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The Seattle Reads 2012 selection was recently announced–Amy Waldman’s debut novel, The Submission. The Submission has garnered much praise in the past year and was named as Esquire’s Book of the Year. Here is what Esquire had to say: I have no idea how Amy Waldman came to write her first novel, The Submission (Farrar, [...]

I’m lousy at science, but fascinated by the minds of those who are good at it. My friend and book club inspiration Margaret Cubberly introduced me to one of the most intriguing–Richard Feynman–a few years back, and I’ve been fascinated ever since. Feynman is interesting because although his scientific work is important, his oddball character [...]

The recently revived Kansas City Star FYI book club met to discuss Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard. This fascinating slice of little known American presidential history will enthrall any book club. Put it on the list for next year’s potential reads. At the recent discussion readers were impressed with Millard’s ability to weave [...]

It’s my favorite time of year! Year-end best of lists! Books, movies, television, music, websites, fashion faux pas and anything else folks care to list. While they’re probably not the first to post their best list, the Kansas City Star posted their Best Books of 2011 list over the weekend. What I liked about this [...]

I love Ian Rankin’s John Rebus mystery series. Rebus is a  curmudgeonly soul, and sometimes bends the rules of policing or conventional morality to get to the villains he’s chasing. He’s terrible at maintaining his own personal relationships, mostly because he’s married to his job. But deep down, he maintains a strong ethical code and is capable of [...]

I doubt that many book groups have tried a volume like the Eric Lane and Nina Shengold edited Shorter, Faster, Funnier: Comic Plays and Monologues. After all, the authors collected within are not terribly well known outside certain circles (with perhaps the exceptions of Christopher Durang, Warren Leight, and Mary Louise Wilson). The works within [...]

I have read all three of Kate Morton’s spellbinding Gothic novels now, and just read her first, The House at Riverton, last. Morton knows how to write parallel stories that draw you in. She tells a good story well and entices with atmosphere, period detail and suspense. But when I finished The House at Riverton, [...]

Like many readers, I encountered Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” in high school and loved it. Sadly, like most of those other students, and I’m betting many of you, I didn’t follow up and never read anything else by Jackson. She’s one of those authors I always knew I’d like, but somehow she never made [...]

I’ve begun my annual task of collecting all of the best-of-the-year lists and awards into one sortable spreadsheet. This is my fourth year compiling this massive labor of love-hate, and I almost chose to let it go this year, but once the lists started to come out, I just couldn’t resist. The analytical side of me loves [...]

I’ve tried in book groups and in print to describe the pleasures of Jasper Fforde’s latest series starter, Shades of Grey, and on every occasion the task has defeated me. It will probably thwart me again. I could get lost in the delightfully quirky details of the dystopian future world that Fforde sketches–a world in which [...]

While casting about for topics for Book Group Buzz today, it occurred to me that I’ve never written here about the author who is perhaps my favorite contemporary American writer, Richard Russo. Now seven novels and one book of stories into his career, Russo has yet to produce a book that isn’t worthy of book [...]

The October selection for my library book group was Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann.  This 2009 novel has won a number of prizes, including the National Book Award.  Set in New York City, it takes as its central motif the famous 1974 tightrope walk of Philippe Petit between the World Trade Center [...]

In Silas House’s debut novel, the quilt that the title character is piecing together is his own life. The incident that dominates Clay’s life happened when he was only four years old: his mother, Anneth, was killed on an icy Appalachian mountain. Despite their limited time together, Clay has grown up much like Anneth: spiritual but [...]

What would you do if a loved one came to you and calmly declared that she was going to commit suicide later in the evening? It’s a horrifying scenario, and the simple premise for Marsha Norman’s 1983 play ‘Night, Mother. The pair in question are a mother and daughter who live on a quiet country [...]

Earlier this month my book group discussed Dave Egger’s Zeitoun. A work of nonfiction, Zeitoun takes a look at Hurricane Katrina and how one Syrian-American man and his family are swept into a terrible storm of a different kind in the aftermath of the natural disaster in New Orleans. The book fostered a wonderful discussion [...]

My wife and I usually go to the movies on Friday night, so an essay at The Millions struck my attention this morning. It touts the new Library of America compilation of the film criticism of Pauline Kael, The Age of Movies: Selected Writing of Pauline Kael. It also argues that passionate debate about films is yet another item [...]

Tayari Jones’ Silver Sparrow has a great first line: “My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist.” As soon as I read the first line, I wanted to know this girl’s story. Narrated by two voices, Silver Sparrow tells the story of a secret, ‘outside’ daughter, Dana, and Chaurisse, the ‘real’ daughter who is unaware of [...]

I’ve written previously about August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, but having just finished Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, I had to promote that work specifically. Wilson’s cycle has a play for each decade of the 20th century, and this is the entry for the 1910s. The action takes place in a boarding house, and concerns the arrival [...]

Let’s get ready to rumble! The latest Reading Group Choices book has just arrived on my desk and I’ll be using this to help select the book group titles for next year. RGC is in it’s 18th year and I have to say that I’ve kept every single one of these collections. I go back [...]

Which will make it onto your reading group lists next year? The National Book Award Finalists for 2011 were announced yesterday in Portland, OR and while there are some surprising omissions, there are also some surprising nominations. Click through any of the above links for the full lists of nominations in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and [...]