Most book groups follow a model learned from high school classes or Oprah: a book is assigned, everyone reads it, and then it is (cue angelic choir) DISCUSSED. While this can be great, especially when discussion goes well and that rare thing we call DEPTH happens, a single book is not the only way to go. In fact, there are many ways in which one-book discussion can be downright clumsy. Consider these problems:

1) The one-book group creates unhealthy competition for resources. The local library is unlikely to stock ten copies of anything but the newest bestsellers, and those books are likely to have hold lists. At the library where I work, a montly slapdown occurs as group members fight to get this month’s selection first. Our “gab bag” packs of ten books for reading groups solve some of the problem, but now the groups stage turf wars to get the most popular bags. In smaller towns, even bookstores can be hard pressed to support a group in a timely way.

2) If your readers don’t finish or aren’t interested in that month’s book, they’ll come, but squirm whenever a plot point is revealed. Or worse than that, they’ll sidetrack the conversation at every opportunity. Worst of all, they may simply stay home.

3) Some books don’t support extended conversation. Many genre titles, plot-driven books, and short books are difficult to discuss at length, even though they are great books that deserve readership. I’ve even seen discussion falter because everyone liked the book too much. Oprah has been accused of picking depressing books, but that’s not entirely fair: Books full of conflict and dilemma or controversial books often generate the most discussion. If that isn’t what your group wants, another format may be in order.

 4) Single-book conversations encourage lopsided discussions. In one-book discussions, the loudest and most opinionated group members often dominate conversation, while quieter readers may feel they have nothing to add. A multiple book format gives everyone something to talk about.

5) Many readers can only manage one book a month. When that’s the case, they may prefer options in their selection. Otherwise, they may skip meetings so they can squeeze in other books they want to read. Likewise, if your group of readers is diverse, they may respond to freedom of choice in their selections.

6) If your group suffers from too much strife between different-minded members or too much kvetching about the book selections, multi-book discussions are often less combative. Readers have no one to blame but themselves if they don’t like the book choice.

Depending on the needs and style of your group, there are many ways to implement a multiple book format. Next week, in part two of this entry, I’ll discuss them.

BRIGHT OF THE SKY by Kay Kenyon 

(Pyr, 2007, 9781591025412)

One of the best things about our monthly staff readers’ advisory training is that we force ourselves to read outside our personal comfort zones.  The second coolest thing is that we spend the major portion of that training having a staff book discussion.  As a young man, I was a science fiction reader and my genre was defined by the ABCs:  Asimov, Bradbury and Clarke.  Once in college, I shifted to crime and mystery fiction and have rarely dipped back into science fiction.  After reading this book, I am wondering why.

This month our staff selection was Kay Kenyon’s Bright of the Sky, the first book in her new The Entire and the Rose series.  The series is projected to be a four book series. 

Kay Kenyon (http://www.kaykenyon.com) was born in
Minnesota.  She began her writing career as a television copywriter and also did some acting in television commercials.  Her first book, The Seeds of Time, was published in 1997.  Since, she has published Braided World and Maximum Ice before writing this new series.  She and her attorney husband, Tom Overcast, have three sons.  They live in
Wenatchee, Washington. 

According to Diana Tixier Herald in Strictly Science Fiction: A Guide to Reading Interests, “science fiction can be ‘hard’—probing the ramifications of scientific theories and practical applications of quantum physics, bioengineering, or mathematics.”  In Genreflecting: a Guide to Popular Reading Interests, 6^th ed., Herald says “parallel earths and parallel universes are worlds that exist simultaneously with our Earth, conceived, perhaps, along a spatial fourth dimension.”  She also says, alien “’first contact’ is a situation ripe with possibilities for drama.”  I would say this book is a hard science, alien first contact, parallel world work of science fiction. 

In Bright of the Sky, two worlds exist side by side.  The Rose is our Earth where, when the book opens, we meet a very disgruntled and hermitic loner named Titus Quinn.  Quinn was the pilot of the Vesta, an interstellar transport ship lost in a Kardashev tunnel when the ship exploded.  Titus, his wife Johanna and their daughter Sydney managed to get into an escape pod.  When they awake, they found themselves in another world:  The Entire.

The Entire exists side by side to our world.  Scientists in The Entire can look through the nascence and see our world.  However, they live by three strict laws from their belief in The Radiant Way.  The three vows are withhold the knowledge of The Entire from the non-Entire;  impose the peace of The Entire;  and extend the reach of The Entire. 

All we know at the beginning of book one is that things did not go well for Titus in The Entire but he has managed to return to our universe, physically changed, his memories wiped and without his family.  Left to himself, he would prefer to sit and brood, trying to remember what happened over there.

But Earth cannot leave Titus alone.  By accident, Titus’ employer, the Minerva Company, has discovered a way to replicate Titus’ journey.  The logical person to send back to the alternate world is Titus.

When he goes, we discover (he re-discovers) the wonders that Kenyon has created on the other side of the rift.  A world based on ancient Chinese culture, scary preying mantis overlords, sentient creations to serve the people, an endless war, flying living dirigibles, a bright sky of fire and other wondrous things.

However, this is not all fun and games.  As Titus tries to complete his mission for the company (establish a way to send our ships through their airspace), his memories are slowly coming back.  This helps him try to complete his personal mission:  find his wife and daughter that he left behind. 

As I read this novel, I could not help but think that Titus is not a science fiction hero.  He is the archetypal fictional hero, one who could star in a noir crime novel or a hard-boiled western.  He is a loner, driven to that status when he is cast out from normal society.  He has extraordinary skills that make him valuable.  However, he is also damaged goods which make him both a danger to his enemies and his controllers.  The question becomes:  is he an anti-hero?

Kenyon has done a masterful job of world building.  Her setting is worth reading about.  Her characters are believable.  Her plot is intriguing.  The tone is somber and mean, and there is little that happens in this first book that is redemptive.  Conflict is constant and some of the violence is hard to look at. 

Did I understand all the science?  No.  Was that important to me?  No.  This novel is so accomplished that a reader little interested in the mechanics of the world can still enjoy the universe Kenyon has created. 

Would I read the next book in the series?  You bet!  The next book, A World Too Near (Pyr, 978-1591026426) will be published on March 25, 2008.  The future of the series is projected to be City Without End (February 2009) and Heart of Fire (December 2009).

Here are my suggested questions for a book discussion on Bright of the Sky:

How soon did you know you were reading a “hard” science fiction book?

Kenyon uses the techniques of a suspense novel to slowly reveal the back story of Titus’ first trip to The Entire.  How did that technique improve the story for you?

What qualities does Quinn share with other fictional heroes?  Can you name those he resembles?

The Rose has a BSL (Basic Standard of Living).  What does that accomplish on Earth?  How does it compare to the way the Chalin live in The Entire?  Which system is better?

Why do you think the Tarig molded The Entire around the ancient Chinese culture from Earth?  How did you keep track of all the new wonders of The Entire?

What is the value of a strong bureaucracy for governing?  What are the weaknesses?  What purpose do the Three Vows serve?

Why does this bureaucracy fight an endless war against the Paion? 

Was Anzi’s decision to save Quinn and his family the wrong choice?  Is she to blame for all that has happened in The Rose and The Entire?

How did Quinn betray his family on the first trip to The Entire?  Does he betray his family again on the second trip?

With all the chances that Quinn takes, is he fearless, reckless, driven or dumb?  How do you feel about the death of the Small Girl?

What do you think will happen in book two, three or four?

Since I will be traveling to London this week, I cannot help but think about the many British authors that I count among my favorites.  Chief among them is the great George Eliot.

I love Eliot so much that I have to admit that I have been afraid to schedule any of her books for my book group.  What if they hate Middlemarch or Daniel Deronda, call them too long or boring? What if they don’t love Maggie Tulliver in Mill on the Floss as much as I do?  What if they (gasp!) don’t finish?  Most of the time I expect these kinds of comments or situations, but I don’t know if I could bear it with a cherished author.  Call me chicken, but I just haven’t been able to brave it.  Yet.  And it’s not just the fear that they might not like Eliot, it’s the fear that I might not facilitate the best possible discussion commensurate with my deep and abiding respect for the author.  Does anyone else ever send themselves into a panic over such things?

I mean, the last paragraph of Middlemarch makes me cry every time I turn to it.  Here is the last sentence: “But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

Wow.  How could anyone read that (and read more than 700 pages to get there) and remain unmoved?  That right there is writing!

My own silly fears aside, I also got to thinking about the reminder emails I generally send to the group a week prior to our meeting.  I like to include links to author interviews or discussion questions or biographical information–I like to throw in a little something extra.

Now, were I to do George Eliot, whose life I found as fascinating as her fiction, I couldn’t expect the group to read, say, Rosemary Ashton’s biography.  This is a book group, not a literature course!  So, I would most likely provide some nice links or email an article from Literature Resource Database.  Even easier, there’s Wikipedia!

Now I just need to get over my own Eliot crush and trust my group (and myself) to take on one of her Victorian tomes for size.  Just writing this down makes me feel a little more brave.  And after a taste of London, I may have to sign us up for a draught.

How many men do you know who end their day snuggling up in their favorite armchair with a good novel?

I thought so.

A couple of centuries ago, authors directly addressed the male reader. Friendly man-to-man asides throughout the narrative assumed the reader to be of the same sex. Women readers were, of course, allowed to peek over the man’s shoulder, so to speak, or glance at the volume in the home library while the man was out doing manly things, but women readers were considered incidental.

Those days are history. Today statistics show that the average reader is an educated woman in her thirties. Men who read at all tend to prefer sci-fi and thrillers. And anyone who’s ever been in a reading group knows that getting a male reader to join is cause for rejoicing.

Which is just one of the reasons we were all so happy last night to see Lowen walk through the restaurant door for our book club meeting. Lowen Clausen is a Seattle author who’s written three police procedurals with local settings and has just published his first non-genre novel, River. Lowen loves books. I first met Lowen back in the seventies, when he was a Nebraska farmboy with an incurable fascination for reading. Lowen isn’t gabby and you’d never say he drove the conversation. But when he speaks he always chooses his words carefully.

Last night, the first two women to speak (we sit at a round table, and start a meeting by going around establishing our positions on the book) didn’t care much for the novel. Maybe that made Lowen extra eloquent. With about three times more than usual to say, he gave a quiet, dignified rhapsody of praise for the way Pat Barker showed her characters changing in the face of war. His low-key Danish passion got everyone to sit up a little straighter.

Our other reasonably-regular male member, Jeff, was home sick with the flu. Jeff compares everything to the classics, so he’s never satisfied. He likes to take on biggies. He’s just finished the 700-page, seven-novel Colombian classic, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, and is midway through the new translation of War and Peace, while expressing an interest in joining the new Proust book club. He often manages to make time for our club book, too.

We used to have a third male member, Robert, but we’ve pretty much lost him. Robert reads so much following his own drummer that he’s hard-pressed to squeeze in our monthly selection. He’s currently fascinated by deaf culture, and reading every book he can find on it.

And then there’s me. My love for books long ago took over my life. For over thirty years I’ve been the bookman in a little bookstore. When I’m not reading a good book, I’m slightly edgy and not myself. Carrying a book around with me all day is my security blanket. I’m never standing in line or riding on a bus without one. Obsessive reading seems to be my way of responding to all the suffering and darkness in the world. Entering into the minds of smart writers and watching how they interpret human interaction never ceases to fascinate me.

But Lowen and Jeff and Robert and I are anomalies. We’re the exceptions in the thundering herd of modern males who prefer their kick-back entertainment to be electronic. Most men I know, even smart and reasonably literate ones, would only read a novel if there were absolutely no other entertainment form available.

Having said that, if I’m wrong, and there are plenty of men out there who love reading and discussing novels, well, then, um, guys, I was wondering, can I interest you in a book club?

Recently I led a discussion of Jhumpa Lahiri’s powerful and involving novel, The Namesake, with a group of graduate library science students.  As it happened, all of the participants were female, and they were fairly unanimous in their lack of enthusiasm for the book’s protagonist, a young American male dealing with identity issues related to the unusual name given him by his parents, who had immigrated to the United States from India.  The women in the group mockingly referred to this man, Gogol, as “Goggles,” and said they found him boring, annoyingly passive, and not at all the kind of guy they would ever pick as a boyfriend or a husband.  Instead, they said they wished the book had told them more about his sister, Sonia, who is a minor character in the story.  I was surprised by their reaction because I liked the novel and found it beautifully written and constructed.  When I asked if they had trouble relating to Gogol because he was male and they were female, they bristled.  No, they were perfectly willing to identify with a male protagonist — for instance, they much preferred Cold Mountain and The Kite Runner, two other books with men as the main characters.  I’ve noticed in other book discussions that readers generally find the book unsatisfying if they feel the protagonist is unsympathetic — although in this case, I think Lahiri was actually trying to make Gogol a likeable character.  Going into a discussion, it’s probably worthwhile for the leader to consider whether or not the group will relate strongly to the book’s protagonist, since that factor may have a critical effect on the direction the conversation takes.

Okay, I admit it, I don’t belong to a book group. Maybe it’s because working at Booklist is like being in a book group 27/7. Since I can’t share any personal experiences, from time to time I’m going to be writing about what goes on in other groups–call them my book group surrogates.

Jane Levine, my Steppenwolf Theatre subscription partner, is head of technical services at Winnetka Northfield Public Library District in Illinois. She also leads a book group that meets monthly and consists of eight-to-ten women in their fifties and sixties. Occasionally someone younger attends. Jane says it’s tricky to select the right books, and any time she reads something she considers whether it would be good for discussion. Her group doesn’t want simple chick lit, but at the same time they don’t want anything too literary; Lloyd Jones’ Mr. Pip wouldn’t work, for example. They like books they’ve heard about but would not necessarily pick up on their own. They like discussing characters and motivation, but not symbolism. 

Jane also says that she’s had the same loyal group for years, with a newcomer now and then.

Is this typical? Are there any book groups out there that have successfully attracted men, and people younger than the Hillary Clinton demographic? If you want to share your book group experiences, add a comment or e-mail me at mquinn@ala.org. And if you need ideas for discussable books, check out Jane’s  Fiction Book Club List.

Most book group facilitators don’t choose genre fiction for discussions and if they do, they lean towards mysteries or science fiction.

Today, I want to show-and-tell a Western I think works well in a discussion. I don’t know about all Westerns, but I know about this one, The Last Cattle Drive by Robert Day.

This first novel was published in 1977 and is a cult fave in the Midwest. Not the Midwest that includes Chicago or Minnesota, but the Midwest of Kansas, Missouri, Colorado and Oklahoma, the Plains States. Enough geography. Now you know where the book is set.

The story: Spangler Star Tukle is a rancher who’s just been informed, none too politely, that it will cost more than his cattle are worth to send them to the stockyards in Kansas City via truck or train. After pitching the most colorful of fits, Spangler and his ranch hands decide they will have a good old fashioned cattle drive right down I-70 and into Kansas City.

Spangler, his wife Opal, and their two hired hands, Jed (the last of the real cowboys), and Leo (cowboy lite), wrangle over 200 head, one rabid cat, and a barmy calf, on their way East to the wilds of Kansas City. Along the way the four-wheel drive quartet hook up with a movie crew, Leo chooses his horse over his girlfriend, and they all tour the stone Garden of Eden.

What makes this book discussable? Well, the language for one. The blue language. One of the topics my group enjoyed addressing is how an author creates a character using the vernacular. Also how an author can create fluid and musical language using cuss words you didn’t know existed. The second topic to discuss is civilization and chaos, whose society is civilized and whose is chaotic. The typical Western hero provides fun fodder for conversation, too. What makes Spangler a typical cowboy hero and what makes him different? How did Day tweak our notion of the mythological cowboy to create Spangler? What other stereotypical objects, characters, places and/or scenes is Day altering slightly for a modern western?

This book is great fun, but warn your readers. The language is rough. However, it’s the most creative use of invective I’ve ever read in my life.

Don’t bug me now. I’m going to go re-read my favorite part. The one where Spangler mouths off to the waitress in the diner.

Calling all book group people! (and you know who you are) We know you like to talk about books, but we want you to talk to us
about your book group. Please help us get a picture of book groups across the country by participating in a short informal survey from the
RUSA CODES Readers’ Advisory Committee of the American Library Association. To visit the survey, go to  our RA website nfollow the instructions below: Reading Group Survey 

Click on the link on the left that says “Book Group Survey” Preliminary data will be presented at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, CA at the program Reading Group Therapy: How to Repair, Revamp and Revitalize Your Book Group being held Sunday, June 29th, 2008, from 10:30 a.m.-12 p.m. Librarians who are also members of a book group, library sponsored or other (Neil? This is for you. ) should answer the questions as a group member, not a facilitator. So far results are interesting. Can’t share any findings yet, ’cause we haven’t sifted through all the data, but some of the reasons folks are giving for books they loved and loathed are great! Please share your opinions with us. What you say matters.

The librarians in my children’s department made reading resolutions this year and posted them on a bulletin board.  Mine was to read a chapter book with an animal main character each month.   The character must be a different kind of animal than any read about in the previous months.  So far, I’ve read about cats with Erin Hunter’s Into the Wild and mice with Robin Jarvis’ The Dark Portal.  By December, I’m sure I’ll have run through dogs, horses, pigs, rabbits, bats, and I’ll be looking for that perfect book with a llama main character.  If you know a great book with an out of the ordinary animal character that I shouldn’t miss, let me know.

I have always been one to like specific goals and getting to work my way through a list.  Book club seems like a natural time to discuss our reading goals and how we are progressing on them.  I am thinking of next year asking if book club members would like to share reading resolutions and then we can talk about our progress in our monthly meetings throughout the year.  Resolutions could be serious or zany, specific or general.  One mom I know whose daughter devours books made a resolution to read one book her daughter recommended to her each month.  I love that she’s sharing her daughters’ books and giving her daughter the power to pick books for mom.  Another reader I know made the general resolution that she wanted to take time to read more non-fiction.

So, I know I’m not the only one who likes this kind of challenge.  I have become aware of more and more reading challenges/projects in the blogosphere.  They are all over the map - trying to read 6 authors you’ve never read before in three months (http://bookawardschallenge.blogspot.com/), trying to read your way through the alphabet with an author’s last name or book title for each letter (http://a-zreadingchallenge.blogspot.com/), trying to read all the Newbery award winning kids’ books (http://newberryproject.blogspot.com/),  and even the generic set your own goal Winter Challenge (http://inksplasher.blogspot.com/2007/12/2007-winter-reading-challenge.html).  

I wondered if other book groups out there are participating in these types of challenges and what your experiences have been with them.

 When I heard that a group of eight wealthy, married women in a prosperous North Seattle neighborhood were about to read for their book club Dave Eggers’ harrowing, gut-wrenching What is the What, I had misgivings. This wasn’t Anne Tyler or Amy Tan. This was a nearly 500-page saga about thousands of orphaned boys being eaten by lions, machine gunned, blown up by bombs, cut down by machetes, mines, disease, hunger, and sheer exhaustion. Not only is the story brutal and without romance, but such a huge economic chasm separated the readers from their subject matter that I feared their sympathies might be hard-pressed to make the leap.

In spite of my reservations, I accepted their invitation to host the evening’s conversation, since they were using my What Is the What study guide and I’d already hosted two other book groups discussing that title. The women gathered sipping wine in an elegant living room around platters of fine cheeses and a spectacular seven-layer dip. The tallest, loudest woman had what sounded like a yacht, and had just returned from her umpteenth trip to Bermuda.

They were all well-dressed. One was showing off an expensive new pair of shoes. We were just about to start our discussion when the loud woman’s cell phone burst into the Moonlight Sonata. It was her daughter. We were held up five minutes. At that point, I pretty much thought I had the group figured out, and that woman in particular.

Which goes to show how wrong you can be.

Her daughter was leaving the next week for Africa in a charity service program. The loud woman, who worked long hours every day with developmentally challenged children, was giving up her vacation to go join her daughter there, volunteering for a month at a Tanzania orphanage.

We had a fine discussion.

I’m a groupie.

 No, not that kind…I’m a book groupie. Right now, I’ve got the compulsion under control. I’m only doing three groups. If I’m sneaky and use some books in multiple groups, I can usually manage my schedule of groupie reading, review reading, and even the occasional (gasp!) non-required book that I pick out all for myself. It’s a walk on the reading tightrope, but I get by, and still hold down my day job at Williamsburg Regional Library. But every time I hear about a new group, I have to confess, my first thought is “I bet I could fit that in.” Maybe I could read another book a month in the bathroom, or prop it up in the grocery store basket. Maybe I could sneak an audiobook into my other book groups, and turn it on when the conversation flags.

 Why three groups? Well I lead one, a thematic group on my first genre loves: fantasy and science fiction. We pick a theme each month, distribute a list of books that might fit the theme, and then everyone reads and reports on the book of their choice. I love exploring the themes and having a good excuse for reading plenty of my favorite genres.

The second is a staff group. We read on a mix of themes and selected books. This group intentionally samples from all the genres to help boost our readers’ advisory skills. I like the variety and the chance to mix with my co-workers from all over the library. With all the desk hours librarians work, we get surprisingly few chances to talk books, enjoy each other’s company, or get to know people in other divisions.

My third book group is with some older friends. We read classics, literary fiction, and nonfiction. I love their perspective, it’s one I don’t otherwise get. I love being required to read great books that I would otherwise probably never pick up anymore. We eat too much excellent food, and after we talk about the shared book, we report back on what else we’ve been reading that month. How cool is that? And it doesn’t hurt that at 40, I get to go somewhere once a month and get treated like a youngster.

So you can see why I’m a groupie. I get something different from every experience. And there–on top of the joy of confessing–is my point: you can get many different benefits from your book groups. Find the group or groups that give you what you need as a reader and as a person. Design the groups that you lead to meet the needs of your members. I’ll give ideas in a future post about methods for achieving this. If you only get part of your reading and personal needs fulfilled by your current group, consider joining or founding a new group that cater to other aspects of your reading life. Then you can be a groupie too. If you love books as much as I do, you won’t regret it.

When my old Marlboro College roommate, Caitlin, and her husband Ashley last came to visit, we ended up sitting on the couch for an hour poring over the pages of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, tallying up our personal scores. We didn’t intend to geek out in this way. But when they saw that bright, brick of a book on my shelf, and opened its shiny, lustrous pages, we just couldn’t resist.

For one, the books are arranged in more or less chronological order, starting with Aesop’s Fables and ending with Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. The selection also has a European feel to it, having been chosen largely by British academics. It’s inspiring to flip through the pages and marvel at the timeline of literary landmarks over the ages. I delighted in discovering, for instance, that Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles (two of my personal favorites) were both published in the same year (1969). Each entry provides background on the book and its author, as well as trivia and historical context, and glossy photographs abound.

But back to the scores. Mine was 176. And I consider myself fairly well-read for my age. Pretty humbling though–only 176 out of 1001! I won’t even try to recall what my friends’ scores were, nor would I want to anger them with a false rememberance (aren’t we all a little bit touchy about just this kind of intellectual achievement?).

I do know that I will probably never read all 1001, nor would all 1001 books be for me. But a group in a rut or one that would like to try a year or two of some great classics or chronological reading could do no better than to spend some time poring over this book for suggestions. Feel free to share your scores amongst yourselves!

Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966)

The serendipity of discovering a book never ceases to amaze me.  All my life I have been networked to fans of crime fiction, but recently a man walked into my library who knew I had written Read ‘Em Their Writes.  He handed me this title and told me he thought it was one of the best crime novels he had ever read.

I have to agree.  Even more remarkable, it is Don Carpenter’s first novel. 

Hard Rain Falling is told in five parts.  The first exposition, a very short prologue, details the birth of Jack Levitt in Eastern Oregon.  Jack is born to people with limited parenting skills, ending up an orphan.  In the second part, Jack has moved to Portland and it is 1949.  He is struggling to exist, spending time with small hustles and living out of a pool hall.  When an African-American pool hustler named Billy Lancing comes to Portland, Billy’s story takes over the narrative.  By part three, Jack is in San Francisco, where through a series of unfortunate incidents, he ends up in San Quentin, only to find Billy as his cellmate.  While the two develop their relationship in prison, the novel takes time to show Billy’s path to his incarceration.  Part four is devoted to Jack’s life outside of San Quentin, when he decides to raise a family.  Part five is the coda on the story. 

To say more about the plot is pointless as what carries this book is a relentless debate on the merits of an unimaginable number of human scenarios.  Mostly told through reminiscences, the book allows characters to tell their stories while revealing the conditions that created the conflicts that plague them and the belief systems that led the character to make the choices that they made.  These remarkable revelations reveal the true nature of love, the relationship between men and women, the need for homosexuality, the purpose of incarceration, the yearning for parents and the desire to be one, the causes behind crime and the hopelessness of growing up disenfranchised in America.

Don Carpenter was born in 1931 in Berkeley, California.  His family moved to Portland where he graduated from high school.  After service in the Air Force during the Korean War, he earned a B.S. from Portland State College.  After earning a M.A. from San Francisco State College, he taught English.  For awhile, he was happily married and raised two daughters.  After the publication of his first novel, he moved to Mill Valley, California, and became a full time writer.  But divorce separated him from his family.  He also spent years contributing to various projects in Hollywood with his greatest success being the cult film Payday (1973) starring Rip Torn.  In addition to Hard Rain Falling, he wrote, Blade of Light (1967), The Murder of the Frogs and Other Stories (1969), Getting Off (1971), The True Life Story of Jody McKeegan (1975), A Couple of Comedians (1979), Turnaround (1981), The Class of ‘49 (1985), The Dispossessed (1986), and From A Distant Place (1988). 

Ill, but still writing, he committed suicide by gunshot in 1995.  More can be learned about this remarkable writer at http://www.doncarpenterpage.com.

The words tour de force comes to mind.  It certainly will fit any critic’s definition of noir. 

A book discussion leader would have no problem developing a long list of questions to prompt discussion on this novel.  I guarantee it will promote discussion with little effort on the leader’s part. 

Here is The Big Disappointment: 

Currently, none of Don Carpenter’s novels are in print.  A search of WorldCat reveals only 231 copies available and the American Book Exchange lists only 28 used copies for sale.  Sadly, just like the character of Jack Levitt, this novel has no future, unless someone gets this work back in print. 

What titles would you like to lead a discussion on—only to discover you cannot get enough copies for your group?

How much imagination is allowed before a memoir turns into a novel? It’s a fine line between autobiography and autobiographical fiction. The year has started out with some fascinating riffs on realism, including two very unusual hybrid approaches to reality that make top-flight reading and would make fascinating group discussion pieces.

Tetsuo Miura’s Shame in the Blood is considered a novel, but the author is telling the true, tragic story of his siblings, telling it over and over, each time emphasizing a different part of the tale.

In this slender little volume of six novellas, the first five are the tragic tale of his life told five different ways. Japanese novelist Tetsuo Miura’s debut in English is simply astonishing, plain and straightforward in an artless way but packed with unusual twists and turns and told with a quiet urgency.

Both Miura’s unnamed narrator and Miura himself suffer from terror of their own genetic make-up. Miura and his narrator are both writers desperately trying to work out their demons, telling the same story over and over, the story of Miura’s real-life family. One sister threw herself into the sea. One sister took poison. One brother disappeared. One brother ran off with the family funds. One sister is retarded. And then there’s Miura. With the history of his brothers and sisters, he can only wonder in fear what will he do to shame his family. Does he not have the same blood?

There’s a startling moment when you start the second story and realize you’ve already covered this ground, that the tale of the narrator’s shattered family and his love for Shino is being told again, but differently this time. Each of the five tales takes a different moment in the same narrative. What is told in one sentence in the third story becomes the subject of the fourth story. As exasperated as the reader gets with the narrator, who refuses to work so that he can lock himself in his room and write stories, the troubled little narratives that result about his brave, tragic family are his salvation and our reading joy.

Philippe Grimbert’s Memory also tells a true story, the love and survival through the war of his parents, Maxime and Tania. The author tells it twice, first the version of the story that he once believed to be true up to the age of fifteen, and then the story again with horrifying new information.

Not a word is wasted in Grimbert’s short, taut, elegant experiment in blurring the line between memoir and novel. The author is a real-life psychoanalyst working out the terrible demons of his childhood, in particular the brother who wasn’t there, the invisible playmate who turned out to be real. Grimbert is so scrupulously honest that he calls this careful reconstruction of the past a novel since, like a novelist, he can only guess at the motives of his parents before he was alive.

His discovery as a child of an old toy dog in the attic launches a belief that he has an older brother. The shocking twist is that he actually does, but he doesn’t find that out until he’s fifteen. That discovery causes the author to tell the story over again.

First time through we watch Maxime and Tania, the boy’s parents, escape the horrors of the war in spite of being Jewish. They hide out in a little village in unoccupied France, and come back to Paris when it’s safe. As far as the narrator can see, the worst thing that’s happened to these two beautiful athletes and specimens of health is to have produced a scrawny, delicate, sickly son – the unhappy fellow telling the story.

The book breaks in half when the boy watches a documentary on the Holocaust atrocities in school. When a school jock laughs, the narrator leaps on him swinging. His tearful recounting of the incident induces the good next-door neighbor and elderly family pal, Louise, to tell him the truth – he’s a Jew himself but doesn’t know it. And that’s just one of her surprises.

The author then proceeds to tell the story of Maxime and Tania all over again. This version, however, is wildly different, including the deportations, the death camps, and a heartbreaking secret his parents have never dared reveal.

Some authors would call this a memoir. This scrupulous author considers it fiction only because the recreation of Maxime and Tania’s lives has been enhanced by the narrator’s imagination, pieced together from the only facts the author possesses. Though it reads like a memoir, this lean little gem very cautiously introduces enough guesswork to qualify as an autobiographical novel – well, two autobiographical novels, actually. The fascination here isn’t the cheery tale, but the sparse, minimalist method of presenting it. You’ll look in vain for a single melodramatic scene – which only makes this powerful, understated little story even more wrenching.

Just what is the best way for an author to describe and confront the injustices of family tragedy in real life? Miura and Grimbert are two very different men who have very different fears and make very different discoveries, but both men use the same therapeutic device: redemption through the written word.

Book groups often complain that they don’t get to read anything funny.  And it is true that by and large the best books for discussion can be pretty bleak.  Also, people’s senses of humor can be so different.  I wanted to share a funny read that I felt had surprising depth and poignancy.

In Jonathan Tropper’s The Book of Joe, Joe Goffman returns to Bush Falls, Connecticut when his father is hospitalized by a stroke. But Joe hasn’t been back to Bush Falls for seventeen years, and with good reason. He had a miserable time growing up there in the wake of his mother’s suicide and his father’s disappointment that he didn’t become, like his father and older brother, a basketball star. Joe chronicled his rage at his town’s small-minded ways in his debut novel which became a hit film and is now universally hated by his old neighbors. Needless to say, this complicates Joe’s visit. (And make no mistake, Joe has a pretty Job-like ability to bring misfortune into his life.) Add to that an old high school flame that he has never gotten over, an old friend dying of AIDS, a vindictive bully, countless ’80’s and Bruce Springsteen references, and a main protagonist who is 34-going-on-18 and you’ve got the general idea.

This is a witty, compulsive read for groups looking for a little levity.

Wondering how to give your book group some punch? One of my favorite book group sites, Book Club Girl, has just introduced a new five-part series called  “How to Make Your Book Club More Effective.”  The author is the blogger behind BookClubClassics, which offers book club kits containing discussion questions, author information, links, menu ideas, more.

The books that make for the most lively and interesting discussions aren’t necessarily the ones found on best books lists.   What books nurtured the best discussions in your book group in 2007?  You can share your favorites with other book groups in Reading Group Choices‘ annual survey. When you complete the survey, Reading Group Choices will enter your name in a random drawing for $75 for your next meeting.  That’s a lot of pastry.

Those reading guides that publishers provide in the backs of trade paperbacks are an interesting lot of pages, aren’t they?

If you read the guide, you run the risk of encountering some spoilers (”At what point did you realize that Hortense was completely crazy and pouring her heart out to a shrink instead of her diary?”) or graduate seminar level topics (”Examine the use and significance of the feather quill, travel mug and dromedary by Jeremiah Hackwith. Is one item more life affirming than another? What meaning can be applied to the colors the author has assigned to each item, i.e. chartreuse, indigo and tangerine?”) or just plain silliness (”Would this book make a good movie? Who should play the leading characters?”).

Some publishers are including more than just suggested topics for discussion. There are author interviews, summaries, lists of activities to engage in before the discussion, and in one case, a short description of a book’s journey into print.

How best to use all this extraneous material that is supposed to make our jobs as book discussion facilitators easier? I can’t tell you how to use all that information, but I can tell you how I use it.

I don’t. Much. First of all, there’s usually too much material back there for me to use. I’ll never get through all those  questions, no book group could. So I treat them as a jumping off point and usually rewrite the provided questions into topics that fit my group’s personality and discussion level. Occasionally I find that the hapless publishing assistant charged with writing those guides has neglected something very significant in the story and I eagerly pounce on that and make sure my group talks about it.

My group members are divided on who reads the extra material and who does not. Those that read the material are better prepared to discuss the book. They do more thinking about their reading. Those that don’t may go back and read the discussion topics, but frequently once they’ve reached the end of the story, they are done.

As for author interviews, reactions are mixed on those in my reading circles. Some readers enjoy hearing how an author was inspired to write this particular story. Others could care less that the author penned bits of the story in between scrubbing the bathroom, arguing a court case, or while suffering insomnia.

Hands down the best “extra bits” I’ve found thus far in a book followed the end of I am Not Myself These Days by Josh Kilmer-Purcell. The author asks readers to take a multiple-choice quiz about his life in lieu of reading yet one more “I write in my pajamas with the cat on my lap at 3 am” interview and also provides a list of “Music to Read Memoirs By.”

Now, this is stuff that will generate conversation.

This week my book group discussed Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants.  I was excited to read it as I had been hearing good things and even noticed that Stephen King put Gruen’s book on his best of 2007 list (shameless EW plug).

 Water for Elephants tells the story of Jacob Jankowski.  Jacob is studying veterinary science at Cornell during the Great Depression when he loses both of his parents in an automobile accident.  When he discovers that he is now orphaned and penniless, he leaves mid-way through his final exam and hops a train out of town.  But it isn’t just any train that he finds himself on; Jacob has inadvertently hopped on board a traveling circus!  Jacob’s life is changed forever and he meets some of the most memorable people (and animals) of his life.  Jacob, now in his 90’s and in a nursing home, tells us his remarkable story, a story that begins and ends with a twist.

My book group loved it and came in with some really great insights into the book. We talked about the reliability of Jacob, the narrator, about the story’s parallels to the story of Jacob in Genesis, the sadness of old age, Depression era America, and, of course, the circus. 

One reader, E, talked about how the book itself was arranged as a three-ring circus.  It’s a book where there is so much going on, so much to distract, so much illusion and slight-of-hand and suspense that you cannot pay attention to everything at once.

Another reader, H, said that the book was well-crafted in that the author chose an outsider to tell the story, to lead us into the circus world.

One of our most brilliantly verbose members, K, said that the character, August, was a “classic abuser.”  She had done work in the past with domestic violence cases and thought the author captured the two sides (the charming and the violent) of people who abuse perfectly.

Another reader, K, shared her sadness over Jacob’s lack of connection to family. She said that her grandmother, who was in assisted care, was really close to her family and felt that old age didn’t have to be the way it was depicted in Jacob’s case.

I sat in awe, listening to the varied impressions of each member in the group.   I was reminded how we each bring our experiences, our perceptions, our whole selves, to what we read.  The readers in my group surprise, impress and teach me something every time.

As a book group leader and librarian, I often fight the perception that I must ‘know’ everything or that there are distinct answers to the questions that I throw out.  One reader confided in me at the close of the discussion how she felt that the group was so smart, somehow inferring that she was not or that being ’smart’ was a requirement to join in discussion. 

Yes, I am impressed by the intelligence and the thoughtfulness of many of the readers in the group.  But it’s about so much more.  It’s about sharing your experience, learning from the experiences of others.  It’s about bringing your whole self to the reading of the book and sharing with the group.  We may not always express our reactions, thoughts or questions with articulate ease (I know I don’t!).  Sometimes we are still processing what we have read. Some of us are better at articulating our thoughts out loud, some of us better in writing, and some readers just feel and cannot (or prefer not) to express.

A book group should be like a circus–it should be a place where we can all be different and all fit in.

One of my favorite literary subgenres has no name. Call them quirky Latino tour de forces. Call them short, dazzling Hispanic literary fiction. Whatever you want to call them, they’re realistic, usually written in the first person, usually about two hundred pages long, and make great discussion pieces for reading groups. Check out these narrative delights from the last five years.

THE OXFORD MURDERS by Guillermo Martinez

For three hundred years, people have died trying to solve the most ancient problem in mathematics. Now a stolen paper has provided the springboard for a possible proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, and someone has begun to commit imperceptible murders.

Join a 22-year-old graduate student from Argentina as his stay at Oxford turns into a treacherous puzzle, where the mysterious mathematical genius, Arthur Seldom, pits his wits against Inspector Petersen of the Oxford police.

Martinez has crafted a thrilling, intellectually-teasing tour-de-force that’s part Arthur Conan Doyle, part Jorge Luis Borges, dizzyingly original and refreshingly smart, with an utterly unexpected ending.

PARADISE TRAVEL by Jorge Franco

Marlon Cruz is so crazy about Reina that he’d follow her anywhere, even New York. Now he’s stuck in a seedy hotel, out of money, out of hope, and he and Reina have had a spat. Unfortunately no one tells Marlon that when you’re an illegal immigrant from Colombia and you know only one word of English, it’s not a good idea to go for a walk in New York City at night.

When he turns around, there’s a policeman behind him. Marlon runs. He’ll never find his way back.

How a desperate, penniless young immigrant slowly puts himself back together again in a little Colombian restaurant makes a delightfully comic novel about the heartbreaking business of illegal immigration. Gabriel Garcia Marquez says that Jorge Franco will inherit his place in Latin American literature. Discover him now.

THE MATTER OF DESIRE by Edmundo Paz Soldan

Leaving behind a steamy, reckless affair with a student, assistant professor Pedro Zabalaga flees back to his hometown in Bolivia to find himself confronting the unsolved mystery of his father’s assassination fifteen years ago. He will discover more than he wants to know.

In a world choked with pop technology, through streets blocked with bombs and protesters, through a maze of secrets and rumors, clues and lies as complex as Uncle David’s crossword puzzles, Pedro will search for the man who betrayed his heroic leftist father. He will find his way into the lair of Jaime Villa, infamous drug trafficker and charismatic folk hero, who may have ordered his father’s death.

Author Paz Soldan will have you begging to know the truth. Be prepared for whiplash – this plot has hairpin turns right up to its jaw-dropper ending.

CAPTAIN OF THE SLEEPERS by Mayra Montero

Why, after all these years, does the man Andres swore to kill suddenly want to tell him the truth?

Long ago, secret adult passions ripped apart the little world of eleven-year-old Andres at his father’s hotel on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. And the problem seemed to revolve around Andres’ mother and the Captain of the Sleepers, J. T. Bunker, a pilot-for-hire who transported the dead back to their homes and occasionally more dangerous shipments between the islands.

As the nationalists secretly prepare to strike, a brainy little brat decides to interfere in a situation he doesn’t understand. Cuban author Montero’s thrilling study of two men at a moral crossroads has an unforgettable ending.

MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The 90-year-old music reviewer of Barranquilla is about to have the most unpredictable, upsetting experience of his life.

He thinks he’s going into the red light district for one last old man’s fling with nothing less than a virgin. But you’re in the hands of one of the greatest writers of our century, and nothing happens exactly as planned. Nobel Prize-winning Garcia Marquez breaks a ten-year absence from fiction to pen this magnificent little daredevil high-wire act, simple and brief and gorgeous and life-affirming.

Laced with surprises and chuckles and earthy wisdom, studded with those unique Garcia Marquez moments, it’s an elegant comic love story about an old stick-n-the-mud who discovers you’re never too old to accidentally fall in love.

SOLDIERS OF SALAMIS by Javier Cercas.

A Franco-supporter manages to escape from a mass execution at the end of the Spanish Civil War.

A pursuing soldier finds him in the forest, locks eyes with him, and lets him live.

Out of this incident springs a fascinating meditation on war, memory, and the writing of fiction. Part One shows the author’s discovery of the incident and his research, with a little help from his girlfriend. Part Two is the biography of the fascist who walked away from the firing squad alive. Part Three attempts to find the soldier who spared his life, in a search through all the nursing homes of France.

Tough and unsentimental, like no novel you’ve ever read before, this little volume has the cumulative effect of a bullet straight to the heart.

THE SPEED OF LIGHT by Javier Cercas

Did you know that ten times more bombs were dropped on Vietnam than on all of Europe during the Second World War? Take a fresh, startling look at the American tragedy of Vietnam through the eyes of Spain’s most brilliant, unorthodox new writer.

A Spanish grad student from Barcelona lands a teaching assistant post at the University of Illinois, and finds himself sharing an office with a troubled older man haunted by more than his share of ghosts. Meet Rodney Falk, loner, outsider, Vietnam vet. Talk to his father. Talk to his wife. Peel back the layers, and find out what happened. Find out why. If you can.

Javier Cercas is a brilliant modern original whose novel Soldiers of Salamis captured the imagination of the world. Cross the line between reality and fiction, and enter an enigmatic, hyper-real world where success leads straight to destruction, where an honest author is doing his best to tell you a story he can’t tell.

THE UNCOMFORTABLE DEAD by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Subcomandante Marcos

The masked leader of the Zapatista revolution joins Mexico’s premier detective writer to create a hilarious literary feast.

Here’s a narrative duet of alternating chapters, passionately political and wildly funny, as two smart writers have their two detectives join forces to solve a mystery that begins with phone calls from a dead man – and might involve a taco vendor from Juarez City who impersonates bin Laden on news broadcasts.

Meet humble, bright, easily confused Elias Contreras, the country bumpkin detective hero, trying to figure out the confusing ways of modern Mexico City. Enjoy a wacky political mystery noir, Mexican-style. It’s achingly sincere, occasionally profound, and brimming with literary antics, a revolutionary novel co-authored by a man whose real-life revolution has made Zapatista a modern household word.