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

Listen to Tonight's Show with Susan Henderson Discussing Up from the Blue Now!

For those who couldn't listen live, please tune in to hear Susan Henderson discuss her novel Up from the Blue. Thanks to everyone who participated in the show and to Susan for joining me!

 

Book Club Girl on Air Welcomes Susan Henderson, author of Up From The Blue

Many of you saw me posting about reading Susan Henderson's debut novel Up from the Blue several months ago. I loved this book so much that it kept me up until about 3 am one night to finish it. And it got a rave review from Jamie Ford months before publication that helped to put it on the literary map. So I'm thrilled to announce that on Tuesday October 26th, Susan, who is also founder of the amazing site Lit Park, will join me on Book Club Girl on Air to discuss Up From the Blue!

Tillie Harris's life is in disarray—her husband is away on business, the boxes in her new home aren't unpacked, and the telephone isn't even connected yet. Though she's not due for another month, sudden labor pains force Tillie to reach out to her estranged father for help, a choice that means facing the painful memories she's been running from since she was a little girl.

An extraordinary debut from a talented new voice, Up from the Blue untangles the year in Tillie's life that changed everything: 1975, the year her mother disappeared.

Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, says: "Up from the Blue deftly portrays a family with contradictions we can all relate to—it’s beautiful and maddening, hopeful and condemning, simple, yet like a knot that takes a lifetime to untangle. You will love it completely, even as it hurts you…it’s a heartbreaking, rewarding story that still haunts me.”

Browse inside Up from the Blue, check out the reading group guide and look for Susan Henderson on tour near you. I have 10 copies to give away to the first 10 people who comment that they'd like to participate in the show on Tuesday, October 26th. Comment now and set your reminder for the show. And in the meantime, check out the haunting trailer below.

Book Club Girl's BEA Day 1! Hot Book Club Books, Tea with Adriana Trigiani and a Celebration of Book Bloggers!

I'm a bit delinquent in my BEA posts, but that midweek BEA completely threw me. While I do love having my weekend back, losing essentially a week in the office, followed by a long weekend meant that I returned to work on Tuesday not remembering much pre-BEA or for that matter, that much from BEA week itself. But of course, I exaggerate, I remember quite a bit, because this was one of the busiest and most productive BEAs I've had in a long while. Why, you ask? Well, mainly because of book bloggers. Between events and meetings, I had more fantastic conversations with book bloggers, a group I continue to call the most optimistic and important in the publishing industry today.

Wednesday dawned bright and sunny and after a lovely walk from Penn Station to the Javits Center, I met our wonderful videographers for our To Kill a Mockingbird 50th anniversary celebration (more on that later), stashed my stuff in the booth and headed to the Hot Book Club Titles Fall 2010 Panel moderated by the amazing Carol Fitzgerald of Reading Group Guides.com and the Book Reporter Network. My fellow panelists were Michael Croy of Simon & Schuster, Patrick Nolan of Penguin, Talia Sherer of Macmillan, Karen Torres of Hachette and Jane von Mehren of Random House. We each presented 5 great book group books coming this fall. Check out the complete list of books here.

I followed the panel with a meeting with the charming Barbara and Charlie Mead of ReadingGroupChoices.com, I always love spending time with them. Next I headed to the Charlesbridge booth to meet, for only the second time, but it seems like we've spent so much time together (thank you Twitter), the dynamic Mitali Perkins, who just that morning had wowed the crowd at the Children's Author Breakfast (let's put it this way, I heard more about her speech than I heard about the Duchess of York's, that's how great she is). Mitali was signing galleys of her upcoming novel Bamboo People and the Charlesbridge folks graciously allowed me to insert flyers for the reissue of Emily of Deep Valley which will feature a new foreword by Mitali, into the books. It was so fun spending time with her and her fans. Though it was far too brief an encounter - thank goodness ALA is just around the corner.

Next up was a quick return to our booth where I was meeting the 5 book bloggers who won tea with Adriana Trigiani. It was so nice to see Dawn from She is Too Fond of Books, Julie from Booking Mama, Kathy from Bermuda Onion and Lenore from Presenting Lenore again and to meet Sheila from Book Journey. We also invited Trish from Hey Lady, Whatcha Readin as she helped pull the entire contest together. We headed out into the now blazing heat to meet up with Adriana and dive into horrendous midtown traffic (that is, once we got a car, slight glitch there). We finally arrived at the upper east side location of Alice's Tea Cup, a simply delightful tea shop where we were served a traditional high tea in our own room, painted a deep teal and decorated beautifully. There were personalized signed books for all the bloggers and absolutely delicious food. I have a particular weakness for clotted cream, which I spread liberally on my scones. Thanks to Dawn for this great picture of the entire group - though missing from the photo (and behind the camera) was Stephanie, aka @book_chatter on Twitter.

 
  
That would have been quite a day had it ended there, but there was more! After a quick stop into the office to refresh and redress, we headed to the famed Algonquin Hotel for the Celebration of Book Bloggers: The New Literary Roundtable that we gave with Susan Henderson of Lit Park and the upcoming novel Up From the Blue. It was an amazing night  - so much fun to meet so many people I've known just from their blogs or twitter handles. I left fairly exhausted just past 9, running to Penn Station with Amy, after saying a quick goodbye to the Algonquin's lobby cat Matilda.