that gets better and better with each additional viewing!

At a recent meeting of the Adult Reading Round Table Quarterly Literary Fiction Book Discussion group, the talk turned to the problems some discussion leaders have been experiencing when they try to attract readers in the ever elusive 20-30 age group.  Others in the group shared their success stories in persuading the “twentysomethings” to participate, mentioning two key factors:  schedule the meetings outside the library at a spot where these individuals typically gather and feel comfortable, such as a Starbuck’s — or even a bar; and communicate with them via the library’s web site (to announce the programs) and e-mail (to send reminders).

One librarian told how she used “chick lit” to attract a group of young female readers — and the size of the circle swelled to 25 members over time, as she started off with lighter offerings and then “moved up,” so to speak, to more substantial authors, such as Marian Keyes.  This same librarian recently designed a “One Book, One Village” reading program around the best seller Three Cups of Tea and remarked that one of her most successful sessions was also held off site, in a tea shop!  The proprietor of the shop was so impressed with the turnout (and the discussion) that she volunteered to bring tea to the library for future discussions.  For those of us who enjoy a spot of  tea with our conversations about books, it’s hard to beat an offer like that!

The big news at my library is a once-in-a-lifetime donation of around 8000 music CDs from a local collector. Despite all the press about people switching to digital music, our CD collection is circulating faster than ever, with longer hold lists and more patron requests, so this donation is a timely boon. But what, you might be asking, does this have to do with book groups?

Although I’m an audiophile, I haven’t tried a listening group yet, but I’m intrigued. Such groups are growing in popularity, and as the use of the often headphone-bound digital music grows, I predict that more people will try to find outlets to talk about music they’re experiencing in isolation.

Acquaintances in listening groups have described their activities, which invite interesting comparisons to book groups. Just as book groups analyze particular works, a listening group may analyze a particular album, with the added bonus that there is time to experience much of that work during the meeting. As book groups exchange facts about the author, listening groups discuss the musicians and composers involved and compare the merits of their other works. As readers address themes, listeners bring favorite selections by particular performers, or from a genre, historical period, or country’s musical output. Just as readers discuss how a work has affected them, listening groups also discuss their feelings or tell stories about how a song has intersected with their lives.

In other ways, listening groups differ. The component parts that come together to produce a piece of music involve more people, and their roles are more easily identifiable than those that go into making a book. Listeners discuss the instruments and playing styles utilized. They examine the output of lyric writers, composers, and session players. Influences on the performers can be more easily identified than those on authors, and the backlog of those performers’ works take less time to explore. Groups can listen to alternate versions and recordings of the same song.

Hardcore audiophiles may go even further. For instance, many can identify the “sound” of a particular producer or studio. I’ve been told of a group that can often guess the location, a particular studio or concert hall, where a song was recorded, based on the sound. Some listening groups even go so far as to bring sheet music of the pieces they are examining. Musicians in the group may attempt live performance of portions of the work.

Book clubs might consider an occasional evening of listening. If the group needs a change, or if preparation time is short for an upcoming meeting, music makes a great diversion. One of the groups I participate in had a wonderful evening when we brought in a working Victrola and listened to old 78s. We’ve also listened to songs or performers mentioned in the books we’ve read. I’m sure creative book groups have found other ways to make music part of their meetings.

Music’s definitely a big part of my forseeable future… Back to processing all those donations!

In my continuing effort to understand the photography of Dorothea Lange (see my comments on January 4th about her biography), I was led to a book from 1938 called Land of the Free by poet Archibald MacLeish.

Published in the middle of The Great Depression, this book is illustrated with photographs mostly from the Resettlement Administration collection and includes some of Dorothea Lange’s work.

With the photographs as an inspiration, poet MacLeish wrote a free verse responding to what was happening in the country and the images chosen for the book.

What is eerie about this work is that it really echoes what is happening today in our country.  The same emotions that are expressed both visually in the eyes of the subjects in the photos and in the tone of the words chosen by MacLeish exist today as we struggle with our own economic crisis.

What it appears to come down to is how individual people are treated in times of stress.  When MacLeish writes his refrain, “We are wondering,” he means whether the basic assumptions of liberty and justice exist when basic needs are not being met.  The questions become “we wonder…we don’t know…we’re asking.”

This would be a fabulous book to use for a book discussion.  Its historical nature may deflect the pain of today but no one could read and view this book without seeing today’s headlines.

All of my acquaintances who are retired love the fact that they have so much more time for activities that used to be just shoehorned into a work week. One of the things I plan to do when I retire–besides volunteering, adding a  second weekly yoga class, learning to knit, and writing that novel I’ve been creating in my head since college–is join a book group. (Yes, I know many of you juggle work and book groups at the same time, but I don’t have your stamina.)

I was intrigued to learn a few days ago that a long time friend of my husband’s is a member of The Tacoma Retired Men’s Book Club. None of your quick-and-popular reads for them. Their December selection was Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. In January they read David Foster Wallace’s The Broom of the System. Tomorrow (February 3) they’ll be getting together at Satellite Coffee to talk about local author Ruth Tiger’s The Away Place, and Tiger will be joining them. The pick for March is The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property by Lewis Hyde.

Check out the Tacoma Retired Men’s Book Club blog where members often post commentaries–sometimes very long commentaries. Because they have time.

At my most recent book discussion, I tried something new.  At the start of the meeting, I asked everyone to take a minute and think about the book (which was Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman) and prepare to share a brief comment beginning with “What I liked about the book was…” or “What I didn’t like about the book was…”

I was interested to see how many people would choose to say something positive and also, how many would instead offer a negative response.  There were 12 group members, and eight of them opted for “What I liked about the book was…”  I explained that I felt I was conducting a small psychological experiment to see what people would decide was most important to share, an enthusiastic viewpoint or a disapproving one.  One group member laughed and said my effort may not have been entirely successful, since in her opinion, most women are apt to say something nice rather than the reverse if they’re given a choice.  Another person said she could have gone either way, since she had mixed feelings about the book, but I was forcing each of them to make a choice.

What I liked about using this device was that it quickly got the group into discussing the book, because all sorts of ideas and opinions were brought forward in the first few minutes of the session.  Kaaterskill Falls is not a new book — it was published in 1998, and it was the author’s first novel, after winning critical acclaim for two collections of short stories.  The book was nominated for the National Book Award, and everyone in the book group agreed it contained many beautiful descriptions.  But we also agreed that it wasn’t completely satisfying as a novel, and we speculated that the author approached it almost as if she were stringing together a group of short stories, and this accounted for its lack of power as a novelistic work.

Set in New York during the year of the Bicentennial (and the year following), the novel focuses on a group of orthodox Jews who cluster together in an upstate community during the summer.  The families come to Kaaterskill to escape the heat of the city and to enjoy their specific traditions as a unit of deeply committed followers under the strong influence of their ailing leader, Rav Kirschner.  Nothing very dramatic happens, but we do get a very complete set of character portraits, and so we feel we know these people very well by the end of the book.  Characterization is obviously one of the author’s strengths, but she also excels at descriptions of setting and ritual.  These are the reasons to recommend the book, according to my group.

What didn’t they like about the book?  The four group members who chose to go this route were in complete agreement — they wanted something big to happen, and it didn’t.  It’s interesting how we’ve come to expect this in the novels we read and talk about.  Kaaterskill Falls doesn’t have a central character, or protagonist, that readers can caught up with and relate to strongly.  Goodman also makes the mistake of including characters with similar names, such as Isaac and Isaiah, and Rachel and Ruchel.  This may be confusing, but it doesn’t completely detract from her story.  Some of the group members thought it would be interesting to check out what she has written since this book was published.  They suspected she has learned from experience and grown — which is, in a very large sense, what happens to the people in Kaaterskill Falls.

What can someone who is only twenty five possibly have to say that is so significant they are encouraged to write a memoir?

Perhaps it starts with the fact that Kevin Michael Connolly was born without legs.  Then after discovering that leverage is needed to be a successful wrestler, he moved onto to hurtling his body down a mountain side strapped to a mono-ski.  Or, could it be that his distain of a wheelchair, which leads to propulsion by skateboard, finds him making a few trips around the world.

No, I think it is because from his skateboard, with a secret little method, he managed to capture the expressions of all the ordinary people who looked at this extraordinary individual with every possible human emotion.  Including pity. 

But you do not have to pity Kevin Michael Connolly.  On the contrary, you need to admire his greatest skill:  his ability to tell a story with self-deprecating humor at a pace that flows the reader through his life as if you were one of his traveling companions.

Forced to constantly face his legless state, Kevin does a masterful job of relaying to the reader how people feel about him but also how he feels about himself. 

Books groups will find plenty to discuss here and have the added bonus of being able to look at all of Kevin’s fine photography.  If The Rolling Exhibition comes to a gallery near you, you might also want to take in the array of human emotions displayed through Kevin’s lens.

Zoinks! I might be just a little bit crazy (but in a good way).

I’ve been toiling since late November to build my annual aggregated compilation of last year’s best books. It’s not just the best according to one source, or even according to ten sources. So far, it’s the best according to 74 different authoritative sources, and over 1200 books published in the U.S. in 2009 have been mentioned.

I’ve counted the votes, sorted them by genre, and put them in a downloadable, sortable Excel spreadsheet that has tabs for general fiction; mystery and thriller fiction; speculative fiction; historical fiction; romance fiction; young adult fiction; poetry; graphic works; nonfiction; biographies and memoirs; and how-to, art, and cookbooks. The sources compiled to date are listed and linked to on the last tab of the spreadsheet. Get the spreadsheet and read more about it at my other blog home, Williamsburg Regional Library’s Blogging for a Good Book.

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall is the top vote getter, with mentions on 29 different lists so far. In fiction, Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness: Stories received 20 votes to date. This was followed by Suzanne Collins YA SF/adventure sequel Catching Fire (18), A. S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book (17), Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs (17), and Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood (16).  One vote further back are The Help by Kathryn Stockett and Love and Summer, by William Trevor.

In nonfiction, the top vote getter so far is Stitches: A Memoir, the graphic memoir by David Small, with 22 votes. This is followed by Dave Eggers’ tale of Hurricane Katrina victim Zeitoun (14 votes to date),  David Finkel’s The Good Soldiers (13), Dave Cullen’s Columbine (12), David Grann’s The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon (12), Blake Bailey’s biography Cheever: A Life (12). One vote behind are Mary Karr’s Lit: A Memoir, Tracy Kidder’s Strength in What Remains, and Richard Holmes’ Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. Any of these vote leaders would make a fine choice for your book group.

I’m not done with the aggregation yet, but the job is near enough completion that I’m ready to go to press. In the coming weeks, I’ll write individual posts about the results in each of the tabulated categories. I’ll also post an update when the aggregation is finished, or you can check back for the latest updates in the vote count once a week at Blogging for a Good Book.

The death of J. D. Salinger (see Dan Kraus’ post on Likely Stories) has overshadowed the fact we lost another literary figure this week: Louis Auchincloss. Described in New York Magazine as “the last of the gentlemen novelists,” Auchincloss was an old-fashioned writer whose novels and stories depicted an increasingly arcane and antique-seeming world: that of  old money, New England prep schools, Manhattan brownstones and boardrooms, and Long Island estates. Auchincloss has been criticized for being too much a chronicler of the upper crust, but the polished surface of his characters’ lives and his restrained literary style are deceptive. He’s a master at showing the many calibrations and calculations people make to achieve or maintain their place in the world, and this lends his work psychological depth and moral complexity.

Auchincloss wrote more than 30 novels and dozens of volumes of short stories as well as literary criticism that included, appropriately, studies of Edith Wharton and Henry James. He was 92 when he died on January 26.

My email box today contained an invitation to an upcoming panel (sponsored by two of the other review journals, not Booklist) about the future of book reviews. The questions they will address, about the importance of quality reviews to consumers and the comparative value of less authoritative reviews on the Internet, are good ones. Frankly, the decision to hold such a panel makes me worried about the finances of these journals. Unless it’s revived by a late purchase, we’ve already lost Kirkus Reviews. Whether the damage has been caused by the influence of the Internet or the business models of the conglomerate parent companies that own most journals I’m not sure, but we’re definitely in a state of flux.

Let’s hope that other review journals won’t succumb to these strange times when not-yet-profitable online resources are damaging the solvency of print resources (yes, I know, I’m writing this on a blog, but it is associated with a print resource known for high standards.) Online resources are mostly free for now, but they aren’t turning big profits and you can bet that if the income from print resources dries up, the companies producing content will either have to start charging for online access or go out of business. Consider the recent announcement that the New York Times will begin charging for content in 2011. There’s only so much Internet advertising revenue to go around. At some point we’ll have to pay for resources or lose them.

But I’ll take off my corporate crusader hat and return to my theme: book reviews. Here are some ways for your group to use them:

• Bring a well written review to the meeting and read it aloud as a way to introduce the book and set the table for discussion.
• Print the most opinionated reviews you can find. If discussion lags, read some aloud and ask for reactions.
• If your group reads older works, use the literary databases at your local library to research the critical reaction to the book when it was first published. Did the critics of the time get it right?
• Use reviews to help generate a list of discussion questions for your next meeting.
• If your group collaborates when its time to select future reading, print book reviews and pass them around so that your members can make informed decisions about titles with which they are less familiar. You might even consider purchasing a group subscription to one of the review journals for this purpose.

Whether you agree with them or not, reviews are an important part of the book group member’s toolbox. Learn how to use them to your best advantage.

A copy of what looks like a wonderful book group resource just arrived in my office. It’s Fellowship in a Ring: A Guide for Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Groups, by Book Group Buzz’s own Neil Hollands. In addition  to offering advice on starting and running a sci fi/fantasy book group, Neil explains the genres and their various subgenres. He also provides discussion guides for 50 recommended science fiction and fantasy titles, and suggested works and questions for 40 different speculative fiction themes. Great stuff, Neil!

Jean Hegland only has 2 novels, but they are both perfect choices for book discussion.  Interestingly enough, they couldn’t be more different from each other.

Into the Forest is a post-apocalyptic story of two teenage sisters, Nell and Eva, who go through the end of the world with only each other to rely on.  It’s an undated future, where the world they know slowly collapses around them.  Wars raging in the middle east, banks are collapsing, and soon there is no news from any source.  The girls live in the remote California forests, and when their parents die, they are left to find a way to survive.  An absolutely fascinating tale, this is sure to make a lively discussion as readers will have strong emotions about what happens to the young women.  I’ve used this at 4 different libraries with good results.

Hegland’s second novel, Windfalls, is the story of two different young women in the late 1970s who have the same choice to make:  each finds herself pregnant and unmarried.  Anna, a college student with career ambitions, chooses an abortion, while  Cerise, a lonely high-schooler, chooses to have her child.  Anna becomes a successful photographer who marries and has two daughters, and Cerise ends up in a series of bad situations that eventually cause her to lose her home and her second child.  Their paths cross when Anna hires Cerise as a daycare provider and the women forge an unexpected friendship.  A powerful and poignant novel.   While the topic of abortion may spark some heated discussions, the real meat of this story is motherhood and what it means; and, how homelessness can come upon any one of us in the blink of an eye.

I hope all of you Jane Austen fans were able to watch (or, like me, record) the first part of the new  Masterpiece Emma adaptation that aired last night on PBS. This makes the fourth Emma in recent memory, following the BBC adaptation in 1993, the 1997 version starring Kate Beckinsale and shown on A&E,  and the 1996 Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle.

Be sure to check out the special  Emma-related features on the Masterpiece site, among them a Bachelors of Highbury quiz, a screenwriter Q&A, and a Jane Austen House slide show.  And for the first time, Masterpiece hosted a live Twitter party during the broadcast.  More information on the Emma Twitter Party is here.

The second and third parts of Emma will air on January 31 and February 7.

One of my personal issues is that I do not like to use books from a series in my mystery and crime fiction book discussions unless it is the first book.  I just feel like book groups have to dither through too much baggage when they drop into a series with a complex character surrounded by a huge cast of inexplicable supporting characters all talking about issues that the new reader is unfamiliar with.

Better to use a first novel where everything is fresh for all.  The down side is that some first novels in genre series are not the author’s best work.

I am not about to predict where Elly Griffiths will be in a few years but her debut novel, The Crossing Places, is a solid genre novel that will appeal to groups interested in crime fiction.  Her main character, Dr. Ruth Galloway, teaches forensic archaeology at the University of North Norfolk.  She lives an isolated life on The Saltmarsh, a remote area which changes each day with the tides.  Ruth lives out there because she is fortyish, believes she is overweight, has had a rocky love life and basically does not relate to any people all that well.  Not even her mother. 

What will make Ruth fun to discuss is that the supporting characters in the novel treat her differently from her self-perceptions.  Questions will arise about her veracity that should enliven a discussion.

The subject matter of forensic archaeology will appeal as well.  I am like one of the characters in the book:  cannot tell the difference between the Bronze and Iron Age even if I held it in my hand.  But the idea that henges were built on this land and that secret pathways across the marsh are marked by posts that may lead a person to a mysterious and sacred ground is both chilling and enlightening. 

The setting of The Saltmarsh is used to great advantage in this novel and is reminiscent of the Grimpen Mire in The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle.  Setting becomes another character. 

Here is a first novel that should work for book discussion groups.  It will especially appeal to those looking for mystery or crime novel in the traditional style which distains graphic violence, language and sexual behavior yet handles all those topics within the narrative.  A second novel, called The Janus Stone, is scheduled for an American release this fall.

With support from Gary Niebuhr, I’m going to start exploring the discussion of mysteries in some of my book groups. I have another boost from the winter reading program theme my library chose this year, Readers in the Rue Morgue. The first title I’m going to use is Mystic River by Dennis Lehane, the “best mystery for discussion groups” according to Gary.

But in this post, I want to talk about another Dennis Lehane novel that I think is suitable for book groups, Shutter Island. I won’t be choosing that one for a while since the movie adaptation will be opening on February 19, thereby causing a stampede at the circulation desk for all available copies (see Neil).

However, when I do, I will present all the formats of this novel to the readers and strongly encourage them to try a new one and bring their experience to the discussion.

Dennis Lehane’s second stand-alone novel was a departure from his detective series featuring Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro as well as his best-selling and award-winning crime suspense Mystic River. Shutter Island immediately made me think of all the best Alfred Hitchcock films. I hope you understand what I mean when I say that I “read this novel in black and white.”

Of course, the typeface is black and white. But what I pictured while I was reading were scenes in sepia-toned black and white to go with the time period (early 1950s) and the setting (a storm-tossed island housing a mysterious psychiatric hospital from which a patient has escaped).  Two U.S. marshals have been dispatched to the former military base to investigate the disappearance and some questionable medical practices as a hurricane bears down on the island sitting in the Bay of Boston.

I remember reading this book in July of 2003 and feeling chilled to the bone. Then a patron put it on hold and I had to bring it back. Not to be thwarted, I immediately checked out the audio version of Shutter Island as read by David Strathairn. I didn’t think it was possible to become even more sucked into the twisty plot, but I was. Strathairn laid on a layer of creepy that I hadn’t perceived in the text. There’s another audio version that consummate narrator Tom Stechschulte. A listener can’t go wrong selecting either audio book.

Now there’s a third interpretation of this mind-bending mystery, the graphic novel. Artist Christian De Metter has artfully combined black and white panels with a few brief scenes in color. He has retained the noir feel of the novel and created images of the characters that stand apart from the forth coming movie. The graphic novel is just as creepy as the source material.

Once demand for all the versions of Shutter Island have died down, I’m hoping to have a lively discussion with my book group about all the formats and which ones enhance some elements of the story better than others and how the readers’ experience is affected by the various formats. I will also ask them if they read it in black and white.

Book club members have been in my library en masse this week. It’s the time of year when groups are making new selections for the upcoming reading year, and the readers are coming in to place books on hold. Here’s a bit of advice as your group makes its selections: Think twice before you pick the hottest book group of the moment.

Three or four times a year we’re overrun at the library when every book group in town decides to do the same book at once. The worst current backlog is for Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, but we’ve seen this many times before. Overselected books of the last few years include The Glass Castle, Water for Elephants, Three Cups of Tea, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, and Eat, Pray, Love.

Balance your group’s need to read the latest thing with practical concerns. If you join the groups rushing to read what’s hot, library users will not be able to get the book in time. Instead, they’ll further clog request lists with holds that won’t materialize until well after your meeting has been held. Your meeting will be damaged because many readers will either not have read the book or will only have read the first few pages of a copy they bought at the last minute. If you must read the hot book, warn your readers that they will need to buy a copy.

A rash of book group requests will also aggravate problems at the local library. Book group readers sometimes hold onto overdue copies until their meeting occurs, further backing up the hold lists.

If you’re a book group leader, call your library and ask about the hold list and availability before you pick THE book group book du jour. If you’re a member, by all means take advantage of your library, but don’t wait to put the book on hold once your group announces it. If a computer catalog is available, go home and put it on hold that night. If it isn’t, call the library the next morning and make the request or you will become one of the readers left out in the cold. Tell the library your book group is reading the book. It might cue them to order new copies. 

Finally, when your group does read the latest and greatest, do a kindness to other local readers: donate copies to the library after the meeting to help them meet the backlogged hold list. What goes around comes around, and if you want to get The Help in the future, you might have to give the help today.

I know that it’s been a while (I had a beautiful baby boy about four months ago), but I wanted to dive in and share a recent read that would be good for book groups.

I have written a couple of times about Jane Gardam’s Old Filth. The last time I did this, Mary Ellen was good enough to add in the comments that a prequel/sequel of sorts was forthcoming. Well, now I have read it and can report back.

The Man in the Wooden Hat is another fine novel by Jane Gardam. It revisits the main characters from Old Filth, Sir Edward Feathers and his wife Betty. This time, though, we meet Edward and Betty in their youth–when they meet in Hong Kong and marry. But this is by no means a simple love story nor are Edward or Betty simple characters. There are also revelations here that will have you racing to reread both books.

While this would stand on its own, The Man in the Wooden Hat gains its real strength from its predecessor. But once again Gardam is suave, witty, wry and surprising. She writes with a firm tenderness about Edward and Betty; it’s obvious that these are two characters she was not finished with, that she had to return to again. I, for one, am glad that she did.

Yesterday was our staff reader’s advisory meeting and this month’s title was The Bingo Palace by Louise Erdrich.  The category for January was ethnic fiction and The Bingo Palace is set in the Chippewa Nation in North Dakota.

It addresses the choice being made by a driftless character named Lipsha Morrissey.  Lipsha may have reasons for being a bit down:  his mother tried to drown him in a sack full of stones when he was a child, his father is a notorious prisoner in jail and he is in love with his uncle’s wife. 

What saves Lipsha and many of the other characters in this book is that they are imbued with magic powers.  This characteristic also answers the question of why should we read ethnic fiction.  By reading outside your own culture, book groups must deal with questions such as do these magical powers really exist.

Setting aside the issues of ethnicity, this book also will stimulate discussion because of the author’s style.  The presentation of the characters is different due to the nature of their ethnicity and the proof in this might be the fact that Erdrich’s mother was a Chippewa.  The bigger stylistic issue may be that Erdrich is a poet and she is capable of writing sentences that stop a reader because they are so rich.  Book groups will find themselves addressing both the language used and how it is used when discussing this title. 

Group leaders may know the titles that preceded The Bingo Palace:  Love Medicine, The Beet Queen and Tracks.  If you have tried these titles and were happy, you will want to continue with The Bingo Palace.   A reader’s guide can be found at http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides_b/bingo_palace1.asp Read the rest of this entry »

The Reference and User Services Association of the ALA names has chosen books in eight genres as the top of their Reading List for 2010. I love these awards, started only a few years ago, which helped ALA begin to recognize more than literary fiction as worthy of recognition. I hope book groups will follow their lead: Try some genre books in 2010! These winners and runners-up are all deserving. Here are the awards:

Adrenaline (Action, Thrillers, and Adventure) Winner

Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

Runners-Up

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell

The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner

Shatter by Michael Robotham

The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer

 Fantasy Winner

Lamentation by Ken Scholes

Runners-Up

Red Wolf Conspiracy by Keith Redick

Turn Coat by Jim Butcher

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett

 Historical Fiction Winner

Agincourt, by Bernard Cornwell

Runners-Up

Cleopatra’s Daughter by Michelle Moran

Etta by Gerald Kolpan

Grace Hammer by Sara Stockbridge

The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland

 Horror Winner

Last Days by Brian Evenson

Runners-Up

The House of Lost Souls by F. G. Cottam

The Little Stranger by Sara Waters

The Seance by John Harwood

The Unseen by Alexandra Sokoloff

 Mystery Winner

A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn

Runners-Up

The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny

The Dark Horse by Craig Johnson

Dog on It by Spencer Quinn

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

 Romance Winner

What Happens in London by Julia Quinn

Runners-Up

Chemistry for Beginners by Anthony Strong

Goddess of the Hunt by Tessa Dare

The Temptation of the Night Jasmine by Lauren Willig

Vision in White by Nora Roberts

 Science Fiction Winner

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Runners-Up

The Empress of Mars by Kage Baker

Flood by Stephen Baxter

The Quiet War by Paul J. McAuley

Steal Across the Skies by Nancy Kress

 Women’s Fiction Winner

Very Valentine by Adriana Trigiani

Runners-Up

After You by Julie Buxbaum

The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club by Gil McNeil

Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas

Shelter Me by Juliet Fay