I just finished a book that would be perfect for any group looking for a short, substantive read.  It’s Dorothy Baker’s lost classic, Cassandra at the Wedding.

Cassandra and Judith Edwards are twins.  They grew up in an eccentric California home where their father, a retired philosophy professor who spends his days filling his glass with Hennessy, and writer mother taught them to be individuals, to think for themselves.  Inseparable for most of their lives, Judith decides to move away for a year to New York and returns with a beau.  Cassandra returns to the family ranch to try and stop her dear sister from breaking up their sisterly union.

Cassandra’s voice is beguiling, sly, and sharp, mirroring her wit and aplomb.  She is so alive, so real.  Her complexity jumps off the page.  And again, that voice–she is so fetching you want her to narrate everything she does, you want her in your head in the morning narrating breakfast.

What this book does is draw you into a family whose dynamics are as fascinating as they are familiar.  It draws you into the minds and the lives of two young women on the cusp of figuring out who they are, who they can be, apart.  It is about identity, heartbreak, acceptance and love.  It is also about a wedding.

This book made me again so happy that New York Review Books is reviving and revisiting books that should never have gone out of print.  They should win awards for this! 

So do your book group a favor, and put Dorothy’s Baker’s Cassandra at the Wedding on your summer list.

  This autumn all five thousand members of Seattle’s largest reading group will be tucking into a hair-raising true account of illegal Mexican immigration, Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway. If this compelling book doesn’t engage the minds of the University of Washington’s 2008 Freshman Class with its harrowing, heartbreaking picture of our immigration laws, nothing will.

It’s the story of the Yuma 14, the worst loss of life in border crossing history. Seven years ago, twenty-six walkers set out on the Devil’s Highway, became lost in the brutal terrain under conditions of extreme heat, and were abandoned by their guide. Only twelve survived.

Unexpectedly, the book doesn’t begin with the victims – it begins with forty pages about the men who guard the Devil’s Highway, the Border Patrol. It’s a respectful account of the guys everyone hates, men who love their country but sometimes do some pretty repugnant stuff. An illegal is called a “tonk,” the sound of a flashlight cracking over a human skull. A popular Border Patrol joke is to throw a dead rattlesnake into a truck full of captured immigrants and watch them piss themselves with fear. But Urrea shows both sides of everything, including the Border Patrol, who will pay out of their own pockets for a new device to save lives.

Once you know all the mistakes illegals make and all the tricks and technology waiting to catch them, Urrea begins to introduce the reader to the poor trusting wretches who are optimistically undertaking this journey. They come from faraway Veracruz in southern Mexico. They have no idea what lies ahead. They’re coming so they can send money to a mother or a wife back home, or send a child to school, or pay for a new roof. Urrea begins with the bags that hold their remains, what they were wearing when their bodies were found, their belt buckles, their underwear.

This is a very special kind of non-fiction. It’s the facts, all right, but presented with liberties, convincingly brought to life even though the author wasn’t there and never met the survivors. It’s all imaginative re-creation, educated guesswork, exhaustive research and most-likely scenarios, a novelistic bringing-to-life of the taped interviews and records, infusing the men with the feelings and thoughts of characters. At times The Devil’s Highway does a border crossing of its own between non-fiction and historical fiction, incorporating the strengths of both.

The next-to-last chapter includes an exceptionally surreal moment for non-fiction: Urrea takes you into the fourteen body bags being transported to the medical examiner in Tucson, into the minds of the dead men – an artificial technique that might have seemed strained and unnecessary were it not such a heartfelt memorial to each of the men, name by name, what little is known, a profoundly moving elegy to the trusting men who died. Not many writers could have pulled it off. Not many would have dared to try.

Slowly Urrea draws all his threads together, and the hapless band of illegals set out with the young rocker guide called Mendez. In excruciating detail Urrea lets you know what it’s like to die slowly from a merciless sun, and once you know exactly how it will happen, you watch the men start to go through each stage, slowly cooking to death, deceived by their guide, perishing for their dreams, some of them just as the rescuing helicopters finally arrive.

At the center of the spiderweb is the enigmatic Mendez, the nineteen-year-old guide, who is either a criminal cold-bloodedly leaving twenty-six walkers behind to die in the sun, or else a stupid, reckless young lout who won’t admit he doesn’t know where he’s going, whose failed attempt to be a solo guide turns him inadvertently into a mass murderer.

A nineteen-year-old peer for five thousand college freshmen to discuss!

Lest you fail to appreciate the cost of this border drama in tax dollars, Urrea gives you the sobering figures per body, the skyrocketing costs of hospitalization, transport and burial. But he’s got plenty of surprising facts to leave you with as you close the book, not least of which is how much revenue illegal immigrants bring into this country. As one Mexican politician says, “We have inserted twelve million workers into the United States – it is already Mexico! We have won the war!”

The University of Washington’s challenging 2008 Common Book is a thrilling choice, a provocative, humanitarian examination of an ongoing modern tragedy, a perfect tool to engage students with the struggles of the real world and to stir up passionate dialogue about one of the moral crises of our time.

At a recent discussion of Kurt Vonnegut’s acclaimed novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, I learned a useful lesson.  The group was talking about some of the more controversial aspects of the book that led to its being questioned as an appropriate reading choice for students at the local high school, and this prompted a number of teachers and ex-teachers in the circle to begin spinning off into anecdotes of their encounters with would-be censors.  Suddenly, one of the group members raised his hand, and when I nodded in his direction, he quietly asked, “Whatever happened to Kurt?”

That brought me up short.  I realized I’d become so interested in the horror stories the participants were recounting that I’d forgotten my role as the leader and my obligation to keep the group focused on the book we’d gathered to discuss.  Of course, we all laughed and quickly got back to talking about Vonnegut’s work, but what I learned from that slightly embarrassing moment was that I could use that question — appropriately revised — to keep future groups on track. 

And I intend to do just that.  When the need arises to pull the group’s wandering attention back to the book of the evening, I can simply ask, “Whatever happened to Jane?”  or more specifically, “Whatever happened to Ms. Austen?”  They’ll get the idea quickly enough.  It’s a nice little device to have in the discussion leader’s bag of tricks.  Very direct and not at all impolite.  And effective.  I urge you to use it, too.

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk, translated by Erda M. Göknar,
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001 [original title: Benim Adim Kirmizi].

While we are supposedly reading crime and mystery fiction at my library’s book discussion once a month, I stray a little out of the box when I help the group select our titles for the year.  The book we end up reading often engenders comments like, “I would have never chosen this book to read.”  Yes, even the occasional “who the hell picked this book?”

Last night’s title was My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk.  Chances are if a group has selected a title by someone who has been bestowed the Nobel Prize for Literature, the book is not going to be a quick read.  This proved true with this story of 16^th Century Turkish miniaturists who are struggling to maintain the purity of their craft against the influences of the West.  When one of the artisans is murdered, a young diplomat named Black is charged with figuring out which of the three remaining artists committed the murder.   

That outline of the plot is a skeleton frame for a very complex narrative which tells us more about the nature of Islamic thought, the process of making miniatures in Turkey, the nature of art, man’s relationship to God, and man’s relationship to women (and occasionally little boys).   

In case that does not sound daunting enough, each chapter has a distinct narrator who manages to divulge the truths through such dissembling methods as answering questions with a fable or outright lying.  This novel may set some sort of record for unreliable narrators.  And then there are the chapters narrated by a coin, a tree, a dog and the color red.  Oddly, the chapter narrated by Satan may be the funniest part of the book.

Then, what to make of the role of the central female in this book?  One of the most hotly debated questions we answered last night was:  is this book a romance?  Key to the whole story of Black is whether the love of his life is the classic femme fatale so familiar from hard-boiled American crime novels of the 1930s.  

Pamuk may be as interesting as any of his narrators.  Born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1952, he managed to talk his parents into letting him live at home until he was thirty.  This was necessary because he studied journalism and architecture before deciding he would grow up to be a Nobel Prize winning novelist. 

So how did the group like this book?  I was afraid to enter the room last night out of fear that the group would not like this book.  Instead, what I found was that the power of the story held the group’s interest with one understanding:  nobody cared who the murderer was. 

The reason for that is that Pamuk is so adept at showing a society of unfamiliarity to Western readers that shocks, dismays, frustrates and educates us while pulling us through the narrative.  Perhaps the greatest lesson to be learned from this novel is that no passage of time changes the nature of people.  The same issues that separated East from West in the 1500s is still present in the world today.  Perhaps no one knows this better than Pamuk.  In Turkey, because of his opposition to fundamentalist religion his comments on the Armenian Genocide, and his outspoken criticism of Turkey’s war on the Kurds, he has been criticized by the government and criminal charges were pressed against him.  As is the fate of the storyteller in his novel, Pamuk has learned that satire is still a punishable offense in some places in the world. 

 I love her writing, she’s perfect for book clubs, and no one knows who she really is.

Elena Ferrante is currently a very popular Italian author whose identity remains unknown. Imagine, in this age of celebrity, an author who actually chooses to avoid the celebrity machine, and succeeds! Ferrante lives in Naples, and that’s all anyone knows about her, other than that her swift, elegant novels are intense little bullets of literature, electrifying experiences in which you become trapped in a woman’s mind.

I should know. I’ve just escaped from narrator Leda’s mind in Ferrante’s newest novel, The Lost Daughter. What an experience.

Leda hasn’t been a very good mother, and her two twenty-something daughters have gone to live with their father in Toronto. For the first time in decades Leda is alone again. She rents a summer place and goes to the beach, where she becomes fascinated watching a pretty new mother and her daughter. Their lives converge.

We get a nice jolt of a plot surprise on page 40, and another nice surprise on page 82, and the whole thing wraps on page 125. Which means the neat little novel falls into perfect thirds. Five pages from the end, I had absolutely no idea where the plot was going, only that the two previous shocks appeared to be on a collision course. I’ve just finished the novel. The ending was utterly unexpected and completely satisfying.

It’s Leda’s voice that’s hypnotic, and it’s the writing that makes it that way. Ferrante can do a woman’s interior dialogue like no one else, with a ferocity that is shockingly honest, unnervingly blunt. Only a woman could have written this, but don’t expect poetic, sensitive, delicate stuff. This is not that kind of feminine writing. You’re afraid of what she’s going to say next. You’re not sure you want to hear it.

She admits things most people erase from their memories. The many times she loses her patience being a mother. The many times she snaps at her children, or treats someone unfairly. As a man, I can’t imagine how this would read to a mother. Is Leda not cut out to be a mother, or is this what all women go through? She records the numerous miscommunications between mothers and their children with excruciating precision. Maybe it’s her anonymity as a writer that allows Ferrante let go of propriety and admit the dozens of blunders and little unpleasant deeds that litter our lives.

Trapped inside her head, watching how her emotions bump her into making bad decisions and dangerous choices, Ferrante makes you achingly aware of how many illogical, small-minded, counter-productive things you yourself do every day.

It’s like a member of the reading group suddenly taking off all her clothes and telling you candidly what she really did last summer. You feel that someone is trusting you with her inner life, telling you her story because she needs to tell someone, but at the same time you’re not sure if maybe you wouldn’t rather bolt from the room. But now you can discuss her. You’ve all heard her confession. You know everything you need to know.

She has two other slim novels in English translation, The Days of Abandonment and Troubling Love, each of them narrated in first person by a different woman, perhaps all of them simply the voice of Elena Ferrante taking us on a tour of the thrilling, dangerous terrain inside her soul, all three of them in those handsome Europa paperbacks that are such a dang pleasure to read. Next time your reading group is looking for a fresh new voice, I’d take a look at the work of this mysterious, unknown Italian woman who calls herself Elena Ferrante.

I now know the depths of my love for a certain novelist.

This morning on the way to work, NPR did an advance promo for today’s Fresh Air. Special guest Helen Hunt, four-time Emmy winner, Oscar winner and recently turned director, will be discussing her new film. It stars Bette Midler, Matthew Broderick and Colin Firth in addition to Ms. Hunt.

The film? Then She Found Me. I took that moment to harangue Terry Gross via my radio that this movie is based on Elinor Lipman’s first novel and that I wasn’t going to go see it because Ms. Hunt directed it. I’m going to see it because it’s Elinor Lipman!  One of the funniest writers I’ve ever read! I suppose I’ll go for Colin Firth, too.

But, please, Helen, props to Elinor for providing you with such great material! And if you think Then She Found Me is good, you haven’t read The Way Men Act. Favorite scene? The description of the floral delivery. Chapter 29. Do. Not. Miss.

Don’t discuss without me!

Everybody loves Nancy Pearl.  Okay, well, anyone who loves books loves Nancy Pearl.  If I had my way that would be everyone!

Nancy celebrates books in everything that she does.  And she has a masterful way of describing books that makes you want to run right out and buy, borrow or steal anything she just raved about.  From her librarian action figure doll to her books, Book Lust and Book Crush, she is the ultimate cheerleader for the written word.

But I wanted to alert all of the book-lovers out there to Nancy’s weekly book reviews on local NPR.  You can even subscribe to her weekly reviews and get them e-mailed to you, or listen to the podcasts.

Let Nancy choose your group’s next book!

Libraries need to recognize book group readers as one of their core audiences, a population that deserves “extra-mile” service. Here’s my list of 25 ways that a library can support book groups. How many of these are available at your local library?

1. Organize groups, provide staff leaders for those groups, or train community volunteers to lead the groups.
2. Provide book databases and training in how to use these databases to prepare discussion materials.
3. Collect discussion materials for groups on demand–reviews, author biographies, and other related material.
4. Link to web sites that support book groups prominently on the library web site.
5. Offer meeting rooms in the library for book group use. Consider designing at least one meeting space specifically to be inviting to groups (comfortable chairs in a circle, allow refreshments, etc.)
6. Develop a handout with advice for successful book group practice that you can distribute to local groups.
7. Build a directory of local book groups with contact information, subject specialties, meeting dates and frequency, membership limitations, past reading lists, and an indication of whether the group is willing to consider new members.
8. Promote new groups in a centralized location. Provide a matchmaking service to help new readers find appropriate groups and groups find new readers.
9. Circulate book group bags or kits: collections of 10 to 15 copies of a title with discussion materials that can be checked out for two months for use by book groups.
10. Offer staff members as guest leaders for various reading specialties.
11. Design plenty of book lists and bookmarks on different reading themes and encourage book groups to take copies and distribute them to their members.
12. Compile and distribute  list of books in the collection that contain discussion questions; Make this notation part of the online catalog.
13. Become aware of book group picks from Oprah, Book Sense, and other major media outlets. Make sure that enough copies of these books are available to support groups.
14. Conduct a training day with advice on how to lead a discussion, how to select titles, how to add a touch of fun or creativity, and how to advertise your group.
15. Build “reading maps” or readalike lists for popular book group titles.
16. Devote a display space to books about book groups and good books for discussion at least one month every year.
17. Organize a day of book talks about good book group selections. Invite book group members to participate, not just listen.
18. Take special notice of subject or reading interests that are popular in your community. Design book groups to fit these interests or create book lists in these subjects and distribute them to existing groups.
19. Collect lists of links to websites that would enhance the discussion of various popular book group titles.
20. Provide readers’ advisory for groups: Given a list of what the group has discussed and enjoyed (or not enjoyed) in the past, a librarian would provide a list of other suggested titles.
21. Ask book groups to notify the library of upcoming titles. The library can then buy new or extra copies of these titles as appropriate.
22. Compile a list of local establishments and locations that are “book group friendly”: good places for groups to meet.
23. Invite a successful local book group to design and select titles for a library display.
24. Schedule one-on-one or small group consultations with local group leaders to discuss methods, provide advice, or just exchange information about the library and the group.
25. Encourage librarians and book group leaders to read Book Group Buzz!

Libraries can potentially do much more to support groups. If you’re a librarian, considering adding one or two of the practices from this list to your repertoire. If you are in a book group, talk to your local library about which of these services they can support.

Please add your own comments about any service methods for book groups that I might have missed!

They are a boisterous and creative lot at the joint Oregon/Washington Library Association conference. Last Thursday I presented a sesssion called “Book Group CPR: Breathe New Life into Your Discussion Group.” I thought I wouldn’t have enough material to give the audience and it turns out, they had plenty of material to share with me! Handouts for the progam will be uploaded here.

After a discussion on the pros and cons of themed book groups (a topic I willl address in greater depth in a later post unless someone’s beaten me to it), we brainstormed ways to dress up an existing book group’s meeting and chat about Luncheon of the Boating Party.

I have mentioned Susan Vreeland’s latest novel before in this blog. I think it will become a book group staple. A member of the audience asked about this particular book and wanted it to be the focus of the exercise, “because my group is doing it next week and I don’t have anything planned.”

I tossed the title and query out to the audience and they did not disappoint. They started right in on the food.  Suggested servings included wine (!), grapes, bread, cheese, French pastries and “a spread that looks like the one in the painting.”

Then the audience started to have fun with the concept. Some of the ideas bandied about were: Everyone wear a hat. Bring in a costume historian to discuss the dress of all the models in the painting. Have the book group attendees reenact the various models’ poses and hold it for five minutes. Play music of the time. Bring in all those over-size Impressionist painting books and check them out to attendees. Ask someone to pronounce all the French phrases and words in the novel and provide definitions or American slang equivalents for some of the expletives. Someone shouted for a can-can demonstration.

Sorry, folks. I left my ruffled bloomers in Kansas City.

Arlington Heights, Illinois, the community where I live and lead book discussions, has never conducted a “One Book, One City” reading program.  However, the public library does participate in a regional program organized by The Daily Herald, the newspaper that serves Arlington Heights and the surrounding towns.  It’s called “Suburban Mosaic,” and focuses on books that promote diversity.  Every year a new book is selected for adults to read and talk about, and there are also titles chosen for young adults and children.  Library staff members have provided input into the selection process, along with teachers, clergy, and representatives from the newspaper.  The books are widely promoted, and discussions are held in libraries, schools, churches and coffeeshops — so it’s the same idea as the “One Book, One City” model, except for the use of a continuing theme and wider coverage than just one town.  In past years, the adult readers have read and discussed The Kite Runner, The House on Mango Street, Dreams from My Father, and Enrique’s Journey.  

I’ve just learned that next year’s choice for the adult discussion groups is Digging to America, by Anne Tyler, and I’m very excited by this news.  To me, Anne Tyler is the ideal author for a satisfying book discussion.  Over the years, I’ve used many of her books with my groups, both at the library and in workshops illustrating how to lead effective discussions. So I’m definitely looking forward to talking about Digging to America.  In describing this book, Tara Gallagher of The Wall Street Journal states that Tyler has “a reputation as a master of the fine threads of human relationships,” which I think is the perfect way of summarizing the qualities that make her books so fascinating to read and talk about.

Digging to America centers on two families who become intertwined when they meet at the Baltimore airport on the evening both have come to pick up the Korean girls they are adopting.  One family has deep American roots, while the other has an Iranian background, although the adopting couple is fully assimilated to America.  Over the subsequent years, Tyler explores the closeness — and the tension — that develops between the two couples, their children, and their relatives.   This is her 17th novel, and it’s subtle and assured, as her fans would expect, but new readers can’t help but be drawn to this absorbing story of what it means to be an American, worked out on several different levels.  If you’re interested in looking at complex characters caught in a clash of cultures, please consider adding Digging to America to your list of titles for future discussions.

I have failed to get my whole community behind a book.  Our efforts are definitely more one library, one read than the alternative.  However, knowing that we are too small to pull this off does not keep us from doing one spring and one fall session called Greendale Reads.

Well, this time around we were able to renew our partnership with the City of Milwaukee Public Library, a great partner for a community wide effort.  It works even better when the City employees do all the work for me.

Dawn Lauber and her cohorts applied for a National Endowment for the Arts grant called The Big Read.  A committee selected the title Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.  I will admit that I was unfamiliar with Hurston other than the fact that we own the Library of America collection of her works. 

The Big Read makes it very easy to feel good about a title.  They provide massive amounts of publicity including posters, reader’s guides and informational CDs.  The graphics are eye popping and make reading look like it is fun.

So, with anticipation, I picked up the book to dive right in.

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”

Why has no one ever told me that Zora Neale Hurston has written one of the greatest opening lines in literary history?

I was hooked from the first words.  Now I will grant that any reader may be challenged by the use of dialect in the novel.  However, if you are swept up in the novel like I was, it becomes like a dance.  There is a rhythm to the dialogue that pulls the reader along, pacing the reader’s heart to the intent of the passages.  

The journey of Janie, both physically and spiritually, is one fine read.  Due to the timing of The Big Read, Greendale’s book discussion was the caboose of the grant, coming home a distant two to three weeks after the end of Milwaukee’s portion.

Although I did none of the work, I would encourage you to apply for a Big Read grant.  It works.  Last night, we had 25 people join Dr. Edwin Block from Marquette University in a discussion of this fine work.  Even more exciting for us was that six of the people who attended were from the City of Milwaukee Riverside High School, studying the book as a part of their coursework.

That is one city, one book enough for me.  

A couple of lists of top books for book discussions have popped up recently.

This list of the top ten book group choices in 2007 was posted on Reading Group Choices. It was selected with the help of book group leaders representing more than 50,000 book group members.

1. Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen

2. The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

3. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

4. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

5. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

6. TIE: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert; and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

7. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

8. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

9. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

10. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

All of the books on the Reading Group Choices list are familiar and you may have already discussed them in your group. If you’re looking for something different, Kristen at Book Club Classics posted this list of the books that readers of Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust thought created the best discussions.

The Boy on the Bus by Deborah Schupack

Heart, You Bully, You Punk by Leah Hager Cohen

The Romantic by Barbara Gowdy

Spilling Clarence and The Disapparation of James by Anne Ursu

The Dive from Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer

How do you prepare for your book group discussion? 

I know that everyone has different methods and approaches.  Everyone does different things in order to feel “ready.”  Some of us may take copious notes while others may like the thrill of going by the seat of their pants. 

I guess I come somewhere in between.  When I have the time, or if I think the book is particularly complex, I like to page back through the book and take notes.  I comb through each page, each chapter, for foreshadowing, relationships, events, and sometimes copy down entire lines or paragraphs that I find meaningful or beautiful.  I make note of page numbers where characters are introduced or where turning points occur.  Sometimes this turns out to be a couple of pages and sometimes ten.  Sometimes I write discussion questions for my group if there aren’t any available.  Or I do some reading about the author and their body of work. 

Other times doing a quick scan of the book and of the discussion questions is enough.  Other times I go in without giving it much thought.   

Once I filled in for a colleague for a book I had not read.  The group told me I did a great job and they wouldn’t have known that I hadn’t read the book if I hadn’t told them!  There went all of my theories about reading thoroughly and being prepared! 

But really, when it comes down to it, I never feel completely “ready.”  You never know what someone is going to say.  You don’t always know what you’re going to say!  I also enjoy how the conversation organically evolves, how one question or comment leads to the next.  I like to be prepared to be surprised.

But please share your secrets.  I’d like to learn something new!

This relationship has gone flat. Maybe it’s time to consider some counseling.

Book groups and libraries should be the perfect match. Libraries want to cultivate readers: you bring energy to us. You keep our collections moving. When readers talk to librarians, it makes our work feel worthwhile and informs our decision making. Book groups in turn need advice and support. As rewarding as they are, every group goes through dull patches where the meetings just aren’t clicking. Taking advantage of some free resources or getting help from a good librarian can provide that fix that gets your group humming again.

But for this to happen, lines of communication need to open. From what I’ve seen when I look around, neither book groups nor libraries take full advantage of the possibilities, the synergy they can provide for each other.

Here’s step one: an introduction. If you organize a book group, let your local library know about the group. Give them the contact information of your leaders and let them know some basics: what your group tends to read (if you’ve got a list of recent selections, by all means pass it along), what your members are like, when you meet. Let the librarian know if you are open to new members and whether they should have those new members contact you directly or if you would prefer for them to take some information and pass that along to your group. Ask if they have any special resources for groups. Ask if they can help you with discussion information. Ask about what databases and references about books and authors are available. Even if you don’t need help right now, open communication: the time will come when every book group needs a little help.

If the first librarian you talk to doesn’t seem very receptive, ask if anyone on staff has a particular interest in book groups, readers’ advisory, or the particular kinds of books that your group reads. All librarians aren’t avid readers. Some are more interested in other subject specialties, technology, programming, or working with particular populations. But every library has got someone on staff who is avidly interested in books. Find these librarians and cultivate them as resources.

For those of you who work in libraries, think about the package of services you offer to book groups. Often in the profession, we get too focused on supporting groups that the library sponsors directly and don’t think enough about how we can provide help to all of the community groups that function on their own. In my next post I’ll outline the variety of services that libraries can consider for groups. A good start is to ask this: Is your library aware of the groups in your community? Figuring out a way to communicate with them is the first step to creating that positive synergy that we all need.

We can still save this relationship. We’ve been through a lot together, and we still care about the same things. Let’s talk to each other and see if we can work out the problems.

I lost all my compassion long before the Dalai Lama stepped on stage. The huge Chinese protest outside the stadium, the assault of posters, banners, leaflets, and even an air message flown overhead, on the mob of thousands waiting to get inside was maddening. They mocked his name with misspellings, and accused the kindly minister of peace of everything from enslaving serfs to being in bed with the CIA. As I stood in line clutching my copy of Pico Iyer’s brilliant new book, The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, I was rapidly running out of tolerance.

Then an earnest young Chinese girl thrust her face into mine and said, “Don’t believe media distortion. They started the fighting. Don’t you want to hear the other side of the story?”

I lost it. I’m a child of the sixties. “Your side of the story? China is a big bully just like the United States. We’re in Iraq. You’re in Tibet. What’s to discuss?” I was screaming the last words.

“Don’t you want a dialogue?” she said, as the line began to move and we pulled away. I didn’t understand her comment until I was inside, listening to the Dalai Lama’s address to the Seeds of Compassion program in Seattle. A treasured word of the Dalai Lama is dialogue. That’s the only way to arrive at peace. Hold your temper and sit down with the enemy and find your common ground. Learn how to listen. Ask questions. The only time the Dalai Lama has ever corrected a translator was when one fellow used the word “conversation” instead.

“Dialogue!” insisted His Holiness. “Dialogue!”

It’s a technique as old as Socrates, and just as powerful a tool today in the search for knowledge as it was then. And at its best, it can be the foundation of a book group that is willing to take on books with content open to controversy. A hearty dialogue over the interpretation of a complex novel enriches everyone.

I’m talking about books like What Is the What or The Reluctant Fundamentalist that have content beyond plot and emotion. There is no trigger to a good discussion better than two readers who take polar opposite points of view on a plot turn or a character flaw or the author’s message.

Our book group’s discussion of Gilead was one of the best meetings we ever had, due almost entirely to one of our club members, novelist Mary Morgan, daring to take an opposing view to the novel. Her confidence in sparring with the other readers allowed us all to reach a new level of understanding. It was exhilarating. The best ace you can ever have for a club meeting is someone with an opposite point of view and enough intelligence and restraint to discuss it. The truths that come out of real dialogue are many.

Where does that leave me? There’s an angry young Chinese student out there that I owe an apology. I’ll cool my anger if you cool yours, and I’ll meet you at the stadium.

Did it ever occur to you that book discussions generate more book discussions — of the same book, that is, both before and after the “real” discussion?  I’m willing to bet that most discussion leaders have heard members of their group mention having talked about the book being discussed with family members, friends or co-workers while they were reading the book, before they came to the discussion session.  They also talk to these people after the discussion, when they’re asked, “So how did your discussion go?”  What’s interesting about this phenomenon is that far more people are being drawn into a discussion of a particular book than it would appear, just looking at the number of folks who show up for the scheduled meeting.  The unseen participants may play a role in shaping the opinions of the individual who actually comes to the discussion;  we discussion leaders never really know, for sure.  What is certain is that when we choose a book to discuss, we create interest in that book, far beyond our original intentions.  People who aren’t interested in attending the discussion are nevertheless drawn to reading the book because they interpret a book selected for discussion as a book worth their time as a reader. 

So our efforts at choosing books and developing discussions are more worthwhile than we might at first understand.  Some leaders question the time they find themselves investing in discussion preparation and wonder if it’s really an activity they should continue.  But when you look at the number of people you reach, and the variety of needs and interests that are met by your efforts, the answer seems clear-cut.  The ramifications of spotlighting a particular book and exploring its meaning and significance are indeed many and wondrous.  

Maybe someday I’ll open the 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, realize I was foolishly blind to its treasures, and see how brilliant it is. Maybe. Unfortunately, right now it seems unnecessarily opaque, bitter, off-putting, filled with show-off writing and a grudging, mean-spirited attitude. It’s told by the most unlikeable narrator since the lying teenage Texan protagonist of Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre, the worst choice the Booker Prize ever made. In short, it seems the worst Pulitzer choice in years. I’ve tried to read it twice. Sure, it’s angry – but anger is good for provoking literature. A tough, scrappy loser doesn’t have to be unpleasant company.

Take Animal, the feral child narrator of Indra Sinha’s brilliant Animal’s People. He’s got a spinal deformity, he runs on all fours, and lives in the ruins of the chemical plant whose accidental spill killed thousands and crippled Animal. He talks dirt, he talks slang, curses and swears and is always getting erections, and he’s so delightful and funny you want to savor his words out loud.

Not Diaz. His prizewinner has the Kerouac musical language thing going, but the pissed-off voice behind the sounds isn’t generous or welcoming at all. I don’t want to spend time with the narrator. I’d seriously think twice before asking casual everyday readers to try reading it for a book group. Most of them won’t make it past the third horrendously-long footnote, and that’s only page 20.

Admittedly, the other two champion readers at University Book Store in Seattle who take on the toughest literature both got farther than I did – Brad got forty pages in, and Jay made it halfway.

Now, as I said, anger can be good for literature. I just finished reading a really superb novel that’s just as angry as Diaz’s prizewinner, also about living in brutal poverty. It’s The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, available in bookstores on April 22^nd, and I couldn’t put it down.

I almost didn’t read it because I read on the outside of the book (always dangerous to do) that it was told by a murderer. I immediately set it aside. I take murder seriously. I don’t respond well to any kind of glamorization. Something got me to give that book a second chance, and the sheer wittiness of it won me over and kept me reading. Balram is a hustler, and he hustles for a living, and he’s hustling you, the reader, as he tells his story. You can’t help but laugh as you see through him, but Balram wants you to like him, and before long you do. By page 36 you know he will slit his master’s throat. The confounding thing is that, the farther you read, the more you discover that the master is the one character who is kind to Balram!

The writing is so natural and laugh-out-loud funny that I zipped through the book far too fast. Though you know the one chilling fact about the ending, you don’t know the when, why, or how. For the last hundred pages I made everyone around me miserable, pacing and gasping, because I couldn’t put it down. Adiga, like Sinha, lets you inside the mind of his hostile narrator, so that you grow to love him, and when he misbehaves you suffer and worry. You will never forget the murder scene – and neither will the poor people trapped with me on that bus ride. It’s the best first novel I’ve read in years. I would compare it to Mohsin Hamid’s little masterpiece, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, as an angry political novel presented as a word-perfect satirical literary delight.

Now The White Tiger would make a brilliant book group selection. It’s a banquet of moral complexity, it’s so compelling you can’t help but finish the book, and it will have the members of your group talking long into the night.

When I wrote Read ‘Em Their Writes, I had to think about book discussion questions and the impact of what you say on the overall success of the evening. In reviewing my notes from over the years and all of the workshops that I had attended, I discovered I had these 15 questions that I would claim are the life savers for every leader.

In fact, I claim that I could walk into any room of people will to discuss any title and use these questions, without having read the book. I am not advocating that, just saying it is possible. I know because I did it once when I was called to pitch hit for a discussion leader who had taken ill.

So when I train, I make sure that every person goes home with a copy of the following questions:

Were the characters believable?
To which character could you most relate?
Was the plot believable?
What scene from this book do you like most—or least?
Did the book’s setting enhance the story?
What do you think happened to these characters after the book ended?
How did you feel at the end of the book?
Was order restored to this world at the end of the novel?
Was justice obtained at the end of the novel?
Did you enjoy the author’s style?
What do you think the title meant?
What was the book’s theme?
Did the theme affect any of the main characters?
Can you name another book that this book compares to?
Would you read another book by this author?

And if those don’t work, here is the silver bullet:

Who would you cast in the movie?

I’m dipping into my handy bag of book tricks again as I prepare for another workshop on book groups: facilitating, feeding, and tattooing. 

One of the gems I like to draw attention to is A Year of Reading by Elisabeth Ellington and Jane Freimiller.

Published in 2002, this trade paperback-sized treasure is great for folks who are just starting a book group and need help with basic preparations. It’s also suitable for the facilitator on the fly who needs to cobble together a reading plan tout de suite.

Using “classics and crowd pleasers,” Ellington and Freimiller take each month of the year and offer five titles for possible discussion, a good synopsis of each title with topics for reflection/discussion, multi-media and internet resources, and readalike suggestions.

I like to use this books an inexpensive source for library staff to delve into when time and money are at stake. These reading suggestions are tested successes for most book groups and all the prep work is present.

And I’ll admit it here and now. I also use this book when I’m lazy and need to be rescued from title selection and idea generation. Hey, it happens to everyone.

Millions of readers love Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, but these successes aren’t always enough to get adults to allow themselves the pleasures of other fantasy fiction. That’s too bad: this sophisticated, diverse genre isn’t just fit to enjoy with your children. Here are good bets to try with a book group that usually reads literary fiction:

For readers of memoir, family stories, and those who seek the meaning of life:

The Stolen Child, by Keith Donohue 

In an unnamed American suburb, a boy named Henry Day is kidnapped by hobgoblins and replaced by a shapeshifting lookalike. The old Henry lives outdoors with the troop of lost children, learning their strange ways and waiting for his turn to kidnap a child and rejoin the human world. The new Henry must hide his true identity from his parents and others while pursuing his dreams. This languidly paced, meditative novel has many layers, but ultimately it’s about themes such as feeling like an outsider, finding one’s identity, accepting adulthood, and the disappearing ways of a simpler time in America.

For fans of the parable, those interested in the afterlife, and those who ponder our connection to others:

The Brief History of the Dead, by Kevin Brockmeier

In Brockmeier’s story, those who die go on to a city where they reside until everyone who knew and remembered them has also died. As the city starts to empty, some inhabitants of this afterlife begin to realize that they are connected to one or two individuals: a plague has decimated earth’s population and only a few survivors remain. The story goes back and forth between the city and the adventures on earth, particularly those of Laura Byrd, the last survivor, who is trapped at an Antarctic research station. This lyrically written, gentle elegy examines the power of memory. It will leave readers thinking about the impact that people have on each other and pondering their own connections to those who have gone before.

For romantics and historical fiction lovers:

The Lions of Al-Rassan, by Guy Gavriel Kay

Kay re-imagines medieval Spain and its conflicts between Muslim, Christian, and Jew in a fantasy context. At the core of the story are three extraordinary people: the woman doctor Jehane, the poet and political advisor Ammar, and a soldier Belmonte. Relied upon but often betrayed by less capable leaders, immensely respectul of each other but often placed in opposition, this passionate triangle must balance their feelings for each other with many other responsibilities. The world that Kay creates is spot-on: deeply believable and highly involving.

Fantasy works from both literary and mainstream currents of the genre make great book group choices. Here are a few more suggestions from literary fantasy: The Confessions of Max Tivoli, by Andrew Sean Greer; The Book of Lost Things, by John Connolly; A Winter’s Tale, by Mark Helprin; Little, Big, by John Crowley; or the stories in Portable Childhoods, by Ellen Klages or Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link.