February 9, 2014
I loved this website so much, that I created my book club TODAY! Approximately 8 members are IN! So, lets see what happens. I named it after my initials. LOL SO it's called MQ's Book Club.
—from MQ,
Dominican Republic
February 24, 2015
Today is the day. I'll send you the notes and some pictures :D i'm so happy. We are 14 girls now, initially. Let's see if it keeps up.
—from MQ
March 2, 2015
Everything went smoothly.... Everyone was happy to join, and I was so excited to make this little dream come true. Our first choices were "The Little Prince" and "The Old Man and the Sea": because they're classics and easy reads. (I didn't wanna start with a book that could give anyone an excuse not to read!).
—from MQ
And a couple more photos. Congratulations to MQ's BRAND NEW book club!
We've got plenty more clubs to read about. Take a look at all of our FEATURED CLUBS...and consider having your club featured on LitLovers.
FICTION IS A MAGIC TRICK of sorts. But at its best it doesn’t just conjure up an imaginary world; it makes the real one disappear, it makes the author disappear. Only a book can do this — let you lose yourself so completely. So, if you can, forget about everything else. Just be there with the book.
Jami Attenberg, Author of All Grown Up
Interview, NY Times Book Review, March 26, 2017
And in the other corner . . .
A GREAT OBSTACLE to good education is the inordinate passion prevalent for novels, and the time lost in that reading which should be instructively employed. When this poison infects the mind, …[t]he result is a bloated imagination, sickly judgment and disgust towards all the real businesses of life.
Thomas Jefferson
Letter to Nathaniel Burwell, March 14, 1818
Hello…ello…lo…….. Are book clubs like echo chambers—reading and talking about the same books? Joshua Henkin (Matrimony) worries that we are: you know, books like Water for Elephants; Eat, Pray, Love; Kite Runner. We’re all reading them and reviewing the same ones.
Here’s how Henkin puts it:
There are a lot of great books out there that people don’t know about . . . . [At the same time] fewer books have more and more readers. . . . For that reason, it has become harder for all but a handful of books to get the attention they deserve.
—Books on the Brain, 4/29/08
Henkin makes a strong case. Pity new authors trying to get their books noticed. It’s got to be disheartening.
Nonetheless, there’s something delightful that so many of us are on the same page. The book club movement is like the city that promotes a single book for its residents to read. Meet someone at the water cooler, at the mall, on the bus…and a conversation gets started. “Hey, how do you like Eat, Pray, Love? Have you read such & such yet?” It’s suddenly easy to find commonality, even with total strangers.
And while Henkin is right—many more authors deserve our attention—perhaps book club lists have more variety than expected.
Take a look at the list below. It’s a sampling of titles that have cropped up recently on LitLovers website—some are mentioned by our featured book clubs, others come from people who email me to request a reader’s guide. It’s an interesting list.
Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie — Half of a Yellow Sun
Murray Bail — Eucalyptus
Lynne Cox — Grayson
Ivan Doig — Whistling Season; the McCaskill trilogy
Jennifer Cody Epstein — The Painter from Shanghai
Dorothea Benton Frank — Sullivan’s Island
Victor Fankl — Man’s Search for Meaning
Tana French — In the Woods
Beth Gutcheon — Good-bye and Amen; Leeway Cottage
Jim Harrison — Returning to Earth
Kent Haruf — Plainsong; Eventide
Robert Hicks — Widow of the South
Paulette Jiles — Enemy Women
Lesley Kagen — Whistling in the Dark
Aryn Kyle — The God of Animals
Sinclair Lewis — Main Street
J. Nozipo Maraire – Zenzele: Letter for My Daughter
Roland Merullo — Breakfast with Buddha
David Mitchell — Ghostwritten
John O’Hara — Appointment in Samarra
Tom Perotta — Little Children; The Abstinence Teacher
Nancy Pickard — The Virgin of Small Plains
Anthony Powell — Dance to the Music of Time
Richard Powers — The Echo Maker
Reynolds Price — Kate Vaiden
Tatiana de Rosnay — Sarah’s Key
Mary Doria Russell — The Sparrow
Helen Santmyer — And Ladies of the Club
Carol Shields — Stone Diaries; Unless
Ahdaf Soueif — The Map of Love
Nancy Turner — These Is My Words
Larry Watson — Sundown, Yellow Moon; Montana 1948
See all posts on Joshua Henkin’s book club essay.
Do you ever find yourself mourning the end of a book—you finish the last sentence, and it's like saying goodbye to a dear friend?
I’d been reading Richard Ford’s The Lay of the Land. By the time I reached the end, I’d become so caught up in Frank Bascombe’s mind—his life and his ideas about life—that it was hard to leave him.
Then I turned around to start a new book, and I found it hard. Like making new friends—it required energy and commitment.
Do I even like these people? Do I really want to spend time with them? Do I want to make the effort to learn all about them? Hopefully, we stick with the book, to the point where the story sucks us in—and we beoome engaged once again. Of course...then it's eventually goodbye.
Questions for Book Clubs
1. Which books have been hard ones for you to end—it feels like saying goodbye to dear friends?
2. Which books have you had difficulty getting caught up in? You’re not sure you’ve got the energy or interest to invest in getting to know a new group of people.
Check out LitLovers newest Featured LitClub—a brainy group of New Yorkers, who tackle the Booker Prize awards list (winners and nominees). That’s some impressive reading!
They also have a great idea for any book club—a Book Swap. The group organized a Swap at a library in SoHo (SoHo…ah, how cool izat?) in conjunction with a Peace Corp veterans book club. It proved so successful the library wants to make it a seasonal event.
The two groups are also considering a joint read and discussion. The Peace Corp group reads international books, which ties in beautifully with the Booker Prize list. *
* Britain’s Man Booker Prize is awarded to English-written novels by authors from the 54-member [British] Commonwealth of Nations, plus Ireland and Zimbabwe. Commonwealth nations include countries in Africa, the South Pacific, and the Carribbean, as well as Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand.
If you love books on a certain theme…you’ll love Flashlight Worthy Book Recommendations, a new site that lists books thematically. So far the site has 370 different lists, in 50+ categories, with nearly 5,000 books. Here’s a tiny sample:
Flashlight Worthy Lists
Books About . . .
Families in Fiction and Memoir
Women of Another Era
Abraham Lincoln
Dystopia
Crime Fiction–About Women By Women
Love–That Your Club Probably Hasn’t Read Yet
African-Americans–Not Just for Black History Month
WASPS
Madness We Can All Relate to
With the Sea in Sight
So head on over to the website to find some great ideas and recommendations for your book club…or just for yourself.
Imagine this: you're staying at a swank hotel in New York City, you're drinking and dining and hobnobbing with literary luminaries, and you receive a giftbag...like the ones handed out at kiddie birthday parties. Only not like them.
Your giftbag contains 12 books...delivered to your hotel room...and selected by a Pulitizer Prize winning author. For you. All for you. Oh! Happy daze, happy daze!
Such is the fate of the Poor Unfortunates who participated in the PEN Festival of International Literature starting April 30, 2012. The reigning Pulitzer winner, by the way, is still Jennifer Egan for A Visit from the Goon Squad. She was invited to select the books for the giftbag—here's what she chose...and why:
Emma by Jane Austen
Politics masquerading as matrimony. Austen was a mathematician of social interaction, and her novels are impossibly, preposterously good. Emma happens to be my favorite.
The Image by Daniel J. Boorstin
In 1961, before the Vietnam War was close to being televised, Boorstin identified...a longing for authenticity that naturally results from increased mediation of human experience. His observations hold eerily true even in the era of Facebook and YouTube.
Don Juan by Lord Byron
Who can resist an epic poem in which the protagonist gets shipwrecked, hides in a harem (and then is chosen by the sultan for an evening of pleasure), has a fling with Catherine the Great, and endless other romps—all narrated in Byron's slouchy, sinuous poetry?
Underworld by Don Delillo
My favorite American novel of the past 25 years. A gigantic vision of the Cold War and its aftermath, in which DeLillo manages to be sweeping, intimate, political, hilarious, and sad.
Middlemarch by George Elliot
A quintessentially swaggering 19-century English novel, thrillingly attentive to a sweep of diverse characters, and impossible to put down.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
A surreal tale that exposes the ravages of racial persecution, yet ultimately subsumes them in a meditation on identity and transformation, whose proportions are nothing short of mythic.
The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
Utterly unique: a flexible, sharply written, wide-ranging story that encompasses the life of a young Australian woman who comes to England.
The Golden Notebook by Dorris Lessing
An epic, experimental yet utterly human work that manages to fuse a political vision (disillusionment with communism) with a social one (women, men, and the collisions between them).
Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys
Tough, bleak, and deeply atmospheric. Rhys wrests a gripping--even phantasmagoric--narrative from the solitary perambulations of an alcoholic woman in Pais.
Tristam Shandy by Laurence Sterne
One of the first novels in English...and a bouyant, postmodern romp. A heart reminder of the power,malleability, and deep playfulness of the novel form.
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Tragic in the classical sense, yet also hilarious, nuanced, and socially astute; the novel's cool assessment of the calculus of beauty and wealth rings true even in our radically divverent era.
Germinal by Emile Zola
My favorite reportorial 19th-century novel. A vivid story full of spectacular set pieces--like a horse being lowered into a coal mine--and also a brutal indictment of the mining industry's exploitation of its workers.
Thanks to The Daily Beast. And thanks, to my dear librarian, Lynne Schneider, at the Sewickley Public Library, for handing me the printout.
Quite a list. If you've not read them all...well, most of us haven't. They don't spring easily to mind...nor to the top of everyone's reading list. But HERE's THE QUESTION: what would you choose to be in the giftbag?
You read ... and read ... and you read. And you think you’re pretty well up on authors.
Then you come across one who’s written 8 books—8 mind you!—and you don’t have a clue. You feel so, so ... can I say it... sob ... so UNREAD!!
That’s what happened with Elinor Lipman. Somewhere I came across her name. Hmmm ... that’s vaguely familiar, but only vaguely ... I check her out ... and holy cow! Stunned I am—by her body of work and the fine reviews she’s garnered over the years. So where have I been?
Why isn’t Lipman on the lips of every book club member in the country? She’s funny, smart, perceptive…and her dialogue crackles. We should be reading her!
I’m working my way backward through her books. So far I’ve read My Latest Grievance, The Pursuit of Alice Thrift and Dearly Departed. Wonderful... Check out our reading guides for Lipman’s other 4 novels — they’re on our LitGuide index...L for Lipman!
I plan on reading all 8 novels ... sometime.
Boooo...! Halloween’s coming up. A reader asked me to come up with ideas for spooky mystery novels. The writer herself suggested Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale. Good one!
Here are some I came up with—mostly older works:
- Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, 1938 (an all-time favorite)
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, 1847 (the mad women in the attic)
- The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, 1859-60 (scrumptious)
- The Hound of the Baskervilles by Conan Doyle, 1091-02 (the great Sherlock and Watson)
- Twilight by Stephanie Meyer, 2003 (we have guides for the complete vampire series)
- Anything scary by Stephen King… Any particular suggestions from anyone?
If anyone has some other ideas, let us know. We’d love to hear from you.
Gone Girl (Rosamund Pike, Ben Affleck) Before I Go to Sleep (Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth)
LOOK at them! These gorgeous people with their messed-up marriages—they captivate us. Of course, they're just characters out of BOOKS, who now find themselves writ extra large on screen, but still...
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By our count, at least eight domestic thrillers have hit the shelves since 2011 and 2012—with the publication of Before I Go to Sleep and Gone Girl.
Considering the immense attention the books have garnered—both book sales and movie rights—it seems we can't get enough. The question is, why?
Why this morbid fascination? All eight books deal with psychopathically CREEPY marriages; surely, their wide appeal taps into some underlying anxiety on our part. And we haven't even taken TV's Wives with Knives into account!
At the very least, the number of books—and their popularity—suggest a new and disturbing attitude toward marriage, which has always been considered the sine qua non of a fulfilling life. Every single person knows far too well that ubiquitous question, "Ever going to get married?"
Maybe it's a suspicion of intimacy, a growing fear that genuine connection is unattainable. All the books reflect an innate distrust of "the other"—indeed, their overarching theme is the impossibility of truly knowing another being, even spouses.
Or perhaps we suspect marriage is no longer up to the task of functioning as a stabilizing or cohesive force in life. Certainly none of the marriages in these books stave off chaos and loneliness. Just the opposite.
But, oh, pshaw! Here we go again, fooling around with mole hills and mountains. As a genre, creepy thrillers have a long history as great entertainment—think Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde...even Hamlet...or go way back to Oedipus, for that matter. This is probably just one more pop culture phenomenon—like Zombies.
But Dear Reader, it's hard to think all this means NOTHING. After all, isn't literature supposed to be about SOMETHING? (Oh, and the Zombie craze? It's raised similar questions...)
So what do you think? Any ideas?
—By Kristi Spuhler for LitLovers—The graphic novel has been fighting a tough battle. Many of us have been too quick to pass off panel comics in favor of traditional books, but in truth we may not know what we’re missing.
Breaking away from spandex-clad superheroes, graphic novels have taken on more serious subject matter—often diving into the realms of historical fiction and autobiographies.
Rich with complicated plot lines and well-developed characters, graphic novels take the art of storytelling in a completely new direction. By incorporating poignant images with well-crafted prose, graphic novels break down slow-moving descriptions into swift actions.
Caught your attention yet? Just in case, take a look at the list we’ve compiled—some of the best stories to ease you into the world of speech bubbles!
Graphic Novels
Watchmen - Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons
The only graphic novel that has been included on the NY Times 100 Best Novels List, Watchmen follows a group of retired superheroes through 1985 America as they try to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes
Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
This autobiographical graphic novel follows the author through her childhood and early adult years in Iran during and after the Islamic Revolution. In 2010, Newsweek ranked Persepolis #5 on its list of the top 10 books of the decade.
Maus - Art Spiegleman
This graphic novel, penned by the popular contributing illustrator of the New Yorker, depicts the author interviewing his father, a Polish Jew, about his experiences during the Holocaust.
The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes - Neil Gaiman, Sam Keith, Mike Dringenberg
This dark fantasy follows Dream (aka Morpheus) on his quest to find his three magical objects of power after a wrongful 70 year imprisonment at the hands of an evil magician.
Scott Pilgrim - Bryan Lee O’Malley
The title character of this spunky graphic novel is in love—but there are complications. The story follows Scott through a video game-inspired landscape as he battles to defeat his girlfriend’s seven evil exes.
The Walking Dead - Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Cliff Rathburn, Tony Moore
After being shot in the line of duty, Rick Grimes wakes from a coma to discover that his town has been overrun with walking corpses. The story follows Rick and a group of fellow survivors as they struggle against the odds in a post-apocalyptic world.
V For Vendetta - Alan Moore, David Lloyd
Simply put, the titular character, V, seeks vengeance for those in a corrupt government who have wronged him.
Here's the challenge—pick one of these graphic novels (or any other). Give it a try, and let us know what you think. Tell us which novel...and your thoughts. We'd love to hear back.
Janet is one of those wonderful occurrences of the 21st century—an internet friend. Her blog, Riehl Life, continually demonstrates a love of life’s gifts. And Janet has a gift of her own: a talent for poetry and ear for music.
I’ve invited Janet here to talk about the two projects in The Sightlines Collection: her book Sightlines: a Poet’s Diary and now a new CD, Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music, which brings in music by her 93-year-old father along with his family stories and banter at the recording session in his parlor.
So here’s Janet—
Molly: Janet, tell us what inspired you to produce The Sightlines Collection.
Janet: It covered a three-and-a-half year period. After my sister died in a car crash in August 2004, I began commuting from Northern California back to SW Illinois to our family homeplace. My father and I cared for my mother there. It was a hard time. But, out of the truth I found there, I wrote Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary.
My birthday is at the end of the year. I went into a small retreat where I received a clear leading that I needed to listen to the truth and meaning of this period in my life…and write a book to help others. When I returned to my parents’ place after this, I began the book. It flowed out in the form of story poems. This was an easy and effective way to tell my story. This form also provided a good way to make the story accessible, even to readers who weren’t keen on poetry.
After its publication, I gave talks and workshops in the Midwest and West to get the word out. Folks told me that hearing me read these poems added so much meaning to them. Several people suggested that I record them. I’d had this in mind for several years, but didn’t know how to proceed. In Spring 2008 I’d planned to visit two of my closest blogging buddies in Nashville. Suddenly, it occurred to me that the time had come for me to make the audio book.
Indeed, it had! One of my buddies—Yvonne Perry—suggested Scott Kidd, her son-in-law as my sound engineer. Suddenly, we were on the way. The music was recorded in my father’s parlor, and I recorded the 90 poems in Scott’s home studio. It took us eight months to produce, but moved smoothly the whole way.
Molly: Any tips for our book club members?
Janet: Yes. When preparing for the book club, use the Sightlines Collection as a package. Read the book while listening to the audio book. Taking in the material through both your eyes and ears leads even more directly to your heart. At the meeting queue up tracks on the audio book to enhance and deepen your discussion.
Molly:
Here are a few tips of my own:
1. First of all, to purchase Janet’s Sightlines (the print only version) go here: iUniverse. Buy the new CD version here: CD Baby
2. To learn more about Janet and her collection, check out our Reading Guide for Sightlines.
3. Download the delicious recipe for scrapple that Janet and her father have kindly provided. It would be fun to serve at a meeting devoted to Sightlines.
This comment caught my eye, from a Publishers Weekly review of Bridget Asher’s The Pretend Wife.
It’s more than a little disappointing...that Asher inserts an improbably happy ending.
Ouch. I’m not sure which word is more distressing in that sentence: “disappointing” or “improbably.” And here’s another comment on happy endings, this one from Josh Henkin, author of Matrimony:
Nothing is more depressing than a happy ending that feels tacked on, and there can be great comfort in literature that doesn’t admit to easy solutions, just as our lives don’t. From I Laughed! I Cried – 9/19/08.
Fortunately, Henkin isn’t discounting happy endings per se, only those that feel forced or “tacked on” (i.e., improbable). Still, there’s the suggestion that happy endings are “easy solutions.”
Some questions for Book Clubs . . .
- What kind of books do you like to read? Ones with happy endings—always ... mostly ... sometimes?
- What about the great works of literature…so many end on unhappy notes? Does that mean books with happy endings aren’t considered good literature?
- Do all happy endings feel manipulative, or as Henkin says, ”tacked on”? Can books end happily in a natural, unforced manner?
It’s late in the game, I know. But I just finished reading ALL 7 HARRY POTTER BOOKS. I’d avoided them up to now because…
1. They’re for KIDS
2. I don't like FANTASY
3. Way too much HYPE
4. I’m swamped with a long list of "MUST-READS."
Turns out, I was misguided—on all 4 counts. Apologies to the millions of HP fans—I’m now one of you. ICH BIN EIN HARRY POTTER-ER!!!!
Some thoughts on Harry Potter books
- They're complex—seven long novels with interlocking plots, details, secrets and characters. How did Rowling keep track of it all? Post-it notes… index cards… spread sheets… interlocking charts?
- They're funny—portraits on the walls that talk and leave their home frames to visit to their neighboring portraits. There are schoolbooks with titles like "Which Broom" and "One Minute Feasts—It’s a Miracle!" and much, much more.
- They're mythological—represent the archetypal hero's journey; peppered with parallels to Greek, Druid, and Norse mythology.
- They've got rich, long sentences—some real doozies, stretching out to 50 words! FIFTY! They’re lovely things, encouraging kids (and adults) to appreciate complex thoughts along with what it takes to express those thoughts.
Granted, the writing on occasion is clunky, the storyline over-plotted, and villains cartoonish—but all of that’s incidental considering the totality of Rowling’s project. I’m enthralled… and surprised that I am! If you haven’t read Harry Potter… do!
For book clubs, we have Reading Guides for all seven… with discussion questions.
"I don't give a damn"? That's it? The end? A thousand pages (and let's be honest here: that 2nd part really d-r-a-g-s) ... just so Rhett can tell Scarlett to take a hike?Sometimes we don't like an author's choices, but what's a reader do? Well, some take matters into their own hands and turn themselves into writers. Thus the birth of Fanfiction [fæn'-fik-shun].
Fanfiction is just what it sounds like—amateur stories crafted by a fan of a particular work, featuring the same characters but a different plot...or point of view...or ending. Critics may debate its merit, but fanfiction is gaining in popularity—and it looks like it’s here to stay!
Take a look at FanFiction, a site that hosts 100s-of-1,000s of stories created by readers who want something more from a book...or maybe who simply want to pit their own nascent talents against the pros. Here's a smattering of what's offered:
Original Works # of Fanfiction Spinoffs Harry Potter 685,000 Twilight 216,000 Hunger Games 39,500 Pride and Prejudice 3,400 Gone With the Wind 838 The Fault in Our Stars 494 Kite Runner 57 One Hundred Years of Solitude 3 Room 1
Have some fun reading any of these re-works: Click HERE to see the complete list—1,000s of original works which have led to spinoffs. Then just scan down the list and click . . . wherever.
Though some in the published world support fanfiction (Meg Cabot, author of the Princess Diaries series got her start writing fanfiction), other well-known authors—George R.R. Martin and Anne Rice, to name two—resent budding writers who try to gain exposure by piggy-backing on their works.
On the other hand, where's the line in determining what stories are fanfiction and which aren't? Remember Gregory Maguire's Wicked and Jeany Ryhs' Wide Sargasso Sea? They're only two of a very long list of reimaginings of famous works. Even Gone With the Wind has its spinoffs.
For a better appreciation of just how much literary reworking is done, see our LitBlog post from 2010: Old Wine in New Bottles.
Still, while it can be flattering for authors to have their works emulated by an aspiring writer, it can be equally as frustrating to fight of iterations of a story that aren't what the author imagined.
What do you think? Is fanfiction good writing practice for buddingwriters? Or is it muddying the waters for readers?
—Kristi Spuhler for LitLovers
Ever get that “ah-ha!” feeling when reading? You come across a passage that practically shouts, “Hey, pal. Pay attention—this is YOU we're talkin' about.” It’s eerie, sometimes unnerving.
One of the narrators of Nicole Krauss’s Great House describes herself in a lengthy passage…and I felt an itch of recognition, a not very pleasant itch either…so I won’t quote it here.
But I love that books can do that…make us see ourselves…recall feelings and experiences…and put them into words! It’s uncanny.
Question for Book Clubs
Was there a particular character—or moment—in the book you’re reading now that gave you a sense of self-recognition? What about in other books? If you’ve come across those passages, can you recall how they made you feel?
A recent quip from the New York Times about book clubs caught my ire. It’ll probably catch yours, too. So here it is…
Gaggles of readers get together monthly to sip chardonnay and discuss the latest Oprah selection.*
Ouch. Don’t know about you, but that sounds a little…oh, I dunno… condescending? Not to get too upset about an analogy to unruly geese, but it’s kind of a potshot to all those who get together, out of a passion for literature, to talk (not honk) about something of value—books!
So…are mindless cocktail parties better? I’m just asking….
And what’s wrong with Oprah selections? —Breath, Eyes, Memory; Edgar Sawtelle; 3 Faulkner novels (Faulkner!); House of Sand & Fog; We Were the Mulvaneys. That’s some pretty good reading.
To counter that unfortunate “gaggle” image (nothing against geese…understand?), I offer, again, two defenses of book clubs: one by moi and one by Joshua Henkin, author of Matrimony:
- Book Clubs—Smarter than Critics?
An April 2008 post on LitLovers Blog quoting Josh Henkin- Saving the World—One Book Club at a Time
My March 2009 guest post on the literary blog, Books on the Brain
Oh, heck…maybe I’m just over reacting. Honk. Honk.
* Mokoto Rich. ”The Book Club with Just One Member.” New York Times, “Week in Review” section (1.24.10)
For LitLovers of ALL ages: we couldn't resist sharing this gem—Three Little Horses by Dutch children's author Piet Worm (1909-1966). One of our readers, contacted us to see if we could help her recall the title of a favorite childhood book, one she remembers from her grandmother's house.
We were clueless (not for the first time)—but she persevered and graciously sent us the results. Thank you, Sue! Some text was lost when we brightened up the photo, but we added a bit more contrast so you could decipher some of Piet's story.
Here's Piet Worm himself. Is he climbing IN or OUT of his imaginative world here? (Lovely metaphor.)
If you have a favorite childhoold book, let us know. But, for heaven's sake, PLEASE don't ask us to help you recall the title. We don't like feeling clueless!
We're worried if not downright panicked. So, of course, GALLOWS HUMOR is on the rise—proof once again that humans will always find a way to laugh in dire times.
Please allow me a DISCLAIMER:
Many find humor tasteless right now—especially if they've taken ill or know someone who has. But laughter is in no way meant to denigrate the seriousness of the virus or make light of how precarious life has become.
Neuroscience tells us that laughing has a BENEFICIAL affect, triggering the release of endorphins, our brain's natural mood elevator, and suppressing cortisol, a stress inducing hormone.
Above are a few memes that have popped up in my texts and emails, brightening my day.* So please, find HUMOR, share a LAUGH, and feel KINSHIP. We're in this together.
♥ Thanks to my sister, Janet, who always keeps me laughing.
Let me tell you how easy it is to get over your attachment to books—the kind with paper pages? Once you hold this gorgeous book-machine (yes, machine) in your hand, you won’t want to let go. Ever.
It’s surprisingly easy on the eye—so you can read for hours, even even bump up the type size. It’s easy to flip from page to page and back again. You can bookmark pages, highlight passages, even make notes! You’re automatically connected to Amazon, so with a click of a button, you buy your books—and they’re downloaded within a minute. Ooooooooh… I’m in love!
But dear librarians, here’s the question: what will you do? If our books become electronic, what’s the future for libraries? I know librarians all over the country are asking this very question—I read your blogs. (Wow, do you guys blog!) And what will become of bricks-and-mortar book stores?
Oh, how did I get my Kindle? After all, they’re not cheap. Well, my dear friend Lynne presented it to me as a gift! Give her a call. Maybe she’ll take a liking to you and get you one, too. Here’s her number: 202-555-1234. Good luck.
My 3rd post* on Josh Henkin’s excellent essay about book clubs. Henkin (author of Matrimony) speaks with book groups all over the country, and here’s what he would like to see happen when we talk about books:
- Less discussion about which characters are likable: (Think of all the great literature populated by unlikable characters.)
- Less of a wish for happy endings: (Nothing is more depressing than a happy ending that feels tacked on, and there can be great comfort in literature that doesn’t admit to easy solutions, just as our lives don’t.)
- Less of a wish that novels make arguments: (The business of the novelist is to tell a story and to make characters come sufficiently to life that they feel as real to the reader as the actual people in their lives.)
Books on the Brain, April, 29, 2008
Dear reader, we’re up a creek. Henkin’s points are well-taken, but since we’re not professional critics, and if we shouldn’t talk about characters, endings, or themes—then what do we talk about when talking about books, especially when it’s our turn to lead the discussion? (Me? Lead the discussion? Please, I’d rather have the flu.)
If it’s high anxiety for you at your book club—give the discussion resources a try on our main website. You may find they help.
• Reading Guides for specific titles and discussion questions.
• Discussion Tips
• Generic Questions for Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk —a guided-reading chart.
• LitCourse—our 10 short, free online courses.
See all my posts on Josh Henkin’s book club essay:
So pretty. So Blonde. So articulate. Did I mention thin? On top of that, she writes Eat, Pray, Love, a terrific bestseller. (Me? I’d have called it Eat, Eat, Eat…but then it’s her book, and as I said, she’s thin.)
I ran across her on a video interview on the "Barnes & Noble Studio" page, Meet the Authors. It’s fun place to visit—good interviews with interesting authors.
Also check out Borders Book Club, another set of videos featuring an Ann Arbor, Michigan, book club that invites top authors in to speak.
Book Clubs can get some good ideas of books to read, authors to check out, discussion questions to ask. The videos are interesting enough to play in your meetings.
case you hadn't noticed, the novel seems to be getting longer and longer, some clocking in at 700-800+ pages. In a gag news article we wrote a while back, we riffed on the idea of authors taking performance enhancing drugs, enabling them to pound out longer and longer sentences, leading to "stupefyingly longer" books.
Now someone's pushing back. Although publishers have pressed him "to write longer books," Welsh author Cynan Jones praises the short novel.
He points to The Old Man and the Sea, They Shoot Horses Don't They?, Animal Farm, even Gatsby (though Fitzgerald worried it was too short). Here's Cynan Jones on the subject:
I've never met a reader who doesn't like short novels.... For me, the opportunity to sit somewhere for two hours and read a book from start to finish—to submerge myself in it—is a thrilling experience. A short novel makes a straightforward demand: give me this time.Readers don't buy books by the the pound, Jones points out. And publishers should get over their obsession with longer works. "The only thing to be taken into account should be the impact a piece of writing has," says Jones. Yep, we couldn't agree more.
Cynan Jones is the author of The Dig and, more recently, Everything I Found on the Beach. The full article can be read in Publisher's Weekly.
Joshua Henkin is one of my favorite writers: his 2008 novel, Matrimony, was chosen as a NY Times Notable Book and reviewed here four years ago. His newest novel, The World Without You (2012) has received stellar reviews—phrases like "subtle and ingenious," "blazingly alive...a living, breathing world," "powerful and unexpected...compassionate and beguiling." See LitLovers Book Review.From my keyboard to your eyes—READ THIS BOOK! It's the story of a family that gathers a year after their son and brother Leo was kidnapped and killed in Iraq. Parents, siblings, and Leo's widow meet in remembrance and grief...as they struggle to live in a world without him.
Joshua has generously "stopped by" to answer some questions about his newest novel, and LitLovers is delighted to welcome him.
Q Not a lot happens in The World Without You in terms of plot—though a good deal does happen among characters. You seem to prefer character-driven over plot-driven stories. Why is that?
You’re not the first person to say that not a lot happens in The World Without You in terms of plot, and while I understand what you’re saying, I disagree. A son has been killed in the Iraq War. His parents are splitting up from the grief. His widow has a new boyfriend. There’s a lot of plot there.
That said, I think you’re fundamentally right, in that my fiction is always less concerned with what happens than with the characters who act and are acted upon. I think plot is important for fiction (you are, after all, telling a story, and a writer should never forget that), but the greatest plot in the world won’t be of interest to the reader if the characters don’t come alive on the page.
To me, fiction is first and foremost about characters. I want my readers to feel at the end of my book that they know my characters as well as or better than they know the people in their own lives. If I’ve done that, then I’ve succeeded.
Q The characters in The World Without You are beautifully realized—each clearly delineated from the others. How do you invent them—all the grainy details of their personalities and behavior? Do you find yourself, say, brushing your teeth...when an idea jumps out at you? Do you deliberate? Do you hold conversations with them? Do the characters ever take over? How does the miracle occur?
The miracle occurs slowly over time. You live with your characters day in and day out for years, and eventually they come to be fully formed. Who is your character? the writer should ask. Where did she grow up? What kind of work does she do? Does she like spinach? Does she sleep on her back, her stomach, or her side? It may seem inconsequential to know (much less describe) how a character sleeps, but not if the gesture is laden with meaning, as all gestures in fiction should be. Does the character who sleeps on her side do so because she doesn’t like the smell of her husband’s breath? Does she do so because she hears better out of one ear than the other and if she sleeps on her good ear she won’t be able to hear when her child cries out at night?
In my last novel, Matrimony, Julian meets his eventual-wife Mia after having spotted her in their college facebook. He dubs her Mia from Montreal. I wrote that phrase instinctively, probably because my own girlfriend freshman year of college was named Laura, and my roommate called her Laura from Larchmont. I liked the alliterative sound of those words.
Before I wrote Mia from Montreal, I had no idea where Mia came from. But she had to come from somewhere, and Montreal seemed as good a place as any. But then I had to own up to what I’d written. How did Mia’s family get to Montreal? Had they lived there for centuries? Were they expatriates, and if so, from where? And how did Mia end up back in the States, in western Massachusetts, for college?
I could have chosen Mia from Madagascar or Mia from Maryland, and if I’d chosen Mia from Maryland, there might have been, for all I know, a long section in Matrimony about her family’s tangled relationship with the clamming industry. But she wasn’t Mia from Maryland, she was Mia from Montreal, and so I discovered that her father had gone to teach physics at McGill, forcing her mother to abandon her career in the process, and that Mia, out of loyalty to her mother, decided to retrace her mother’s steps back to Massachusetts.
I knew none of this until I wrote the words Mia from Montreal, just as the writer who has a character who sleeps on her side doesn’t know why she sleeps on her side until she does so.
Q Noelle is the hardest character in the book to like (though we come to develop sympathy, maybe even affection, for her). How difficult is it to create characters that you know readers will find irritating? Do you dislike them as you write them?
As a writer, you have to love all your characters—not love them as human beings, certainly, but love them as characters, which means you have to take them seriously and respect their humanity and complexity. If you don’t, they won’t be real and you won’t be speaking the emotional truth. So while I could tell you that I’d rather go out to dinner with one than another, rather be stranded on a desert island with one than another, as characters, as my creations, they’re all equal; I play no favorites.
But that’s a different question from making your characters likable. This is one of the great myths of fiction writing—that characters have to be likable. Think of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories. There’s not a likable character in the bunch. But those are some of the most brilliant, most affecting stories around.
In fact, it seems to me that one of the pleasures of good fiction is that it allows us to enjoy the company of people on the page whose company we wouldn’t enjoy in real life. The writer’s obligation is to make his characters interesting, complicated, fully human, not to make them likable. A complicated, fully human, flesh-and-blood jerk is far preferable to a dull nice guy.
Q The book centers around Leo, who was killed before the book begins. Yet he gradually takes form and shape—to the point where he seems as developed as the others. Is it difficult to bring a dead character to life on the page when he can't speak for himself?
Leo is, in fact, the great hovering absence in the book, and the issue you’re pointing to gets at one of the challenges of writing a novel like this one—not just in terms of Leo but in general. In a book that takes place over seventy-two hours and that is so engaged with the past, you need to fold in a lot of flashback without slowing down the forward movement of the book.
That was probably the biggest aesthetic challenge I faced with this novel. In terms of Leo specifically—yes, it’s a challenge to bring a character to life who’s not there to speak for himself, but what I would say is that what this novel needs to do is less allow Leo to speak for himself than allow others to speak about him.
Because The World Without You isn’t about Leo—he’s dead. It’s about the family’s memories of Leo and their often contradictory interpretations of who he was, clouded as these interpretations are by grief and by different experiences of him when he was alive. That’s where my interest lies—not in Leo, but in how the rest of the family perceived him.
Q You've written elsewhere about a book's "theme," warning readers against looking for a central idea or lesson. Can you explain what you mean? If not a central idea, what do you hope your readers will come away after reading The World Without You?
Critics think in terms of theme; novelists don’t. A friend of mine in college wrote her psychology thesis on how adults group objects versus how kids group objects. Adults group the apple with the banana, and kids group the monkey with the banana. That’s a way of saying that kids are more natural storytellers than adults are, and it’s the writer’s job to teach herself to think like a child again, albeit like a smart, sophisticated child.
Critics are apple-banana people, and novelists are monkey-banana people. Which isn’t to say there aren’t themes in my novels, just that I don’t and can’t think about them as I write. I have to keep my eye on the prize, and the prize is my characters and my story. That’s what I’m focused on, nothing more and nothing less.
Q Let's talk about book clubs, of which I know you're a huge supporter. You wrote once that book clubs are smart...that they've offered insights into your work that has surprised you. Can you be more specific?
I’ve talked to so many book clubs that it’s hard to remember what I learned from whom, but I do think book clubs are incredibly valuable. I direct Brooklyn College’s fiction MFA program, so I spend a lot of my time with some of the most talented young writers around, and when I’m not spending time with them I’m spending time with my characters. It’s good to get out of my daily life, and out of my head.
I’m not in a book club because my life is a book club, and what I like about talking to book clubs is that you’re in a room with a dozen really smart people whose lives aren’t book clubs. These are just regular readers who take a day a month out of their busy lives to discuss your book, and it gives you a whole new perspective on what you’ve written, and so I’m incredibly grateful to them for that. Also, they’ve just read your book, so a lot of times they know your book better than you do!
Josh wrote a terrific guest blog piece for Books on the Brain back four years ago—about book clubs. It was so good that LitLovers devoted four separate articles on our own Blog to talk about it. Take some time to read them.... Here are the links
• Are Book Clubs Smarter Than Book Critics?
• So Where Are the Guys?
• How Do We Talk About Books?
• Are We All Reading the Same Books?
Also, be sure to check out Josh Henkin's website. There's fascinating video interview with Book Chase TV.
Really, this guy's so good looking—especially if you go for wonky men with GOOD HAIR and a great pair of horned-rims. He's so… so… writer-ly.
But he can't get a break in the media, at least not on Twitter—which is where it all started.
In promoting his newest novel, Crosswords, Jonathan Franzen's publishers touted him as "THE leading writer of his generation" (caps mine).
That's a statement bound to get a reaction. And it does.
One writer quickly retweets that no matter how lauded and applauded any female author's works are, SHE "will never, ever, be called 'the greatest living American writer.'"
In that same publicity announcement, the publishers go on to tweet that Franzen, in this newest work, places the family in all its "intricacy" at the book's center.
So this gets Roxanne Gay to wondering. Gay (no slouch herself, btw) tweets back asking… Hey, wait. Haven't ALL Franzen's novels centered on the family? In other words, what's the big deal about THIS one that earns him kudos as THE GREATEST WRITER? She's sort of like… ah, c'mon!
Then a guy who writes for an online journal jumps into the DUMPSTER FIRE with these choice words: "Franzen’s a good novelist. Sorry?"
But what does he even mean? Why "SORRY?" Is he sorry because he refers to Franzen as "good" but not "great"? Or is he sorry that others are resentful? Or sorry for himself? And what's with the QUESTION MARK at the end of "sorry"?
Anyway, it's all nutz.
You may remember, 20 years ago, Franzen made literary headlines by dissing Oprah, who had chosen his family-centered novel, The Corrections, for her book club. But Franzen declined!! He didn't want his work given the imprimatur of a woman's book-club pick—because then…omg, MEN WOULDN'T TOUCH IT.
So poor Franzen, there he was, seemingly dissing both Queen Oprah AND women. Whoa! A trifecta (minus one).
Hold on—not so fast. Novelist Meg Wolitzer (no slouch either) has pointed to the same phenomenon, that men don't want to read novels about complex relationships—uh, no thanks, that's for GIRLS.
Let's be honest: Franzen's and Wolitzer's comments say more about men's sensibilities than women's. (See our jokey posts on co-ed book clubs—this one and this one, too.)
One more thing. I had the thrill of hearing Franzen in a live lecture several years back. It was essentially a master class in the ART OF WRITING. Members of the audience, many of them hopeful young writers, asked some of the sharpest, most astute questions I've yet to hear in a lecture—and Franzen was MARVELOUS. Sadly, I can't recall a single thing he said. But I do remember the hair. And his glasses. (Did I mention he's good-looking?)
By Kristi Spuhler for LitLoversThe way we read, and what we read, has been going through quite a transformation. With publishers focusing solely on what makes a bestseller, many exciting and groundbreaking reads are being passed over in favor of more cookie-cutter options. What’s a writer to do?
To find a way around these roadblocks many budding writers, as well as many previously published authors are turning to alternate methods to get their works published. According to Bowker, self-published titles saw a 59 percent increase from 2011 to 2012. And that number continues to grow.
With so many writers scrounging for the next best way to make sure their work makes it to the eyes of readers, one idea seems to be catching quite a bit of attention—Unbound.
A new groundbreaking method for publishing a work of writing, Unbound offers both established and budding authors the chance to go directly to the source when looking for the funds to publish their books—the readers! Much like similar sites Kickstarter and GoFundMe, Unbound allows writers to appeal to friends, followers and interested parties to pledge donations to see a project through to completion.
Don’t think the project is all one sided! Pledging to a project has its own set of advantages for the contributor as well. Depending on the project and the amount that you agree to contribute to the cause, each individual contributor has access to a set of rewards such as a signed copy of the printed book, or one-on-one meetings with the author.
The process is quite simple. Once you sign up for an account you then have access to author videos pitching their next project. From there you can choose which books you want to endorse and how much you want to contribute. Once the author is fully funded, their work then begins the publishing process. It’s really that simple.
To date, Unbound has helped to publish 54 books and they’ve raised over £1 million in funds from users. In an interview with writer Jason Hesse from Forbes.com, Unbound founder Dan Kieran stated, “Our users love to be involved in the process and have critical taste. They are not passive consumers – they’re micro patrons.” Sounds to us like the perfect opportunity to have a hand in getting the books YOU want to read published
What do you think about giving the power in publishing back to the readers? Would you like to jump in and choose which books are written and published? Leave us a comment and tell us what you think!
(Image courtesy of Kate Ter Harr.)
A book club member emailed me the other day to say she found a certain book's Discussion Questions just TOO HARD. So I took a look. She was right—you need a Ph.D. to answer them...in fact, a whole damn village of Ph.Ds.
What to do? Well, I decided to replace the publisher-issued questions with my own set and sent them off to her. Fortunately, that seemed to do the trick.
The whole incident brings up a point—a book's Discussions Questions can feel more like a pop quiz than a discussion starter for book clubs. They're often more threatening than helpful.
So...what do you do if you want a good discussion? Try taking a look at our other LitLovers Discussion Resources. While they're not specific to a particular title, they can help you get to the meat of a book—either fiction or nonfiction. They're more helpful than scary.
Discussion help from LitLovers
- How to Discuss a Book
- Generic Disucssion Questions for Fiction and for Nonfiction
- Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
- LitCourse—our 10 free courses are short and fun
Too young to die. John Updike was only 77 and, many suspect, still taking copious notes as he drew his last breath in hospice care in Massachusetts on January 27.
His lifelong output was astonishing, not just in number but genre: novels, short stories, verse, essays, and criticism. On subject matter, he was equally wide-ranging, moving from literature and art to favorite subjects like golf and baseball.
Considered America’s preeminent recorder of the middle class, he gave “the mundane its beautiful hue,” as he himself put it. Some critics believe his sentences—lyrical things of beauty in themselves—lack the heft to carry ideas, but others feel his writing is a polished reflection of the world.
Critics find themselves hardpressed to pinpoint a single masterpiece, but most mention the Rabbit Tetrology (from 1960-90)—Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit is Rich; Rabbit at Rest—chronicling the life of fictional Harry Angstrong.
Other favorites include Couples, The Coup, The Witches of Eastwick and, recently, the Widows of Eastwick. But that short list doesn’t begin to cover the body of his work. My advice—get hold of an obituary in a major newspaper or national news magazine, where his oeuvre will be covered in depth.
- It would be fun to read Witches…then Widows of Eastwick. You might attempt the Rabbit Tetrology, too, though it’s not my favorite.
- For fun, read Updike's famous short story “A & P” in our free LitCourse 4. The story is a brilliant and funny, even bittersweet, coming of age story set in the 1950s. Also, take a look at the LitCourse Study Guide for for the story.
♥ Thanks to my dear friend Sybil.
Btw... the pea-green book—bottom shelf, center—reads: "Always Remember." Even when enlarged, it's hard to read.
I've said this before, but it bears repeating—we readers are a lucky bunch to have OTHER people willing to write novels for us. I certainly can't do it.
Here's what author Amos Oz has to say on wriitng:
It is like reconstructing the whole of Paris from Lego bricks. It’s about three-quarters-of-a-million small decisions. It’s not about who will live and who will die and who will go to bed with whom. Those are the easy ones.
It’s about choosing adjectives and adverbs and punctuation. These are molecular decisions that you have to take and nobody will appreciate.... That is the business of three-quarters-of-a-million decisions.
Wait...that's the hard part? PUNCTUATION? Nah, that's nowhere near the hard part. When someone says to me (and people have surely said it to you), "You should write a book," MY JAW DROPS in dumb wonderment. Just how smart do people think I am? (I'm not.) Even more to the point, just HOW EASY do they think writing novels is? (It isn't.)
A BAZILLION Legos—not a million—go into novel writing. Here's just some of the stuff authors have to think about—stuff we take for granted but then get ALL TETCHY over if authors get it wrong:
- WHO will tell the story, whose voice (or voices) will be used? (It better be a convincing.)
- WHAT information will be withheld? When will it be revealed? Who will reveal it, and how?
- IS the dialog believable—is it the way people really speak? (Not so easy.)
- HOW much research is needed to establish setting—location and era.
- HOW will the characters be shaped; how much depth will they be given; what will make them life-like and compelling?
- HOW will the plot be structured—what's the arc of the story?
- WHAT underlying concerns, themes, or ideas will suffuse the book? What big questions does the author want to explore?
- WHAT about all the literary stuff—imagery, symbolism / metaphor, irony, and allusions—which gives the story richness and resonance?
Writing is a hard-knock life. Too hard for the likes of me. AND YET, it's remarkable, isn't it, that with the rise of web-based self-publishing, lots and lots of people are heading to the key board to try their hand(s) at writing books.
Bless them one and all. They are BRAVE SOULS, brave souls indeed!
By Molly Lundquist, LitLovers.
Who doesn't want to be cool? Well, my friends, THIS is what cool looks like … and what it doesn't.
I'm a wanna be. Just when I deluded myself that—after all these years—I might be getting close, here comes LEIGH BARDUGO, author of the Grisha Trilogy (Shadow and Bone, etc.)
And now Leigh's got a brand new fantasy novel—Six of Crows, published to rave reviews. Think Oceans Eleven with a bunch of adolescents.
Not only is the book cool, but take a look at the photos of Leigh and friends on Instragam. Top row is Leigh. Bottom… guess who. Me. Cool? Not even close.
Lovely words from the book editors of The New York Times—
—Letter from the Book Editors
The New York Times Book Review, April 19, 2020
By Kathy Aspden, Author *
Writing is a lot like making a baby. Sometimes, it takes everything to get to the point of conception, and sometimes you don’t even remember having sex that night, but somehow a baby was conceived. Either way it all begins with a tiny seed that is planted in your heart (or your brain if that’s how you’re wired).
Even before conception, the image of your child is already materializing: "He’ll have my eyes, my husband’s lips, and hopefully not Uncle John’s nose…" In anticipation, a parent is creating a composite baby in their mind. It’s the same for writers. We envision different blends of traits, strengths and weaknesses for our characters.
"Composite Character" is a term I was certain I had invented, right up until I looked it up on Wikipedia. What I found was that I had been intuitively using a process that many writers and filmmakers have done forever - take two or more people from real life or experiences or even history, and meld them into one quirky, interesting person with the capability of being both deeply flawed (as most great characters are) and relatable. It was another case of my inventing something that somebody else had already invented (insert travel hammock, swinging screen door for sliders, the instant ballerina-bun maker).
The strange thing is that I can’t tell if my characters begin to remind me of someone who then creeps into my head as I write, or if there is already a person in my head whose traits have crept into my character. Anyone who knows me may have guessed that there’s probably more people in my head than is considered healthy. Whatever the reason, my characters tend to take on a lot of personality traits – like snowballs down a mountainside — as their stories progress.
I'm more aware of it when I'm writing screenplays. It's easier to have an actor to visualize as the script unfolds. And why wouldn’t an actress like Julianna Moore (with a little Diane Keaton thrown in) want to play the part of Grace Mitchell, a forty-nine-year-old author who has just written a successful self-help book decrying America’s obsession with youth, but stands to lose everything when she finds herself pregnant by a thirty-eight-year-old plastic surgeon? Great plot, right? (An Inconvenient Miracle is available for option if you happen to be a successful movie producer).
Anyway, back to these mixed-up characters of mine. What I came to realize was that my psychiatrist had been wrong; the voices in my head were a good thing. Working with the public, being part of a large family, inheriting a natural love of human interaction from both my mother and my father gave me a lifetime’s worth of crazy, loveable parts and pieces to choose from when writing. This mental/multi-tasking/ADD portion of my brain was finally paying off! On top of that, I found a great app that allowed me to see my combos by physically blending people.
Here’s my JulianneDianeKeatonMoore blend.
P.S. I also invented the first Transformer, the epitome of the composite character — a doll head that turned into a change purse. I didn’t call it a Transformer. I called it a Doll-head Purse.
* Kathy Aspden is the author of Baklava, Biscotti, and an Irishman, as well as a book reviewer for LitLovers.
If you're watching any one or more of these Book-to-TV iterations—or if you've got a favorite—let us know.
Books to TV True Blood—Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris is the inspiration behind TV's True Blood. The story follows waitress Sookie Stackhouse through Bon Temps—a factional Louisiana town inhabited by both vampires and humans. Dexter—The first novel in Jeff Lindsay's series Darkly Dreaming Dexter, provided the inspiration for the popular TV show. The story chronicles the life of Dexter Morgan, a blood- splatter analyst for the Miami police department who moonlights as a serial killer. Game of Thrones—The first installment in The Song of Ice and Fire series penned by George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones, inspired the hit HBO series. The story follows the leaders of several noble houses as they battle for the throne of the seven kingdoms. Orange Is the New Black—Piper Kerman's memoir spawned the Netflix original series by the same title. The plot revolves around Piper Chapman after she is sentenced to 15 months in Federal prison for her involvement with drug trafficking. Boardwalk Empire—Set during the prohibition era of the 1920s, Nelson Johnson's novel, Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City, centers around "Nucky" Thompson. The HBO series returns for its final season this fall (2014). Sleepy Hollow—Most everyone knows Washington Irving's tale of the headless horseman that terrorizes Sleepy Hollow. The FOX series of the same name gives the legend a modern facelift with a few new surprises. Justified—Based on Elmore Leonard's three works—Pronto, Riding the Rap, and Fire in the Hole—the TV series follows Raylan Givens as he enforces his own form of justice in his hometown of Harlan, Kentucky.
By Kristi Spuhler for LitLoversIf you're looking for a new read...but not QUITE ready for another long, involved one (a bit hungover from your last big one?), then head to the online journal Literal Latté.
The site's offerings, by published and unpublished writers, create the perfect blend of prose, poetry, and art. It's all just the right size to whet your appetite—like a sip of a carefully crafted cappuccino.
Debuting in 1994 as a print journal, Literal Latté was widely distributed throughout New York City's bookstores and coffeehouses. Its fresh approach to literature grabbed, and held, the attention of readers for nearly a decade.
Then in 2003 the journal published its last print copy. To broaden its reach—and share its writers with a wider audience—Literal Latté moved online, where it remains today as a go-to spot for both readers and writers.
For adventuresome and discerning readers (you, right?), it's a chance to find something new and exciting. For writers on the cusp of a publishing career, Literal Latté offers a way to distribute your work to an appreciative audience. (Go here to learn more about the submission process.)
So if you've got a few spare moments, pop on over to Literal Latté and take a look around. Be sure to let us know if, as a reader, if you found a favorite piece there...or, as a writer, you have a piece featured there. (Share the title or the URL in the comments.)
Image courtesy of nerissa's ring.
A literary spat that broke out some 30 years ago tickled my funny bone after reading about it in today's New York Times Book Review section. But the article also got me to thinking about what we in book clubs read.
Thirty years ago, authors and publishers split ranks over the National Book Awards—differing on what kind of books should win.
On one side stood the panel of authors and critics who selected the winners. They championed books of high literary merit, based on prose and philosophical insight. Unfortunately, those books don't tend to be big sellers.
On the other side stood publishers who accused the panel of being elite insiders. Why not select big sellers, books that actually make money...just in case anyone forgot that publishing's a business?
I'm not taking sides here, but it got me to thinking about the books we select in our book clubs. I've taken issue on a number of occasions with those who think book clubs read drivel or those who refer to us as a gaggle of geese.
While I don't think most of us tackle a steady diet of difficult "literary" works, and while occasionally we do chose lighter fare, book clubs primarily look for works that engage the reader—compelling characters, solid plotting, and some darn good writing. We also like works that take on issues that divide humanity and do harm to body and soul.
We also want books to be accessible. Finally, they should lead to lively discussions—because conversations about literature can open eyes and change minds. Actually, when you think about it, all those requirements make a pretty tall order for any author.
Gotta toot my own horn. When I started my LitLovers website, I’d no idea how it might be used . . . or that readers around the globe would tune in.
A library site in Auckland, New Zealand, uses LitLovers as part of their web 2.0 training exercise—and what a cool site to be listed on. Take a look.
Lots of libraries have training blogs to teach staff how to maneuvre the new world wide web (web 2.0)—which refers to the new level of interactivity on the Net—sites like Del.ic.ious, StumbleUpon, GoodReads, FaceBook, Wikipedia, LibraryThing, and personal blogs.
LitLovers has been used on a number of library training sites in the US, but the New Zealand one is a particularly gratifying! Spend some time on it yourself—we can all learn more about this new web environment.
Ah, poor me...I just returned from Italy. Life is so hard.
While there...I was reading Sarah Dunant’s The Birth of Venus—which I’d just happend to pick off the bookshelf at the house where I was staying. And here’s what happened…
Dumb me. I left my purse on the Florence Hop-On-Hop-Off tour bus, which takes you around the city. Had to sprint—shoes off—through a piazza to head it off at the next stop. No mean feet, so to speak (not so young…nor so thin). But happy ending. Got the bus, got the purse.
Here’s the cool part: the piazza I cut through was in front of the Basilica di Santa Croce—the very place, in the book, where Savanarola banned women from public life (i.e., those running barefoot around town). And I’d just read that chapter of the book the night before. Ah literature...ah, life!
Anyway, my trip was slightly different from Liz Gilbert’s…my version was Eat, Run, Eat. Just as much fun...but no book, no movie.
By Kristi Spuhler for LitLovers.We're sure you saw it—this photo we posted on Facebook a week or so ago. We found it funny because there's a grain of truth to it.
But it's probably more than "a grain" of truth: to be honest—just how much of our reading IS a way for us to ignore life?
You know—we pick up a book after a tough day to shrug off the stress. Or to beat the boredom during a mid-day slump. Maybe to put off chores...or simply to hide from a noisy world.
Of course, we tell ourselves—and everyone else—that our reading isn’t about escaping. No no! We're reading so we can understand the world around us.
And guess what? We're not just blowing hot air when we say that. A study published in the Journal of Science in October, 2013, found correlations between reading and an increase in emotional intelligence. Simply stated, reading helps us understand, and respond to, other’s feelings. (We blogged about this a good year ago. Take a peek here.)
But, okay, say we do read as escapism: even so...how often are we exposed to
♦ ideas we've long opposed but see there might be another side...
♦ troubled characters we come to care about...
♦ alien cultures we've gained some insight into?
An author’s vision can reveal the rich complexity of life—and yield up a new experience for the reader.
So even if we DO read to ignore life, we nonetheless end up engaging with it. WHY we read isn't as important as what we take away from it—which is an enlargement of our understanding and compassion.
So tell us—do you think reading has made a difference in how you understand and react to the world around you? We want to hear what you think!
Warning: if you ever find yourself in the position of being a fictional mom, look out—there's a risk you'll get BUMPED OFF.
It could happen during the course of your novel… or even BEFORE the novel even begins.
Here's why: the author may have destined your daughter for a great literary adventure; maybe she's slated to become one of literature's most renowned heroines. If that's the case, SORRY, MOM, you've gotta go.
Literature's spunkiest, most independent HEROINES—the ones we admire and remember most fondly?—they're motherless:
Moll Flanders (1721)
Fanny Hill (1749)
Emma (1815)
Jane Eyre (1847)
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903)
Nancy Drew (1930…)
Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier) 1938
More recently, we've been graced with the heroines of Ahab’s Wife and Amy Bloom’s Away, both of whose mothers die.
What's wrong with mothers? Well, traditionally, a mother's role has been to instill proper behavior — to correct for waywardness — especially in their DAUGHTERS. And mothers are fierce protectors of their offspring, keeping them out of harm's way.
Yet literature's greatest heroines are placed squarely in the path of HARM'S WAY, right where their authors want them—but where any mom worth her salt doesn't. So a character who would restrain improper or dangerous behavior must be GOTTEN RID OF. Dumped. That would be a mother.
Today, most moms aren't so old-fashioned. We want our girls to enjoy a WEALTH of human experience — education, career, and travel, as well as family life. Even so, I'm not so sure many of us would want our girls sneaking aboard a whaling ship, let alone working in a brothel like Moll Flanders — which means an author would have to WRITE US OUT of the storyline. Oh, well…
Don't miss these later LitBlog posts on getting rid of literary moms:
#MomsAreMad About Books
Where is My Mother?
Ideas for book clubs
- Think of other books featuring independent heroines in which mothers are done away or are simply never present.
- Think of books with father-and-son or father-and-daughter adventures.
- Prove my theory wrong: come up with some mother-daughter adventure stories.(Okay… Little Women. Any others?)
We're all into social distancing, right? And scrubbing hands while singing "Happy Birthday" (twice, yes?).
Book clubs are affected by the VIRUS, of course. So if you haven't canceled future book club meeting(s), you may be doing so soon.
But don't give up. You can still meet using group VIDEO MEETINGS via Skype, Google Hangout, or Zoom. *
The apps are FREE … and will accommodate up to TEN PEOPLE. Zoom will handle more, but limits you to 40 minutes. All are fairly easy to set up.
Follow the app's instructions. If you run into trouble try site Support or Help … or reach out to an 11-year-old (after all, they're not in school).
♦ GOOGLE HANGOUT (see photos)
1. Go to Google's home page
2. Click on the app in the top right corner.
3. Scroll down the menu till you find "Hangout."
4. Click on the icon to open it up.
♦ SKYPE (click on links below)
1. Go directly to Skype to download the app.
2. Watch this intro video at Tech Boomers. It's not great, but it's better than others.
♦ ZOOM
1. Go directly to Zoom to download the app.
2. Watch this intro video on YouTube. It's pretty thorough.
And there's always Facebook. Facebook launched its video chat in late 2016, but it's limited to 6 PEOPLE at a time (although more can listen in). If you've already set up a private a Facebook GROUP, click on the "video" icon in the upper-right-hand corner to join an ongoing chat or start a new one.
Whatever you decide, dear readers, STAY WELL—and that goes for your families and friends, as well.
See Meeting in the Time of Corona—Part 2
♥ Thanks to my daughter, who's younger than I am… and smarter. This post was at her suggestion.
"OK … show of hands: how many of you put on MAKE-UP and a nice top—but still have on your PJ BOTTOMS?"
That's Mary Field opening the first ever online meeting of the VILLAGE LIT CHICKS of Lewes, Delaware.
"It seemed to break the ice," Mary told me. "Everyone LAUGHED, and off we went! A pretty good start."
The 12 members met on ZOOM, a web-based video conferencing app. All signed in without a hitch … except for one member. But her HUSBAND came to the rescue. (Try to have one of them around; that, or know where you can find a 12-year-old.)
To facilitate a sense of order, Mary assigned each member beforehand a Discussion Question for the book— Chances Are... by Richard Russo.
It worked. Conversation flowed, and "everyone was respectful—with very little talking over each other," said Mary. The meeting was such a SUCCESS that the club has planned its next for May.
One final bonus: members sent thank-you notes to Mary for her DELICIOUS New England-themed DINNER—bread bowls of clam chowder, with chilled beer and wine, topped off by a dessert of Boston Cream pie—all of which she had planned, NONE of which she had to cook. Good job, Mary!
See Meeting in the Time of Corona—Part I.
Some years ago, when her daughter entered the fourth grade, author Tracy Carbone* became part of a Mother Daughter Book Club. I asked Tracy to share some ideas with the rest of us on how to go about starting a club for moms and their girls. So...here's Tracy!
Mother Daughter Book Club
Tracy L. CarboneNine years ago Lisa, the mother of one of my daughter's friends, learned she had breast cancer. Fortunately, she survived. Two years later she decided she wanted to do something special—something to create lasting memories for her oldest daughter.
So Lisa made some calls to find out who would be interested in starting a Mother Daughter Book Club. Ten of us signed on—five mothers and five daughters—all of us excited to be in such an exclusive group.
One of the first things Lisa did was to create a binder, which we used month after month...year after year. In it were the names of each month’s book, along with the five discussion questions posed by the daughter who ran that month’s meeting. Whoever ran the meeting got to host the group and choose the book for the following month. Our first book was the beloved 1945 children's classic—The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes.
By the end of the girls' fourth grade year, we had read one book a month, most of them tame and friendly. But one question kept popping up, time and again: as our girls read the books and studied the plots they always asked, “Why don’t the characters just tell their parents?” We moms wondered the same thing, and their question revealed to us just how strong our bonds were with our daughters—and how our club had become a place where they could trust us.
With each book, we mothers were reminded of our own childhoods, often sharing with the group and our daughters stories no one had heard before. By the end of nearly every meeting, there were tears of joy and remembering, and heaps of sharing.
The girls matured, moving into fifth, sixth and then seventh grades. When bras and periods came into play, we moved up to books like Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret (Judy Bloom, 1970). We also combined movies with books if possible, including Because of Winn Dixie (Kate DiCamillo, 2000) and The Last Song (Nicholas Sparks, 2009), as the girls grew older.
Sadly, midway through the girls' seventh grade, Lisa’s cancer returned with a vengeance. We stepped up the meetings, choosing riskier books, teaching our girls as much about love and heartbreak and reality as we could, preparing them for the road ahead in an environment—our club—where they could feel safe.
Books like So B. It (Sarah Weeks, 2004), Jars of Glass (Brad Barkley, 2008), Hope Was Here (Joan Bauer, 2000) and Call Me Hope (Gretchen Olson, 2007) filled our shelves. These were life-affirming stories that demonstrated tenacious female characters finding strength in what remained. We read Mother-Daughter Book Club (Heather Vogel Frederick, 2007) and set up a conference call with the author, while luxuriating in an oceanfront hotel in Maine.
The five girls grew very close because of this bond. Lisa lost the battle to cancer at the beginning of the girls’ eighth grade. Though the bookclub carried on the rest of the year, by high school, the girls’ workloads were heavy and extra reading wasn’t possible.
We had a good clip though. Five years of stories of courage and love and life. I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything.
* Tracy L. Carbone is author of The Soul Collector for young readers. Check out her book on Amazon (click on the book's cover image). Also, be sure to visit her website at Tracy L. Carbone's Writing Website.
Book marketers have given in...or smartened up. Either way, they've taken a page from the movie folks and now create film trailers to promote new books. Some of the trailers are pretty ho-hum. But we've found a couple that are ho-ho-hilarious. Really funny.
The first is Teddy Wayne's The Love Song of Jonny Valentine. Wayne is a wonderful comic writer, a terrific satirist, who in this book sets his sights on the commercialization of an 11-year-old rock star sensation, a la Justin Bieber. A child prodigy, Jonny is there for the taking: his life is commodified by just about everyone, including his own mother.
Here's the Video Trailer.
Here's our Reading Guide.
Second up, is John Kenney's novel Truth in Advertising. Again, like Teddy Wayne's, this is a comic novel: a sardonic take on the advertising world of New York. Finbar Dolan, the book's hero (not a River Elf), carries around a lot of angst—about the job, his family, and his love life. He sweats the big stuff.
Here's the Video Trailer.
Here's our Reading Guide.
Have fun with these. The more you watch them, the funnier they are. If your book's trailer is any good, play it at the book club meeting—it's a great way to break off socializing and signal the beginning of the discussion.
What book changed your life?
Paranoid me, but I always see that question as a trap. It means you’re about to be judged on your literary taste, so you’d better come up with an OBSCURE BUT SIGNIFICANT work of literature—like a poem by Rilke.
But all I ever come up with is Nancy Drew.
Nancy. She had great clothes. She had a blue roadster ... great pals ... a boyfriend ... a doting father ... and a surrogate mother in Hannah-the-housekeeper.
Best of all, she had an unlimited supply of pocket change—which allowed her FREEDOM and ADVENTURE!! She was 18—I was 10 or 11, and I adored her ... envied her.
But Nancy Drew DID change my life. Obviously, I never become a detective—instead, I became a life-long reader. After devouring every book in the series by 13, my friend Mary Phelan Turner got me to read all 1,000+ pages of Gone With the Wind.
That did it: from there on, I was hooked on books. Books were, and still are, my drug of choice.
Something fun for a book club meeting:
- Start your meeting by having each member answer the question: “What book turned you into a life-long reader ... and why?
- Turn it into a game. All members write their answers down on a piece of paper, collect and read them outloud, then guess who submitted which title. (For more book club games under "Run a Book Club".)
Scroll down to our previous post about the hundreds of Girl Titles in the publishing world. Book after book with "girl" in the title.
I griped about the use of the G-word as a throw-back to the bad old days when women were easily dismissed and occupied lower rungs on the cultural ladder.
But, hey! Girl titles sell books. The first "Girl" may have been Susanna Kaysen's 1993 Girl, Interrupted. But it wasn't until 2005, with Steig Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, et.al., that the trend seemed to take off. Next came Gone Girl and Girl on the Train.
Now it's a full blown trend. Publishers want in on it—so they're busy RENAMING OLD TITLES, hoping to breathe new life into older books. Take a look ...
New Girly Titles
For Old Books
Remarkable Creatures
by Tracy Chevalier
Girls Who Dug Rocks
Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott
Little Girls
The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton
Girls Wearing Corsets
My Beloved World
by Sonia Sotomayor
The Girl Who Made It All the Way to the Supreme Court
Where'd You Go Bernadette
by Maria Semple
The Girl Who Left Her Daughter (But Kept in Touch)
Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
The Girl Who Runs with Sharp Objects
Wild
by Cheryl Strayed
The Girl Who Went for a Walk and Then Felt a Lot Better
Lean In
by Sheryl Sandberg
The Girl Who Kicked Corporate Butt
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
The Girl with Prejudice & the Man with Pride, or Vice Versa
Obsessive Genius: The Inner Life of Marie Curie
by Barbara Goldsmith
Hey, Girl—You're the Bomb
I Am Malala
by Malala Yousafzai
The Girl Who Damn Well Better Win the Nobel Prize
The Invention of Wings
by Sue Monk Kid
The Girl Who Owned a Slave … Who Was Also a Girl
Flight Behavior
by Barbara Kingsolver
Climate Change Girl
The Signature of All Things
by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Girl Who Watched Fungus Grow and Became Famous
The Woman in Cabin 10
by Ruth Ware
The Girl in Cabin 10
Feeling guilty about all the reading you do ... and all the chores you DON'T do? Relax. It turns out you're a finer person for keeping your nose in a book. So keep reading.
A new study shows that books enable us live up to our better selves. The researchers, Emanuele Castano and David Comer Kidd, found that people gain empathy and social intelligence after reading certain kinds of books.
What kind of books? Well, not the blockbuster kind. So nix the heart-thomping thrillers or the steamy romances. The study refers specifically to "literary fiction"—well-developed characters and storylines that explore complicated human relationships—the very kind of books we read in book clubs.
One of the books used in the study was Round House by Louise Erdrich, which (at the time of this writing) happens to be the 3rd most requested book on LitLovers. (See our Popular Books page.)
There's a reason why books like Round House matter. According to the New York Timesarticle:
[L]iterary fiction leaves more to the imagination, encouraging readers to make inferences about characters and be sensitive to emotional nuance and complexity.
You can read the full story in the NY Times HERE. It's fascinating and well worth the time.
For Book Clubs: Consider taking time during one of your meetings to talk about the books that have altered the way you perceive people and the world around you. Which books have enlarged your ideas about life and your role in it?
A real challenge for any author is the remaking of a classic story. The new novel might set the older work in the modern era (Hamlet → Edgar Sawtelle). Or it might use the older novel as a starting point—for a sequel, or a retelling of the story from a different perspective (Wizard of Oz → Wicked). Here’s what I’ve come up with so far...
Makeovers
Resetting a classic in the modern era.Anna Karenina .......... What Happened to Anna K by Irina Reyn
The Great Gatsby ...... Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
Hamlet ...................... The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David
Wroblewski
The Illiad .................... The Human Stain by Philip Roth
Howard’s End ............ On Beauty by Zadie Smith
King Lear ................... A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
Mrs. Dalloway ........... The Hours by Michael Cunningham
The Odyssey ............. Ulysses by James Joyce
Pride & Prejudice ....... Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
Sense & Sensibility .... The Three Weissmanns of Westport (added: 1/2011)Starting Points
Writing a sequel, ”prequel,” parody, or using a secondary character’s point of view.A Christmas Carol ...... Mr. Timothy by Louis Bayard
Dr. Jekyll &Mr. Hyde ... Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin
Gone With the Wind ..... Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley
Gone With the Wind ..... The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall
Great Expectations ...... Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
The Great Gatsby ........ The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian
The Great Gatsby ........ Jack Maggs by Peter Carey
Jane Eyre ................... The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Ryhs
Huckleberry Finn ......... Finn by Jon Clinch
King Arthur ................. The Mists of Avalon
Mansfield Park ............. Murder at Mansfield Park by Lynn Shepherd
Moby-Dick ................... Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund
Pride & Prejudice ......... Pemberley by Emma Tennant
Pride & Prejudice ......... Pride & Prejudice & Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith
Rebecca ...................... Mrs. DeWinter by Susan Hill
The Scarlet Letter ........ Angel and Apostle by Deborah Noyes
A Tale of Two Cities ..... A Far Better Rest by Susanne Alleyn
The Wizard of Oz ......... Wicked by Geoffrey MacGuire
Wuthering Heights ....... Heathcliff: The Return to Wuthering Heights by Lin Haire Sargeant
What have I missed? Surely, there are more.
Short update—I’ve just received a terrific invitation to be a guest on a local NPR station in Hampton, Virginia. We’ll be discussing book club issues—the how-tos of starting and running a club, and handling difficult issues.
The show is HearSay with Cathy Lewis. Maureen Corrigan will also be on, as well as Susan Coleman who is leading Virginia’s Big Read! Call letters are WHRV 89.5 FM.
Most of you won’t be within reach, but for those in Southeastern Virginia and Northeastern North Carolina…tune in on Thursday, September 3, 2009, from 12 noon to 1pm.
Apparently, I’ve got a good face for radio. Two days ago, I was on the air again, this time on Martha Stewart’s Living Radio—Sirius Radio/XM, the satellite radio.
No, it wasn’t Martha but instead two shock-jocks, Kim and Betsy, who banter their way through morning drive time. They’re a hoot. We talked about starting a book club, how to talk about a book, etc.—the usual book club stuff. Here’s the short version (6 min.):