I’m secretly packing my suitcase in the spare room, so my cat doesn’t see it. I’ve learned from bitter experience. He knows exactly what the suitcase means. Every year I travel down to Portland for the annual Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association tradeshow, for three days of sampling the autumn titles of all the major publishers, dining with authors and reps, staying in a hotel room, and leaving Buddy to the kindness of friends stopping by twice a day to give him a scoop of food. When Buddy sees my suitcase being packed, he immediately climbs into it and blatantly, aggressively pees on it. I now pack behind closed doors, waiting to fold my clothes until my cat is patrolling the yard looking for any careless rodent activity.

Okay, I’m going to miss him. It’s what I hate about the book tradeshow every year, being away from the constant humor and affectionate demands of my feline, and when I come back there will be a probationary period during which I’m only tolerated, culminating in a moment when he startles me with a swat. I know it’s coming. It comes every year. I make sure he doesn’t come near my eyes. Still, even though he’s a tyrant, I’ll miss him, and as soon as the final breakfast is over on Wednesday morning, we’re going to be in that car heading home, with the car trunk stuffed full of book bags bulging with new books.

Speaking of new books, I’ve stumbled on two delights, both by women.

  I’ve just finished reading a compelling new graphic memoir this afternoon, Alissa Torres’ heartbreaking American Widow. It’s her story of marrying a Colombian boy whose green card was running out, of their happy year together culminating in her pregnancy when he finally starts his new job on September 10, 2001 at the World Trade Center.

American Widow is a non-linear emotional tour de force, never capitalizing on its subject matter, more concerned with the broken promises of the Red Cross and the barrage of often callous bureaucratic aid for widows and survivors. With an boldly graphic, frame-shattering style of artwork by Sungyoon Choi, her story is about the nightmare engulfing 9/11 survivors in the aftermath of the tragedy, learning how to negotiate the strings of red tape and broken governmental promises while dealing with Eddie’s absence. Twice real photos of Eddie Torres are inserted into the text. It’s a real cry from the heart. I read the entire thing in a single sitting.

  Currently I’m a third of the way through a Spanish classic written in 1945 by Carmen LaForet called Nada, recently translated by Edith Grossman and released as a Modern Library paperback in February. As it happened, a university employee came into our campus bookstore asking for a copy of Nada to read for her book club, and just seeing the handsome cover broke my last resistance – it reads in a thrillingly modern style, as young Andrea tells her story of going to live with relatives in Barcelona while attending the university. Like Andrea, the reader walks into a house full of raging tempers and secrets, brother against brother, screaming matches and throwing chairs. Along with Andrea, the reader gathers a clue here, a clue there, as to what’s really going on, what lingers from the terrors and crimes of the Spanish Civil War, who fought on which side. I have no idea where this fascinating novel is going.

That’s the book I’m bringing with me to PNBA tomorrow morning, when somehow I’m going to be packed and ready to go when Brad drives up at 8 a.m. We’ll check into our Portland hotel room tomorrow, talk to publishers’ reps and other booksellers. All day Tuesday will be the tradeshow, a convention room filled with tables piled with copies of the new fall line-ups in books, far more than any sane man can carry. I only take ones I’m sure I’ll read, and that usually involves a shoulder-bag and a book-bag full.

I’ll let you know what I find. Here’s hoping I’m about to discover some real gems that will bring book lovers genuine joy.

A two volume omnibus of Maxwell’s fiction and stories was just released by Library of America.  Christopher Carduff edited the two volume collection, and Library of America conducted a wonderful interview with Carduff about Maxwell and his work.

The release of the Library of America editions also prompted an NPR spot, which brough additional attention Maxwell’s way.

Admirers of Maxwell’s work, the writers he influenced and friends he made in his life, have been writing article after article celebrating this underappreciated American author.  Two days ago, an essay by John Updike came out in The New Yorker entitled “Imperishable Maxwell.”  Earlier this week, Stewart O’Nan wrote a lovely tribute, “A Master is Given His Due,” for The Wall Street Journal.

I should mention that in 2004, Charles Baxter edited A William Maxwell Portrait: Memories and Appreciations which included contributions from Donna Tartt, Ben Cheever, Ben Cheever, Richard Bausch and Shirley Hazzard.

I, for one, am thrilled to hear about the outpouring of support and celebration for Maxwell.  I look forwarding to discovering and revisiting his work this Fall.  Join me in raising a glass and one or both of the two volume set to Mr. William Maxwell.

The short list for the Man Booker Prize has been announced.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (The favorite to win.)

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant

The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

Now I can get started on my seldom-achieved yearly goal of reading all the short listers.  According to reports, there was some surprise regarding the fact that Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence didn’t make the cut.

Another thing that I discovered in preparing for this week’s discussion of Dave Eggers’ What is the What.  Philadelphia chose it for its 2008 One Book program.  They created an excellent resource guide with a timeline for Sudan and suggested further reading lists for children, teens and adults and a list of recommended movies. I found some links to online articles and weblinks for supporting Sudan. I was also incredibly impressed with the lesson guide they created for grades 9 through 12.

It must have been an amazing program for Philadelphia. 

In addition to the city’s reading What is the What, they also heavily promoted Mawi Asgedom’s memoir, Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy’s Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard.  While I have not read Asgedom’s memoir yet, I have been handing it to teens and teachers looking for positive stories of struggle and success ever since it came out.

It is just so amazing to see these One Book programs take flight all over the place.  And this time, instead of thanking Dave Eggers, I have to thank Nancy Pearl for starting this grand tradition. 

Take eight steps, and you’ve crossed my kitchen. Turn around when you get to the microwave, and eight paces back. Seven paces if the suspense starts building. Okay, sometimes six if it gets really intense. Six paces, going faster and faster.

  I’m reading the last 50 pages of Jean-Claude Izzo’s Total Chaos, and I can’t sit down. I’ve tried. Buddy made the unfortunate mistake of thinking he could curl up in my lap purring while I finished the book. That ended when I discovered who Batisti’s daughter was married to – oh, my God! My entire body flinched. My cat went flying. The scratches on my leg have finally stopped bleeding.

From now on, I’ll pace safely down the middle of the kitchen. Buddy crouches on his favorite bookshelf, watching me.

Another shocking revelation. I have to shout. Izzo has pulled the rug out from under me so often I don’t believe in rugs anymore. Slowly the pieces of the puzzle are coming together. I’m very nervous and anxious. I’m chewing on a fingernail. The good cop has suicidally determined to see it all through to the end. Thank goodness this is a trilogy! At least I know there are two more books in the series, so surely Fabio lives. Because right now I’d say he had about a zero chance of surviving this. And he’s not even trying. He’s lost everything that matters. He’s doing what’s right, even if it gets him killed. And it will, because he has enraged, powerful enemies. Bad cops on one side, mafia on the other. It’s the set-up for a tragedy. He can’t survive this.

Right now he’s parked outside the apartment house of the third rapist, the only one left alive. There’s a light in the window. The guy is home, but is he alone? I’m hoping Fabio will wait for backup before going up there when I notice that one of my fingers is bleeding. Dang, I’ve got to stop chewing on myself! I take a very brief Band-Aid break, and then I’m back to pacing ferociously. Nothing’s going to stop me now. I’m seeing this through to the end. The door of the rapist’s apartment swings open. It’s not the rapist. Shock after shock. I had everything wrong. I didn’t even know who the real villain was. Fabio, you’re in over your head, turn back now. If he goes to that villa, he doesn’t have a prayer. Don’t go there, Fabio!

Tonight I’ll be turning the last page.

I know I should be repentant. There’s no justification for reading this book. Sure, I roared through it in three days, but I needed those three days. I should be sensibly working my way through my pile of advance copies. I’ve got gems to read – the new Argentinean novel by the author of The Oxford Murders, and Home, the new Gilead-companion novel from Marilynne Robinson. Those books need to be read at once. I’ve got to be on top of things. I’m running behind. My reviews are late.

  Instead, to my horror, I see a red book waiting like a hellish temptation beside my armchair. I’ve quietly brought home from the bookstore the second volume of the Marseilles trilogy. This is absurd. I don’t have time for the rest of the trilogy. I absolutely cannot read another one. Will someone please knock this book out of my hands? I need an intervention. I’m out of control.

I’m in reading heaven.

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith (Grand Central, 2008)

As a life long mystery reader, I am often asked to defend reading mysteries when “they are all the same.”  It is true that there is a comfortable format to many mysteries that I read and that is why I like to read them.

However, to make a mystery really sing for me, it has to be about something else besides the murder and the investigation.  For some mystery readers, that something else can be the topic:  cooking, traveling, sewing or antiques.

For me, the something else is theme.  I want the book to be about a theme so compelling that I cannot put the book down.  Then I am happy.

Often when I am reading a thriller, I am saying to myself, “Why do people read these things when they are all the same?”

I guess we can safely say that in order to read and enjoy a thriller, I need it to have a strong theme.  Being thrilled is not enough.  I also need to learn something, be challenged by something and/or be angered by something in the thriller so that it is not just about things that go bump in the night or chase the protagonist from one location to another.

I am wondering about the value of selecting a thriller for a book discussion title.  My theory (because it is also my opinion) is that a thriller will only work for a book discussion if it has a strong theme. 

My shining example of a thriller that will thrill any book discussion group is Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. 

Leo Stepanovich Demidov works for the MGB (or State Security Force) in Moscow.  When we meet him, it is the last year of Stalin’s reign and the Soviet Union has descended into a state of excess where everyone is paranoid with good reason.  The state has created so many reasons to be viewed as an opponent of the government that everyone has been turned into a spy.  Everyone has turned on everyone to the point where family members are willing to turn in their own to save themselves.

When Leo’s MGB co-worker Fyodor Andreev’s son is found dead near some railroad tracks, Fyodor is convinced his son was murdered.  The boy was found naked, disemboweled, with dirt stuffed in his mouth.  It becomes Leo’s job to visit the family and tell them that this is impossible.  The boy was hit by a train.  In Stalinist Russia

           There is no crime

While angered at being assigned this onerous task, Leo is also worried about his real assignment:  the fate of veterinarian Anatoly Brodsky.  Brodsky is under suspicion because he has treated a pet of an American embassy staff member.  Leo has hesitated to arrest him because he would like more proof, a decision that will cost him dearly.  The irony here is that a society that believes there is no crime has elevated any suggestion of behavior that threatens the status of the
Union to be the highest crime and employees a relentless security force to hunt down and punish anyone who steps over any line. 

While Leo is disappointing Fyodor, Brodsky escapes. 

Here is where this thriller begins to take on the aspects of a noir novel.  In a noir, the central character always makes one decision, major or minor, that seals their fate—and that fate is never good.

Leo’s hesitation to put the needs of the state ahead of his own personal moral needs means he is screwed.  He sets off into the countryside to apprehend Brodsky, but what he does not anticipate is that within his own squad he is harboring a man more committed to the Stalinist way then he is.

Every good thriller needs a villain extraordinaire.  In Child 44, that person is Vasili Ilyich Nikitin.  He sells Leo out to the state and then becomes obsessed with making sure that Leo’s life is a horror show.  Dragged into the mire with Leo is his beautiful wife Raisa and his parents, for the Soviet Union punishes all in the perimeter of those who have offended the state. 

Spared the Gulag, Leo is sent to the farthest reaches of the empire, to the industrial nightmare town of Voualsk in the Ural Mountains.  Demoted to the lowest position in the local militia, Leo is stunned to make the central discovery of this thriller:

            There is crime

Leo discovers another child, murdered by the exact same methods as Fyodor’s son in Moscow. 

It has been awhile since a novel has had such a visceral effect on me.  This is truly a book that a reader cannot put down.  It is so emotionally draining to read this relentless account of this senseless society.  As a character, Leo is forced to reexamine every belief system he operates under and this makes him a compelling person to observe. 

This should be a thrilling book to discuss. 

Barnes and Noble has a reader’s guide for this title at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bookstore/recommended.asp?PID=22580

Young Marcus Yallow and three teen friends are in the wrong place at the wrong time, playing a game on the streets of San Francisco when a bomb destroys the Bay Bridge. Before they know what has happened, they’ve been detained by Homeland Security and accused of terrorism. Three of the four are eventually released (under threat to keep silent about what they experienced), while Marcus’s friend Daryl disappears, possibly to his death, possibly to a prison camp in the bay’s Treasure Island.

That’s the frightening starting point of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, a young adult novel that deserves to be read by young and old alike. The story follows Marcus in the months that follow the attack, as he tries to fight back against draconian, counterproductive anti-terror measures that seem not to catch terrorists and threaten to turn his city and country into a police state.

Every reader will not love this novel, but all will find it highly discussable. There are three main reasons why the book could raise hackles: First, you may simply disagree with its politics, although Doctorow is persuasive, creating a very believable scenario for a descent into authoritarianism. Second, Marcus is a teen boy: he’s full of himself and acts brashly at times. Some of his actions are morally questionable, especially for a teenager. Third, the book includes a plethora of near future technical detail. Doctorow does a fine job of explaining how the government can employ technologies we use every day to superficially track our behavior and how Marcus and others attempt to thwart their actions with other consumer technologies. He mixes all of the jargon gracefully into an exciting, fast-paced story. Still there’s a lot to explain and some readers may find this technical detail overwhelming.

In the end, however, it’s exactly these “flaws” and “weaknesses” (I’ll leave you and your group to decide if those scare quotes should stay) that make this book such a fine choice for book groups. There’s a great deal to think about here, and it’s a subject that isn’t going away anytime soon. This is a great opportunity to explore a complex matter in a highly entertaining context. As long as your group can handle some political discussion, Little Brother would make a fine selection.

If you’d like to continue your exploration of this topic, pair this novel with Orwell’s 1984, Clifford Chase’s clever teddy bear interrogation novel Winkie, Dan Fesperman’s strong suspense story The Prisoner of Guantanamo, or any of the excellent nonfiction books that have been published about the War on Terror or the aftermath of 9/11.

The doyennes of clutter-and-stress free living have found a way for over-committed readers to participate in a book group on their own time. It’s an idea that libraries have been supporting for years, but the editors of Real Simple are doing it with a little more panache, which should come as no surprise since they are experts at doing things with simple elegance, the No-Obligation Book Club.

Every month, one of a revolving cast of Real Simple editors will choose four books for reader-subscribers to vote on. The winning title will be read by the editor-facilitator who will offer up comments and insights and open the boards for discussion from participants. Or not. This is the simple part. Participation isn’t mandatory and there’s no scheduled time to post comments. Much like library-sponsored online book groups.

In this month’s issue, Real Simple gathered some of the favorite book group choices of their readers and while most of the titles are familiar discussion favorites, one or two are delightful surprises with great comments. One reader’s group read Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre and stated that while no one in the group finished nor liked it, it provided fodder for one of the best conversations the group has ever participated in.   One group needed a few belts of bourbon to better appreciate the debut novel Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. Contributors read everything from graphic novels to The Holy Bible and expressed appreciation for titles that made them think and engage each other in deep conversation.

Let’s hope that Real Simple’s editor-facilitators can continue those book group traditions—reading outside comfort zones and generating thoughtful discussion.

For those of you familiar with Stephenie Meyer’s popular teen vampire series that starts with Twilight, you know they are not high-brow literature.  And that’s exactly why teens and adults love them.

Set in Forks, Washington, the series centers around high school girl Bella Swan and the vampire of her eye, the dashing and chivalrous Edward Cullen, and her best friend and werewolf, Jacob Black, who is is love with Bella and a sworn enemy of Edward and vampires in general.  Pretty nifty love triangle, for sure. Well, even fans have complained about what a weak character Meyer has created in Bella.  A colleague of mine even wrote a brilliant blog post about how to get over your annoyance with Bella by finding some truly kick-ass female characters.

Meyer’s fourth and final book in the Twilight series was much hyped and anticipated, with midnight parties in bookstores and libraries across the country.  And after fans got a chance to dive into the 700+ page book, it became clear that readers either loved or hated it.  The haters were pretty vocal. Now, let me say, I really enjoyed this book. It was a guilty pleasure to begin with, so I didn’t expect much more than that.

Recently I was pleased to learn that the Villa Park (IL) Public Library, where I served as the administrator for over 20 years before retiring in 1999, held a Staff Development Day that featured book discussions.  The library has been offering book discussions for the public for many years and currently has three groups meeting every month — one of which focuses on mysteries.  The Staff Development Day program was, however, the first time staff members were involved as discussion participants.

The Head of the Readers Advisory Department, Candy Smith, came up with the idea and organized the event, which was only one part of the all-day development experience. (There were also segments on community recycling, water conservation, and chair yoga.)  Candy decided there were enough staff members to form four different groups.  She then encouraged the staff to help select the books to be used in the discussions by posting information about possible titles online and asking everyone to vote for their four favorites.  The books that were chosen were The Time Traveler’s Wife (Fiction) by Audrey Niffenegger; Nickel and Dimed (Nonfiction) by Barbara Ehrenreich; Greywalker (Young Adult) by Kat Richardson; and Things Not Seen (Science Fiction/Fantasy) by Andrew Clements.

The discussions were led by three members of the Readers’ Advisory Department (Candy, Jean Cooper and Marna Rundgren) and a Young Adult Librarian (Lee Rabi).  Each session ran for one hour, and the groups met simultaneously in various areas of the library.  This was possible because the library was closed for Staff Development Day.  Multiple copies of the books were obtained for the program utilizing interlibrary loan.

One of the main objectives of the program was to mix the library departments.  Thus, in the sign-up process, each group had a designated number of slots for each department (e.g., three slots for Circulation Department members, two for Adult Services members).  Surprisingly, since it was “first come, first served,” everyone got either their first or second choice of groups.

The staff seemed to enjoy the experience, Candy reports, and the discussions continued, even after the sessions were over.  Organizing the event was somewhat time consuming, according to Candy, but worth the effort because it was a great way for staff to mingle and learn more about book discussions, one of the library’s most prominently featured activities.

Looking for a new way to enliven and enrich your staff development event?  Why not try a book discussion (or several)?

“I don’t like short stories.” How often have I heard that in our book club and in the bookstore? Reading addicts often want to be entrenched in a long narrative, caught up in the rushing current of a strong plot, immersed in the heady waters of suspense and surprise, returning again and again to the new predicaments of favorite characters. And on to the sequels. Longer is better.

None of those are operating values in short stories.

The pleasures offered by stories are significantly different. A short story is like a crossword puzzle or an equation in algebra, a condensed and concise experience boiled down to its essence and fitted tightly together, a turning-point moment in a life, the essence of a character in a single incident or choice. A story is best read at a sitting, a concentrated experience, not in random chunks on the bus and in line at the supermarket.

  If the story collections that I revere were gathered separately, they’d make a very short shelf. In my domain, the queen of all short story writers is Flannery O’Connor, and there’s no collection of stories that more bears re-reading than her Complete Stories. I’ve read it twice, and the second time I felt like I’d never read the stories before, they’re so rich. Who would I dare to place next to her? Well, everyone has their favorites, and I hear cries for Ernest Hemingway and Guy de Maupassant, for Grace Paley and Alice Munro, but none of them has had much impact on me.

  The first contemporary collection that broke through my short story barrier was Robert Olen Butler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, those awesome tales of Vietnam.   More recently, Rattawut Lapcharoensap’s thrilling collection of Thai stories, Sightseeing, in which every single story is a gem and ending with that superb novella. If the teller of the tales is a bright enough intelligence, that alone can be the unifying factor for my personal reading experience. If the stories have a theme, or all take place in the same location, or all deal with the same industry or nationality, so much the better.

Well, now I’m going to add one more collection to my very short list. Last night I finished reading the final tale in Sana Krasikov’s collection of Russian immigrant stories, One More Year.    I’ll say this for starters: there’s not a single dull page in that book. Not only do all the stories have their major turning points and surprises, but there are dozens of fascinating women characters, hundreds of little delights sprinkled throughout, unforgettable lines like, “He was black and, like all cats, a little obnoxious.” Even a cat lover like me had to laugh at her wisdom. Or how about this: “She could not be bothered with small talk. To her, friendship still meant coming face-to-face with another’s unmediated existence. It was exhilarating, Lera thought, but also exhausting.”

Sana Krasikov doesn’t hesitate to call it the way she sees it. She’s a native of the Ukraine and grew up in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. She writes in English, with a Joseph Conrad-like precision but instead of ships and sailors she’s describing the interactions between husbands and wives, children and their parents.

I can’t remember the last time I encountered so many fascinating women characters in one book. I think that will be my next blog: all the multi-dimensional, unpredictable, unsentimentalized females that come to life in One More Year!

Peace.  Richard Bausch.  Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.  978-0-307-26833-4. 

Richard Bausch is just a few years older than I am so I am going to claim that he and I are of the same generation.  I suspect that his father’s experiences fighting in World War II may have influenced his son as Bausch grew up with sensibilities imparted by his father that in part were honed on the battlefields of the last great war. 

I know that was true of my own father.  A small town boy from Wisconsin who ended up in the South Pacific battle zone, he rarely spoke of his service years until near the end of his life.  Then, as an old man looking back, he went on a mission to trace his service record.  The hunt eventually proved futile when he discovered all his records were lost in a fire years ago in St. Louis warehouse where they were stored. 

I cannot imagine any reader not being touched by the writing at the end of chapter twelve when the young Marson is doing his leave taking with his family.  There must be many Americans today who could write their own chapters on this sad subject. 

My father was a disciplined and at time hard individual.  Once a close cousin of mine said his family forgave my father for some of his attitudes because they knew he had been a Marine in the Pacific.  I had to laugh because my father was just a Sergeant Major in the Army, or as I said at the time, “He was no Marine—just a son-of-a-bitch.”

Why do I think Bausch may be writing about his father?  Bausch was born on April 18, 1945 at Fort Benning in Georgia.  The second part of the dedication of Peace says, “In loving memory of my father, Robert Carl Bausch, who served bravely in Africa, Sicily, and Italy.”  And lastly, the third part of the dedication states, “With deepest gratitude, love and admiration to George Garrett, who for almost twenty years kept after me to write this story.”

There is a quote on the Literature Resource Center page from Bausch that says, “I grew up listening to my father tell stories–he is a great story-teller.” 

Whether this particular story is exactly the one Robert told Richard, we can say one thing for sure.  The son tells it better than his father ever did.

The basic plot of this novel is that Corporal Robert Marson is a part of a reconnaissance mission in Italy near Cassino.  Recon missions require men to go out and find the enemy, remain unseen, and then get back and report what they saw.  When his unit comes upon a cart pulled by two Italians who scurry away, Marson and his men are not cautious enough.  After tipping the cart, a German officer tumbles out who shoots two American soldiers before being shot by Marson.  A woman, who accompanied the officer in the cart, is summarily executed by Sergeant John Glick without remorse.  Of this, Glick’s only remark is to say, “This is all one thing.”

It may very well be as the next piece of action finds Marson and two privates named Asch and Joyner assigned to climb a mountain to find the enemy.  As they begin their ascent, they are joined by an Italian guide named Angelo who proves to be an enigma.  Asch is fearful that the mission is cursed as revenge for the killing of the woman while Joyner feels everything is justified by the death of the two Americans.

While only taking 171 pages to tell it, Richard Bausch manages to create an oppressive atmosphere out of so many factors.  The condition of war would be enough if not combined with constant rain that turns to snow as the men gain altitude.  Each man suffers a physical aliment which impedes his thinking but also reinforces the theme of the novel.  In the way that Bausch unfolds this tale, the sheer physical brutality of fighting the war equals the moral horror of being a participant. 

But to me the most compelling story this short novel tells is how citizen soldiers are so unprepared for what they will experience on the battlefield.  Forced to make split second decisions truly about life and death, sent to war without enough training and placed in command when it is contrary to a character’s nature are just samples of some of the challenges faced by the men in this novel. 

These are the types of things that molded our fathers into the men they became when they raised boys like me.  At a time when we know our citizen soldiers are in the same situations again in far flung foreign lands, I cannot help but think this book would make a great book discussion title for any library.

Here are some suggested questions that I thought of as I read this novel:

Glick says, “This is all one thing.”  (pg. 6)  How is he right and where is he wrong?

Why do the men not report the incident when it happens?

Why do the men become obsessed with the incident when it is over?

What is the sense in the men’s mission to climb the mountain?

Why is Asch the one who is shot?

Why do the men trust Angelo as a guide?

Does Marson make the right decision regarding Angelo’s fate?

Is Glick a murderer?

Is Marson a murderer? 

What does it mean when Marson’s father says, “Do your duty”?

 In honor of my visit to Minneapolis/St. Paul this week, I want to do a little shout out to the downtown library in Minneapolis.  I was blown away by this library, its spaces, displays, collections and staff.  The children’s department was a real gem, and their vibrant, whimsical displays created by local firm Blue Rhino Studio were a delight.  I am sure that anyone who had the pleasure of visiting for PLA will say the same.Even though the Minneapolis city system merged with the Hennepin Country system a year ago, I was still able to score some old-school “MPLS” shirts and baby blankets.  Score! 

Most of you have already heard the term “cozy.”  It’s a term coined for the type of books you can easily hand your grandmother–they’re mostly free of (or light on) sex, violence, profanity or those pesky open or sad endings you find in most contemporary fiction.

The April 2007 issue is particularly good.  It’s chock full of book group related links and blogs–so check it out!

The order matters. Alluring books get readers to come to meetings. The sequence of books discussed becomes a chronicle of the growth of the reading group. Start off a book club with three bad choices, and chances are you no longer have a club. The beginning is where you get reader commitment.

  Which novels or memoirs will work the best as an introduction to the many faces of gay literature? What we call our culture as gay people often has its roots in the many psychological defenses we’ve created to survive persecution by straight society. The coming out novel. The social justice novel. The moral problem novel. Get rid of intolerance, and a prominent chunk of gay literature is left by the wayside. Young gay people today have a hard time even imagining a pre-Stonewall gay life.

Much of our literature so far involves the individual gay person and his/her method of growing up and dealing with a society that disapproves of gayness.    The development of integrity, the ability to be honest to yourself and about yourself in spite of social disapproval, is often the value that culminates a gay memoir or novel. It’s called coming out of the closet, and for many gay authors that’s the self-defining step. But is it for young people who don’t know what the closet is? One of the questions of our book club will be: how is gay culture more than simply a response to oppression?

  Gay people who read (not casually, like read magazines, but passionately, as though books matter and might change you) are a particular minority sub-culture. But we exist. We’re often solos, on the outskirts of gay society. Once I realized homosexuality was a mortal sin in the Catholic Church, reading became my frantic attempt to make sense out of my crumbling morality. Reading was my salvation, as I desperately tried to figure out what was “wrong” with me and why I had such an unusual attitude toward boys. I dived into psychology looking for answers. I gobbled up books by gay authors, people who were like me, to see how they dealt with the unfair blows and the gnawing secrets and the unspoken passions.

  Those books anchored me. Those authors assured me I belonged to a tribe of sane and good human beings. Which is why I want this club to succeed. It’s my give-back. It’s my heritage, these thrilling and revealing books, these monuments to gay giants, and I want to pass them on. I’m trying to design an ad campaign to get the attention of those lonely solo readers out there on the outskirts. I want to gather them to Dunshee House to discuss great books together.

  So this Wednesday we’ll shoot the studio photo that will become the postcards and the posters and the newspaper ads: two naked guys in a yin/yang position reading. The motto of the ad will be “Let’s Read Them Together” and the naked models will be doing just that. The bottom of the ad will list the first six books we’ll be reading. Which are…?

  I need to decide. I have to make a call on the order of those first six books. I need to start with the books that will attract the most readers to this project. My instincts are to hold back on my favorite novels till I have a core of strong readers – Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers, Andre Gide’s The Counterfeiters. Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask and Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire will each have particular challenges. Robert Musil’s Young Torless and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice are darker visions to save for later. I had thought to begin with one of my all-time favorites, E. M. Forster’s Maurice, until I heard it dismissed as “that boring British movie.” Yike. When I first read it in 1972 it was a jolt of reality. But then, after all, it’s Edwardian gayness. Okay then, not Maurice, and not the European classics. Maybe that’s the clue, then – maybe the way to get this group on its feet is to start with the American experience.

With that in mind, I hesitantly come up with this first list of six books, open to revision, to start off the 2009 Gay Classics book club in Seattle:

January 28   The City and the Pillar by GORE VIDAL

February 25   Rubyfruit Jungle by RITA MAE BROWN

March 25   A Boy’s Own Story by EDMUND WHITE

April 29   Becoming a Man by PAUL MONETTE

May 27   Bastard Out of Carolina by DOROTHY ALLISON

June 24   A Single Man by CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD

Here are two interesting book-group related items I’ve come across recently.

In 2003, the BBC had a Big Read program to identify the Britains’ best-loved books. The winner was The Lord of the Rings, but more to the point for book groups is  BBC Big Read book group guide.  Besides offering tips on how to organize and run a book club, it lists the “top 21″ and “top 100″ nominated books and, for the top 21 (mostly classics like Jane Eyre, Rebecca, and To Kill a Mockingbird) it provides a handful of discussion questions.  There are also theme-related discussion questions  that could be applied to other books.

Are you familiar with Unshelved, the library comic strip?  Well, they have a book club in which, every Sunday, their comic-strip characters would talk about a book they’ve read. There don’t seem to have been any book club strips for the past year–too bad.

The Kansas City Star has developed an interesting twist on the community-wide book group. Since 2000, the Star’s FYI Book Club has been profiling books, interviewing authors, gathering diverse readers, hosting discussions and then reporting the process. It’s one of the most popular activities/features in the newspaper.

In 2003 I was invited to be one of the Star’s Book Club participants. We read Rick Bragg’s All Over But the Shoutin’. As an added treat, our book group met Mr. Bragg while he visited Kansas City on a book tour for this title.

Group leader Deborah Shouse invites new readers from all over the city to participate in the book group every couple of months. Rarely do any of the readers know each other and they all hold a variety of reading preferences. It’s never the same group of readers twice.

Star Books Editor, John Mark Eberhart profiles the discussion selection with a great synopsis and evaluation and throws in a couple of book excerpts and a lengthy author interview. Interested newspaper readers can pick up the book at any of the Kansas City metro area libraries and read along. 

About six weeks after the book’s introduction in the FYI section, excerpts from the reading group’s discussion will be posted along with photos and short bios of all the readers. In September, readers will gather to discuss the National Book Award finalist, Then We Came to the End. This debut novel by Joshua Ferris was a surprise bestseller, charming critics, readers, and cubicle dwellers across the nation.

For anyone who has ever wasted an afternoon gossiping with those folks in Accounting or shot rubber bands over the cube walls or completely dismantled a vacationing coworker’s cube, your tribe is captured between the covers of this sardonic, sad and snort-worthy novel.

After finishing John Dufresne’s most recent novel, Requiem, Mass., I reflected on some of its parallels to one of his earlier novels, Love Warps the Mind a Little.  I suppose there aren’t so many similarities to speak of, although both novels are about writers.

I just saw this Guardian article in which American comic book writer and editor Danny Fingeroth rates his top 10 graphic novels. Here are Fingeroth’s top 10:

The announcement of the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn took me back to my college days, when reading his books seemed to be part of a student’s introduction to the wider world.  A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich still shows up on school reading lists, but I wonder how his longer novels such as The First Circle and Cancer Ward would work in book groups.  Though Solzhenitsyn got crankier in his later years, it’s hard to think of any other twentieth-century writer who had such a profound influence.