Dunshee House is hosting a discussion of six gay novels. The conversation will last for twenty-five nights. We’re inviting the city of Seattle.

That’s how we’re designing the promotional postcard to launch the new Dunshee House book club beginning in January. Those postcards are going to be everywhere – libraries and health care facilities and counseling offices and bars – to make sure that if there’s anyone in Seattle interested in reading gay novels and discussing them, anyone, they’ve been urged to join us.

THE NAME OF THE CLUB. I have wrestled with this long and exhaustively. The natural, easy-to-say name seems to be Gay Book Club. But is that inclusive enough? What exactly does that mean? We’ve included the words “and Lesbian” in the title. That’s a mouthful. It’s too long to use casually. And does that include everyone now? We’ve considered GLBT and LGBT (but that alienates straight people who don’t know what that means). We’ve considered Queer Book Club (but that alienates older people who hate that word because it was once vicious and condemnatory).

I wish we could give this club a name people would actually use. The easiest name for marketing and memory would be simply the Gay Book Club, but I think maybe we’d better call it the Seattle Gay and Lesbian Book Club. A mouthful, but I think women need to be specifically included and that Seattle should be in our name, too. It shows our breadth and reach. It makes us the definitive gay book club in the city. And I want the slogan in all of our advertising to read “a book club for anyone who’s ever loved the same sex.” In my heart, that includes us all.

As for what happens now, GOAL  #1: OUTREACH is the most immediate. For November and December, working with my new marketing manager, Grant Bostwick, a University of Washington intern, I want to conduct as thorough an outreach as possible: I want the eye-catching postcards we’ve designed –  a naked man reading, surrounded by piles of gay books – to be available in all the gay bars. I want them available, with posters, in the other major Seattle gay health care agencies: Lifelong AIDS Alliance, Gay City, Multifaith Works, and very importantly, Lambert House, the facility for gay teens.

But this club is for everyone. The outreach has to go farther. We need to ask for the support of the Seattle Public Library and the University of Washington Libraries. We need to ask Robert Bakan, the experienced publisher of The Seattle Gay News, to help us devise an effective advertising program, and then apply that program to Seattle’s other independents, The Weekly and The Stranger. I want to approach University Book Store to join us in this whole promotion, and I want to make sure Seattle’s oldest living gay-oriented bookstore, Bailey Coy, is also included. Now’s the time to ask Nancy Pearl for a favor, and to approach our local public radio, KUOW. We need to come up with news releases for The Seattle Times and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I want to invite as many people in Seattle as possible, book lovers and those who’ve never enjoyed reading, and encourage them all to share their experiences at Dunshee House.

The Seattle Gay and Lesbian Book Club needs to do whatever it can to reach that lonely closeted teenager across the city who might feel totally alone. That teenager reading secretly in the basement who, long ago, was uncoordinated, near-sighted, virginal me.

My other primary objective is GOAL #2: MULTI-PART DISCUSSIONS. There’s so much you can do with a book. Author appearances. Group movie nights. Documentaries. From five years hosting a book club, I know how often you want more time, or one aspect of the book dominates the discussion to the exclusion of others, or topics are opened up that introduce whole new avenues of thought. Or a scheduling conflict suddenly cuts you off from the monthly meeting. You get free tickets to the opera. Or your old college buddy is passing through town. There’s only one chance and now you’re frustrated, you’ve read the book and your thoughts have nowhere to go.

WEEKLY MEETINGS. So I’ve decided that this book club, unlike most, will adopt the format of the weekly support groups at Dunshee House. Each novel will be discussed four times during its month, every Wednesday evening at six. And if you happen to enjoy the company of the other readers, as I hope we all do, if you become caught up in certain aspects of the discussion, if your perceptions are challenged by new viewpoints from other readers, you can return to other meetings after reviewing the novel for fresh insights.

Our first two reading selections, Breakfast with Scot and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, each has a film adaptation to accompany it. On one of the Wednesdays we can all watch the film version together. There are excellent documentaries on Gore Vidal and Christopher Isherwood that can enhance a meeting as a supplement. And to enrich the historical context of each book, we’ll have our literary historian, Brad Craft of University Book Store, available for at least one meeting each month to answer questions about the book’s place in gay history, and all the funny, dirty little tales and touching period anecdotes that surround good authors and good novels.

Weekly meetings will mean that if some reader feels a particular identification with some aspect of the book and happens to take a few minutes grappling with it, the rest of us aren’t glancing nervously at our watches. There will be breathing room for people to learn how to apply their experiences in literature to their own lives, to interpret for themselves the messages and values in their reading.

Gad, this all sounds so ambitious I’m getting tired just thinking about it. Am I up for this? Enough blogging. Time to let the cat in out of the cold morning air, and for both of us to curl up in the armchair for a little quality reading time. What are Sunday mornings for?

Book group leaders, have you tried discussing The Time Traveler’s Wife?  This intriguing 2003 novel by Audrey Niffenegger isn’t primarily science fiction, as some readers conclude, just from glancing at the title.  It’s really a beautifully written love story dressed in the trappings of science fiction (time travel, specifically), but my instinct is that it appeals far more to romance fans than to sci-fi aficianados.  Some book group leaders at my library had chosen to stay away from the book as a discussion choice because of the sci-fi aspect, which they felt would not be well received by their group members.  Another concern was that the book is long (over 500 pages), and perhaps group members wouldn’t be willing to stick with it until the end.

When I learned the library had a book discussion set for the title, I immediately wanted to add it to my discussion line-up — for a number of reasons.  First, it has a unique structure — chapters are written from various points of view.  Sometimes we are listening to Henry, the time-traveling protagonist, at different times in his life.  Sometimes we are hearing the voice of Clare, the woman he loves, whom he meets when she is a child and he is an adult, traveling from his present to hers (eventually she grows up and catches up with him, and they get married).  The time sequences skip around continuously — sometimes we are in Henry and Clare’s present, sometimes in their past or future, but not at the same times.  It sounds confusing, I know, but eventually one gets the hang of it.

What makes the book especially enjoyable is the rich characterization, not only of the two leading players, but also of some of the supporting folks — family members, friends and co-workers.  A couple of other things particularly appealed to me.  The story is set in Chicago, which is my neck of the woods, and it features many familiar locations, such as the Newberry Library and the Field Museum, meticulously described.  Also, Henry is a librarian, which is another nice touch, as far as I was concerned.

But what I think my group members appreciated most was the love story — the author really makes you care about this couple, how they get together and how they stay together, in spite of the fact that Henry is continually time traveling (it’s an ailment he can’t control).  Usually in time travel stories, the characters want to travel and work hard to move from the present to some other time — but Henry’s different, he doesn’t particularly want to do this, and when it happens, he can’t help it.  One minute he’s here and the next, he’s not — he finds himself in some other place at some other time and always stark naked (he learns you can’t take anything with you when you time travel, including your clothes!).

As you may have guessed, the book has a sense of humor, and it can be fairly poignant, as well — these characters are constantly separated, but even after death, they have the prospect of meeting up again.  Henry’s sudden disappearances place a strain on the relationship (as frequent separations do with most couples) — and then there’s the issue of whether they should try to have children, considering Henry’s peculiar ailment and the possibility it could be inherited by his offspring.

My group spent quite a bit of time exploring the themes of free will and predestination which the book seems to evoke, in that Henry knows Clare’s future before she lives it; and though he doesn’t tell her everything that’s going to happen, he does drop some tantalizing hints, which some readers took as his way of exercising control over her and limiting her options.  Yes, there is a lot to talk about with this one, and if you haven’t read it yet, I hope I’ve piqued your interest.  As reported earlier on this blog, it’s coming out as a high profile movie in the near future, so people will continue to be focused on it. Even if you think you wouldn’t like a book with a sci-fi angle, I urge you to read the first 100 pages.  I think you’ll be hooked and want to read to the end. 

Speaking of the right book at the right time, I was fortunate enough to stumble across the French bestseller, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, in a bookstore, and pick it up by virtue of its title and its publisher, Europa Editions.

But what really grabbed me, when I turned it over in my hands, was this line from a review:

Enthusiastically recommended for anyone who loves books that grow quietly and then blossom suddenly.”—Marie Claire (France)

The book captured my attention and I knew I just had to read it. And as soon as I plunged in, I was not disappointed. The novel is narrated by Renée, a 54-year-old Paris concierge at number 7, rue de Grenelle, a closet autodidact who reads philosophy and great literature and consumes high and low culture and Art with an insatiable hunger for more, and Paloma, daughter of a wealthy family that live at number 7, who ruminates on the pointlessness and ugliness of human beings and of life as she readies to kill herself on her 13th birthday. While this sounds morose and heavy, Barbery brings a light touch to the headiest of ideas and themes.

Renée is a great character, a woman who holds herself above those she serves through her clandestine intellectual pursuits, who dumbs herself down for her betters so as not to disturb their notions of the inner lives of French concierges. She is routinely rude, slams doors in people’s faces, and converses in the cultureless retorts attributed to her caste. Renée is a widow and has one friend, Manuela, the cleaning woman at number 7, who is elegant despite her station in life. Renée lives a carefully crafted hermetic life, until Paloma and a new resident come in to shake her foundations.

Paloma is studying Japanese and devours mangas, but what she is really doing is observing those around her with a scrutiny and a level of judgement well beyond her years. She starts a journal of profound thoughts as well as a “Journal of the Movement of the World” as she contemplates her death.

Both Renée and Paloma rail against the smug, self-satisfaction of the rich and well-born and the intellectually bankrupt, the “millennial prejudice” they find themselves forced to observe and perform within. Early on, Renée describes herself thus:

“I correspond so very well to what social prejudice has collectively construed to be a typical French concierge that I am one of the multiple cogs that make the great universal illusion turn, the illusion according to which life has meaning that can be easily deciphered.”

Renée also asks, “What is the purpose of intelligence if it is not to serve others?” But it is not until she connects with others and comes out of her shell that she begins to do this herself.

Barbery plays on these themes again and again, weaving in critiques and celebrations of literature and philosophy and art into a narrative that is simultaneously satiric and tender.

But perception and even philosophy only provides one vantage from which to see, and so many miss the other ways of seeing, miss the moments of beauty in everyday life. Both Renée and Paloma seek the best in life, while holding onto the worst; they challenge assumptions while holding stubbornly to their own; they are stunted until they begin to see and to connect. For so many of us, this is true. Therein, for me, lies the real power of this novel, its real message. These contradictions also make Renée and Paloma more real, believable and memorable.

A couple of recent articles and reviews posit whether a philosophical novel about class and intellectual inquiry could become a bestseller here, as it has in France. Critic Michael Dirda, in his review, has this to say about the two principal characters in Barbery’s novel: “These two characters provide the double narrative of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and you will — this is going to sound corny — fall in love with both.” Could The Elegance of the Hedgehog become a bestseller here? I say we give it a try, one book group at a time.

When I assemble my book group reading lists each year, there are invariably books on the list that I have already read. I pretty much always reread them when the time comes, but every once in a while I cheat–I skim, I read old notes, or rely on memory. I even admitted to my group this month, that I had not intended to fully reread our October book, Julia Glass’s The Whole World Over. But I was pleased to tell them that I could not cheat!

For one, October is National Reading Group month, and for another, I found myself captivated with the book a second time. I found myself wanting to follow the characters, as my mind was now fuzzy on what happened to them, and I found that I noticed things differently with a second reading.

The maternal themes, for one, struck more of a chord with me this time. Greenie, the bakery and chef who begins and ends the novel, is mother to four-year-old, George. But her real mother, although Greenie never realized, was determined to outshine and undermine her daughter at every turn. Walter, the gay owner of a restaurant for whom Greenie baked, becomes the nurturing, no nonsense maternal figure Greenie lacked. While Walter’s character was built by his grandmother, who raised him when his father’s drinking derailed the family. Then there is Saga, whose memory has been affected by an accident, and who, it turns out, is a mother deferred (which the author brushes aside too easily after quite a build up).

The group discussion was as lively and varied as ever. What was fascinating, as it always is, was to hear how some readers found irritating the very same character others found delightful. Or that while some enjoyed the lush descriptions of the food that Greenie prepared, others had no interest and skimmed right over them. I spoke about how reading about 9/11 in Glass’ novel grated less than the previous time I read it, when 9/11 was emerging over and over again in contemporary literature. Other readers felt it didn’t seem to significantly change the characters, that few of them satisfactorily changed throughout the novel. After discussing the flaws, as well as the aspects we enjoyed, I wondered why I had enjoyed rereading it so much.

What makes us each tick as readers? What informs our reading lives? How does our mood effect our reception of a book? So many mysteries abound in books, and in our relationships with the words on the page. The right book at the right time–this, to me, is the mystery, the magic, that fuels me personally and professionally. How to create that spark. Or, as E. M. Forster wrote, “Only connect!…Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.”

Welcome back to the literary homage to my honeymoon in Spain and Portugal. Last week, we looked at books set in and related to Barcelona. This week, it’s on to the capital, Madrid, but let’s start with a few books that apply to all of Spain.

Giles Tremlett is a British journalist who has lived in Spain for twenty years. After the horrible train bombings of 2004, he undertook Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past. This travelogue explores how the train bombings, the Spanish Civil War, and Basque and Catalan nationalism have shaped the country today. It’s not all dark, Tremlett also looks at cultural elements like the influence of flamenco music, the effect of tourism, and droll comparisons between the Spanish and the British. This book is a great introduction to the country as a whole.

James Michener loved Spain. Instead of giving it his usual historical fiction treatment, he wrote a massive travelogue, Iberia nearly 1000 pages long. Published in 1968, it’s somewhat out of date, but a surprising amount holds up. Regardless, Michener’s love for the subject shines through. Whether Michener is recounting history, eating tapas, staying in paradors, attending bullfights, viewing art, or simply watching the people, his enthusiasm carries the day.

Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Lions of al-Rassan is my personal favorite book about Spain. It’s historical fantasy that renames the locations, but this is clearly and vividly medieval Spain. It recounts the triangular relationship of a woman doctor, a solder, and a philosopher/poet/politician during times of turmoil. The intricate relationship between Christians, Muslims, and Jews is well-treated in the context of an exciting, often heart-rending adventurous epic. Kay is a powerful storyteller, and this may be his best book.

Andromeda Romano-Lax’s The Spanish Bow is fiction inspired by the life of Pablo Casals. It follows an underprivileged orphan who plays the cello through his discovery in a small Catalan town, tutoring in Barcelona, and tours as an adult, particularly to Madrid. As he becomes involved in a volatile trio with a pianist and a violinist, he also witnesses the rise of history: the Civil War, Franco, and WWII.

Gioconda Belli’s The Scroll of Seduction alternates between past and present, chronicling the story of a female student who becomes the lover of a professor, who seduces her–ironically–with tales of his historical obsession: the alleged madness of Queen Juana of Castile, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and her manipulation by Philip of Hapsburg. The historical part of the tale is particularly effective.

No discussion of Spanish-set books is complete without mentioning Arturo Perez-Reverte. Popular in both Europe and the United States, Perez-Reverte specializes in intellectual historical thrillers. There’s almost always exploration of a particular area of interest: book collecting in The Club Dumas, fencing in The Fencing Master, or sea salvage in The Nautical Chart, for instance. He also has a swashbuckling series set in 17th-century Spain following the adventures of Captain Diego Alatriste.

Rebecca Pawel writes a series of historical mysteries set in a more recent era. They follow Carlos Tejada Alonso y Leon, a member of the civil guard in the tense setting of Franco’s Spain just after the Civil War. The first book Death of a Nationalist, is set in Madrid, while later entries follow the young officer as he is sent on to other postings in Salamanca, Granada, and Northern Spain.

Madrid is now home to Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica. Readers can follow the history of the events that inspired the mural through Dave Bolling’s new historical novel Guernica or through nonfiction with Gijs van Hensbergen’s Guernica: the Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon, which studies the bombings at Guernica, Picasso’s painting of those events, and the impact the painting has carried.

Finally, C. J. Sansom’s Winter in Madrid, a work of romantic suspense set at the beginning of WWII follows Harry Brett, an Englishman sent to gain the confidence of Sandy Forsyth, a school friend who now controls a shadowy business empire in Spain. At the same time, Sandy’s girlfriend Barbara, a nurse,  goes looking for a former lover who joined the International Brigade to fight for the leftists and disappeared. Sansom builds suspense with deliberation in this atmospheric tale.

There’s one more stop on my Iberian literary trail: Lisbon. Come back next week for book choices for a Portugal-themed meeting.

How to identify those next books that your book group will want to talk about? One great source is IndieBound (previously Book Sense), which describes itself as “a socially conscious movement in support of independent businesses and shopping locally, starting with indie bookstores.” The Indie Next List, published monthly, is based on favorite handsells–those books that booksellers are really passionate about.  Here’s a sampling of bookseller-recommended titles from the Indie Next list for October, 2008. You can find the complete list, as well as previous lists,  on the site.

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Serena by Ron Rash

The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory

Goldengrove by Francine Prose

The Toss of a Lemon by Padma Viswanathan

The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews

The Killing Circle by Andew Pyper

Also check out the Fall ‘08-Winter ‘09 Indie Next List for Reading Groups. There are lots of good recommendations here, including titles organized by categories such as “Mystery Marvels” and “Memorable Memoirs.” 

I’ve been peeling off stickers. Lots of stickers. Forty-five of them to be exact, one by one, shiny silver and slightly bigger than a quarter. They’re fiercely determined to stick to the covers of my new releases, all announcing the same thing, “Compliments of the Publisher.” No book leaves the showroom of the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association’s annual fall tradeshow without a sticker.

  Getting them off is another matter. It’s a tedious process if you value the cover of the book, and in spite of the most careful handling there are always some books that come out with a little less cover than when they started. Why such an aggressive adhesive is inflicted on poor paperbacks is anyone’s guess, but being a lover of books, those dang little suckers need to come off.

  So I’m kneeling on the carpet in front of the buzzing space heater in my small, book-packed spare room, slowly peeling off the stickers, one by one, surrounded by piles labeled by small cards with boldly-lettered months, from NOW to OCTOBER and NOVEMBER, around the sofa and down the side of the bookshelf right up through MARCH 2009, as I sort through two big bags full of advance reading copies of new books that looked too good to leave behind. Believe me, when you’re toting them all the way home, from the hotel to the parking lot, from the trunk to the house, it only takes one trade show to teach you the virtue of leaving the marginal and the almost-good in Portland right where you found them.

  I’m so excited I forgot to have breakfast. I’m having my own little Christmas morning in here, all toasty warm, in a ring of new books. I already know that time will be cruel, and I won’t be able to read anywhere near as many of them as I want. Still, not knowing which ones will transport me, which ones will disappoint me, which ones will thrill me or bore me, makes all of it gleefully suspenseful. Books bring out the child in me. I regret to see that I’m almost finished emptying the second bag.

All right, now I’ve sorted all the advances into their appropriate months of release. I’ve gone through each book, setting aside all the ones I really won’t read, all the tomes over five hundred pages, no arty writing, no angels, no serial killers, no mutant female praying mantises (you think I’m kidding). I’ve got it down to the top thirty new books coming out this fall, mostly novels with a few yummy memoirs thrown in, as selected by yours truly.

NOW:

To Siberia by Per Petterson, the author of Out Stealing Horses.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.

The Train of Salt and Sugar by Licinio de Azevedo, from Mozambique

Waiting for an Ordinary Day: The Unraveling of Life in Iraq by Farnaz Fassihi

OCTOBER:

Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain by Kirsten Menger-Anderson

What Makes a Child Lucky by Gioia Timpanelli

Lulu in Marrakech by Diane Johnson

Three Musketeers by Marcelo Birmajer

Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany

Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago

A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carre

NOVEMBER:

The Howling Miller by Arto Paasilinna, from Finland

Songs for the Missing by Stewart O’Nan

Couch by Benjamin Parzybok

DECEMBER:

Two Rivers by T. Greenwood

Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love by Myron Uhlberg

JANUARY:

Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun

Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker

FEBRUARY:

Ghosts by Cesar Aira

Safer by Sean Doolittle

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

The Lost City of Z by David Grann

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

The Siege by Ismail Kadare

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

MARCH:

My Abandonment by Peter Rock

The Believers by Zoe Heller

Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman

All right, enough. That took all afternoon. Time to enjoy a little reading, now that I’ve sorted through all the best and brightest. At this point, you know as much as I do about what’s coming out this fall. Let’s hope we’re about to find some excellent new ones for our reading groups!

It happens. A book you’re dying to read turns out to be less than you expected. That’s just part of reading – that’s just part of life – but it’s still a comedown. So my second guilty pleasure of the week turned out to be not so much of a pleasure, after all.

  Rutu Modan is a prodigiously talented Israeli author/illustrator whose graphic novel, Exit Wounds, was just about everyone’s favorite graphic novel last year, and it’s only human nature to want more of what we love. Unfortunately, Jamilti and Other Stories, the latest gorgeously produced Drawn and Quarterly publication from Montreal, is a collection of earlier pieces, so it’s more Modan, all right, but also less. In story after story we can see the confident artist of Exit Wounds finding her style, experimenting with color, perfecting her storytelling skills. They’re the early works of a genius. With the emphasis on early works.

  Of course, after her knockout graphic novel, I expected to find storytelling brilliance, and I wasn’t completely disappointed. The first piece, “Jamilti,” is like a Chekhov short story. Two fiancées get in an argument in a taxi, and when the girl gets out, she’s caught in a terrorist explosion where she encounters a seriously wounded young man who gives the bride-to-be a haunting kiss. It’s subtle, textured, and provocatively open-ended, as is the other standout story, “Homecoming,” where a small plane circling the kibbutz could be a terrorist attack or a frightened young soldier in a stolen plane trying to come home.

  But they’re just two superb moments that give a taste of the expertise to come in Exit Wounds. Speaking of which, have you experienced that graphic masterpiece? Now, there’s what a graphic novel wants to be, with a grabber of a story, expertly told and visually exhilarating.

  A woman in uniform serving her military duty tells Koby, a young taxi driver in Tel-Aviv, that she has reason to think his estranged father was blown up in a recent bombing. How she convinces Koby to help her find out what happened to his father, and what they discover about his father and about each other, is Chinese boxes-within-boxes of secrets and lies. The two central characters are both so likeable and complex – and constantly fighting – that they’re straight out of classic comedy, except that they feel utterly real and you ache for their confusion, played out against the tortured, explosive backdrop of Tel Aviv.

  Author/illustrator Modan works in big, bold colors, wisely knows what to show instead of tell, and generates perpetual surprise. The volume is visually rich, handsomely produced, witty and heartbreaking and humane, with a jim-dandy ending. Every member of our book group loved Exit Wounds. We discussed it passionately for the whole meeting. Skip Jamilti, and treat yourself to a graphic novel that has made many converts to an underestimated genre.

  Okay, that’s enough children’s books and graphic novels. Pictures! I love them. Well, I’ve got two big bags of books for adults waiting for me in my little home library that I haven’t even unpacked. Time to grow up and take a look and see what I actually brought home from that Portland book tradeshow…

I am finally getting around to reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, the book that Kaite told us all about so many moons ago and that now is sprouting up on so many best of 2008 lists.

Because Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrow’s runaway hit is an epistolary novel, a novel in letters, it got me to thinking about other novels written in this same format. A few years ago I put together a list for the The Seattle Public Library. The list is called “Epistolary: Letters, Diaries, Journals and E-mails.” I had a lot of fun assembling this list, for one, because I happen to be a letter writer myself, and two, because it is so interesting to see how, with the advent of e-mail, this format has changed over time.

There is something immediate about the form. Reading a letter is so much more intimate than, say, an omnicient narrator’s introduction to the relationships in a novel. It plunges you into the minds and lives of the characters. It can also leave you wanting more, make you read between the lines. There is also that voyeuristic aspect of reading someone else’s correspondance. Choderlos De Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons is all the more delectable and dispicable somehow for the way in which those words, actions and motives are laid bare from one letter to the next. 

Reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, I am reminded of the beloved 84, Charing Cross, the real life correspondance between the American writer, Helene Hanff and a London bookseller at Marks & Co. What these two books share is a celebration of books and readers and the ways in which literature doesn’t just have the power to describe the human condition, it has the power to bring people together. That is a story well worth diving into, one letter at a time.

Falling Off Air by Catherine Sampson

Despite having been trained by the best (Ted Balcom), I make one crucial decision each year regarding my mystery and crime fiction book discussion group.  I do not read the books prior to their selection as titles that the group will share. I love to live on the edge.

We began our new season of mystery and crime fiction book discussions with this title from England:  Falling Off Air by Catherine Sampson.  Back in 2004, a Booklist reviewer who shall remain nameless (Mary Frances Wilkens—now I need to watch my back at the next PLA!) said, “Sampson, a journalist living in Beijing, makes a grand entrance into the mystery genre with this stellar debut novel…Remember Sampson’s name; it’s about to become an important one in crime fiction.” 

Maybe yes, maybe no.

My group was lukewarm to this title as a mystery.  Part of the problem is that the character of Robin Ballantyne, a single mother of infant twins, is so down that she cannot get anything right.  Therein might lie some comedy, but the light touch is not significant enough to stave off a feeling of failure and depression. 

The irony of this is that we spent most of the night talking about what was wrong with Robyn and less about the other aspects of the book.  And, we talked for the full ninety minutes. 

We did touch on the fact that it seems to a number of people that this book was not particularly about London.  We touch on the fact that some loose plot lines (the long lost stalking father figure) are never explained. 

But we kept coming back to Robyn.  Why would she try to get her job back without washing her hair first?  Why does she deliberately make dumb decisions that do nothing to free her from suspicion?

To my great surprise at the end of the night, about one third of my attendees wanted to read the next book to find out what happens to Robyn.  Is that just because she kissed a cop?

Mary Francis Wilkens says, “The story is told in the first person, and Robin’s narrative voice is immediately compelling. She is portrayed with humor, subtlety, and dead-on accuracy, first as a woman seeming to come apart at the seams and then as an inspiring modern heroine drawing on untapped inner strength to overcome both commonplace and extraordinary adversity.”

I think what this says is that even though the book proved to be a mystery that will most likely not stand the test of time, the character is what drew the readers into this book and made them want to talk about her.  Flawed characters may be the best for a book discussion. 

However, please do not quote me on that. 

How can I rationalize that with 43 advances piled up on my Must Read Soon table, not to mention two big bags of unread advances (19 books in one, 26 in the other) from the fall tradeshow in Portland not even unpacked yet – how can I admit that two new books arrived in the bookstore yesterday and immediately, without a second thought or a twinge of conscience, I propelled them to the very top of the pile?

I could hardly wait to get home last night! How can I rationalize what I’m doing right now, sitting here at home this morning when I should be at the bookstore, enjoying a sick day in my reading armchair with my cat in my lap while my poor fellow bookstore employees are dealing with four hundred identically-dressed, souvenir-purchasing Japanese high school girls on an international fieldtrip to campus?

  I should be at my cash register, but I’m not. I’m blissfully enjoying Aya of Yop City, the delightful sequel to Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie’s gorgeous chunk of Ivory Coast comic reality, Aya.

  I’m so glad to find myself in the company of that same charming cast of characters again, four families of stereotypes that are straight out of classic comedy but given a unique Ivorian twist, with plenty of bright African hues and musical slang. Here again are Aya’s two girlfriends and their harried fathers and exasperated mothers, their boyfriends, some employed, some not, with the entire economic spectrum of Ivory Coast, from the servant girl to the big boss’s son.

  Aya herself never gets involved much in the action. She’s the sensible, caring center of the story, around which her more passionate, flustered and flawed friends and family members battle and swirl in secrets and dramas and plot complications.

  My mouth muscles ache from smiling so much. I’m literally grinning like an idiot while I read through the panels. What is it about this graphic novel that generates such unmitigated pleasure? There’s a joy of life that radiates from this impoverished ghetto that transcends poverty. Abouet’s complex characters all have realistic flaws. Though they may be all stereotypes, the characters are just human enough to ring true.

  The enjoyment became so intense that during the final third I began turning the pages slower and slower, savoring each layout and spread of color and images, one visual feast after another, punctuated by Oubrerie’s periodic, shockingly lovely full-page spreads. With the simplest dots and lines on the faces of the characters he conveys all kinds of subtle innuendoes, as the plot complicates and takes one unexpected turn after another.

  The original Aya ends with a perfectly-planted little plot bomb that immediately sent me scurrying back to the beginning of the book to marvel with newly-opened eyes. This new Aya of Yop City goes for a similar concluding surprise, and it’s a doozy, because it’s not at all what you’re expecting, and very nicely set up while you’re busy watching another plotline heading for disaster. But this second volume is clearly a transitional volume on its way to somewhere else – several different threads are left unresolved (who are those mysterious lovers meeting in the dark? What scheme is the Parisian up to now?) not to mention what feels like a missing grand finale centerpiece, the upcoming beauty pagent of Yogoutou which has yet to occur, in which all the girls in the story will be competing against each other for the cash prize to help their families, all except for sensible, realistic Aya, who would win if she entered but is secretly training her maid, Felicite, to compete.

  Ever tried using a graphic novel for your reading group? Persepolis was such a huge hit for our group that I effortlessly include one each year – Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s Cat, and Rutu Modan’s superb Exit Wounds have been, along with Aya, the standouts in a field of thrilling new growth. The best graphic novels and memoirs are absolutely as discussable as their non-pictorial kin! If you haven’t allowed yourself to discover the unexpected, nonverbal depths of a graphic novel, the subtle pleasures when a plot point is covered by art instead of words, you couldn’t have a better opportunity than the Aya books. They’re comedies with bite about real moral and economic issues, delivered through visual artistry that’s positively exhilarating, composed with balance and wit.

  And now, here I am, the day after the book’s release, at the end of the second book and in dreadful suspense for the next installment. Who will win the beauty pageant? How has Albert enraged his sister? Who is Albert meeting in the dark? Will Mamadou finally get a job? Will Ignace’s family be destroyed by the shocking revelation at the end of the book?  And let’s just hope Bintou isn’t pregnant!

I’m starting to feel guilty. At this very moment four hundred identically-dressed Japanese girl tourists are trampling over my fellow book store workers, buying armfuls of college T-shirts and key-chains, presenting their fathers’ Visa cards, and me – I’m here at home in reading heaven.

I’m not here.

Well, this is the Internet, so you’ll have to take my word for it: I’m not where I usually am. I’ve deserted my library and book groups for the month because I’m on honeymoon in Spain and Portugal! (And no, you don’t have to send condolences to the bride: I’m writing this before I leave, not in some Internet cafe.)

To honor the occasion, I thought I would spend the next three weeks exploring the way in which a book group can use geography as a superb monthly theme. Lose the usual snacks in favor of port, vinho verde, imported ham, and a table full of tapas. Break out the best of your Spanish titles, it’s time for a literary fiesta!

First stop: Barcelona. You might remember Robert Hughes for his epic history of Australia, The Last Shore, his 60s memoir, Things I Didn’t Know, or his art criticism, but one of his greatest successes is Barcelona, which traces the history, architecture, art, and culture of Barcelona and Catalonia from its Roman origins to the present. You couldn’t find a better introduction to this diverse city.

Of course Barcelona is the city of Gaudi. His unique architectural style makes Barcelona distinctive. There are many overviews of his architecture available, but Isabel Artigas’ Gaudi, published by Taschen in 2007 is beautiful, and as art books go, affordable. I recommend bringing books like these and illustrated travel guides to your meeting to pass around while you talk about your literary discoveries.

On a darker note, Catalonia was the last stronghold of the left in the Spanish Civil War. This epic struggle was in many ways the pre-cursor to all that happened in World War II. This history makes dramatic, fascinating reading. George Orwell’s classic memoir, Homage to Catalonia, Hemingway’s marvelous novel (my favorite of all his works), For Whom the Bell Tolls, or Antony Beevor’s highly readable history, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 are all first rate explorations of a harrowing time.

Barcelona isn’t too far from the Basque Country in northern Spain, and no literary tour of the region would be complete without the book that got marvelous Mark Kurlansky, king of the micro-history, rolling. The Basque History of the World covers the politics, culture, sociology, linguistics, and even culinary skills of this influential minority in a book that fascinates at every turn.

For fiction fans, the Barcelona setting offers other pleasures. Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind is a tale within a tale, about a boy whose father takes him to the Cemetary of Forgotten books, where he selects a masterpiece of a thriller which comes to infatuate him. In the search for the book’s origins and its author, he enters a labyrinth as complex as Barcelona’s gothic quarter. Equal parts scary, thrilling, and sensuous, this was a blockbuster in Spain.

Speaking of forgotten masterpieces, Nick wrote about the pleasures of Carmen LaForet’s Nada in his September 15th post. It’s a coming of age story set in Barcelona, following a student who moves in with her dramatic, sometimes violent aunt and uncle. A new translation of this 1945 work is now available. Highly recommended!

The provocative cover of Pablo Tusset’s The Best Thing that Can Happen to a Croissant may make you hesitant to pick up the book, but don’t be scared away. It’s the story of Pablo, the bright, combative, profane, fat, and deeply lazy heir to a Barcelona family fortune who spends his days surfing the Internet, abusing various substances, and arguing with the members of his club. When his brother (whom he dislikes) disappears, Pablo goes on debauched and circuitous hunt to discover what happened. This is one of those books that hinges on the voice of its extravagant narrator, and Pablo will offend you, frustrate you, and make you laugh out loud in equal parts.

I’ll finish my literary tour of Barcelona with the police procedurals of Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett. Her heroine, Inspector Petra Delicado, is a tough, combative woman. Her personality contrasts nicely with that of Sgt. Fermin Garzon, a polite, sensitive, older man. The interplay of these characters and the novels’ tight-but-twisty plotting make the series a great discovery. So far Dog Day, Prime Time Suspect, and Death Rites are available in translation.

I’m heading east from Catalonia and on to Madrid and environs next. So grab a book and join me on my Iberian adventure.

Every year for a week at the end of September and into the beginning of October (Sept. 27-October Oct. 4, 2008), libraries across the country celebrate Banned Books Week with posters, displays, booklists, community forums and events.

Thanks to the ALA, Banned Books Week has practically (at least in my world) become a major holiday. It is also the time when libraries can engage the public in the topic of intellectual freedom, a value that makes libraries such an important, vital and remarkable part of a healthy, democratic society. The freedom to read, the freedom of access to information and ideas, is a right that we cannot hold lightly. Banned Books Week reminds us all that reading is truly revolutionary.

Every year I pore over the list of books that have been challenged or banned. The information provided about why a book raised concerns, a challenge or even removal is as fascinating as the titles that appear. The lists often read like a book group reading roster, featuring classics as well as bestsellers.  The 2007-2008 list could provide a book group with years worth of excellent titles for discussion.

But what you could try doing is discussing the books that have been challenged the most. Here are some lists to choose from:

Most Challenged Books of 21st Century (2000-2005)

The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000

Reading the history of the challenges to a book can only enhance your discussion.

Kudos to each and every one of you out there supporting the freedom to read, in your work and in your book groups.

Book Group Buzz may not be doing much in October to observe Celebrate Sun Dried Tomatoes Month, National Kitchen and Bath Month, and Squirrel Awarness Month, but we’re definitely on board for National Reading Group Month, which was launched in 2007 by the Women’s National Book Association  (WNBA) “to promote reading groups and to celebrate the joy of shared reading.” 

The second annual National Reading Group Month will feature events sponsored by WNBA chapters nationwide. The signature event will take place in Seattle on October 20 at University Book Store. 

Numerous other bookstores, along with libraries, publishers, and trade organizations, are collaborating in National Reading Group Month activities. Book Group Buzz is thrilled to be chosen by the NWBA as a National Reading Group Month partner.

Here’s a list of books from this year’s National Reading Group Month events.

The Second Journey by Joan Anderson (Hyperion)

How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster (Harper Paperbacks)

Sweetsmoke by David Fuller (Hyperion)

Hell Hole: A John Ceepak Mystery by Chris Grabenstein (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)

Big Money by Jack Getze (Hilliard & Harris Publishers)

The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory (Touchstone-Fireside Books)

The Year She Disappeared by Ann Harleman (Univ. of Texas Press)

The Condition by Jennifer Haigh (HarperCollins)

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (Ballantine)

Schooled by Anisha Lakhani (Hyperion)

The English American by Alison Larkin (Simon & Schuster)

Nothing is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn by Alice Mattison (Harper Perennial)

The Richest Season by Maryann McFadden (Hyperion)

The Red Lion Series by Yxta Maya Murray (Harper Paperbacks)

The Girl I Left Behind by Judith Nies (HarperCollins)

Angel and Apostle by Deborah Noyes (Unbridled Books)

The Return of Desire by Gina Ogden (Trumpeter)

Book Lust, More Book Lust and Book Crush by Nancy Pearl (Sasquatch Books)

Peony in Love by Lisa See (Random House Trade Paperbacks)

The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer (Harper Perennial)

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House Trade Paperbacks)

Petropolis by Anya Ulinich (Viking)

I received a delightful piece of mail today wedged in with flyers about upcoming conferences, my second ALA renewal notice, Demco catalogs, and a flask of window cleaner (Joey the Facilities guy has his mailbox above mine, I always get weird bits of metal and plumbing invoices by mistake).

My favorite book group resource, Reading Group Choices 2009, the 15th anniversary edition, appeared in a spicy red cover with a great photo and plenty of thoughtful suggestions for book group selections.

I have kept every RGC since they went into business and guard them fiercely. They are the handiest little tools for deciding if a book is a good match for any one of the book groups I facilitate. In this edition the editors profiled some of my favorite reads from last year:

Chosen by a Horse: How a Broken Horse fixed a Broken Heart, a touching memoir about three feisty horses and the woman who loves and cares for them.

Interred with Their Bones, a great arcane thriller of a scholar poring over Shakespeare’s plays reading between the lines for clues to various codes that may lead to a long missing play. The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty, a dramatic readalike for groups that can’t get enough Jodi Picoult, Moriarty’s second novel explores the relationship between a mother and daughter after an auto accident involving the daughter takes the life of one of her classmates.

There’s plenty more goodies in this tidy little paperback. Turn to page 175 for a hoot of a list of book group names. Get inspired all over again.

Just how useful is the word classics?

Until now the name of Seattle’s city-wide gay reading program, scheduled to begin in January at Dunshee House, has been the Gay Classics Book Club. I’m rethinking that. I’m suspecting maybe that word classics might be limiting, off-putting, might in fact be wisely dropped. In fact, I’ve been rethinking a lot, and it’s no time for rethinking. It’s time to get going on advertising, not changing the name and reading list.

  Dropping the word classics doesn’t endanger anything. I’m sufficiently classics-oriented in my tastes so that the program is in no jeopardy of losing its focus on the best of gay literature. But by leaving out that word, I open the selection to the best in more recent fiction, and can possibly accommodate film adaptations and author appearances. I’m still determined to tackle the greatest of gay literature – Andre Gide’s The Counterfeiters, Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers, E. M. Forster’s Maurice, Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima – but maybe those treasures should be held back until the second year of the club.

Maybe a better name would be simply the Gay and Lesbian Book Club. Maybe first I need to gather a core of committed members, engage a team of stalwart readers in honestly sharing their thoughts about books together.

Besides, if I can include a couple more recent works involved with addiction and recovery, Dunshee House stands a chance of partnering with the Shift Recovery Network at Multifaith Works, a fine program under one of Seattle’s largest umbrella organizations for gay health care. I’ve got my eye on Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s hilarious, heartbreaking I Am Not Myself These Days, his account of life as an alcoholic drag queen in love with a crystal-addicted hustler. A delightful, profoundly revealing memoir, and a favorite of mine!

  But I don’t have forever. Before we can launch our advertising campaign, I need to decide on the selections for the first six months. Until now the opening selection, because of the immediate name familiarity, was Gore Vidal’s novel, The City and the Pillar, an early realistic portrait of gay life that so offended The New York Times Book Review that it refused to review any novel by Gore Vidal for fifteen years. Historic, yes. Literate, yes. But is it the novel to start with?

  Maybe not. Maybe what we need is the defiance and upbeat, two-fisted energy of Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle. Maybe that would be a smarter opening gambit. Unlike the “victim of society” school of much early gay fiction, her semi-autobiographical 1973 bestseller is a refreshing dose of take-me-as-I-am gay self-esteem. Molly Bolt goes after what she wants and gives the finger to society.

  I’ve just finished reading Rubyfruit Jungle for the first time, and I can see why it took the world by storm. It’s got a dynamite opening, one side-splitting prank after another as Molly Bolt out-Hucks Huckleberry Finn in sheer orneriness, locking her mother in the root cellar, substituting rabbit pellets for raisins, outrageous and loveable and eerily modern in her defiant self-confidence. Unfortuantely the second half of the book isn’t quite as much fun. The supporting characters become a little more cartoony, and the trim, irresistible, witty, wise Molly becomes pretty full of herself. When a smitten older married woman says, “…are all homosexuals as perceptive as you?” something inside this reader groaned. Fortunately, the book’s last-chapter returns to the mother who raised her and provides an emotional finale that rings true. But just in time.

Well, okay, if not that one, then what other guns have I got?

  I noticed that the Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in Portland opened with the film adaptation of a highly-praised gay comic novel, Michael Downing’s Breakfast with Scot, about two rather yuppie-looking gay guys who find themselves suddenly raising an eleven-year-old boy who’s a flaming queen. I watched the movie preview online. I laughed. Funny premise, and if the film opens here in Seattle in a timely fashion, this might be a good starter. It would come with its own publicity.

  That’s next on my reading list, unless – well, unless I try Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. I’ve never read it, and even though I get the funny feeling I might not be crazy about her later work, that first rather honest-looking, semi-autobiographical novel has been highly praised, is appealingly short, and looks literate and promising.

Really, I should read them both. And I ought to try Junky and Queer by William Burroughs, and I truly ought to give Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar an actual read-through. If only there were time for them all!

But in order to create the postcards and posters and newspaper ads to promote this book club, I’ve got to come up with the first six titles, the best combination of books with the widest range of inclusiveness, the winning team to launch a successful club.

Time is running out. Enough blogging, I’ve got books to read.

For years I have been hearing that Georgette Heyer is as close as we will ever come to Jane Austen. Fans of Heyer speak of her in reverant tones, and remember the first Heyer they read in their youth.