Book Club Girl - Book Group Recommendations, Reading Group Guides, Audio Book Club Podcasts

Harry-est Town Update

I promise I won't write about Harry Potter every week, or then again, maybe I will. After all, there are only 12 weeks left and I still haven't figured out how I will get my kids and husband out of the way to devote that weekend to reading (not to mention that I'll have to completely avoid all radio, tv and internet media that could serve as spoilers) so I may just keep obsessing about the final volume. In any event, the stats have been updated at Amazon, and I couldn't resist the opportunity to write that SAMMAMISH, WA is now town #100, up from #103 last week. Falls Church, VA holds onto the #1 slot. If I'm counting correctly, and it's late so I might not be, New York is looking like the Harry-est state so far.

It's only 11 weeks until Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix the movie, opens on July 13th. View the trailer here. Highlights: Imelda Staunton looks creepily evil as Dolores Umbridge; Voldemort wears a suit; Hermione leads a revolt against authority; Harry kisses a girl; and the showdown at the Ministry of Magic looks incredible. I can't wait.

-JH

Tattered Cover's Book Club Recommendations

The Tattered Cover is one of the country's best independent bookstores, located in Denver, CO in three stores. They hold an annual Book Club event entitled Writers Respond to Readers in which four headline authors speak to a room of reading group members. It is an amazing all day-affair with a high-ticket price that always sells out in a day due to the stellar authors they are able to attract. This year our own Nell Freudenberger was in attendance, along with Ayelet Waldman, Nick Arvin and Robb Forman Dew.

Look for your next book club pick on Tattered's Reading Group Recommendations Fall 2006/2007 -- it's an extensive, eclectic list.

-JH

Book Club Mixer

Book Clubs and the booksellers who serve them, take note of this terrific Book Club Mixer that took place over the weekend at Books & Books in Coral Gables, FL, as reported in today's Shelf Awareness! "The Program had a travel theme: each attendee received a passport with an itinerary outlining the afternoon's roster of activities. It also included various sections such as "wish you were here" with space for jotting down e-mail addresses of potential book club buddies; a "packing list" for recording interesting titles; and "excursions," which promoted upcoming Book & Books author appearances. (Those who ordered Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns in advance received a ticket for the store's June event with the author.)
Daily Candy Miami helped to spread the word ahead of time and 200 book club members showed up -- the store estimates that 6 new groups were formed on the spot. Books that were recommended included Nicole Krauss's The History of Love, our own Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain (reading guide). A win-win for both the bookstore and the book clubs.

-JH

To Work (Outside the Home) or Not to Work (Outside the Home) the Mommy Dilemma

Today's New York Times, in an article entitled Mommy Books: More Buzz than Buyers?  looks at The Feminine Mistake, by Leslie Bennetts and examines the overall trend of books about womens' (really mothers') choices to work outside the home or not --  and why these books generate a lot of buzz, but rarely sell a lot of copies. Many theories are proferred up in the article as to why this is the case. My own has always been that once you have made your choice, whether to work outside the home, or not, and you find out that a book is published on the subject -- if the book supports your decision, you think, "great, I'm doing ok, and there's no need to read further." A summarizing article suffices. And if the book doesn't support your decision, which is often made for many reasons (primarily financial) that are not always in your control, you figure, "why should I read something that's just going to torture me?" Mothers no matter where they toil are so busy that when we read, enjoyment is usually the goal. For more on the controversy: at www.mommiesparadise.com a SAHM (stay at home mom) weighs in; Bennetts responds on The Huffington Post; and is interviewed here by Harper Audio Publisher Ana Maria Allessi.

-JH

No, I don't want to Blog!

But really, I do. I love the title of No, I Don't Want to be in a Book Club! about  Marie Sharp, a woman approaching her 60s who is fed up with what everyone around her thinks she should be doing now (taking a cooking class, joining a book club, etc) when she just wants to live, enjoying her new grandchild and her new man. Even though she doesn't want to be in a book club, I think that book clubs will welcome Marie into theirs. Her publisher is counting on this as well, here's the reading group guide.

Next best book title: You are So Not Invited to My Bar Mitzvah!

-JH

Year of Magical Thinking

For my book group and any book group reading  The Year of Magical Thinking, on the Today Show website: an essay by Joan Didion, plus footage from the play and of an interview with Didion.

and on a happier aside, happy birthday to my 12-year-old stepdaughter Sunshine!

-JH

Does Your Town Love Harry the Most?

I just noticed that in addition to pushing the pre-ordering of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on their site (561,000 plus orders as of this writing), Amazon is also revealing the top 100 Harry-est Towns in America. This list (updated daily) features which towns in America, on a per capita basis, are pre-ordering the most copies the final chapter of the beloved series. The winning town will receive a $5,000 Amazon.com gift certificate to a charitable organization of its choice that serves the winning town. #1 for two weeks in a row is Falls Church, VA. Climbing the charts to reach the top 100 at #100 is Stroudsburg, PA. and holding on to the middle at #51 is Chatham, NJ, not far from where I reside.

-JH doing my best Casey Kasem

Things in Little Blue Boxes

Who doesn’t love that blue Tiffany’s box –- men, if you’re reading this, though chances are slim -- know that it pretty much doesn’t matter what comes in the Tiffany box, just receiving one, with the white bow attached is gift enough. Did you know that a Tiffany bow, when properly tied, can be removed with one hand? Why? So you can hold a champagne glass aloft with your free hand, of course.

Just out on bookshelves, and a perfect reading group pick and/or mother’s day gift is Marjorie Hart’s (no relation) Summer at Tiffany, a memoir of the author and her best friend coming to the big city in 1945 and landing jobs as the first female clerks at Tiffany’s. The book is a love letter to both New York City (did you know there’s an automat in NYC again?) and the venerable institution made famous by their bling and of course Audrey. So pick up a croissant, don your shades, and saunter on over to the bookstore for a read that won’t disappoint.

Book Club Idea--everyone come with their own story of the summer they'll never forget.

-JH

Amy's Bedside Table

In what will be a recurring feature on Book Club Girl, we bring you the bedside reading piles of our friends and colleagues -- first up is Amy, our marketing director:

What is the What by Dave Eggers -- here are FAQs about WITW

Kissing the Virgin’s Mouth by Donna Gershten -- here's the reading guide

Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls -- here's the reading guide

The Lonely Planet Guide to Mexico

National Geographic Adventure magazine

-JH

My Book Group

My book group met last night for a terrific discussion of Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Some had even done research on footbinding, and brought along pictures of it which really brought home the torture these women endured (that link is not for the faint of heart). We were harder pressed to find a lot of background on laotong sisters but we all loved how those relationships helped Lily and Snow Flower to somewhat escape the strict confines of their lives (a precursor to the Ya Yas, perhaps?). See's own site has more information on the nu shu language.

We voted for our next selection as well. The choice was between Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, Sarah Dunant's In the Company of the Courtesan, Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper, Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake and When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka. Joan Didion was the clear winner though many of us are approaching it with some trepidation as we know it will be a very emotional read. Perhaps we'll make a field trip to see the play. Kudos to R. who hosted with excellent fare (thank goodness as it served as my dinner) and who served an amazing lemon olive oil cake. It sounds weird, but is delicious.

-JH

Rishi Reddi on Tour

Had the pleasure of hearing a wonderful reading, followed by a great q&A, with Rishi Reddi, author of  Karma and Other Stories last night at McNally Robinson, one of our favorite bookstores in New York. Karma is new in paperback, so a perfect reading group pick.

In her sparkling collection, award-winning writer Reddi weaves a multi-generational tapestry of interconnected lives, depicting members of an Indian American community struggling to balance the demands of tradition with the allure of Western life. Says Rishi about her work: "I wrote the book over a period of almost ten years, and I started the oldest story "Lakshmi and the Librarian," in 1996. The idea of having loosely linked stories grew over time, as I realized I wanted to set each story in the Boston area and that several of these characters would almost certainly know each other because they were part of the same immigrant Telugu community." Rishi heads to DC tomorrow night and then back to Massachusetts for a few more bookstore stops on her tour.

-JH

How Do You Pick Books in Your Book Group?

Many people ask me how we pick books in our reading group, and having been in different groups in the past, I think I'm finally in one with a system that works. At the beginning of the year, we each pick a month to host and when it's your turn to host, you present 5 books. Our local independent, Goldfinch Books, is very generous with letting us buy the five and return the ones that don't get picked (though once I've bought them, it's hard for me to return books, but I work in publishing after all). They also give us a nice book group discount too. Sometimes the hostess also prints out the book descriptions and reader praise from Amazon and slips that into each book so we can see what real readers think. Then there are two rounds of voting. In the first round, you can vote for two different books, which makes it interesting. The top two books from the first round make it to the second, in which eveyone gets one vote and voila, we have a winner. We do this at the top of the meeting, which encourages everyone to be on time-ish and gets it out of the way early so we can get down to discussing the book at hand. BookReporter.com offers up more tips on picking books from other reading groups.

-JH

Rain, Rain, Go Away

I'm sitting in NJ where the rain has finally slowed down, watching the stories of flooding in parts of the tri-state area (we remained relatively dry, the worst thing I had to do was literally sweep water off my front lawn, a small price given what others are going through). All this rain reminded me of a book from some years back, called In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden -- a novel by Kathleen Cambor about a bittersweet romance set against the backdrop of the Johnstown Flood of 1889, in which 2,200 people died when the South Fork Dam burst on Memorial Day weekend. The dam was the site of a gentlemen's club that attracted some of the wealthiest industrialists of the day -- Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, and Andrew Carnegie -- and served as a summertime idyll for the families of the rich. Here's the reading group guide.

My book group meets this Wednesday to discuss Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.

Coming soon -- bedside reading.

-JH

Ten Most Discussable Books of 2006

Reading Group Choices has announced their ten most discussable books of 2006, and it's actually a list of 13 books, with some ties thrown in. I was proud to see that my own group has read 7 of the 13 books, most recently having really enjoyed Year of Wonders, an intriguing novel about the plague in England in 1666. This is a great list to take along to help you pick your next book.

***

USA Today chimes in on books published in 2007 this week to say: "Book clubs across the USA should be  buying up stacks of Lionel Shriver's dazzling Rubik's Cube of a novel, The Post-Birthday World. Even if you're a solitary reader, file this one under Books That Will Have You Talking -- to yourself. The Post-Birthday World is a brilliant "what if?" novel. But that barely scrapes the surface in describing Shriver's imaginative feat." Of course Shriver's previous novel, the Orange Prize winner We Need to Talk about Kevin has become a book group staple since its initial publication and is now reissued with a fantastic P.S. section that includes an essay by Shriver on maternal ambivalence--a topic that can keep book groups talking (and drinking) for hours.

-JH