National Reading Group Month's Great Group Reads

October is National Reading Group Month, sponsored by the Women's National Book Association.

Perhaps your book group would like to try one of these Great Group Reads chosen this year by the Association:
* The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë by Syrie James
* The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey

* Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal by Julie Metz

* While I'm Falling by Laura Moriarty

* Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

* Cost by Roxana Robinson
The titles were selected for their potential to "open up lively
conversations about a host of timely and provocative topics, from the
intimate dynamics of family and personal relationships to major cultural
and world issues." Read more...

More surprise hits you may have missed

The Outlander : a novel / Gil Adamson "Set in 1903, Adamson's compelling debut tells the wintry tale of 19-year-old Mary Boulton ([w]idowed by her own hand) and her frantic odyssey across Idaho and Montana. The details of Boulton's sad past—an unhappy marriage, a dead child, crippling depression—slowly emerge as she reluctantly ventures into the mountains, struggling to put distance between herself and her two vicious brothers-in-law, who track her like prey in retaliation for her killing of their kin. Boulton's journey and ultimate liberation—made all the more captivating by the delirium that runs in the recesses of her mind—speaks to the resilience of the female spirit in the early part of the last century. Lean prose, full-bodied characterization, memorable settings and scenes of hardship all lift this book above the pack." (from the PW review in our catalog)
Tears in the Darkness : the story of the Bataan Death March and its aftermath / Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman This major new work about World War II exposes the myths of military heroism as shallow and inadequate. "Tears in the Darkness" makes clear, with great literary and human power, that war causes suffering for people on all sides. (catalog notes)
Wicked Plants : the weed that killed Lincoln's mother & other botanical atrocities / Amy Stewart A tree that sheds poison daggers; a glistening red seed that stops the heart; a shrub that causes paralysis; a vine that strangles; and a leaf that triggered a war. In "Wicked Plants," Stewart takes on over two hundred of Mother Nature's most appalling creations. It's an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise offend. You'll learn which plants to avoid (like exploding shrubs), which plants make themselves exceedingly unwelcome (like the vine that ate the South), and which ones have been killing for centuries (like the weed that killed Abraham Lincoln's mother). Menacing botanical illustrations and splendidly ghastly drawings create a fascinating portrait of the evildoers that may be lurking in your own backyard. (catalog notes)

Surpise hits you may have missed

I was interested to see an article in Publishers Weekly of September 7, 2009 about summer midlist titles whose sales suddenly far exceeded expectations. The article analysed why each book stands out and what media trigger caused each book to draw ahead of the mid-list pack in sales. All of these are remarkable books, but none of them drew six- or seven-figure advances or were considered "big books", so it's possible you missed them. Why not check one or two of them out of the Harford County Public Library now? Then let me know why you think they stand out!

The Girls from Ames : a story of women and a forty-year friendship / Jeffrey Zaslow Find this book in our catalog

From the co-author of the bestselling "The Last Lecture" comes a moving tribute to female friendships, with the inspiring story of 11 girls and the women they became. (catalog notes)

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything : a novel / Janelle Brown Find this book in our catalog

In Brown's withering Silicon Valley satire, a family wakes up on a June day to realize that patriarch Paul's company has hit the big time with a phenomenal IPO. But instead of rejoicing about being newly rich, the family's three women each find themselves in the throes of a major crisis. (catalog notes)

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming / Joshilyn Jackson Find this book in our catalog

While Laurel's life seems neatly on track... everything she holds dear is suddenly thrown into question the night she is visited by the ghost of a her 13-year old neighbor Molly Dufresne. The ghost leads Laurel to the real Molly floating lifelessly in the Hawthorne's backyard pool. Molly's death is inexplicable--an unseemly mystery Laurel knows no one in her whitewashed neighborhood is up to solving. Only her wayward, unpredictable sister is right for the task, but calling in a favor from Thalia is like walking straight into a frying pan protected only by Crisco. Enlisting Thalia's help, Laurel sets out on a life-altering journey that triggers startling revelations about her family's guarded past, the true state of her marriage, and the girl who stopped swimming. (publisher's notes in our catalog)

Shop Class as Soulcraft : an inquiry into the value of work / Matthew B. Crawford Find this book in our catalog

In this wise and often funny book, a philosopher/mechanic systematically destroys the pretensions of the high-prestige workplace and makes an irresistible case for working with one's hands. (catalog notes)

Books for Men - book club suggestions

Charged with finding something good to read for my husband the other day I found myself stumped. My recent suggestions had fallen metaphorically on stony ground: my husband has "done" action and adventure and espionage fiction and the history of science.

By chance I was reading an article about men's book groups and discovered this list of suggestions for men's discussion groups on Amazon.com's Listmania:
Books for Men (The Anti-Oprah Book Club) by "rhodeislandreader."

Here are some of the books suggested on the list - with a few suggestions of my own and links to our catalog:
Of mice and men / John Steinbeck Find this book in our catalog
The old man and the sea / Ernest Hemingway Find this book in our catalog
A prayer for Owen Meany : a novel / John Irving Find this book in our catalog
When the sacred ginmill closes / Lawrence Block Find this book in our catalog
A confederacy of dunces / John Kennedy Toole Find this book in our catalog
Night train to Lisbon / Pascal Mercier Find this book in our catalog
Indignation / Philip Roth Find this book in our catalog
The life and times of the Thunderbolt Kid : a memoir / Bill Bryson Find this book in our catalog
A dirty job / Christopher Moore Find this book in our catalog
Mr. Paradise / Elmore Leonard Find this book in our catalog
The man in my basement : a novel / Walter Mosley Find this book in our catalog

Booksprouts another resource for starting or running a book club

Booksprouts: The Online Community for Book Clubs

The other day a friend drew my attention to this website called Booksprouts. Booksprouts' goal is to make book clubs a fun and easy experience for everyone.

Reading is an usually solitary experience but it doesn't always have to be. Sometimes it is nice to bring in other individuals. Talking about books can enhance your reading experience and tighten social contacts.

If you feel like sharing your reading experiences with people close to you, one way to do this is start a book club. Booksprouts recognizes that this can be difficult to do. Friends may live and work far apart, and it is hard to find the time when everyone in a group can meet. Booksprouts' solution to the problem of time and geography is to provide a forum for online book groups.

It is hard to organize a book group, and once you are organized it is hard to choose the books to read. Booksprouts say they make it easy to start a club, join a club, invite your friends, choose a book, and discuss. Booksprouts introduces Book Choices to help book clubs agree on what to read, they automatically create and organize online discussion spaces for each book, and they help clubs manage their member lists and their club meetings.

I looked at the Booksprouts website and found it very easy to understand and navigate. You can search for a book group to belong to by geography, subject, author, or title. You can start your own book group. You can find books by title, subject or author and you can see a list of current hot books. You could use the site just as a resource to find books to discuss in your existing group.

The site is still in Beta mode, so I did not see many reviews of the site. At least one public library is using it. The reviews I did see could not understand how the site will make money. I found the Booksprouts blog which gives a rationale of why they started the site. At the moment it is free to sign up to join or create a book group. Some groups are open and some are invitation only.

Some reviewers wondered why we need yet another book sharing site, mentioning LibraryThing, Shelfari, etc. You should check the site out for yourself. If you have been struggling with finding a suitable book group, online may be the way to go.

Yiddish Policeman's Union to become a movie

United Press International reports Hollywood filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have signed on to adapt Michael Chabon's novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union for the big screen. I look forward to it very much since the Coen brothers also made the recent release, No Country for Old Men, which was a hugely successful adaptation of the novel by Cormac McCarthy.

The Yiddish Policeman's Union is recommended in countless reading guides as a terrific book group title. Why not read it before the film comes out so that you or your group are ready to compare the book and the film?

Find this book in our catalog.

A murder mystery set in the imaginary Jewish homeland that is Alaska.

Jacket Notes:
"The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" pens an homage to the stylish menace of 1940s noir, in a novel that imagines if Alaska, not Israel, had become the homeland for the Jews after World War II."

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 03/05/2007:
Reviewed by Jess Walter: "They are the "frozen Chosen," two million people living, dying and kvetching in Sitka, Alaska, the temporary homeland established for displaced World War II Jews in Chabon's ambitious and entertaining new novel. It is-deep breath now-a murder-mystery speculative-history Jewish-identity noir chess thriller, so perhaps it's no surprise that, in the back half of the book, the moving parts become unwieldy; Chabon is juggling narrative chainsaws here.The novel begins-the same way that Philip Roth launchedThe Plot Against America -with a fascinating historical footnote: what if, as Franklin Roosevelt proposed on the eve of World War II, a temporary Jewish settlement had been established on the Alaska panhandle? Roosevelt's plan went nowhere, but Chabon runs the idea into the present, back-loading his tale with a haunting history. Israel failed to get a foothold in the Middle East, and since the Sitka solution was only temporary, Alaskan Jews are about to lose their cold homeland. The book's timeless refrain: "It's a strange time to be a Jew."Into this world arrives Chabon's Chandler-ready hero, Meyer Landsman, a drunken rogue cop who wakes in a flophouse to find that one of his neighbors has been murdered. With his half-Tlingit, half-Jewish partner and his sexy-tough boss, who happens also to be his ex-wife, Landsman investigates a fascinating underworld of Orthodox black-hat gangs and crime-lord rabbis. Chabon's "Alyeska" is an act of fearless imagination, more evidence of the soaring talent of his previous genre-blender, the Pulitzer Prize-winningThe Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay .Eventually, however, Chabon's homage to noir feels heavy-handed, with too many scenes of snappy tough-guy banter and too much of the kind of elaborate thriller plotting that requires long explanations and offscreen conspiracies.Chabon can certainly write noir-or whatever else he wants; his recent Sherlock Holmes novel,The Final Solution , was lovely, even if theNew York Times Book Review sniffed its surprise that the mystery novel would "appeal to the real writer." Should any other snobs mistake Chabon for anything less than a real writer, this book offers new evidence of his peerless storytelling and style. Characters have skin "as pale as a page of commentary" and rough voices "like an onion rolling in a bucket." It's a solid performance that would have been even better with a little more Yiddish and a little less police."

About Michael Chabon: Photo; Wikipedia bio

Conversation starters:

Chabon's work is characterized by "complex language, frequent use of metaphor, and an extensive vocabulary."

Recurring themes in his work include "nostalgia, divorce, abandonment, fatherhood, and issues of Jewish identity."

HarperCollins reading group guide for Yiddish Policeman's Union