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Here’s another of those under-the-radar books I found while wandering about the fiction stacks. I must admit to being a fan of Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s debut novel, The Effects Of Light, another good choice for book groups. Her second effort, Set Me Free, is just as suitable. Loosely using Shakespeare’s The Tempest as a frame, this [...]

I’m always prowling the new fiction and nonfiction shelves looking for “the next big book group thing”. Since I’m usually looking for narrative non-fiction, I tend to focus on the 300s, 600s, and 900s. But when I remind myself to browse the 400s and 800s, I’m always pleasantly surprised by what’s on the shelf. My [...]

The version 4.0 spreadsheet of the All-the-Best-Books Compilation (ABBC) is available for download at my other blogging home at Williamsburg Regional Library. There will be one more release in March before the most complete best-of-the-year collection you’ll find anywhere is complete for another year. Here at Book Group Buzz, I’ve been highlighting the most mentioned [...]

There are two new Nancy Pearl Book Lust interviews for the Seattle Channel posted that book groups should know about: Stewart O’Nan and Jo Walton. Nancy Pearl spoke with Stewart O’Nan about his new book, The Odds, but they also discussed his varied career, the authors and books he loves to share and how he approaches writing. You [...]

Now Joyce Saricks will know that people are listening when she speaks.  At a talk she gave at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee’s School of Information Studies she mentioned a collection of essays by Michael Chabon called Maps and Legends. Chabon is one of the those people I would like to have read but… [...]

The end of compilation is in sight as I continue to combine all of 2011′s best-books-of-the-year lists and awards into one spreadsheet that shows every book that was mentioned by every major source and documents how many times each of those works has been mentioned. Here at Book Group Buzz, I’ve been analyzing some of [...]

It is impossible to read Roger Rosenblatt’s memoir Making Toast: A Family Story without crying at least once. Rosenblatt, known to many for his work with PBS and Time, faced the toughest experience any parent can face when his middle child, his daughter Amy, died suddenly at the age of 38, leaving a husband and three [...]

Here’s the next installment analyzing the results in the 2011 ABBC, the All-the-Best Books Compilation. Today, I’ll look at the four mysteries and thrillers that have received the most mentions by reputable commentators. In fourth place to date, with eight mentions, is Donald Ray Pollock’s The Devil All the Time, a blunt, pitch-black reflection on [...]

Here’s the second set of books discussed at a recent meeting of the Williamsburg Regional Library staff group. The meeting was devoted to some of the best books of 2011. Barbara had Clara and Mr. Tiffany, Susan Vreeland’s latest historical novel. It’s about Clara Driscoll, the woman behind the success of Louis Comfort Tiffany, and [...]

The Adult Reading Round Table ‘s Quarterly Literary Fiction Discussion Group is going to try something different for its upcoming spring meeting.  The group is planning to meet in a bar rather than at a library.  The reason for this change of scene relates specifically to the theme of the session — the participants will [...]

I had the pleasure of meeting Stewart O’Nan a couple of weeks ago and his affability and warm, open demeanor endeared me all the more to this Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania author. O’Nan read from his new novel, The Odds, and even sang pieces of the Heart rock-ballads mentioned in the novel. While O’Nan said his wife [...]

The staff group at Williamsburg Regional Library met last Friday to discuss some of the best books of 2011. Some of us had books that I’ve already mentioned in posts about the 2011 All-the-Best-Books Compilation (ABBC), such as Moonwalking with Einstein, In the Garden of Beasts, Steve Jobs, and Bossypants, but several other great book [...]

It always takes me a couple of weeks to sort through all the conference swag after an ALA meeting. But once I do, I find I have a long list of forthcoming reading to look forward to. This year I have two stacks of books I’m going to put on my short list for book [...]

Do you love coming-of-age stories? Do you like books with a little magic in them? Do you enjoy reading about boarding school life? Do you love books written as diary entries where you learn about a character’s innermost thoughts and lives? Do you like books full of literary references, from science fiction and fantasy to [...]

A few weeks ago, I looked at the best received biographies and memoirs of 2011. This week, let’s examine other narrative nonfiction. These results come from the All-the-Best-Books Compilation (ABBC) that you can download in full from my other blogging home, Williamsburg Regional Library’s Blogging for a Good Book, where we’ve just posted version 3.0, [...]

Am I the only person who enjoys long delays in airports because it is just a good excuse to get more pages read? On a recent trip, I packed three physical objects previously known as “books” and took off on vacation.  What I liked about this trip was that it worked out that I pretty [...]

I spent some of the holidays cleaning out my “book room”. Many of you know what this room is. It’s the one room in the house where the books live in stacks on the floor on neat shelves. These are all the books I hope to read/can’t part with/use in workshops/give as gifts. But while [...]

February 1st was the 50th anniversary of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Ken Kesey was just out of the Stanford creative writing program, trying to make ends meet, when he took a job as a night orderly at a mental ward. The time there inspired Cuckoo, his epic novel of individualism and oppression that [...]

I love to see books in art and this image was captivating. I believe the photographer/artist is Stephen Beadles. The suspension of the books is masterful, as is the lighting.

Let’s continue looking at the top vote-getters in the 2011 ABBC, today examining the speculative fiction category. I’ll focus on the top four, perhaps returning to this category at a later date, as it seems to be receiving more attention than ever in this year’s best-of-the-year lists and awards. As usual, the latest full ABBC [...]