Just what exactly should a study guide be?

For decades of my life, study guides meant only one thing: a zebra-striped, yellow-and-black series of pamphlets called Cliffs Notes that were generally used for cheating. The Cliffs Notes version became a way of disparaging any condensation or expurgated version of a story, a kind of cheapening by shortening. Teachers hated them. Sleepy students smelling like last night’s party were the ones who bought them.

  Then when book clubs became sighted by the publishing industry as a potent new customer base, the study guide had a rebirth. Suddenly every new trade paperback was defaced with a little announcement that questions were waiting for you at the end of the novel. No longer did the hostess have to fuss over what to discuss; she could concentrate on the hors d’heurves and have her list of questions readymade. As a bookseller, I’m used to pooh-poohing the study guide craze.

But their usefulness is genuine. I’m a great user of notes – my own. I always take notes when reading a stimulating book. And I offer these notes – usually a chapter-by-chapter outline of the plot, with all the characters listed by their first appearance and identifying traits – called Nick’s Notes in my monthly email for University Book Store. I encourage my readers to just kick back and enjoy the story, and know that when they forget a character, they’ve got a handy reference sheet all set to go. When I launch the Gay Classics book club in six months, I’ll be creating study guides for each book. I’ll want them to be informative and useful. I’ve got to decide what they should include.

Just to push this discussion of study guides one step farther, two days ago I received an email from the marketing department of Grove/Atlantic. Because of my online review of their book, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, in Shelf-Awareness, my article about the author, Sasa Stanisic, here on Book Group Buzz, and my choosing the book as the July Nick’s Pick for University Book Store, I was asked to create the Grove/Atlantic study guide for the book.

Exactly the kind of study guide I’ve always pooh-poohed.

  Time to re-think this, as I get ready to make one. What should a study guide really try to achieve? I’m thinking a study guide has three functions:

1. Memory refreshing. It includes a summary of the basic plot points and the names of the characters, to facilitate discussion.

2. Thought provoking. It includes provocative thought questions: why are there seven narrators? Why does the story start twice?

3. Background enrichment. When does the story take place in history? What factors of the Bosnian war affect the way the story unfolds? How is Sasa Stanisic’s personal history reflected in his novel?

Grove/Atlantic will be sending me some sample study guides, to show me what they’re looking for – and in the meantime, I’ll be considering different methods of organization, looking for the format that works best. I’m starting with the basic template that I use for Nick’s Notes. Rather than separating out the chapter plot summaries from the character names and the interesting quotations, I blend them all together in a chronological outline, so that each chapter summary is followed by the characters introduced there and the passages to remember. But we’ll see. There are many different methods of doing this, and I’m going to construct the most effective memory-stimulus package I can design.

As book discussion leaders, have you found that sometimes what you planned to focus on in the discussion isn’t always what your group members want to talk about?  During the past two weeks, I’ve led two discussions — one at the library, with my regular group, and the other at Dominican University, with a class of library science students.  I’d done my usual preparation — reading, research, and formulation of discussion questions — but in both cases, the groups chose topics to discuss that I hadn’t thought of.

The first discussion was on The Birth of Venus, Sarah Dunant’s absorbing tale of forbidden love in Renaissance Florence, and even though I came with plenty of thought-provoking questions to raise about the story, the group was interested in exploring contemporary parallels to the mistreatment of women described in the book.  We had a stimulating discussion nevertheless, and I made a mental note to add “contemporary parallels” to my list of potential discussion topics for future books.

But when I met with the library science group to discuss Raymond Chandler’s classic hardboiled detective story, The Big Sleep, a week later, the students didn’t want to talk about contemporary parallels — they were fascinated by the cinematic aspects of Chandler’s writing style.  One participant compared the book to film noir, and I hastened to explain that The Big Sleep, which was Chandler’s first novel, was published before the wave of film noir dramas that swept through 1940s cinema and actually may have contributed to the development of the style, in that it was later adapted into a famous Bogart-Bacall star vehicle.

The students weren’t particularly concerned with the rough treatment of women depicted in The Big Sleep — it was “sort of what you’d expect for that era” — which showed me once again that what especially intrigues one group may have minimal interest for another.  This element of unpredictability — it’s always there, no matter how hard one tries to figure out how the discussion will flow in advance — plays a major part in keeping book discussions interesting and challenging for the leader.  You learn something from every discussion experience, and you fervently hope you can apply the lessons later on.

I am curious about what other book group leaders do to prepare themselves and their groups for discussions.  There are so many aspects to “preparation,” so I am just going to share one.

Every month, one week prior to our meeting, I send out an e-mail reminder.  Because it is a Library book group, I find that this helps tremendously.  This way I hear from members if something has come up, if they have gone on vacation, or if they need an extra push to get through the book.

It is also my chance to provide some background materials for discussion.  When I hand books out the next month’s books, I generally provide discussion questions that I find online or that I create myself.  But when I send my one week reminder, I like to send articles or interviews that will enhance their reading experience.   Sometimes, too, group members will get inspired to do some searching themselves on an author or book, and take this as an opportunity to share with the group.

Next week we are discussing Richard Yates’ 1961 classic Revolutionary Road.  Since a film directed by Sam Mendes and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet is slated to be released later this year, I found an article by a Yates biographer about Yates’ own tragic relationship with Hollywood during his lifetime.  I also shared an NPR “You Must Read This” spot and audiofile entitled “An Emotional Journey Down ‘Revolutionary Road.’”

One reader responded to me with a 1972 interview with the author in “Ploughshares” which I forwarded to the group.

So what do you do to enrich your group’s experience?  What do you do to prepare?  Do you share articles, interviews, biographical essays?  Do you compare the book and the movie? 

And if you have anything to share with me or my group about Richard Yates or Revolutionary Road in particular, you have one week.

I’m about to re-read my favorite new book of the year, Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. Our book club discusses it one week from today, and a couple months have passed since I first made the acquaintance of Balram Halwai, entrepreneur. What a guy. I’m looking forward to having him try to hustle me again.

  Today I’ll dive in, and I’m eager for the pleasures that lie ahead, but the experience won’t be quite the same. Reading and re-reading look similar, they’re achieved by the same process, your body is in the same position, the pages turn the same, but what happens is something else.

I re-read a book in the hope of recapturing some of the pleasures of my first experience. Sometimes, with the best literature, you discover new depths and levels. Re-reading Proust was a humbling experience, to see just how much my thick head had failed to perceive. Re-reading Joseph Conrad or Iris Murdoch provides that same sense of “how much I missed the first time.”

First-time reading provides a one-time-only addictive thrill that re-reading can never hope to equal, but that first reading doesn’t reveal the mechanics and geometry of the book, which only become apparent looking back from the other side of the book’s ending. If the set-ups were successful, they were invisible the first time – the second time they glow like fluorescent flags.

I remember how Balram tells me at the end of the first chapter that he will cut his master’s throat. I was tempted to put the book down – I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend a whole book in the company of a murderer – but it was too late. I liked Balram. I had to know what would bring him to do that. What would make a character I liked do something so dreadful – and do it to the only other likeable character, the only one to treat Balram kindly? Disturbingly enough, in reading The White Tiger, you learn just exactly that.

Re-reading has its limitations. It doesn’t work as well in buses, for instance. It isn’t as effective during the little breaks of the day. That’s when I need the “And then, and then” lure of new narrative. Bus rides and coffee breaks aren’t for thoughtful re-evaluation of technique. They’re for inducing reading hypnosis. They’re for escape from the present. The unknown works best.

The emotions in re-reading will be different than the first time. They will probably occur in new places. There will be an additional depth that wasn’t there before, the pre-knowledge of events, my emotional footprints from the first reading.

A thin layer of memory from now on will always be part of The White Tiger. I’ve recorded my personal set of emotional responses into the narrative. I won’t be caught by surprise. I know in advance what happens to Balram and his boss. But where the element of surprise is lost, the elements of form and pattern and technique will become a new part of my reading pleasure. I’m about to see how it all the parts of the novel fit together.

When vacations, families, and the great outdoors call, book groups can quickly take a back seat. Here are ten ideas to help your group avoid doldrums and dog days:

1) OPEN UP THE POSSIBILITIES

Instead of assigning a particular book, select a broad topic like mysteries, romances, or thrillers. When they have choices, your members may find it easier to squeeze a book into their schedule.

 2) LIGHTEN THE LOAD

By all means pick books that are easier in the summer months. That could mean shorter page counts or it could mean lighter subject matter. For a very light month, you could even allow your members to pick a short story.

3) PICK A SUMMER TOPIC

Beach books or travel stories make good choices in the summer when everyone’s mind turns toward a vacation, even if they can only take one on paper. Find out where some of your members will be traveling this summer, and pick a schedule of summer books set in the those locations.

 4) SPREAD A BIG BOOK OVER TWO MONTHS

Take a month off from meeting, but assign that big book that your group has always wanted to try. If you try this, send a few email tidbits about the book to your members a couple of times during the off month to encourage them to get the reading done. 

5) RE-READ A FAVORITE

Make your theme for the month the re-reading of a favorite novel or a return to a book that you read in your school days. Re-reading usually takes less time and if need be, you can always cheat a little by talking about an old favorite without re-reading it.

6) REVERT TO CHILDHOOD

Try reading a young adult novel or some children’s books for your summer meeting. While you’re at it, talk about the books that got you excited about reading as a kid.

7) CHANGE UP YOUR LOCATION

Take advantage of summer weather to meet at a restaurant with a patio or the backyard of one of your members. Pick a book that matches with your location.

8 ) TRY A FILM ADAPTATION

If a movie from a book is playing in the theaters, go see that one month. Go out for dessert afterwards and discuss the book. Or for an even easier approach, read the book one month, then watch the film the next month. If the movie isn’t in theaters, hold a screening at a member’s house or pass around DVD copies.

9) GET GRAPHIC

Graphic novels are usually quicker reading. Put together a small list of possibilities for different types of readers and have each member try one that looks good to them. Make sure you bring these books to the meeting to pass around, as looking at them is half the fun.

10) PUT THE BOOKS AWAY (gasp!)

If your group needs extra incentive to attend try putting the books aside for a month. Throw a party. Go out to dinner. Go out to a ball game. Share your vacation photos or plans with each other. If you want to stick to bookish topics, spend a meeting planning your schedule of books for the next six months.

These are a few of my ideas. Do any of your groups have summer meeting ideas that you’d like to share?

  I really need a committee. Sure, I can choose and assemble the titles on the reading list, and I can put together a few sample study guides, and facilitating the discussions is no problem. I can figure out how to write grants, I suppose, but it’s going to take time to learn how to do it right. And I can learn how to place ads in the local weeklies – that shouldn’t be too difficult, but it’s likely to be expensive. And I know how to write news releases, but figuring out who to mail them to can be time-consuming. I can do it, of course, but at the same time I’ve got to be reading a half dozen key books I haven’t read before, and re-reading twice as many that are fuzzy or forgotten. You would think there was enough time – our launch date is January 2009. But the Pride Foundation’s deadline for applications is August 29. So maybe not that much time.

I know how to do this stuff because I’ve created a group at University Book Store. It’s lasted five years. But I’m used to having a marketing team behind me. I’m used to turning in copy and having a poster appear. Now I’ve got to figure out how to market this club. I’m convinced that letting people know a reading group exists is the key act in forming one. The first step needs to be done right. Outreach is everything. Those readers who are longing to discuss books are out there, if I can just notify them. 

Our project, the “Gay Classics – Let’s Read Them Together” project at Dunshee House, has become a two-year plan. Coming up with the top 24 books was much easier than the top 12, and I’ve got a great list (see future blog). But the order of reading them needs to be left fluid. I’ve decided to only announce the first three titles with the launch, so that I can have some flexibility in matching book content to group dynamics. Those first three titles need to be easy access, big name, compelling experiences. My goal is to make this book club into a provocative new gay social event in Seattle. 

I’ve got a photographer who’s just about ready to commit to donating his services. We’ve discussed what I want – I need a poster and a postcard with an image no gay man can fail to notice. The image for “Gay Classics – Let’s Read Them Together” is two attractive naked young men in a yin-yang position suitable for mutual oral sex – except that they’ve each got an open book in front of the other’s equipment. They’re curled together reading. They’re more interested in their books.

Around them will be floating names – Thomas Mann, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Gore Vidal, Yukio Mishima, Jean Genet, Rita Mae Brown – the names of the most familiar and beloved of the selected authors. 

At the bottom will be the dates for the first three meetings to discuss the first three books. The compelling question now is: which ones? How do we start?

The more ambitious novels I’ll hold back till the group is more confidant – The Counterfeiters and Pale Fire and Orlando. But I’ll want three big guns to get this going. My instincts tell me one of these needs to be about women, and I think I’ve stumbled on the greatest lesbian novel ever written (see future blog). I would have thought Maurice would be perfect for younger gay men, until I heard a young male reader shrug it off as boring. Boring! When it was first released from its time vault and published in 1972, I took it home from the bookstore the day it arrived and read it in one sweat-and-tear-drenched night. But maybe not today. Maybe something younger, like Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story. And for older gay readers, maybe Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man. Or Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar. 

Meanwhile, I’ve discovered that a volunteer who helps facilitate one of the support groups at Dunshee House knows about grant writing. I’ve emailed him about my project. A man who volunteers for one thing might volunteer for another. Maybe I’ll get one more person on my team, a desperately needed member. Then with Jacob the photographer and Brad the literary historian and David the future head of Dunshee House, maybe with these guys and one or two more, I’ll be able to get this dream project on its feet and give the Seattle gay community a thriving and vital book club.

Neil’s post about ODD books got me thinking.  How often have you gone into a book group meeting fearing the worst, that everyone will just hate the book? 

I never expect the entire group to love a book.  In fact, better discussions arise when there are real differences of opinion.  It can be quite boring if everyone swoons over a book, like groupies backstage.  It can just as tedious if no one has at least taken the time to see a book’s possible merits.

But what I like to remember with each meeting with my group is, that no matter how well I get to know them, I can never truly predict how a book will be received.

Two good examples of this were in the case of two books I thought they’d hate.

One was Matthew Kneale’s English Passengers.  The other was True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey.  English Passengers is a dense, historical novel told by mutliple narrators about a crew of rum smugglers sailing to Tasmania.  Carey’s novel about legendary Australian outlaw Ned Kelly is told in a vernacular that mirrors his famous Jerilderie Letter.  Both novels are challenging and idiosyncratic.  And in each case I prepared myself for an onslaught of “why did you choose this book?” from my group.  But in both instances the opposite was the case.  The group more or less really enjoyed or at the very least appreciated these books.

So I try not to predict which books will be a hit or a miss.  Besides that, it is so satisfying to work with a group that is up for a challenge.

“I hated, hated, hated this book!”

Those words are probably not what most book discussion leaders are hoping to hear when they convene their group — and yet, that response comes up often enough, so that leaders have to be ready to deal with it.  But what happens when everybody in the group (or almost everybody) feels this way?  How do you keep the discussion moving along in a manner that can be enjoyable — and rewarding – for the participants?

 I suggest tackling the problem head on.  Ask people what they didn’t like about the book   — and why.  Once the reasons have been established, ask them if they think the author actually intended the average reader to respond negatively and if there was some purpose in doing that.  Could it be possible that the author wanted to upset you?  And if the aspects of the book that you found so irritating were changed or removed, what effect would that have on the book?

Readers always need to think about what the author was trying to achieve, and then deciding for themselves if he was successful.  Yes, perhaps he wants us to think his central character is a despicable person.  We need to consider whether or not the author is asking us to see this character as standing for all people of a particular type, or perhaps just an unusual and extremely difficult individual.

Something else to think about — and talk about — is whether or not there is an ideal audience for this book, readers who would respond to it positively, just the way it is.  Or, if it were revised, what changes would improve it, and then, what kind of a book would it be?

Readers need to become aware of what they find especially satisfying in books and why this brings them pleasure.  By talking about their tastes with others, they also come to know that other people may like the very quality in the book that they despise, and learn why it works so well for the other person.

So it is possible to talk about a book that nobody seems to like, and to talk about it at length.  But before closing the discussion, it’s always worthwhile to ask if there wasn’t something, some tiny little thing perhaps, that people did like about the book.  By this time, the group has purged itself of its anger, disgust, contempt, and whatever other negative emotions they came into the room with — and maybe there’s just a little bit of grudging enthusiasm for some part of the book that after all, was chosen because the leader, having read the good things the critics had to say about it, naively thought it would be a great choice for a discussion.

I am an obsessive bibliotaph.  My secret vice is that over the years I have accumulated six thousand private eye novels which I store in a damp basement on the south side of Milwaukee.  Temperature controls, humidity sensors, pffit!  Over the years, I have been asked to share (or sell) a volume in my collection—something which inevitably would send me into a panic.  Now, I have decided to rid myself of this reader’s burden and sell the collection.  However, that decision has been pending for over two years while I fight the lingering haze of megalomania and the collector’s compulsion to always move forward and never back.

So I have a soul mate in Bob Langmuir, one of the three main characters of the non-fiction work Hubert’s Freaks.  Bob is a compulsive collector who violates the cardinal rule of book selling:  don’t be the last one to own the book.  This lie is told early about Bob in the book:  “The pleasure of collecting, he discovered, paled beside the thrill of dealing.”  This just does not prove true when Bob begins to lose his mental abilities and gain the lost photos of Diane Arbus.

Arbus struggled with her role in the world of photography.  Married early to Army photographer Allan Arbus (who ended up abandoning his photography studio, divorcing Diane and starting an acting career that eventually found him playing psychiatrist Dr. Sidney Freedman on the television series M*A*S*H.), it was Diane who went on to study with some of the great innovators of photography in New York.  Her interest in picking subjects from the edges of society (or placing average subjects in odd settings) made her work edgy and controversial, a perfect combination to drive up the cost especially when she committed suicide at age forty eight and her estate clamped down on the use and distribution of her photos. 

So when Bob abandons the book selling business to concentrate on all the ephemera surrounding the struggles of African-Americans in America, imagine his excitement when amongst some great finds about the Times Square freak show called Hubert’s Dime Museum and Freak Show, he finds some images he believes are original Arbus photographs that once hung in the lobby.  To back up his claim that he has found undiscovered Arbus images are the journals she kept to document her work.  When he decides to take the items to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the issue is whether the subjects are worthy of being called great art or whether the photos are just snapshots.  The toll that this has on Bob’s life is amazing as he was already a vulnerable and weakened individual.  His ability to persevere is part of what makes this story so compelling. 

The photos introduce the reader to a set of characters who persevere:  Charlie and Virginia Lucas and the freaks from the sideshow.  This loving couple started out in the freak show and ended up managing it through to its last days.  While Virginia became the exotic Princess Shaloo who did the Dance of Love, sometimes with snakes, Charlie became the inside talker or the one who kept the customers moving and paying.  The roles these two African-Americans had to take becomes emblematic of the role of their race in a changing American culture.

The book tells us what made Bob buy and then try to sell the photographs, why Arbus was fascinated with the freaks of Hubert’s as a subject, and the role of people like the Lucas’ who will do anything to make a buck and survive in a challenging America for people of their class and race. 

The book should make a great book to discuss in a non-fiction book club.  The only weakness that I could detect was the story fizzles out without a dramatic conclusion.  Upon reflection, that very dissatisfaction may be one more great issue to deal with when developing the questions needed to drive the discussion. 

If you’ve been in a book group for long, you’ve been there: the choice for next month’s meeting is announced and it’s a book you would never choose to read on your own. A book that you don’t expect to enjoy. A book that is ODD.

A thought will pop into your head at this moment, as your mind charges into fight-or-flight mode: Maybe next month, I will stay home. I think my toenails will need trimming that evening. It’s the season finale of Meandering and Floundering with the Stars.  My second cousin’s child’s best friend has an important wiffleball game that I should attend. Yes, next month, I will definitely stay home.

This is a plea to reconsider that thought. I’ve noticed over the years that the best book group meetings often happen when you least expect them. If you make a habit of dodging too many of the books that you don’t expect to like, you’ll miss out on one of the great joys of group reading: stretching your horizons and finding new sides of your own reading interest that you might not have know you have.

One group that I read with often chooses classics, the kind of book that I don’t seem to find time for now that I’m not in school. In that group, we take turns selecting the books, and the tastes are diverse. One member, in particular, tends to pick works with a reputation for being dark or difficult: Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Albert Camus’ The Plague, or thick biographies of historical figures. My first reaction is usually to run screaming from the room, but I try to hang in there and read the book (admittedly with gritted teeth in some cases), as do most other members of the group.

The surprise comes with such books when the group reassembles to discuss the reading. Almost inevitably, one or two of us discover that to our surprise, we liked this book, we like it a great deal. Perhaps it was much more readable than its reputation led us to believe. Perhaps it was less dated and more relevant than we had thought. Or perhaps it was ODD, but in a way that worked for us. In other cases, people don’t love the book, but in discussing why we don’t like it we learn something about ourselves or our reading interests. Clarifying exactly why you don’t like something can be surprisingly rewarding.

Another example came from my science fiction/fantasy book group meeting this week. I approached the meeting with dread because our topic for the evening, nanotechnology, had yielded a set of suggested books that was entirely missing the usual suspects, the authors that our group members love to read and re-read. The topic was technically advanced in a way that I feared would baffle us. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find that a couple of our members had enough background with chemistry to open the door to some fascinating science. Many of our readers had discovered midlist authors: Kathleen Ann Goonan, Alistair Reynolds, Mike Shepherd, Joel Shepherd, and Travis Taylor to name a few, that they really enjoyed. By the time we left, I couldn’t help thinking that the topic that had elicited groans when first introduced had yielded one of our best meetings of the year.

So at that moment when you start planning next month’s schedule of alternate activities in startling detail, STOP. Remember that one of the reasons you joined a book group was to challenge yourself a little and find new pleasures. That unlikely book, that ODD book, is just the book that is likely to yield new experiences.

An international author arriving for the first time in his life on the West Coast isn’t likely to find his internationally bestselling novel for sale at the airport bookstore. Sure, everyone in Germany may be reading the novel, and sure, it may be a phenomenal, prize-winning success throughout Europe, but that doesn’t mean squat when it comes to airplane reading. Air travelers want it light, easy, fast and American.

  Except when Sasa Stanisic stepped off the plane at the Sea-Tac International Airport, he walked into the bookstore and found, to his amazement, the American edition of How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, in hardback, on the rack for sale!

It’s an easy book to spot, because it has one of the most unforgettable covers this summer. A framed photo, hanging against floral wallpaper, shows an apparently deserted stretch of beach where two dogs are running across the sand while a lone young accordion player faces the viewer, playing. 

It took our author’s Dutch publisher to point out that the accordion-player in the copyright-free photo used on the American book cover was actually the author Daniel Handler, better known by his pseudonym Lemony Snickett, creator of the thirteen-volume children’s epic, A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Sheer goofy coincidence.  

Stanisic, the thirty-year-old author of this year’s winner of the German Book Prize, was in Seattle to speak at another bookstore, and made time to meet with me at University Book Store the afternoon before – although he was an hour late, since his taxi delivered him to the wrong bookstore. It was worth the wait.

Having escaped from Bosnia with his family at the age of fourteen, and currently living in Germany, Sasa (pronounced Sasha) speaks fluent English and is a great fan of Seattle music. Besides an obvious love for Nirvana and Pearl Jam, his current favorite band is Death Cab for Cutie. His novel, an autobiographical recapturing of the Bosnian village where he grew up, presents a harrowing slice of history, and makes its heartbreaking points about what happened honestly, but intermixed with the horrors are the light-hearted best of humanity. 

I went out of my way to meet this guy because his novel literally sucked me in and wouldn’t let me go. I didn’t mean to read it. The first chapter alone is breathtaking. Stanisic is way too gifted for his age. What he’s done is a kind of deconstruction of storytelling. In the aftermath of war, stories have become broken fragments. The narrative is in literal pieces. “Storytelling can heal a lot,” Stanisic said to me today, “but it cannot restore the past. We don’t need storytellers anymore, we need the truth.”

His book may be a bit of a reach for some readers. There are unfamiliar Slavic names, and lots of them. Events seem to be told chronologically, but then the chronology starts up all over again halfway through. Nevertheless, there are so many obvious flashes of brilliance on almost every page that I’ve decided to make it our book club’s July selection. I’m convinced that the heart of the work – the childhood voice of Aleksandar – is so emotionally honest that it can reach and touch anyone, and that everyone who reads this novel will be glad they did.

Teen book group leaders looking for an adult book should take a look at Three Girls and Their Brother by Theresa Rebeck. This compulsively readable novel told in four voices will particularly appeal for its subject matter. Three sisters with wildly unusual red hair are tapped for a photo spread in the New Yorker with a renowned photographer. The photo immediately shoots the girls into the stratosphere of notoriety and celebrity.

The youngest sister, Amelia, has no desire to become a famous model/”It Girl” like her older sisters, but the girls’ agent knows that they are a package deal. The older sisters, Daria and Polly, are so obsessed with their impending fame, that they don’t care that Amelia must drop out of school for being a “nuisance.” The girls’ mother is jubilant with the newfound attention and is happy to send her daughters off on “meetings” with movie stars, producers and publicists who ply the young teens with alcohol and drugs.

And who is “the brother” of the title? He is the voice of reason and concern. But his wariness over his sisters’ budding careers as “celebrities of the moment” leads to his own banishment from the family.

The author has done an excellent job of capturing the cadence of adolescent-speak and the bewilderment of teens who think they have gotten what they always wanted.

I am writing to convince book groups everywhere that your group should try Jane Gardam’s oddly titled novel, Old Filth.  Do not let your group members be deterred by the strange-sounding title or the rather stately Europa Editions (wonderful publisher, by the way) cover.  (I rather prefer the current UK cover, myself–see below).  Old Filth is a funny and heartbreaking book by a writer in her prime.

Old Filth tells the story of Sir Edward Feathers, a distinguished lawyer now in his 70’s, who coined the phrase “Failed in London, Try Hong Kong” which is where he received his own moniker.  Old Filth was a child of the Raj, part of a generation of expatriate children who were more or less orphans, sent back to their homeland to be educated, abandoned to relatives or foster parents and boarding schools.  Born in colonial Malaya, his mother died in childbirth and his distant father left him to be raised by natives and then shipped him off to a foster home in England at the age of four and a half.

This eminent Hong Kong lawyer and judge retires with his wife, Betty, to Dorset, where they expect to live out their days in rural isolation.  But when Betty dies, Old Filth finds himself adrift and memories of his childhood rise to the surface.  This cold, buttoned-up man begins acting oddly, and what comes of his adventures and his reliving of his past will delight and surprise.

What Jane Gardam achieves in this novel is a complex character and a story that will unwittingly captivate readers to the end.  I love what this Guardian reviewer had to say:

“Are you interested in venerable lawyers, the relic of empire? You will be. Do you want to know about the Far Eastern Bar? A reader of Old Filth, despite its unpromising title, will become passionately curious about such matters. This novel is surely Gardam’s masterpiece. On the human level, it is one of the most moving fictions I have read for years.”

What makes Gardam’s book a good book for discussion is how many aspects of this man that are left to the imagination.  Her prose is tight and economical yet so evocative.  My father-in-law, originally from London, just read it on my recommendation, and he said that for once he did not want the book to end; he wanted to know more, wanted the book to be longer (and this from a reader who mainly devours police procedurals, and this book is definitely not that).  Gardam is the kind of writer who leaves you wanting more, and that, in this case, is a very good thing.

Book lovers need to know about the social networking and wiki tools that are popping up around the Internet. Sites like Library Thing (http://www.librarything.com) and Shelfari (http://www.shelfari.com) offer a suite of tools that allow readers everywhere to document personal book lists, libraries, and reading experiences.

At their most basic, these sites allow readers to collect a virtual shelf (or list) for display online. Cover illustrations from several editions of most books are available. The books on these shelves or lists can be given any “tags” or identifiers that the reader wants, marked as favorites, rated on a five star scale, reviewed at length, or sorted. You can also identify friends and link to their shelves, join group discussions, ask those who have read a particular book if it should be tried, or take advantage of other features.

Of the two, Library Thing came first and currently seems more aggressive about adding new features. It does, however, have a small fee if you want to add more than 200 books (which is surprisingly easy to do!) Although both are great sites, I chose Shelfari because it is free and currently seems to load a little faster. The rest of this post refers to specifics from Shelfari. For a sample, check out my shelf at http://www.shelfari.com/nhollands/shelf.

Shelfari has many applications for book groups as well. For starters, some folks are isolated from others in various ways that makes an online choice like Shelfari the best option for joining a book group. Browse around the groups on Shelfari, (http://www.shelfari.com/explore/groups) particularly within the “Book Clubs by City” and “Reading Life” categories and you can find a group to fit almost any description (although many of these groups seem to have limited activity).

For most, online book groups don’t serve the variety of needs that a face-to-face group can satisfy.  Your face-to-face group should, however, consider building a shelf that can serve as an archive of the books you have discussed in the past. When new members join, or if your group reaches the longevity of some I attend, you’ll find it’s handy to have an easy, visual archive of the books you’ve selected in the past. Another shelf could collect books that you think the group should consider for future reading (and could be added to easily by members when the idea of trying the book occurred to them). The “widget” features on Shelfari allow you to import these shelves onto most other websites and blogs.

If members of the group join Shelfari as individuals, they can compare each other’s reading interests. Some groups operate on a tight time table, and online communication would be a great way to supplement those quick-moving monthly meetings. The communication tools would also allow a means of notifying members about new book choices and upcoming meetings (although you might want to consider a group page at http://groups.yahoo.com or http://www.meetup.com or a blog through Wordpress, TypePad, or Blogger for these purposes, as they have more complete and secure tools for giving your group a free web presence.)

I’m sure there are other creative uses of Shelfari and Library Thing for book groups that I haven’t thought about yet. If you know of some, please comment. If these tools are new to you, sign up for a shelf and see what you can do!

Have you discovered Laura Lippman yet?  I just finished reading her superb 2007 crime novel,  What the Dead Know, and I can’t say enough good things about it.  I think it would be a great choice for a book discussion.

Previously I’d read an earlier Lippman book,  No Good Deeds, the most recent entry in her Tess Monaghan private investigator series (it was published in 2006).  I enjoyed it — it was well written, with a strong sense of place (Baltimore) and sharply defined, interesting characters, plus a twisty, engrossing plot.  But it didn’t stay with me for long, and it didn’t prepare me for the complexity and power of What the Dead Know, which is not another Monaghan adventure.

What the Dead Know tells the story of two young girls who visit a Baltimore mall on a Saturday afternoon and mysteriously disappear.  The case goes unsolved for over 30 years — until a middle-aged woman is involved in a hit-and-run accident and when questioned by the police, suddenly reveals that she is one of the missing girls.  But is she telling the truth?  Where has she been, all this time, and what happened to her sister?  Maddeningly, the woman refuses to answer all of the questions that are put to her, and the people who are investigating the case — three police officers, including one who had tried to solve the mystery at the time the disappearance occurred; a social worker; and a lawyer — painstakingly pursue every clue that is offered to them as they try to learn once and for all what really happened.

What makes this such an involving story is the way it is told — from multiple points of view, flashing backward and forward in time — getting into the minds of many different characters, including the two sisters and their parents, as well as the investigators.  The voices of the characters are so vividly presented, and there is such a wealth of fascinating detail provided about times past and present that a reader can’t help but be caught up.

There’s a twist at the end that I certainly didn’t see coming — I wonder if you will…

As one reviewer put it, one aspect of the book that makes it so distinctive is the disturbing way it explores “different perspectives on the nature of grief.”  What a treat — I was expecting a fairly diverting but ordinary detective story, and what I got was a multi-layered psychological novel that I can’t stop thinking about.  Please read What the Dead Know — and talk about it.

  The gay district of Seattle, once clustered on Capitol Hill, is disintegrating. Broadway, the colorful centerpiece street, has been swallowed up by supermarkets. The Gay Pride parade has been diverted from its historic street and transplanted into Seattle Center. Rents have skyrocketed. Bars and gay social services have had to close their doors to make way for condos.

Among the endangered is Dunshee House, the oldest Seattle HIV/AIDS support group, founded in 1986, now barely afloat financially. It’s a grand old house with a round front porch and white columns, its living rooms and bedrooms converted into meeting rooms and offices. Every day of the week support groups gather there. Thanks to pharmaceutical advances, the bequests from AIDS deaths that formerly funded social services like Dunshee House have dwindled to nothing. Dunshee House’s big annual Christmas tree sale tries in vain to fund the entire year. Following the trend of other HIV services, Dunshee House has branched into support groups for those wrestling with substance abuse to qualify for government grants. Which is some help, but not enough. Every year the doors nearly close forever.

Dunshee House is seeking new ideas. I offered one. What about a community-oriented reading group for the gay classics? Once a month Dunshee House could open its doors to discuss one of the gay masterpieces that define us. Isn’t there money out there somewhere for literacy and community education?

  I got the idea from the Dalai Lama. In his recent visit to Seattle I found myself baffled as to why he was making such an effort to reach out to children. Then I got it. If you have any kind of spiritual legacy to leave behind, you leave it with the young. Well, at my age, the young are everyone else. What do I have to leave? My passionate love and respect for good books. Does my crumbling gay community here in Seattle know about the literary heritage that unites us? Maybe not. Maybe that’s my gift to them, the very best books ever written about people like us. Maybe the way to keep social services alive for HIV is to invite the rest of the gay community into discovering and celebrating our common literary tradition.

I’ll need help. At the University Book Store, the head buyer in Used Books is a short, witty, amply-sized autodidact with a Santa-sized beard and Google-sized recall of literary history named Brad Craft. Brad is able on demand to provide instant thumbnail sketches of all major and minor literary figures, with colorful opinions included. He enthusiastically signed on as my historical background expert for each of the titles we discuss.

Which brings us to the most important decision of all: which titles?

  Easily found online is the famous Triangle list of the 100 best gay and lesbian books. Some of titles included are hilarious (Little Women!) but most of the important gay masterpieces are there. I decided not to go back to those wonderful early dialogues of Plato or the fragmentary delights of the Satyricon. Due to sheer size, I regretfully omit Marcel Proust and Armistead Maupin. I haven’t quite got it down to the top twelve yet, but I managed to choose a top fifteen. Brad was an enormous help, but I take full blame for this first list, the best fifteen reading experiences I can offer to the gay community:

1. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

2. Maurice by E. M. Forster

3. Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet

4. Orlando by Virginia Woolf

5. Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown

6. Becoming a Man by Paul Monette

7. A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White

8. If It Die by Andre Gide

9. Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

10. Young Torless by Robert Musil

11. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

12. Falconer by John Cheever

13. Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal

14. Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima

15. The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith

16. The Story of the Night by Colm Toibin

A literary feast! Next up: how do we fund the project? Looks like it’s grant writing time.

Has anyone else seen this commercial? It opens with a trim, perky blonde woman talking to the audience about how much she loves books and reading and talking about reading. She’s so excited because she just found a book group where the women (apparently the group is solely composed of women. Is that redundant? A women’s book group?) always choose the best books. She can’t wait to talk about these great books with these intelligent women! By now she’s got her hands in little fists and she’s pumping them excitedly. Her hair is swinging around, all bouncy and perfectly cut. I’m scowling at the television because I am not lithe and blonde and I need a haircut and I should be reading, not zombieing out in front of the cable box. So I grab my remote and I’m about to channel surf this Oprah-tastic broad right off my screen when she gets pouty and says the women in the book group nudged her out because she actually read the books and wanted to discuss them.

My heart and grip on the remote melted. I felt for her. I do. How many book groups have I gone to where steering conversation to the book is like driving Ben-Hur’s chariot? And then, I knew I could be in a book group with this gal. What does she do to make herself feel better? She busts out the spreadable cheese and crackers and lobs a joke at the viewers at home. She gets it. Books and food are a winning combo. She’s gonna keep on reading. To heck with those gossipy hens.

And Madison Avenue? When did those marketing culture vultures learn that book groups could be used to sell product besides books? Today, smoothy cheese and crackers. Tomorrow,  beer and pick-ups. Woot.

This week my book group discussed Philip Roth’s Everyman.  The novel is loosely based on a 15th century morality play that some of the members also read.

Everyman starts at a gravesite at the funeral of the main character.  His children are gathered there, his second wife, and his brother.  His daughter and brother offer eulogies that provide our first glimpse into the hero’s life.  Dirt is dropped onto his coffin and the mourners leave.  This sentence concludes the graveside scene: “Of course, as when anyone dies, though many were grief-stricken, others remained unperturbed, or found themselves relieved, or, for reasons good or bad, were genuinely pleased.”

From there the book is narrated by the main protagonist.  So from his death we begin to learn about his life.  We begin to learn about the man as a boy, and through his life how his death evinces differing reactions in those left behind.  Roth’s protagonist is a largely selfish man, characterized as a “receiver” or more pointedly a “taker” by members of the group.  From a happy childhood where his mother and father, a Jewish owner of a jewelry store, did everything they could to provide for their two sons, comes a man who lives more for himself than others.  He marries three times (and has many affairs), leaving behind him two angry, betrayed sons and a doting daughter, and finds himself, in his 70s, alone, with failing health.  It is towards the end of his life that he begins to examine and reflect.  One beautiful passage, in my mind, is this one about aging and memory:

“But how much time could a man spend enjoying the best of boyhood?  What about enjoying the best of old age?  Or was the best of old age just that–the longing for the best of boyhood…”

Roth explores an average man with an average life, with hopes, dreams, fond remembrances, mistakes, and triumphs, a man who faces mortality and the approach of death with the unwavering will to live.

The conversation in my group really took off when one member railed against the way that women are portrayed in the novel.  We discussed the line between the protagonist and the author–whose view was being portrayed?  Readers familiar with other books by Roth said his other male characters (and possibly the author himself) see women in this way–as objects, ciphers, etc.  We only had one male group member at the meeting, so remarks were qualified with “We know not all men are this way,” etc.  But I am curious how Roth has been received by other groups, women and men alike.  And is the way Roth writes his male and female characters really representative of men today, or of his generation?  Whose “everyman” is he?  All intriguing points to discuss.

What the group did agree on was the beauty and depth with which Roth explored the themes of time and aging.  And you cannot deny the power of this now oft-quoted line from the book: “Old age isn’t a battle, old age is a massacre.”

The publication of Steampunk, an anthology of reprinted stories and excerpts, provides a great opportunity for adventurous book groups looking to explore an unusual theme.

“Steampunk” derives its name from its mixture of steam-driven 19th century technologies and a punk attitudes that subvert the staid social and political conventions of those times. Stories and novels in this style feature intrepid inventors, genteel lady adventurers and social activists, frontier dandies, and other period characters using airships, mechanical robots, and other contraptions in science fiction and fantasy settings. This hot subgenre is spawning books, films, music, fashion, and even lifestyles. Even the NY Times has noticed the trend: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/fashion/08PUNK.html
 

The anthology Steampunk, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer is a collection of stories originally published between 1971 and 2007 by the likes of Michael Moorcock, Michael Chabon, Mary Gentle, and Neal Stephenson. Combined with brief essays that define the subgenre’s scope and history, it makes a fine introduction.

But a book group would be well-served by handling this subject as a theme, encouraging members to read other superb steampunk such as Tim Powers’ Anubis Gates, China Mieville’s Bas-Lag novels (such as The Scar), Jane Lindskold’s The Buried Pyramid, or Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials (The Golden Compass) or Sally Lockhart (The Ruby in the Smoke) series. Michael Chabon has edited two collections for McSweeney’s (Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories and Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales) with all-star casts of writers that largely fit within the steampunk framework.

Other readers might choose speculative fiction classics by H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, or H.P. Lovecraft originally written in or near the period to which contemporary steampunk hearkens back. The visually-oriented might choose to review Alan Moore’s graphic novels about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, films like The Illusionist or The Prestige, or a season of The Wild Wild West on DVD. Those with a less speculative bent could read historical fiction or nonfiction that reflects the era and provide comparison or contrast.

Steampunk provides a fine blend of fun, alternate history, and social engineering that will please many readers. Let your book group join the ranks of those who are finding it can be good to get steamed!