NOW YOU SEE HIM by Eli Gottlieb   

Nick Framingham has spent his entire life believing he is the shadow of his childhood best friend, Rob Castor.  Obsessed might be the optimum word.  When Rob murders his girlfriend, Kate Pierce, and then disappears, Nick’s entire life disintegrates as he tries to justify the actions of his friend by searching through his past, present and future.  Nick tests his relationship with his wife Lucy and his sons, Dwight and Will.  Once the mystery of Rob needs to be solved, Nick finds himself rekindling a relationship with Rob’s wild child sister, Belinda.  Nick even gets a chance to re-examine his childhood and his relationship with his parents.  What makes this novel so interesting is the way that Gottlieb decided to tell us the story.  We know important details early but the reader should be aware that these details should be held suspect.  As the reader shifts back and forth, meeting new characters, learning important details, the novel propels forward with an excellent use of suspense techniques to drive to its surprising and disturbing conclusion.  What is intriguing about this narrative is the reliability of Nick as a narrator and the nature of his makeup.  All of this should provide plenty of fodder for any book discussion group.

Here’s a great technique for kicking off a provocative conversation about a book. I’ve used it often enough now that I know it works. I got the idea from Rumi and a sex addict.

The two lines out of Rumi that triggered this idea would run something like:

Keep looking at the bandaged place.

That’s where the light enters you.

And the comment made by my sexual athlete friend was, “After the first hundred beautiful bodies, it’s the flaws that are erotic.”

These two thoughts came together decisively in our book club discussion of Pat Barker’s Life Class. Though I’m filled with admiration for the book, I can’t help but notice that the character of Teresa, the sexy model with the abusive husband, dominates the first 80 pages and then virtually vanishes from the novel, which then proceeds on to deal with its central theme, art and World War One. What exactly the Teresa section has to do with the book as a whole is troublesome. The hero, Paul Tarrant, gets quite a beating from Teresa’s brutal husband. But what exactly does this have to do with the theme of art and war? Possibly not much. One reader noted that the character of Teresa in the first half balances the character of Lewis, the Quaker ambulance driver, in the second half. Possibly. In dissecting the role of Teresa in the novel, we got an angle into discussing the novel itself, a passionate and lively discussion.

Here’s another: Pascal Mercier’s Night Train to Lisbon begins with one of the most startling opening sequences in years. In the very first pages the old professor Gregorius is rushing onto the bridge to stop a desperate young woman from jumping off, she turns around, and to the reader’s amazement writes a phone number across Gregorius’s forehead. The last thing you’d expect her to do! Well, he walks away from his job of thirty years and goes to Lisbon to research a fascinating Portuguese author, but does he phone the number? No. The reader waits and waits. Finally, hundreds of pages in, he phones the number and when someone picks up, Gregorius disconnects. That’s it. You’ve learned all you’re going to learn about that phone number. He’s not interested in it. And it’s never mentioned again. The grabby beginning is just one big red herring. So is it a flaw? Is it an early plot device that no longer works, left clumsily in place? Or is it the philosopher in the novelist saying, not everything adds up? By discussing the flaw, you discuss the novel.

The Booker-shortlisted Animal’s People by Indra Sinha is narrated by a nineteen-year-old street kid named Animal into a tape recorder. Instead of chapters, the book is divided into tapes. Animal has a distinctive voice, tough and concise and slangy. It feels like he’s really talking. But near the end of the book, in a moment of suicidal depression, Animal administers to himself a nearly fatal overdose of datura. For page after page, the drug overdose is simulated in disconnected, poetic fragments trying to approximate the experience. It’s flashy language, linguistic pyrotechnics, but it’s not Animal narrating. I’ll be very interested to see how our book club defends or explains that curious departure from the rules of the game.

Marisa Silver’s The God of War (coming out April 29) is so dang perfect there almost isn’t a flaw. Narrated by a twelve-year-old boy who never breaks character, it’s an intimate family drama, centering around his irresponsible mother and his protective affection for his mentally-damaged younger brother, whom he dropped as a baby. The book is funny, tragic, shocking, moving. Even the cover is awesome. But one thing troubles me, and that will be our avenue into the discussion, because I don’t know the answer and I’m hoping someone in our book club will. Why does the book have that title? There are some obvious reasons – someone is shot, and the narrator’s name is Ares Ramirez, Ares being the god of war, but Ares isn’t the killer. Why name the book that? It’s not at all a title that invites a reader into an intimate human drama of a mother and her children.

Looks like a flaw to me. But then, Marisa Silver does everything else in the book brilliantly, so why not the title? A slip or subtlety? What am I missing here?

It’s times like this I’m really glad I belong to a book club.

This year the Seattle Reads program, originally titled “What if Seattle Read the Same Book?” when Nandy Pearl and Chris Higashi started it in 1998, celebrates 10 years. Ten years of community discussions and events around amazing books or author’s works from Russell Banks to Isabel Allende to Marjane Satrapi to Jhumpa Lahiri, to name a few.

This year’s inspired choice is Dinaw Mengestu’s debut novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. Mengestu is an Ethiopian-American author living in Paris. After the book was chosen for Seattle Reads, it received the prestigious Guardian First Book Award.

This year, as we have done in years past, the events planned around Seattle Reads extend beyond the author’s visit and book discussions. There will be a Horn of Africa Cultural Day; a panel discussion echoing the themes in the book entitled “Immigration, Gentrification, and Small Business: A local perspective;” films on Africa; and more.

I am so excited to discuss this book. I had the pleasure and the honor, along with my colleagues, to work on the Reading Group Toolbox, writing discussion questions and writing annotations for fiction further reading suggestions.

Because I could do no better, I am stealing the Library’s description of this spare, elegant book:

“Set in a poor neighborhood in Washington, D.C., The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears tells a story of the African immigrant experience through three main characters: narrator Sepha Stephanos, an Ethiopian immigrant, who runs a small corner grocery store, and his friends, Joseph, from the Congo, and Kenneth, from Kenya. All share nostalgia for their home countries; none has come close to achieving the American dream. When a white academic and her biracial daughter move into the neighborhood and befriend Sepha, tensions build and it becomes clear they are not welcome in the gentrifying neighborhood.

The novel explores themes of race and class relations, what it means to lose family and a country, what it takes to create a new home, what it means to be an immigrant in America. The book’s title comes from Dante’s Inferno, where the poet is about to leave hell, on his way to purgatory, and catches a glimpse of the stars.”

  Detective Story by Imre Kertész

From his prison cell, we receive the rationalization of an interrogator.  Do not call this a confession because the narrator makes it clear he had little to do with the sad affair that he relates.  Yet, he will receive the ultimate punishment. 

Antonio Martens was a police officer in the Criminal Investigation Division who is given the opportunity to be promoted into The Corps, the state police who study their own people under the dictatorship of The Colonel.  Operating without any rules except their own, abuses will occur. Diaz, the head of the unit, works with Martens and a torturer named Rodriguez.  Throughout the book, Martens refers to himself as the “new guy,” and acts as an observer of The Corps and less as a participant.  Yet, he predicts his fate when he knowingly says when this all blows up, he will be the one who suffers and Diaz will disappear without punishment.

When The Colonel’s regime falls in this unnamed Central American country, and Martens ends up on death row for his “crimes,” he asks for the opportunity to write out his account of the Salinas affair.  Federigo Salinas is the head of a department store chain in this country and he believes he is a man who can stay between the central power and the people.  He is wrong.

Imre Kertész certainly knows how the state can impact on a person’s life.  He was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1929.  Kertész was imprisoned in two concentration camps during World War II.  He survived his state imposed incarceration and served in the Hungarian Army from 1951 to 1953.  He has worked as a journalist and a translator.  As a writer, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002.

Federigo’s son, Enrique, is a restless twenty-two year old, ashamed of his family wealth and the uselessness he feels in the current political situation.  Decisions that the young man makes will have consequences for his father.

This book, although written thirty years ago about a different country, is a reflection of the dangers of hiding investigations under the mantle of state preservation.  Hidden prisons, denial of basic legal rights and torture are not unfamiliar subjects to contemporary Americans. The most chilling theme in the book is how the father, a good man at heart with only his family’s best interest in mind, is dragged into the abyss by one simple choice.  In a sense, this book is the ultimate noir tale.

This book should make a great book discussion title as it has so many contemporary echoes.  Also, it has a huge advantage in that it delivers a major message in a minor amount of space, one hundred and twelve pages, thus endearing itself to readers challenge by time.  

Book group leaders who usually focus their discussions on novels may be hesitant about trying a nonfiction title.  At first glance, it may seem as if the preparation process will need to be very different and therefore more difficult.  However, even though you won’t be dealing with a typical plot and cast of characters as imagined by the author, you may find yourself encountering some similarities with those books you’re more accustomed to discussing.

For instance, instead of plot, think “story.”  Often in nonfiction, the author is reporting a story, only in this case the details are real, not made-up.  This aspect can lead to a discussion of the facts presented — are there enough to make the situation seem real and understandable, and if not, what seems to be missing?  The issue of accuracy is extremely important in nonfiction, so attention must be paid to the author’s credentials and sources.

Then, moving into the story, we may meet a variety of people, who serve a similar purpose to characters in a novel.  We can talk about them in the same way we approach fictional characters — are they interesting in a particular way, are they sympathetic, what role do they play in the development of the “story”?

When we look at the subject matter of the book, we may want to ask, what is to be learned from this account?  Was there anything in it that surprised you?  Did you agree with the author’s perspective and conclusions?

 Of course, we can always focus a bit on the author’s style and talk about whether the book was readable.  What made it interesting?  Or where did it misfire?  Was it biased or preachy?  Was it too technical, too detailed?

 Nonfiction titles often contain photographs or illustrations which handily lend themselves to conversations about how they enhance the work – and either support our responses as readers or leave us wanting something more.

What have you learned from your experiences of discussing nonfiction books that might help others as they venture into this new discussion territory?  I know I’ve just skimmed the surface here — obviously, there’s much more that could be suggested, so please share your comments!

Think that science fiction is for teenage boys and adults who like to wear costumes? That it requires a degree in astrophysics to understand? That the characters are thinner than cardboard cutouts?  Think again. Here are some science fiction choices that should go down well with literary book groups. These are choices with compelling, complex characters and science that an English major won’t find daunting. They are full of interesting ideas and will generate complex emotions that should create a strong discussion.

For readers of drama, coming-of-age stories, character-driven fiction and the English novel:

Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Two things are clear as this story of a triangle of English school students opens: something isn’t right at Hailsham school and although the differences are minute, this is not the England that we know. As the story of Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy unwinds the reader discovers an alternate future where some young people are bred to be organ donors. In Ishiguro’s capable hands, this story isn’t just a cautionary tale (although it certainly is that), it’s also suspenseful, deeply personal, and heart-rending. The author will make you sympathize with every aspect of these three characters. Ultimately their tragedy will make you appreciate the nobility of the human spirit.

For baby boomers, readers of historical fiction, stories of family and friends, or music lovers:

In War Times, by Kathleen Ann Goonan

Have patience with the first few pages of this novel, which might lead one to think the science is going to be complex. This story of an organic computer that allows limited interaction with alternate strands of history is solid science fiction, but ultimately readers will like it for other reasons: Sam Dance, the novel’s sympathetic narrator, is eyewitness to many of the major events of the last half of the 20th century, from America at the opening of WWII, then D-Day, the concentration camps, the Cold War, and the Kennedy assassination, to name just a few. For music fans, there are scenes that create the most compelling appreciation of jazz I’ve seen in any novel. Best of all, Goonan re-uses her own father’s journal entries lovingly and gracefully as part of Dance’s journal in the novel. These elements are all blended expertly in a suspenseful tale about the impact of great events on the lives of one circle of family and friends. 

For readers of thrillers, political fiction, and newshounds:

World War Z, by Max Brooks

Mel’s son has created something deeply original in his first novel: an oral history where each short chapter is the account of one survivor of the zombie wars. Beginning somewhere in China, an infection spreads rapidly around the globe, turning the majority of people into ravenous zombies and changing the geopolitical climate absolutely in a few short months. This tale is scary, exciting, more than a little funny, and utterly original. It rockets readers around the world and never gets dull. You’ll keep reading to find out how the survivors turn the tide in favor of the living. The plague only spreads because of a variety of political gaffes, self-serving lies, and bonehead policies that readers will find all too believable and highly discussable. Of course a zombie novel has violence and horror, so squeamish groups should pick another book.

Some other great choices for groups that don’t usually read science fiction include Elizabeth Moon, Speed of the Dark; Margaret Atwood, Oryx & Crake; Octavia Butler, Kindred; Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife; and Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow.

Ted’s post not too long ago about taking his book group to the museum reminded me that I’m about to embark on another book group adventure. I am fortunate enough to live in a big enough city where everyone working in or with the arts and humanities knows everyone else.

The world class Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and its talented staff want to do something special for the membership and enhance their museum experience. They’d also like to entice new visitors to their beautiful new addition and classic works of art. To that end, two creative folks in the programming and education department approached me about leading discussion on one of my favorite books from last year, Luncheon of the Boating Party. The discussion will be preceded by a docent led tour of the Museum’s Impressionist collection with particular attention paid, of course, to the Pierre-Auguste Renoir paintings. The docent will discuss Renoir’s life as an artist, the cultural history of Paris, Europe and the United States at the time the painting was rendered and then lead the group back to a small room where we will listen to music of the period, provided by Susan Vreeland!

Ms. Vreeland paid a visit to the Kansas City Public Library in February and it was one of the best author talks I’ve attended in a long time. After her presentation I told her how much I loved her book and how I hoped to use it with a book group at the Museum. Ms. Vreeland was delighted and offered me the CD of the French fin de siecle’ music she had recorded and played at the various stops on her book tour. I pounced on that offer and can’t wait to share the music with the book group attendees. I will also be showing them the website for the painting’s home, The Phillips Collection.

If this project takes off, my next stop will be the Kansas City Symphony. Maybe I can talk them into discussing Vivaldi’s Virgins.

My colleague, David Wright, could not wait to share the news yesterday that the “One Book, One Chicago” pick this year is Raymond Chandler’s classic crime thriller, “The Long Goodbye.”  When I saw this I couldn’t help but think of Neil’s last post on genrephobia.  Now an entire city worth of book groups gets to work through their own genrephobia by trying this Chandler on for size.  Very fun.  I cannot wait to hear the results!

 Here is an excerpt from the Chicago Tribune article:

“A writer from the “Outfit Collective,” a group that works to promote Chicago’s crime fiction community, praised the city’s choice to feature a crime fiction book.

“It’s a book with an enormous amount of twists and turns. It will keep you up way past bedtime,” said a writer from the group, Sean Chercove. “Dive in and enjoy the ride.”"

A well-made book is a work of art in itself, which has an undeniable effect on the reader reading it. You can’t pretend it doesn’t matter.

David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green is a perfect example of doing things wrong. Its physicality was inappropriate – for a book by a master stylist where every single word matters, Random House designed an extra-tall book with big pages covered with far too many words in too small type on each crowded page. It just wasn’t easy to read. You practically had to use your finger to keep your place. A smaller size of book and larger type would have enhanced the intimate experience of the story.

Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an example of every aspect of publishing coming together right – perfect cover art, that haunting, stubbled face, perfect type size and layout. It was a joy to read, a joy to carry around. With appalling lack of marketing sense, Harcourt decided for the paperback version to drop the cover that’s practically become an icon and slap on the book instead a no-art green cover that kills the paperback dead. It’s so dull I couldn’t find it on the rack, and I was looking for it. What can publishers be thinking?

Lingering for a moment on the subject of cover art, let me mention Indra Sinha’s awesome new novel, Animal’s People. First you should Google the gorgeous British cover. Then look at the book in your local bookstore. I admit I was so worked up I lost my cool and wrote a hot-tempered email when I saw what Simon and Schuster had done for the American cover. The novel is about a boy with a spinal deformity from a Bhopal-like chemical plant explosion, a feisty, loveable, near-feral kid narrating into a tape recorder. The British cover shows the boy’s face. You want to take him home. The American marketing team decided that instead, a more effective cover would be plain white, but splattered as though the book had been dropped in a chemical spill. Um, guys, the spill in the novel, as in Bhopal, was a gas…

All of this recently rose to a head when I realized my last three reading choices had been significantly motivated by the physical object of the reading experience itself. I love spending time with a good book. I want the act to be pleasurable. The physical object of the book itself plays a role.

A month ago I was in University Book Store looking for a good novel, glanced at the grabby cover of Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day, picked it up off the Non-Fiction table and opened it. Every aspect of book-making craft went into making that clean, well-written narrative into a reading experience that was eye-friendly and effortless and far too brief. The book opened easily, the perfect amount of text on each page in an easy-to-read typeface.

Same for Daoud Hari’s The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur. Now, there was a book I didn’t want to open, and did. The attractive, evocative cover, the small size, the short chapters with their falsely light-hearted tone, all broke through my barriers and dragged me into Darfur. It took a couple days to recover my sense of humor. But what an experience – and the author’s urgency is matched by the publisher’s tasteful, irresistible product.

And from there I veered away from hardbacks to a paperback original that really felt good in my hands. It also has the most hilarious title of the year, Richard Grant’s God’s Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre. Great cover – the holes in the soles of those cowboy boots! – an easy-opening paperback with everything right, including plenty of laughs, something I desperately needed after Darfur. Though it’s personality rich and packed with historical gems, halfway through I drifted away from the book – not due to any of that adventure’s fault, but I began to realize that in spite of the addictive physicality of holding a fun book, after three memoirs I was developing a serious hankering for plot points and set-ups and payoffs and character turns and red herrings, you know, the kind of stuff you only get in novels.

Plus, okay, for the record, a passionate memoir about urban poverty, followed by a passionate memoir about Darfur’s genocide, followed by a hilarious memoir of a fun-loving guy who likes a little danger… well, it didn’t have the same reason to exist. Gang Leader for a Day and The Translator were books written by men who urgently wanted to communicate with me. God’s Middle Finger was the result of a rollicking good time with dangerous people, told by a guy you’d love to have a beer with – but not his friends.

Enough of this article – I’m dying to get back to holding Animal’s People in my hands, and starting the next chapter, “Tape Eight,” the recorded voice of nineteen-year-old Animal. Oh boy, and this chapter is going to be about the mysterious, beautiful American woman doctor who’s come to town to open her own free health clinic, my favorite new character.

Go hold a real book somewhere.

I’m going to.

If you’ve been in a book group for long, you know what I mean: a title suggested from outside the group’s usual boundaries, especially if that title comes from the ghetto of genres that some view as “lesser” reading, may cause genrephobes in the group to react as if someone replaced the wine and cheese with rotgut and Velveeta.

That’s a shame. Real readers know that these genres–in particular I’m referring to fantasy, science fiction, thrillers, “women’s” fiction, and romances–have just as many gems sown in with the dirt clods as any other subset of literature. So if you’re a fan of these genres, or if you just want your group to expand its horizons a little, how can you get them to give these books a fair chance?

There are no easy answers, but here are five ideas to get you started:

1) Enthusiasm Is Contagious

If you’re a fan of a particular genre, don’t be afraid to praise it in front of other readers. Stigma against “lesser” books has been on the wane for over a century, but it’s a stubborn beast to kill. Sometimes all your friends will need is for someone else to admit in public that they love these books too.

2) Avoid Taboo Genre Words

Instead of saying “science fiction” say “near future thriller” or “space noir” or “anthropological puzzler.” Instead of “thriller,” say “action-driven drama.” If your friends aren’t ready to admit they like fantasy, approach the book as alternate history.

3) Focus on Discussability

The real key for groups is whether or not the book will generate good discussion. Emphasize the quality of characterization, the presence of interesting ideas, or the realism of dilemmas and conflicts that the author presents.

4) Minimize the Commitment

To lure readers, you’ll have better luck with shorter, standalone books by new authors instead of doorstops, series starters, or authors whose shelves overflow in an intimidating way.

5) Reduce Reader Awkwardness

Look at the cover of the book you want to suggest. Would a non-genre reader be embarassed to read it in public? Shame about reading certain genres, whether or not it’s well founded, becomes worse when broadcast to the world by the cover. Now try the first page. Is it full of unpronounceable character and place names? First impressions can mean everything. Find the genre titles with milder covers and first pages that won’t produce nervous giggles.

There are great books being promoted to groups, but you’re missing some of the best writers working today if you limit yourself to “book group” books. Find the right entry point and join the rest of us in reading genre literature. It’s more than a guilty pleasure.

I’m verklempt. On 12 marrt Boekenweek 2008 began in Amsterdam and I’m not there. This annual book festival celebrates reading in all its glory. Readers are first-class citizens in this world class city.

This year the theme celebrates senior citizens. The kick off event was a piano concert in the Amsterdam City Theatre presented by Bernlef. Two trains are criss-crossing the country and donating free rides for the jazz concerts they are hosting for passengers. The trains will meet up, disgorge the improvisational jazzperts, and all will converge in the Bijlmer Station for a joint concert.

All the libraries and bookstores participate in the ten day celebration of books and reading, one of the most popular and respected festivals in The Netherlands. It attracts authors, musicians and artists from around the globe.

This must be the Dutch version of ‘March Madness.’

I want to be surprised by the following news story, but I’m not. I say that because it just seems so obvious, creating a book discussion group for some of a library’s most faithful and widely read patrons, the homeless. This project is the sort of low maintenance, low cost program almost any library can host. See how Cleveland Public Library and one outreach nurse did it:  Homeless Men Find Shelter in Book Group

Is your book club in a well-worn rut?  Are you satisfied but not stimulated?  Has your book club become as predictable as the ending to Pride and Prejudice?

Well, in the spirit of spring renewal, here are 10 field-tested tips to help revitalize your book club and encourage your members to reengage! 

Photo by Gallebee

As the moderator of BookClubClassics.com, I have the opportunity and pleasure of reading about the various ways book clubs run their meetings.  When I create a custom kit for a book club, I ask the club member to complete a short questionnaire describing their club’s routines, habits, preferences, and challenges.  From this experience, I have discovered 10 unique ways that clubs get the most out of their selections and each other.

Eat, Drink and Be Enlightened! 

1.       Themed Potluck – each member brings a dish to share that symbolizes some aspect of the selection.  One club even asks each member to guess the connection between the food and the book before noshing.  (For example, chocolate chip muffins to represent Ann Patchett’s Run).

Party On, Dear Reader!

2.      One group asks each member to bring an object that symbolizes the one character the member connected with the most. (Like a copy of de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex to symbolize Mamah from Nancy Horan’s Loving Frank). 

3.      Another asks members to each bring the one sentence that was most meaningful to them (and then explain why). 

4.      The moderator of one group plays music that connects to the selection as the members arrive.  (She chose the music from Titanic for their recent meeting on A Thousand Splendid Suns). 

5.      The leaders of another group, who recently bought my kit on A Thousand Splendid Suns, actually dressed up as Maryam and Leila!

The Discussion’s the Thing…

6.      A club who recently ordered a custom kit on Anne Enright’s Man Booker winner The Gathering rotates who asks the question – one member is responsible for bringing the questions, but then the questions are passed around throughout the discussion.  (This ensures that every member’s voice is heard!) 

7.      Another group puts the questions in a hat and asks each member to choose one to read aloud.

 8.      One group, who ordered a kit on Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, made sure that each member of the book club received the questions and background information prior to the meeting.  You could then ask each member to choose a favorite question from the list to ask at the meeting.

Who’s the Boss?

9.      Determining leadership and book selection can be dicey.  My group suggested that each member should be responsible for their birthday month.

 10.   The club who recently ordered Carson McCuller’s The Member of the Wedding assigns someone other than the person who selected the book to lead the discussion.

Each of these ideas asks members to be more involved and therefore encourages members to be more invested – in reading the selection, attending the meeting, and engaging in the discussion. 

Not sure how your beloved book club would react to altering its established routine?  Consider pairing up with another leader and serving as co-leaders.  Sometimes it is easier to try new ideas when you have a partner in crime!

Now it’s your turn to share!   Does your book club have a creative or effective way of accomplishing any of the above or of getting members engaged?  Please share your ideas in the comments!  Or simply state which of the above you think you might try with your book club…

It is an honor to be on the same team with one of my mentors, Ted Balcom.

Let’s step into the Wayback Machine (for the young:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayback_Machine).

Way back in the early nineties, four Milwaukee-area librarians attended the same Public Library Association event in Chicago.  These were seminars held in the years that the annual PLA conference was not being held.  One of these sessions was on reader’s advisory, a new culture to those of us from a state where you are considered literate if you read the Packer’s media guide once a year. 

We were especially impressed with a group of librarians from Minnesota who told us about an annual retreat they held every year to sit around fireplaces and talk about books.  We four librarians immediately thought, “How can we get paid to do this?”

So, Bev DeWeese, Cathy Morris, Katie Schultz and I returned to the state of Wisconsin to form the Reader’s Advisory Roundtable.  A roundtable is one of the smallest organizations in the Wisconsin Library Association.  To form one, you need a minimum of four librarians intent on forming an organization to talk about books, evidently.

As our first goal, we wanted a dynamic speaker who could enthuse our resident librarian population with a love of literature, a respect for talking about books, and a need to start a reader’s advisory effort in our state. We picked Ted Balcom, the Villa Park, Illinois, Library Director and the author of Book Discussions for Adults: a Leader’s Guide  (ALA, 1992, 0838934137).

For those of you who have never met Ted, you must understand that your first impression of Ted is correct.  From the moment you meet him, you understand that he is an urbane and intelligent gentleman.  More psychiatrist than librarian, he appears to have a calming influence on all situations, a quality that served him well when he drew almost thirty people to a book discussion held after he had trained the first ever meeting of the Wisconsin Library Association’s Reader’s Advisory Roundtable.

I remember distinctly how Ted told us, in his persuasive and dulcet tones, that he knew thirty was too many for a book discussion, but as we were librarians, he knew he could trust us to behave well to our neighbors. 

I think I have been behaving well to all ever since. This was my personal epiphany when I realized that RA was not about sitting around fireplaces talking to the convinced about good books, but rather it was about gathering the uninitiated into the circle through a well run and fun book discussion.

Back in the days, that little instruction guide cost me little compared to where it and its author have led me. Today, it is long out of print which is unfortunate.  However, take heart in that if you wish to buy it through Amazon from used book dealers, it will cost you from $86.85 to $167.93 a copy.  I kid you not (http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0838934137/ref=dp_olp_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1205776787&sr=1-1)!

Now that Ted is retired, and assuming his duties on Book Group Buzz do not eat up all his spare time, isn’t it about time to have a second edition of Chairman Ted’s Little Brown Book?

 So, I owe it all to Ted and his little brown book. Thanks, Ted.

A friend told me recently about a discussion she led that didn’t go well.  “They hated the book!” she said, referring to her group, which has been meeting at the local library for many years.  “They said it was the worst book I’ve ever asked them to read.  They said they could hardly get through it.  But what really upset me was that they refused to discuss it.”  The book was a prizewinner, The Accidental, by British novelist Ali Smith.  It received the Whitbread Award for Best Novel and was also a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.  The cover glows with quotes from the critics, who call the book “astonishing…vivid and affecting” (The New York Times); “completely captivating…devilishly lovely” (The Boston Globe); “beautifully executed…delightful” (The New York Observer); “persistently sparkling…it casts a spell” (The Atlantic Monthly).  No one in the book group came even remotely close to agreeing with the critics.  They found the book extremely offensive because it was written in an avant garde style, contained graphic sexual descriptions, and centered on five unpleasant, seemingly unsympathetic characters (a promiscuous husband, his self-absorbed wife and their two maladjusted children, plus a strange, rather hostile woman who visits them in their vacation home and becomes involved in bizarre ways with each of them, even though none of them knows her from any past association and all of them blithely assume she has been invited by one of the others).  All discussion leaders who have been at it for a while probably have had this same experience – where we’ve picked a recommended book and it turned out that no one in the group really liked it very much, in spite of the fact that it came bearing a great reputation.  What my friend learned from her bleak experience is that her group doesn’t want to invest in discussing a book that they didn’t enjoy reading.  In other words, in selecting a book for this group, she has to find a title with content provocative enough to elicit discussion, but it can’t be so off-putting that it tips the scales of reader interest too far in the opposite direction.  Actually, it’s a valuable lesson for all discussion leaders to think about as they choose titles for their groups.  If our readers decide they don’t want to finish the book because they don’t think it’s worth their time, they won’t want to talk about it, either — in fact, they won’t be able to, since they won’t know enough about it to effectively contribute to the discussion.  All of this makes the discussion leader’s job a little more challenging than perhaps we previously thought.

Chris Bohjalian is the kind of author who tackles timely issues.  He crafts his fiction around topics like midwifery or animal rights or sexual identity and then humanizes and fleshes out the topics with characters and plot.  Another popular author who does this is Jodi Picoult.  I compare these two authors a lot. (Oh, and check out Picoult’s review of this book on Amazon!)  Both Bohjalian and Picoult can, at times, be a little heavy-handed, but they both know how to write compelling characters and stories.  Bohjalian has a real talent for examining an issue from multiple perspectives.  Perhaps this is because Bohjalian also works as a journalist, writing weekly column, “Idyll Banter,” for a Vermont paper, the Burlington Free Press.

I made the mistake of reading Bohjalian’s Midwives when I was pregnant.  I say mistake simply because it does feature a particularly horrific home birth scene around which a courtroom drama enfolds.  But as a pregnant woman considering home birth, I also appreciated the way in which this man approached the issues of midwifery and birth with real respect, depth and fairness.  I thought that he wrote from a woman’s perspective beautifully and truly represented a complex issue from many sides.

In his most recent bestselling novel, The Double Bind, Bohjalian explores the weighty issues of rape, homelessness and mental illness in what turns out to be a psychological mystery.  Laurel Estabrook works for a homeless shelter in Vermont and when one of the clients for whom they had found housing dies, leaving behind a sheaf of photographs of famous people, Laurel is asked to curate the photographs for a possible benefit show.  But what starts as a work project becomes a dangerous obsession.  A photograph of a girl on a bicycle sets Laurel on a hunt that involves her past. For one, it brings up memories of a violent attack on Laurel seven years before on a Vermont bike trail, an attack that has left her emotionally fragile. It also awakens memories from her childhood in West Egg on Long Island, the town where Jay Gatsy and Tom and Daisy Buchanan lived.  Wait a minute, aren’t these fictional characters from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby?  How can they be real?  The Double Bind will surprise you right up to the last pages. Because nothing is as it seems in this book.  You can also lead with a question about the significance of the title, which turns out to have some intriguing implications.

Seems kind of unusual, asking a book group to discuss a book without text. But I think it’s possible. Especially with The Arrival by Shaun Tan.

This haunting, poignant and compelling picture book tells the classic story of an immigrant coming to a new country. The nameless male protagonist (a husband and father) leave his could-be-anywhere homeland (Europe, perhaps?). His country is threatened by the presence of an unidentified creature. He leaves behind his wife and young daughter and journeys to a peaceful, prosperous city in a new country. He is unfamiliar with the language, currency, environment, culture and even the native creatures.

His new country is a peculiar mix of otherworldly people, animals and objects. In sepia-toned softly shaded pencil drawings, the author renders the inquisitive, frightened and eager emotions of the new resident and his adventures with language, directions, job hunting, friends and neighborhood exploration. This new homeland is an intriguing mix of mechanical devices and old-fashioned dress and folkways. Almost every person our hero meets is also an immigrant and their stories of migration and assimilation are also told.

This powerful,  layered, wordless book full of flashbacks, multiple points of view and intriguing illustrations is ripe for discussion. It’s not as quick a read as one might imagine. Readers will take time to pore over every drawing and absorb the details of the hero’s journey to life in a new world. Discussions  involving the universal experience of merging an old life with a new one–past and present–will invigorate readers who use the finely detailed illustrations to support theories instead of the text.

The riddle? What’s that thing called – the kettle? The device that’s going to replace books in the future – the rattle? It will come to me.

One thing book junkies never talk about is what we FEEL when we read. That’s why people who aren’t book junkies can think an electronic gizmo could induce the same sensations as a physical book. They don’t realize that what we hold in our hands, the object within which the words are perceived, matters. Reading a book is different than reading the newspaper. Some books are different from other books. The object affects the experience. So do the cover art and the typeface and the page layout, and what the book feels like while you’re reading it.

These sensual responses to the act of reading matter hugely.

My choice of the next book I’m going to read is often heavily influenced by the appearance and feel of the book. Will this typeface be easy to read on the bus? Will this binding make me fight with the book the entire time I’m reading it?

The book, that ancient human invention, has perpetually modified its shape and appearance, and will certainly continue to do so, though I doubt if it will ever be replaced by this new thing, the ripple? The racket? The hardback novel, the paperback, these have a familiar look I expect, a look that matters, a heft and packaging and readability factor that all affect my decision to buy a book and take it home.

Some books aren’t well-made. Pages can be too thin or too stiff. Some covers are dumb, garish, or dull. Some glue bindings are over-aggressive. Some spines easily crack.

But sometimes publishers get it all right, and you hold in your hands a book with a genuinely attractive cover that opens easily and naturally, inducing you to open it to the first page of text with plenty of eye-easy whiteness on each flexible page and a clear, easy-to-read typeface.

This all became achingly clear when I recently realized that, after several hundred pages, I was no longer enjoying the story of a novel. But I wouldn’t put the book down. Why wouldn’t I stop? I was continuing to read because the book was such a pleasure to hold. It was a Europa paperback – do you know those? They’re gorgeously made trade-size paperbacks, with covers that are just stiff enough but still bend easily, and handsome French-folds (those nifty fold-over cover flaps). They’re filled with well laid-out pages of easy-to-read type on perfectly flexible paper. They’re simply lovely as objects.

I was slugging my way through Katharina Hacker’s grimly difficult German novel, The Have-Nots, heartily endorsed by the German Book Office and winner of some prize or other. One of those novels where the author won’t take the time to tell you whether someone is a guy’s sister or wife, you have to figure it all out. Slowly, slowly, you put together that there are three plots all happening in different cities, then everyone moves into the same neighborhood, and you figure out who’s who, not a chuckle in the entire piece, it’s a world where no one laughs, but I kept on reading. Then the good wife finds herself caught in a silent three-way with her husband’s co-worker. Enough! I no longer cared what these humorless characters did to each other.

Did I throw the book across the room? A perfectly-crafted book like that? No, I just kept hoping the story might improve a little. I didn’t give up until eighty pages from the end.

So much for my sensual book addiction. Fortunately for me, in four months Europa will be publishing A Sun for the Dying, another French noir by the late Jean-Claude Izzo, author of that heartbreaking waterfront noir masterpiece, The Lost Sailors.

Won’t be long and I’ll be holding another Europa paperback…

Recently I gave a workshop on Book Group Basics–starting, facilitating, choosing titles, that sort of thing. Don’t look at me like that. There are still folks out there who don’t belong to a book club and think it might be nifty to start one.

One of the print resources I bring with me is The Readers’ Choice: 200 Book Club Favorites by Victoria Golden McMains.

Ms. McMains, a book reviewer and book group member, published a monthly column, “Book Club Favorites,” in the Press Democrat. Many of those columns are collected in this compilation, and while most of the entries will be recognized by long-time book group denizens, there are more than enough unfamiliar titles to include on a new reading list. 

All the entries are arranged alphabetically by author last name. McMains includes a good synopsis of each book and mixes fiction with nonfiction, biography and memoir primarily. She also includes a discussion topic to get readers thinking and talking. The best use of this topic is to give it to participants as they check out the book. It’ll fuel conversation later as readers have something to ponder as they read.

Each entry is only a page in length. The only quibble I have with this resource is its age. It’s time for an update. This is easily one of my favorite tools and it’s very affordable. Unfortunately, it’s also out of print, last time I checked.  So if you have one, hold onto it. And if you don’t, you can get one easily at your favorite online used book source.

I hope this set of messages has convinced a few of you to try a discussion of multiple books at a future group meeting. If you do, you’ll find that the mechanics change when everyone reads a different book. Here are ten hints to make sure your discussion doesn’t trip over too many titles:

 1) Don’t Give Away the Ending

It’s a major no-no to include spoilers when you discuss a book that others haven’t read. Warn participants in advance that they shouldn’t assume others have read the book.

2) Lean Toward the Positive

Without corroboration, a completely negative review may not be fair. If you didn’t like the book, balance your negative review with acknowledgment of its stronger points. Try to identify audiences of readers who might find it of interest.

3) Make Time Expectations Clear

The biggest challenge of discussing many books can be finishing your meeting in your allotted time. It’s easiest to address the time limit question in advance. (Subtract 15 to 30 minutes for general discussion and asides from the time you want to spend on the full meeting, then divide the time remaining by the number of participants to get an idea of how long each person can take). If time is tight, discourage participants from talking about more than one book until everyone has had a turn. If someone goes on too long, don’t be afraid to interrupt with “I’m sorry, but we need to move on so we can hear about everyone’s book.”

4) Don’t Forget Discussion

In the rush to get through everyone’s book, you don’t want to lose interaction. Please join in if you have something to add about a book that someone else introduces! Discussion leaders should make sure that at least one question or comment follows the introduction of each book.

5) Draw Out the Quiet and Shy

Multiple book discussion puts more pressure on readers who are reluctant to talk. Hearing their input can be a great benefit of this approach, but it can also be uncomfortable to listen to someone who doesn’t know how to talk about books or gets nervous talking in front of others. To help them, distribute a few ideas about how to present a book to new group participants (I’ll expand more on this in a future post). If the presentation is still lacking, trying prodding the participants with a few friendly questions.

6) Help the Readers Find Books

To help readers prepare, distribute a list of suggested books that fits the discussion theme, or a bibliography (possibly annotated) if discussing an author. Such lists are usually easy to find through an online search site like Google. A good clearinghouse for booklists is at http://librarybooklists.org.

7) Develop the Theme

To enhance your discussion, introduce the meeting’s topic with a few tidbits about the theme or author. In ten minutes, someone can preview the history of the theme, highlight a few central issues, or provide a brief biography of an author. For even better results, distribute a few thematic questions a month in advance.

8 ) Pass the Books Around

Encourage participants to pass their books around the group. People will listen more closely to talk about a book they haven’t read if they get a chance to examine it. This will also help them determine if they would like to read the book themselves.

9) If the Theme Fits…

When you find a theme that your group enjoys, don’t be afraid to revisit it. The first thematic group I tried ultimately floundered: I should have taken the hint from the extremely popular first meeting and mined the readers’ enthusiasm for British and Irish fiction. Another group I lead had great fun with a discussion of romance/speculative fiction crossovers, which we playfully labelled SMUT! We’ve revisited that discussion every Valentine’s Day with Son of SMUT, Bride of Smut, and Return of SMUT. The short books and light conversation seem to lighten up dreary February for everyone.

10) You Don’t Need to Read Different Books

The variety of multiple book discussion can invigorate a group, but variety is good for all book groups. Those that regularly read different titles should occasionally focus on a single book to keep things fresh.