I’m eagerly anticipating this week’s release of the new film version of Brideshead Revisited.  By all accounts, it is just as successful as the 11-part series that aired on  Masterpiece Theatre almost 30 years ago (who would sit still for an 11-part series these days?). For book groups, there’s a short Brideshead Revisited discussion guide at LitLovers. You can find information about the author and his work on An Evelyn Waugh Web Site

Some fascinating nonfiction on top level play in two brainy boardgames would be good selections for your next book group meeting.

Paul Hoffman’s The King’s Gambit: A Son, A Father, and the World’s Most Dangerous Game mixes the author’s memoir of his relationship with his dishonest father with a tale of returning to competitive chess as an adult after years away from the board. The best parts of the book, however, are his recounting of the mixture of genius, mental instability, and bad behavior through the history of top level play. Hoffman looks at Paul Morphy, Bobby Fischer, and many other champions and grandmasters whose brilliance at the board was ultimately overshadowed by insanity. He also follows top contemporary players, both men and women, through high pressure matches and tournaments. The chapter where he attends a World Championship in Libya as a second for a Canadian grandmaster and journalist makes for great suspense: as an American Hoffman was followed continuously by the Libyan security service.

Stefan Fatsis wrote a similar book a few years ago, Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players, which stays with me in detail. Instead of chess, this book covers Fatsis’s attempt to join the top ranks of professional Scrabble players. The same mixture of geniuses, hustlers, oddballs, and crazies also inhabits this world. Fatsis is becoming a kind of contemporary George Plimpton: his new book, A Few Seconds of Panic, recounts his attempt to get playing time as a kicker in the NFL.

If you are not a game player, these books may read as a fascinating visit–sometimes funny, sometimes creepy–to a kind of contemporary freak show. If you enjoy games of any kind, you’ll find the competitive urges of these master players both appealing and appalling. If you are especially skilled at any competitive endeavor, you’ll probably see a little of yourself in the personalities involved. No matter who you are, these are compulsively readable books that are hard to put down. 

Do you ever consider using  novels that are marketed as YA in your book group? Interesting essay in The New York Times the other day about the fine line between adult and YA novels. 

Among the authors the essay mentions is Peter Cameron, who has written several adult novels and thought he was writing Someday This Pain Will be Useful to You for adults as well,  only to have it published as YA.  In his Booklist review,  Michael  Cart suggests that Cameron’s book will appeal to both teen and adult readers.

Stephenie Meyer is another crossover author. Her hot-selling Twilight series is YA, but she makes her adult-market debut with her latest book,  The Host.  Jennifer Mattson’s Booklist review recommends buying duplicate sets of this and Meyers’ other works, one for  adults and one for YAs.

Michael Cart, who is quoted in the NYT essay,  is working on an article on crossovers for Booklist.

Book group leaders who have access through their libraries to the superb reading resource database NoveList are probably already familiar with the book discussion guides it offers.  Those who don’t know about NoveList should check with their libraries to find out if the library makes it available and if they can view it (there is an annual subscription fee charged to the library).

The discussion guides, like others of their kind, provide information about the author, a summary of the work, and suggestions for further reading, but the most valuable aspect is a collection of questions, with lengthy and thought-provoking responses, which delve into the most complex issues examined in the books.  I recently referred to the discussion guide for Myla Goldberg’s Bee Season (which my group discussed last week) and was greatly impressed by the useful information it contained.  The guide was developed by Nathan Anderson, who at the time he wrote it — January, 2002 — was a doctoral student in English literature at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Here is the prefatory passage that introduces the Questions section, which I find to be an extremely thoughtful and philosophical approach to the endeavor of book discussion preparation, one well worth remembering: “While answers are provided, there is no presumption that you have been given the last word.  Readers bring their own personalities to the books that they are examining.  What is obvious and compelling to one reader may be invisible to the next.  The questions that have been selected provide one reasonable access to the text; the answers are intended to give you examples of what a reflective reader might think.  The variety of possible answers is one of the reasons we find book discussions such a rewarding activity.”

Amen!

Rereading has been the topic of numerous essays and books.  Anne Fadiman edited an anthology of essays about rereading, entitled Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love.  Or there’s Wendy Lesser’s Nothing Remains the Same: Rereading and Remembering. 

I was reflecting on this topic the other day when a woman in my book group, Edythe, gave me a recent New York Times article, “Agee Unfettered,” about a new interpretation of James Agee’s classic novel A Death in the Family.  Because Agee’s book was assembled and published after his death, it makes perfect sense that another scholar would want to revisit the work and envision and interpret it.  But in reading the article, each editor’s visions sound very different, not surprisingly. For one, in the new version, published by University of Tennessee press and edited by Michael A. Lofaro, the book starts in an entirely different way than that of the David McDowell edited book published in 1957.  The first version begins with the lyrical “Knoxville: Summer of 1915.”  That section is in the new version, just simply placed deeper in the novel.  It also sounds as though the new opener presents writing not included in the former, a passage more strange and unsettling.  Here is how the article describes it: 

Certainly, the two editions of the novel couldn’t start more differently. While the McDowell version opens with the famous prologue, “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” a free-floating evocation of a summer dusk in that Southern city, so beguiling in its rhythms that Samuel Barber set it to music, “A Death in the Family” now begins with a nightmare in which the grown-up protagonist drags the decomposing corpse of John the Baptist through the streets of that same Knoxville. The rotting body is treated with the lyricism Agee normally lavishes on men watering their lawns in the twilight. When John’s head goes rolling down the street, the protagonist feels an agonizing tenderness. “He could not endure to chase and corner and trap it as if it were some frightened animal but gently shoring its escape with both hands, trying by the gentleness of his hands, without speaking, to assure it that it need not fear him, slid both hands beneath it and lifted its cold and gritty weight as if it were a Grail.”

So what is a book group to do?  Can and should we read the new version?  Has anyone ever done something like this?  What if more versions and interpretations keep coming out?  Which do you choose?

I also have to say, UTenn should totally have tried to come up with a more compelling cover. 

  I’ve just been crying over the new collection of Yoshihiro Tatsumi stories. It’s called Good-Bye – nine unflinching, realistic portraits of postwar Japan told in the style of my childhood comic books. All I did was open the lovely new book from Drawn and Quarterly and read the first page of the first story. It slightly confused me, and I felt compelled to read the next page, and then the next. Five pages later I realized I had no intention of going back to work, and sank down into my reading chair for wallop after wallop of thrilling art-plus-words storytelling.

Every reading group will have one or two members reluctant to take the plunge into graphic storytelling – as though enjoying the comic book format were somehow betraying the necessary rigors of verbal literature. I was one of those objectors.

My introduction to the art of graphic storytelling came in a moment of open-mindedness, as I looked at the second frame of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.   What caused the lightbulb to blink on in my head was Satrapi’s playful use of the cartoon framing device. She tells us the little girl on the left of the group photo is herself, but the figure on the end is mostly cut off. She’s not much more than an arm and a hand. Like a little epiphany, the humor of that placement opened up the staggering possibilities of non-verbal storytelling in graphic art.

  I was somehow left untouched by my few forays into Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer-winning Maus, a comic book based on his parents survival of the Holocaust. Who knows why a reader connects with some books, and not others? Persepolis, on the other hand, worked immediately. It was a shock, an introduction, and a preconception-breaking example of mixing several arts together and coming up with something new. From then on I was open to an exciting new art form.

Rutu Modan’s superb Exit Wounds   – a love story that arises from a terrorist bombing in Tel-Aviv – and Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie’s delightful Aya,   a problem comedy about a teenage girl growing up in Ivory Coast, both demonstrate a capacity for contemporary relevance and plot complexity in a film-like series of visual sequences. The two books each end with a gasp. As does the New York Times Best Book of the Year, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home,   which tells the story of her father’s death with a dazzling flurry of literary references and a Proust-like circuitous plot that builds with musical intensity to an emotional peak in the last frame.

I’ve been converted. I’m used to graphic brilliance and non-verbal plot points and the sheer emotional punch that good graphic art can deliver. I just don’t expect the horrors of Hiroshima, not to mention prostitution and cross-dressing, to be sensitively dealt with in comic book art from over thirty years ago. Yet that’s exactly what Tatsumi does. He was a pioneer in graphic realism. His heroes are poor everymen, his situations the grinding trials of everyday life. This new collection features a couple of real masterpieces.

The opening story, “Hell,” is the one that unglued me. A reporter to Hiroshima after the war finds an image of a woman and her son scorched into a wall, and his photo of that hideous reminder launches a media phenomena veering farther and farther away from the surprising truth. “Woman in the Mirror” tells the story of Ikeuchi, the effeminate boy who can’t play football and dresses in his sisters’ clothes, recounted with an astonishingly modern understanding. “Life is So Sad” chronicles the life of a faithful bar hostess whose brutal husband in prison is convinced is being unfaithful. And the final, title story, “Good-Bye,” is the cynical story of streetwalker Mariko’s savage revenge on her needy, hypocritical father.

Tatsumi’s embrace of life’s small defeats and darknesses was ahead of its time, and over thirty years later his graphic short stories deliver a shudder of recognition in their frank, honest humanity. For meaty summer fare that’s easy to finish and yet provocative enough to fill a reading group meeting, any club with an open-minded attitude toward graphic novels and an interest in Japan should jump on Tatsumi’s Good-Bye.

No, this isn’t a 12-step support group for people who read too much and the folks who love them.

But it would be an interesting name for a book group that put the “lib” in “libation.”  Over at Omnivoracious they’ve been speculating on pairing books with beers.

Quite a few writers weighed in the topic of “hops and writing chops.”

From “foodie” fiction to “beery” books. Where are we headed next?

Here’s why I love a thematic approach to book groups: one of my groups met last night. The topic was immortality and rejuvenation. We’re a science fiction and fantasy group, but my readers are a perversely quirky bunch with strong penchants for picking the surprising book and following the conversation wherever it may go.

Bud, our best historian of the genre, got us started with an overview of the theme of immortality. He and Jim immediately got into an interesting debate about whether living forever would be boring or fascinating, lonely or fulfilling.

My job, when I choose to accept it, is to keep the meetings moving, so I opened with Cory Doctorow’s delightful Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, a quick reading bit of science fiction with admittedly thin characters, a mystery that is fairly easy to solve, but so many fun speculations about the future that it will make your head dance.

Bob sang the praises of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s St. Germain series, which follows a regal vampire across many historical periods. The books can be read in any order. In Bob’s mind (and mine) this is the vampire series that should have found mobs of fans instead of Anne Rice’s work.

Dan had Arthur C. Clarke’s Against the Fall of Night, the work which the author later expanded into The City and the Stars, a strong early example of why we should mourn Clarke’s passing.

Jim also took us back to a golden age writer, reviewing the first of Robert Heinlein’s Lazarus Long books, Methuselah’s Children, in which the author explores his trademark issues of family structure and libertarianism while as usual tweaking his nose at society’s conventions.

A turn to fantasy was next, as Andrea had Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris, which explores, among other ideas, an immortality in which one can’t really die but constantly feels the cumulative pain of every injury ever sustained (and as a result is eventually driven to eternal insanity or catatonia.)

Randall brought in The Skinner, by Neal Asher, a fast-paced race through an aquatic planet where the evolution of sea creatures has proceeded quickly and the survivors (including some pulpy pirate captains) have been toughened beyond all proportion by their kill-or-be-killed world.

Carolyn, who loves Victorian era horror was pleased at the chance to bring in her beloved Dracula, which led to a rousing side debate on whether the Winona Ryder/Gary Oldman adaptation of the work is faithful to its source (and the trouble one is probably in when a movie includes the adapted writer’s name in its title.)

Mary took us for an even more literary turn when she pulled out Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, which led into another film conversation, this one more positive, about the divine nature of Tilda Swinton.

Gary also stayed in the past with H. Rider Haggard’s classic African adventure, She. Along the way we had a birthday celebration, introductions of new members, confessions of regulars who hadn’t finished a book, Dan’s monthly round of themed punning, and spirited diversions on topics including copyright, the beading and knitting projects that members were working on, Hellboy 2, and spray-can pancake batter. Our quick trip through fantasy, science fiction, and classic literature on immortals left everyone with more books on their list of things to read and an appetite for our usual post-meeting Mexican dinner.

Thematic groups are a great way to balance the diverse tastes, social needs, busy schedules, and curious natures of book lovers.

Way back in May, Kaite wrote a post about a book that would make perfect August reading. Well August is almost here, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is starting to get a lot of buzz.  It was featured on NPR as part of Booksellers’ Suggestions for a Summer Afternoon, and an article about the book’s writing team appeared recently in The Wall Street Journal. Nora Rawlinson tells us on her blog that Dial Press is shipping over 100, 000 copies, though “libraries show light ordering” so far.  

For a book group, the book offers lots of possibilities. There’s the book-club-within-a book-club angle, the novel-in-the-form-of-letters angle, the historical fiction angle, and the Masterpiece Theatre angle (based on the series from a few years back called Island at War, which also dealt with the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands).  

You can find a reader’s guide with discussion questions on the Random House site.

FEMME FATALE:  WOMEN AND CRIME 

September 25, 2008:  FALLING OFF AIR by Catherine Sampson. 

October 23, 2008:  CALIFORNIA GIRL by T. Jefferson Parker. 

November 20, 2008:  ROSE by Martin Cruz Smith. 

January 22, 2009:  OUTSIDE VALENTINE by Liza Ward. 

February 26, 2009:  HIDDEN by Paul Jaskunas. 

March 26, 2009:  DEATH FROM THE WOODS by Brigitte Aubert.  

April 23, 2009:  MURDER NEVER FORGETS by Diana O’Hehir.   

May 28, 2009:  DISORDERED MINDS by Minette Walters. 

So the anxiety of picking the titles is now over for one more year.

Now I can start the anxiety of wondering if the group will enjoy the titles I picked. 

Each year in May I give my group a selection of potential crime and mystery books we could read.  The list is huge, maybe fifty or sixty books long.  Most of these books are crime and mystery titles that got starred reviews in Booklist or other review sources.  Most of them are not series titles, as I find reading series books a little problematic in an ongoing discussion like ours.

From the list the group highlights as many titles as they care to and then I total up their votes.

Then I pick the ones I want to lead a discussion on if they fit into a general theme.  This year’s theme came about because of one person’s comment that we read more books by men or about men than the group should considering they are all women.  

Some are award winners.  The Parker title won the Edgar in 2004 while the Aubert title won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, thus proving that I have learned nothing from last year and failed to listen to the “no award winner” protest.  

All of this stress comes from the fact that I never read a title in advance of the discussion because I want to play along with the group.  I know this violates all the tenants of leading a book discussion but I can’t help it.  It is one of the ways the groups has stayed fresh for me for over fifteen years.  

I guess we all pick our own poison, so to speak. 

Harking back to suggestion #8 in Neil’s list of “how to beat the book club doldrums,” here are some books-into-movies that are coming soon to a book club/movie theatre near you:

Book club favorite from 2003, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger is scheduled to open around the holidays (dates, of course, subject to change due to the whim of those movie-types). Readers enjoyed the deft mix of science fiction time travel with romantic love story. The structure of the novel intrigued other fans. The author would jump from time to time, much like her hero, to tell a very non-linear story that had an easy-to-follow narrative. Topic to discuss: How well did the movie capture the novel’s narrative structure? Did it work?

Critical darling, Pulitzer winner and Oprah pick, The Road by Cormac McCarthy will be coming to the big screen in November of 2008. The post-apocalyptic drama boasts a stellar cast. This title is great book/movie bait for those discussion groups wanting to reel in some of those twenty- or thirty-something readers.

Pair the books, pair the movies: James McBride’s Miracle at St. Anna, slated to open in  September 2008, is a first-rate military thriller set in World War II Italy. Consider making this title the star of a book group “event,” a double discussion/viewing of Flags of Our Fathers. Read the book by James Bradley and Ron Powers and consider discussing how all the authors/filmmakers view “the greatest generation.”

For those book groups and movie goers who relish a challenge, get ready for Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. A very literary novel full of dramatic relationships and conflicts. Look for the film version in August of this year.

Yesterday afternoon I watched a classroom of nineteen sophomores and juniors from Washington and Idaho, all young writers, as they listened to me reading aloud “My Cancer Summer,” slowly realize that the author of the essay – the man sitting in front of them reading – didn’t have cancer. He had HIV.

I’d hurried over from the bookstore at 10:30, up the ramp into the Mechanical Engineering Building on the University of Washington campus, and upstairs into an institutionally green, cement-block classroom on the second floor, with trucks and buses roaring by the open windows.

I like young people. I chatted with a couple of them before the class was officially brought to order by their instructor, Steve Garmanian, who introduced me with gusto to the Young Writers Workshop of the Puget Sound Writers Project. Steve enthusiastically showered me with credentials, some of which (director, screenwriter, actor) I hadn’t even earned yet.

The students were bright and attentive. When I asked if they knew what first-person narrative was, they groaned. Ah, perfect. Smarties.

I started out talking a little about what an essay was, defining it as a short story-length composition which can contain narrative but which is organized around ideas instead of plot. Then I tried to suggest the therapeutic effects of honestly translating your experience into words and seeing where that leads you. Whereas in a novel or short story language is used to create a beautiful illusion, in a memoir or essay language is used to try to nail down the truth, a much harder task.

With that established, I read the essay, “My Cancer Summer.” The students were appropriately attentive and quiet for the cancer diagnosis. Then a tight silence gripped the room when the topic of HIV was raised. The air stopped moving. The buses became silent. I managed to make it through without too many voice quavers.

They clapped at the end, and I could see that some of them were genuinely moved. The discussion began awkwardly, the young writers hesitant to venture their opinions. One by one they raised their hands. Joel felt that the vulnerable, honest voice of the essay showed the author’s trust in his reader. Attractive Lea with long blond hair had grown up with a mother who did HIV research – she knew well the stigma HIV-positive people faced. Leandro noticed that people with incurable illnesses often developed other strengths. A kid in the back whose nameplate I couldn’t see confessed he hadn’t known you could catch HIV from just one slip.

Dark-eyed, intense Sophie was the one who asked, “Did your partner know?” It was a loaded question, because until then the sex of my partner had never been disclosed.

 “Yes, unfortunately, he knew.”

The pronoun did the trick. I became very aware of being a gay man sitting before young people, a specimen of a lifestyle that maybe one or two of them would follow. Only one boy actually seemed troubled by my presence, the best-looking boy in the class, slumped down sullenly in the front corner.

The great debate finally centered around the last paragraph. Was its tone different from the rest of the piece? Joel felt it should be separated from the text by an asterisk. Christian liked the final paragraph, but Sophie and Catherine felt it could be omitted, with the essay ending on the words “barbequed ribs.”

All thoughtful, provocative suggestions. Then came the moment when the discussion had to end, and they were allowed twenty minutes to write their own essays. What change had unexpectedly altered their life? When they were done, with the last dwindling minutes of classtime, a few of them read their essays out loud.

Joel had to watch his father physically degenerating without motor neurons. Sierra’s mother had been forced to abort a damaged fetus, incurring scorn and disapproval. One by one they told or read of their unexpected changes, the beloved older brother who ran away, the beloved older sister whose baby died.

Unfortunately the bell cut us short. We went overtime, and then had to scramble vacating the room for the subsequent class, who were all waiting in the hall. I tried to say goodbye, to refreshing Natalie in her summery green dress, to witty Raghav, to bright-eyed, perceptive Charlie.

As Steve Garmanian and I walked down the stairs into the glaring sun of the afternoon, we passed Leandro, one of the kids that all my instincts told me would become a writer. Leandro had written an elaborate beginning building up to some unwritten revelation. “I’ll bring it by the bookstore when it’s done,” he promised before zipping away on his bike. I think he will.

It is that time again–I have to pick the books my crime and mystery book discussion group is going to read this fall.

This past year was a bit challenging for the group. Here is what we read:

FOX EVIL by Minette Walters.
END OF STORY by Peter Abrahams.
THE MADMAN’S TALE by John Katzenbach.
OPEN SEASON by C. J. Box.
AMAGANSETT by Mark Mills.
THE CLUB DUMAS by Arturo Perez Reverte.
MY NAME IS RED by Orhan Pamuk.
BY A SLOW RIVER by Philippe Claudel.

THE CLUB DUMAS failed miserably, even with me. There was just something about that book that made all of us feel inadequate. OK, stupid. While I loved BY A SLOW RIVER, the majority of the group did not think to highly of that title either. Both of these titles have won awards, and my group is now in open revolt declaring all foreign award winners verboten and they are too happy about American award winners either.

So, how do I go about selecting titles for this group? Here is what I suggested in READ ‘EM THEIR WRITES. I think these elements are not unique to crime and mystery fiction but could also be factors in selecting any book to discuss.

. Author-Is the author well respected in the field? If this is a first novel, did it get a great review? Has the author won awards? Is this author a bestselling author?

. Plot-Is the crime compelling by its nature? Is the plot
believable? Are there enough clues? Does the plot play fair? Does the plot hold your interest? Do you care whodunit? Do you care whydunnit?

. Subplots-Are there threads to the plot that were as compelling to read as the mystery/crime?

. Main Character-Do you care what happened to this character? Do you understand what happened to this character? Do you agree with what happened to this character? Do you identify with this character? Is this character heroic? Are the characters’ decisions and actions believably motivated? Is there something about this character that you cannot understand?

. Secondary Characters– Do you care what happened to these characters? Do you understand what happened to all of the characters? Do you agree with what happened to all of the characters? Do you identify with one of the secondary characters? Are any of the secondary characters heroic? Are the secondary characters decisions and actions believably motivated? Is there something about any of the secondary characters that you cannot understand?

. Subject-Is this book about some life experience outside of the mystery/crime? Does this novel teach you anything new?

. Setting-Is the setting of this novel interesting? Are there elements within the setting that taught you something new?

. Time Period-Does this novel hold a mirror up to a particular time period? Are there elements in the time period that taught you something new?

. Structure-Is there something unique or challenging in the structure of this novel?

. Style-Is there something unique or challenging in the style of this novel?

. Theme-Does this novel make you consider an element of life from a new angle? Does this novel challenge your opinion or perspective on an element of life? Does this novel raise your emotional level?

Perhaps part of the problem is that I am the one who wrote, “Has the author won awards?” It has become evident now to me that I know nothing about selecting books of a group to discuss.

Yes, I now have selection paralysis. Check in with me next week to see how I overcame this affliction and manage to make a decision.

My colleague, Linda, sent around this article about why high schools have not been putting actual teen books on their summer reading lists.  Here is an excerpt:

“But it’s summer! Summer reading is supposed to be fun, right? Shouldn’t that negate the whole “are these books literature?” debate? That depends on whom you ask. Many teachers and librarians have been moving toward the notion that summer reading should, above all else, be designed to keep kids reading (Period.) and that it should therefore be less about educational value than about sheer pleasure. But others believe the intent of summer reading is to keep kids in “learning mode” or keep them “working” throughout the summer, so that the transition back to the work of the school year comes as less of a shock.”

Every summer I see teens and even college students clutching massive lists of the ‘classics’ they must spend their summers reading through.  I admire this undertaking for sure, but I have helped everyone from the eager reader to the disinterested to the incredulous find copies of Animal Farm, Anna Karenina and The Old Man and the Sea.  Many of those readers are going to discover their newfound love for Orwell or Tolstoy or Hemingway, but just as often it will feel like a forced march through dusty tomes.

Why isn’t the enjoyment part more important?  One of the things I love about library summer reading programs is that they celebrate leisure reading.  Read whatever you want and get credit for it–get a prize, a sticker, your name on the wall, your review on the blog.

And what, exactly, do these students do with all of these books they have supposedly read over the summer?  Is there a quiz?  Do they simply fill out a bubble-form (in my mind one of the worst modern inventions in educational history) to indicate which of the 100 books they have finished?  Are they ever asked to articulate which books they actually liked or didn’t like and why?  What, exactly, is the aim or the point of this undertaking?  Again, I speak as a librarian, who bears a huge amount of respect for teachers and the work that they do.

But I wonder how we can enter into a conversation together to inform educational institutions that there are some new ‘classic’ teen/YA books out there that should totally make those lists, too.  I don’t advocate doing away with the lists, necessarily.  But what can we do to shake them up a little, make them fun?  Any teens out there, let us know what you think!

Here’s another tool to add to your reading group and readers’ advisory toolkit. 

Nora Rawlinson’s collection development philosophy for Baltimore County Public Library, known as Give’ em What They Want, radically altered the way librarians approach the selection of materials.

Nora went on the become editor Library Journal and Editor-in-Chief of Publisher’s Weekly. Now she has a Web site, Early Word, with a blog called, appropriately, Give’ em What They Want: News for Collection Development and Readers’ Advisory Librarians. 

The blog is full of book buzz–information about bestsellers,  film adaptations,  one-book programs,  and much more. There are also links to publisher catalogs, reviews, and podcasts of readers’ advisor extraordinaire Nancy Pearl’s reviews for NPR. 

Take a look–this could be a great resource for identifying titles your book group will want to read and talk about.

Does this happen in your book discussion group?

Do group members bring to the meetings items related to the book  — without prompting from you — as a way of enhancing the discussion?

This happens from time to time with my group, and I got to thinking the other day what a pleasure it is.  Every time it occurs, it’s unexpected to me, although by now, after 30 some years of group leading, I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised.

I recall the time we were scheduled to discuss Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, and one of the participants came with her portable CD player and some opera CD’s so that we could appreciate some of the music that was mentioned in the story.  Another time, we were set to talk about Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, and a group member brought several of her own books on Vermeer, with illustrations of his work, to share with us.

When we talked about Ivan Turgenev’s Spring Torrents, someone in the group passed around a program from one of his plays that she’d seen on a recent trip to a theater festival in Canada.  Stuart Dybek’s The Coast of Chicago brought a visitor to our group, who came with a notebook of correspondence he’d received from Dybek after meeting him at an earlier discussion, as well as photographs of the Chicago locations described in the book.

The Diary of Anne Frank inspired a reader to share with the group her mementos from a trip to Amsterdam when she visited the museum now housed in Anne Frank’s actual hiding place  — photographs, pamphlets, and other souvenirs. 

Often when an author we’ve focused on receives media coverage shortly after our discussion, group members come in with newspaper articles to share.  I remember this happening when the film version of The Kite Runner (which was released months after we’d talked about the book) drew criticism because of the use of child actors in  scenes depicting sexual acts.  We recently discussed Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, and the very next month, a new compilation of his essays was published — Armageddon in Retrospect – and a group member brought the review from The New York Times to let everyone know about it.

This “extra participation” by the book group members provides an added dimension to the book discussion experience that I, as the leader, greatly appreciate, and I believe my enthusiasm is shared by the group at large – the members always seem delighted to sample these surprise contributions.  I hope readers of Book Group Buzz will share similar experiences that have occurred at their group meetings.  Perhaps this will give both leaders and participants some new ideas for enriching their groups.

The following 1500-word essay will be read by 22 high school students from Western Washington this Friday as part of the Young Writers Workshop of the Puget Sound Writers Project at the University of Washington, as a springboard for discussion and an essay writing exercise.

My Cancer Summer

I can remember Doctor Lisa firmly closing the door behind her as she stepped back into the small consulting room where I was waiting. She seemed to be looking for a pen somewhere behind me. Then I noticed that her eyes were red and wet.

That was my first clue that my life was about to change.

I couldn’t identify the cause of her emotion, because doctors never show emotion, because her emotion couldn’t possibly be linked to me. After all, I’d come in to check on nothing more serious than a persistent tummy ache. I probably just needed a new digestive aid.

The clinic was right across the street from the bookstore where I worked. Making an appointment was easy. Most of the personnel there were bookstore customers. Dr Lisa was a real book-lover. I’d been patiently waiting for her, sitting on the end of an examining table in a skinny, cramped room somewhere in the maze of Hall Health Center. Now she’d come back from the radiologist downstairs, and appeared to be upset.

 “There’s a dark ring around your intestine and I’m very concerned about it,” she told me with urgent sincerity. I don’t remember much more. I went emotionally numb while her mouth continued to move.

I left the office in a daze. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon. I sat on a stone bench behind the building, trying to believe what I’d just been told. I had cancer of the colon. Our family did not get cancer. We had no history of cancer.

Now we did.

My family immediately stepped up to the plate. My parents drove me to appointment after appointment. My estranged brother came to my rescue and paid my swelling medical bills. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the result of the colonoscopy turned out negative. Whatever the dark ring was, it wasn’t cancerous. Another venture into my colon for more biopsies gave the same result. Apparently it wasn’t cancer, but it didn’t seem to be getting any better.

I became sicker and sicker. When I became so dehydrated and weak that I couldn’t get out of bed, I was admitted to the emergency room at University Hospital for nine hours in hell. That was the beginning a four-day stay in which I slowly came back to life. Antibiotics tortured my bowels into agony. When I was finally able to sit up without pain, I had only one thought in mind: how to get home to my cat.

Finally I convinced the doctors I could be an out-patient. They signed my release. I was free. I’d had the most awful scare of my life, but I had survived. No cancer! No cancer! As my parents drove me home from the hospital that glorious August afternoon, the world seemed good again. I had escaped the most devastating sickness I’d ever experienced. I was getting stronger by the hour.

A week later, I was called back to University Hospital for a follow-up. Again my family gathered around me in the waiting room of the Digestive Disease Center. This time, however, when my name was called and my whole family rose to their feet, a nurse told them they would have to wait outside, that the doctor wanted to speak to me alone.

How unexpected! I’d heard the nurses call me “the one with the family.” This time not even my brother could accompany me to take notes.

Dr Tung set down my file and charts on the table. I was looking at the back of his white lab jacket. I noticed he had a very nice haircut. He’s a handsome man, but his face was turned away. He was avoiding looking me in the eyes. “Your test for HIV has come back positive.”

My reaction was a complete blank.

I was stupefied. It was the last thing I expected. I’d always practiced safe sex – well, I guess I actually hadn’t a couple weeks ago, but that was the only time. It couldn’t have just been that once. I couldn’t get a grip on it. Had the doctor pulled the wrong file? Someone inside me who still spoke logically piped up. “But the hospital tests for HIV were negative.”

“Those tests were for antibodies,” he explained. “The infection was so new your body hadn’t begun to make antibodies yet. This test was to measure your actual viral load. It was off the chart.”

I don’t remember anything after that. I remember nodding and agreeing with everything he said, even though it all seemed impossible.

I thought the drama was supposed to be over! This was supposed to be the hospital follow-up to a done deal. I’d never considered the possibility that this could be the beginning of anything. I mean, I was feeling better by the minute. I wanted my cancer summer to have a happy ending. But in one of life’s great ironies, while I was in the hospital for my non-cancerous gut ailment, what was really happening was that I was seroconverting.

The kingdom of HIV had just gained a surprised new citizen.

Unfortunately, I now had my entire family waiting for me in the lobby. I didn’t have long to digest my new situation. At the end of one very short hallway, my mother and father rose from their armchairs looking toward the opening door, my brother and his wife rose to their feet, my niece beside them, all gathered in the office lobby. I had no idea what I was going to say.

I just opened my mouth. The words came out, and then they knew.

They were almost as supportive as they’d been when my diagnosis was cancer. But something was slightly different. Less eye contact, maybe. Slowly I understood. Cancer has no guilt stigma attached to it. HIV does. HIV is almost always due to a moment’s sexual carelessness. Cancer, except for the chain smoker who won’t stop, is not choice driven. HIV is.

As we walked out across the Digestive Disease Center patio, my mother snapped back at me without looking, “You were careless!”

She was right. I had made an impulsive mistake. I thought it couldn’t happen to me. I was over-confident. I wasn’t afraid enough of HIV.

Soon I was well again. I got my strength back, and was working full days. Everything seemed to go back to the way it was.

HIV is no longer a death sentence. Today we have meds. I didn’t need any yet, but they were there for when I did. Sure, there’s the stigma of being HIV-positive, but that can only affect me if I open my big mouth. It doesn’t show. I look as healthy as ever. I know what’s safe and what isn’t safe. I won’t accidentally infect anyone.

Not until six months later did a friend’s sharp outburst of fear wake me up, and make me realize I had truly stepped across an unforgivable line. My wake-up call came in the produce department of a North Seattle QFC, with potatoes and onions on one side and bags of iceberg lettuce and spinach on the other.

I have no memory of what I could possibly have said. The topic must have involved passion, since I was clearly talking too fast and not taking the time to swallow. Because it wasn’t my words that were at issue. It was my delivery.

Now imagine here the face of a friend of over twenty years, clean-shaven, crewcut, pink-cheeked, pushing his two little blond daughters in a shopping cart, a loving father buying groceries, his lips curled back in irritated repulsion.

“Do you realize that you spray when you talk? You should be more careful, now that you have HIV.”

I went quietly into shock. I watched his two little blond daughters playing in the shopping cart. My friend stopped in front of the meat department, and asked what I’d like for dinner.

“You know it’s not transmitted that way, don’t you?” I offered quietly, not looking directly at him. “It dies in the air.”

“Not quickly enough,” he countered. “How about barbequed ribs?”

That was the beginning of these essays. That was the first time I realized the fear and misunderstanding that now exist between me and even the most educated of my friends. Writing these essays was my attempt to bridge the gap, to help all of you uninfected people understand those of us who have crossed that line. But writing has also been my therapy, a chance to take a good look at my life, putting into words what’s really there, what has really happened to me, what I really want, and what a happy and healthy life really means.

I’m an easy target for any book about books, but I especially enjoyed Hallie Ephron’s new book 1001 Books for Every Mood. Library presses publish many similar books, but unfortunately those books often come with reference book price tags. This one, like Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust volumes, is priced for everyday consumers. It’s the kind of book that I usually browse while I’m watching television, but in this case, the screen didn’t get much of my attention. I kept jumping through one page after another, curious about the topic of the next list or which books Ephron would place in each category.

1001 Books for Every Mood could be an excellent source for your book group. It’s stuffed full with annotated lists of books to satisfy every mood your group might want to indulge: the mood to laugh, to cry, to take a walk on the wild side, to celebrate siblings, to find romance, to take a trip down memory lane, and so on. Her selections are solid throughout, mixing both classics and recent publications, but with a focus on the kind of not-too-heavy literary fiction that book groups thrive on. Symbols that run throughout estimate each book’s literary merit and denote titles that are particularly provocative, influential, inspirational, humorous, easy-to-read, or difficult. Award winners and books that have been made into films are also noted. There’s even a website with reading group guides for many of the books that are featured.

Instead of using Ephron’s book to pick a single selection, you might pick one of her themes and let your readers choose a book from her list or select one of their own. You might have a good time compiling your own lists of books to fit varying moods. Book groups are like individual readers: they often need to select the next book to fill an ongoing need or to counteract the mood created by the last book. Ephron has provided a quick way to find a strong choice no matter what mood you’re in the need to satisfy.

Every summer for the last twelve years, high school students interested in writing from all over Western Washington have attended a two-week program at the University of Washington called the Young Writers Workshop of the Puget Sound Writers Project. For many of those years, I’ve been invited to be a guest writer for a couple hours, using whatever I’m working on at the time as a springboard for a writing exercise.

One year we did a classroom reading of a new play of mine, a four-character werewolf version of the Red Riding Hood story called Red. Another year I demonstrated the step-by-step process of transforming the classic novel of Frankenstein into a theatrical adaptation, a romantic version seen from Elizabeth’s point of view. Another year I worked through the structure of Seattle Ghost Story, my third novel, showing how certain characters were chopped out and why. You get the picture. Whatever I’m working on, I throw something together that I can share with young writers.

This year I’m confronted with a challenge. What I’ve been working on is a very personal sequence of twelve essays, dealing with some new issues in my life after a traumatic last summer. It means opening up in a way I never have before. I’ve selected the second essay of the collection, “My Cancer Summer,” as the piece I’ll share with the students. The topic of the essay for class discussion is how unexpected change can alter the course of your life.

Their instructor, Steve Garmanian, has taught English for the past twenty years at Cascade High in the Everett School District and has been published in a variety of literary magazines. He’s guided the summer youth workshop for twelve years, and will be putting the twenty-two students enrolled this year through an intense two weeks of writing. My date for sharing with the workshop is next Friday.

Steve and I have discussed how we’ll arrange the experience. Steve wants to start with me reading the essay. He wants each student to have the text. I’ll have twenty-two copies, but I’ll hand them out after the essay has been read. You see, I haven’t been completely up front with Steve on this. He thinks he knows what the essay is about, because of the title, but he doesn’t.

Instead of me reading it aloud, I’m going to ask Steve to read the essay. I keep trying to read it myself, but I get so choked up I make these embarrassing noises and can’t talk. I have buried emotions here that I haven’t dealt with. I’m not emotionally detached yet. So I’m going to introduce the series of essays, and explain how I came to write them, and then throw Steve and the students into the experience blind.

Afterward, I’ll pass out copies of the text, we’ll discuss how the essay was constructed, the devices used to create a sense of realism and honesty. I’m sure we’ll also discuss what the essay is about. The students will be given a brief session to write down their own short, spontaneous essay on an unexpected change that altered their own lives. Then we’ll hear some of them read aloud. This could be electrifying.

The text of my 1500-word essay, “My Cancer Summer,” will be my next blog. And then I’ll tell you what kind of experience it triggered in twenty-two high school writers.

I have a new favorite book group tool: How to Read Novels Like a Professor.

I enjoyed Thomas C. Foster’s delightfully informative first “how to,” How to Read Literature Like a Professor, but I think this latest entry tops the first. I actually laughed while reading this book and wished I’d had Dr. Foster in college.  

For any book group member who has despaired that he or she doesn’t “read like the rest of the group” and wonders “where are they finding all that stuff” in the text, this is the literary guide book you’re looking for.

So far my favorite chapter is Chapter 15, “Fiction About Fiction” or, to my mind, “what is this meta-fiction term all the cool kids keep bandying about?” Dr. Foster explains it all for you and he goes back much further than the McSweeney’s crowd. He takes us back to Homer, Virgil, Boccaccio, and Chaucer, pointing out where all the current writer-hipsters have picked up their influences.

Second most useful portion of the book is the list of eighteen things you can learn about a book just by reading the first page. Look for it in Chapter One, “Pick Up Lines and Open(ing) Seductions.”

Lest you think the good literate doctor is getting too literary, I should point out that he states, unequivocally, that Chuck Jones, of Warner Bros., animating fame is the “first postmodern genius.”

See? We needed Dr. Foster in our undergrad days. He references Bugs Bunny and makes it relevant to reading.