Book Clubs, Summer Reads, and the Motor Vehicle Commission (Oh my!)

Yesterday ran away with me. Or rather, drove away with me. I ended up realizing I missed my car inspection (thanks, surgery!), so I hurried over after a doctor's appointment and got it checked out. Then I realized my registration said it was expired in April 2019, too...

Except I renewed it online in August when I put in my address change... So I had to go over to the actual Motor Vehicle Agency and talk to someone there. Turns out, my payment/renewal doesn't show up in the system for some reason. So I had to renew it again. And now I have to apply for a refund once I pull together the documentation of my August payment. Is your head spinning yet? Mine sure is!

And naturally, I left my book at home because I didn't think I'd be waiting in so many lines... Instead, I browsed GoodReads, looking for potential book selections for RBtL Book Club 2.0, which I'm very excited to be rebooting. I think I came up with some pretty good options, but I sure could've used this awesome list of the best summer reads from the staff over at Publishers Weekly

Looking for the perfect book to throw in the suitcase or take to the beach? Let us help. We've polled our staff for their personal recommendations, and PW's reviews editors have put together some stellar picks in fiction, mysteries and thrillers, romance, sci-fi, graphic novels, nonfiction, and YA and children’s books. Whether you want something breezy, laugh-out-loud funny, terrifying, thought-provoking, or anything else, really, we've got you covered. Enjoy!

Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (Knopf Books for Young Readers)

My favorite reads from last year were the bestselling Illuminae series, which Kaufman and Kristoff cowrote. When I learned that they were collaborating on a new trilogy, well, I don’t think I can accurately describe my excitement. An SF YA with an ensemble cast of misfits, blistering sarcasm, and characters who are really good at what they do but terrible when interacting with other people? Sign me up, please! —Drucilla Shultz, assistant editor

The October Man by Ben Aaronovitch (Subterranean) 

It’s lucky that Aaronovitch turns out new additions in his Rivers of London supernatural police procedural series so often, since their deadpan humor and sexy river gods make them perfect diversions in any season. The latest entry is a spin-off, introducing a new protagonist, magic-practicing cop Tobias Winter, in a new setting: Germany. It’s a wine-related mystery I can’t wait to uncork. —Hannah Kushnick, reviews editor 

The Paper Wasp by Lauren Acampora (Grove) 

That feeling when you know things are about to go horribly wrong, but you’re not sure exactly how and you can’t look away? That’s the sensation of reading Acampora’s debut novel, which opens with Abby, an artistic near recluse in a dead-end job, on her way to visit Elise, a promising Hollywood actress, after they’ve reconnected at their high school reunion. Because here’s the thing about rekindling a friendship—it just might end in ashes. —Carolyn Juris, features editor 

The Perfect Fraud by Ellen LaCorte (Harper) 

What is a beach read exactly? For me, it’s a perfect page-turner that adds to the bliss of summer. This one hits all the marks with two women, one a reluctant fourth-generation commitment-phobic faux psychic, the other a brash single mother with a very mysteriously sick child. The tension rises as the women’s lives collide in the red rocks of Sedona. —Louisa Ermelino, editor-at-large 

The Redemption of Time: A Three-Body Problem Novel (Remembrance of Earth’s Past) by Baoshu, trans. from the Chinese by Ken Liu (Tor) 

Nine years ago, science fiction novelist Cixin Liu published Death’s End in China, finishing his 1,500-page Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. “No matter how many posts we wrote, the magnificent, grand arc of the trilogy was at an end,” Baoshu writes, describing the “melancholy” that inspired him to write a fanfiction tribute. This cosmic Romeo and Juliet story takes a welcome journey back to Liu’s fictional universe (with the master’s blessing). —Jason Boog, West Coast correspondent 

And the list goes on... 

Read the original post with the FULL list HERE

What's on YOUR summer reading list?

A New Website is Bringing People "Togather"

Yesterday, the Reading Between the Lines book club met up to discuss The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth. While our meetings are always fun and full of lively book chat, this meeting was particularly awesome.

With the help of some agent friends of mine, I was able to get in touch with Emily and invite her to join us via Skype for an author Q&A. To our excitement, she accepted, and we talked with her for about an hour, discussing her inspiration, research, characters, etc . One thing that also came up was Emily's experience as a debut author, her interaction with the publishing world and readers, and the shocking amount of marketing that authors must do for themselves.

This last point is one that is becoming more and more well-known as the publishing industry evolves. Marketing department budgets are being cut, making it impossible to dole out much money for books that are not bestsellers, thus leaving it to the authors to help get themselves seen, reviewed, and sold. While I am a firm believe in word of mouth as the strongest form of marketing, there is so much more authors can do to get in touch with their readers. And those readers are the ones who can make or break an author (or a book, of course).

All that said, I was stoked to get a message from my friend Rebecca today, pointing me in the direction of an article on Media Bistro about Togather, an online resource--aka "fansourcing" site--for authors and readers alike,  helping to bring us all together in a new and fun way:

The book world seems dreary sometimes. Smart authors read to empty rooms on their book tours while Fifty Shades of Grey is present in every New York subway car. Pop-lit is consumed en masse, while talented authors have a hard time connecting with their audiences across the country, sometimes just because they’re not able to visit the places with the most enthusiastic readers.

Now, Togather, a new “fansourcing” platform, aims to put everyone on the same page. Incubated by Brooklyn’s own HUGE, Togather is an elegantly designed, intuitive site. Through it, authors post their availability for readings. Then fans can invite that author to their hometown. If enough other readers reserve books, tickets, or RSVPs for the event, the author will come and speak. The author is guaranteed a room filled with excited readers, and fans are granted access to their favorite writers.

Togather brings new optimism to the book world by giving authors more control over their marketing, and readers the power to contact previously inaccessible people. We look forward to seeing if and how the model takes hold.

See the original post HERE

Sounds pretty amazing to me. I'll have to keep an eye on this one for sure! And hey, maybe I'll even find us another author to join us for book club while I'm at it. ;)

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

So yesterday's book club meeting to discuss The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith was a success. Lots of great conversation and interesting opinions. But what I want to share with you now is...the CAKE.

I had originally planned to make a themed dessert--a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. I made some slight alterations though, settling on a devil's food cake with a vanilla buttercream frosting, adorned with chocolate-covered strawberries and raspberries. Oh, and it was shaped like a heart.

Ta-da!

Thanks for giving me even more motivation, YummyBooks.com! =)

Borders Wisely Brings in Book Clubbers

Anyone who's met me knows that I love book clubs.

I run a mostly-YA book club and am a member of a classics book club, and have been part of a smattering of other BCs since I moved to NYC four years ago. So, when I heard that Borders has opened its doors to my fellow book clubbers, I was pretty darn happy.

I first heard about the new trend from none other than my mother (yes, Mom, I'm mentioning you again). Living in a fairly suburban area, it's tough for the momma to meet people and make friends so she poked around her neighborhood Borders and found a book club that meets there on a monthly basis. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that news.

Then, last week, the Chicago Tribune posted an article online about the new Borders book club fad, to use the term loosely:

In the increasingly brutal book wars, Borders Group Inc. is learning what coffeehouses long have known: Encourage shoppers to think of you as a home away from home and they'll spend more, maybe even become regulars.

To spur that feeling, Borders quietly unveiled a program late last month that invites book club groups to convene at its cafe spaces instead of in club members' homes. The step is geared toward helping the money-losing bookstore chain drum up sales and reshape itself into a local gathering place instead of a faceless superstore.

Signs and posters telling shoppers to bring their book group to the store have gone out from corporate headquarters in Ann Arbor, Mich., to Borders' 507 outposts, including 18 stores in the Chicago area, said Mary Davis, spokesman for the chain. Borders' Chicago flagship on North Michigan Avenue, which is slated to close next year, already has hosted a few private book clubs in its third-floor event space.

"We're encouraging stores to reach out to the public to say, ‘We're here,'" Davis said. "It's a way to drive traffic to the stores."

Last year, the company began book club nights hosted by store employees based on books that Borders selected, starting with Kate Jacobs' "The Friday Night Knitting Club" in April. At that time, the retailer also introduced display tables stacked with Borders' recommendations for book club discussions.

The latest effort focuses on bringing in readers interested in selecting their own books and leading their own discussions.

Read the rest of the article HERE

Personally, I think this is a brilliant idea. Not only will it succeed in building store traffic, but as a direct result, it will hopefully help to fend off the recent series of store closures. According to the Trib, Borders/Walden cut 10 percent of its workforce this past January, in addition to the 200+ store closures that occurred that very same month (Publishers Weekly). The book biz is fading at a quicker rate than many of us in the industry--myself included--expected or wanted to admit. So anything booksellers can do to help slow down the process--whether a big conglomorate like Borders or an independent--is a positive thing.

Plus, book clubs can be incredibly difficult to organize, especially when membership reaches more than, say, eight people. While hosting at members' homes is always a fun time, it's hard to find a place to house that many people comfortably, where everyone can be looking at one another for an engaging discussion. And when you try to meet in a public place--a coffeeshop or restaurant--let me tell you, it is anything but easy!

Dueling Review: "Of Bees and Mist" by Erick Setiawan

Recently, my book club read Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan. As I was reading, I realized, “Wait a second, I have such a great opportunity here to get opposing reviews of the same book! I can get two completely different perspectives to share with my readers!”

So that’s what I’ve done—or tried to do rather. It turns out that Of Bees and Mist was so incredible that both reviewers loved it. But take a look and see what it is that made this book so special for each of them. (And stay tuned for another Dueling Review, but I’ll make sure their actually dueling!)

And now, with no further ado, please welcome Rachel Bostic and Meghan Stevenson for the first Reading Between the Lines dueling review.

A Review by Rachel:

Of Bees and Mist is a stunning literary debut from Erick Setiawan. Reminiscent of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Of Bees and Mist uses magical realism to tell the story of Meridia, a young woman whose troubled parents are unable to relate to her. Her father stares her down and critiques her clothing and character every morning and her mother frequently forgets her existence. Tormented by ghosts in mirrors, extreme cold, nightmares, and expanding staircases, Meridia escapes her home at the first opportunity—when she meets and falls in love with Daniel.

In addition to falling for Daniel, she falls in love with his family, who are so different from her own. It is only after the young lovers wed and Meridia moves into her husband’s family home that she discovers the true nature of her mother in law, a cruel, manipulative woman who uses every method at her disposal—including supernatural ones—to exert her power over those around her. At first Eva doesn’t realize that she’s met her match in Meridia, and the duel that springs up between them has unexpected consequences for all of those around them.

At its heart, Of Bees and Mist is a love story. Loss of innocence, discovery of one’s true strength, and the power of both forgiveness and revenge are explored through unexplainable phenomena as well as a relationship that rings true to life. Setiawan skillfully weaves Indonesian superstition, Chinese heritage, and American ideals into compelling portraits of a number of different women, getting right what they fear, what they hate, what they love, and what they most want.

While magical realism is not a style that everyone loves, for me it emphasized the parts of life that can seem to have mystical elements—falling in love, fighting with those close to you. The mist covering Meridia’s father cloaks his shame and his secrets and Meridia quickly learns the futility of fighting against it. Eva’s stinging and harassing bees demonstrate the power of hateful and poisonous words. We all imbue certain memories or experiences with a brightness or menacing atmosphere that don’t exist in the physical world, and Setiawan does an excellent job, for me, of tying supernatural elements into those emotions in the text.

Of Bees and Mist isn’t for the faint of heart. Its message is that love certainly does not conquer all, and that growing up isn’t a painless journey. I’d say it’s a novel for those who have loved and lost, and for those who have loved and lost and come together again. It’s for those who believe that if there isn’t magic in everyday life, maybe there should be.

A Review by Meghan:

I received a copy of this book from a friend without its jacket; that I had no idea what to expect was an understatement. My friend and I share the books for a book club that reads a lot of YA and commercial fiction, so I had no idea what the bees or the mist were. But once I opened the book, I quickly found myself completely delighted to read about a magical world without place or time. I had no idea when or where the characters lived, and at some point, I stopped guessing.

The magical, undefined setting freed me as a reader to be completely enchanted and curious as to what was going to happen to our lonely but lovely protagonist. In the beginning, I compared this book to Jane Eyre a bit—but by the middle of the book, I realized that the heroine in Of Bees and Mist could totally whip Jane’s butt, and not in a mean-girl type of way. Rather, I found the main character Meridia to be a strong woman who knows the difference between right and wrong, and wants to reconcile reality with her morals. She strives to figure out how to accomplish that goal throughout the book.

I actually found a lot of situations in this novel to be more real than you would expect from magical realism; the author brings some common familial conflicts to the plot that will resonate with a lot of readers, and I feel the manipulation between and at the hands of the characters was really, really well crafted and made the book suspenseful in a way most novels today are not.

Without giving away too much of the plot, I feel that this novel is similar to Gabriel Garcia Marquez in that it uses magical realism to show some of human nature that’s not apparent in the normal world—the dark forces or bees that individuals use to manipulate others; the mist that traps some of us in the past. This is the perfect subway read—it takes you away without requiring that much of you. I heartily recommend it.


About the bloggers:

Rachel Bostic is a voracious reader, amateur belly dancer, and lover of all things purple. She currently works at Simon & Schuster as the marketing manager for Atria Books. Find her at www.rachelbostic.com.

Meghan Stevenson is an associate editor at Hudson Street Press, working on prescriptive (how-to) and narrative nonfiction. She enjoys reading fiction because it’s not work-related. Originally from Wisconsin, Meghan has somewhat embarrassing hobbies and passions including but not limited to country music, useless yet extensive knowledge of one-hit wonders, Jason Segel and the New York Mets. Her first New York Times bestseller contained the line “Bros before ho’s.” (Seriously: Page 11 of THE BRO CODE.) She has a penchant for trivia and more cats than people live in her apartment.

Thanks for joining us at Reading Between the Lines, Rachel and Meghan!

If you or anyone you know would like to guest blog for RBtL, please inquire via e-mail.

Celebrities: A New Publicity Tool?

Publishers use all kinds of publicity and marketing tricks to sell books. They toil over their mailing lists to decide which reviwers to solicit to write up something nice about a title, they beg radio and television hosts to interview an author, they even push authors in the direction of key events to get their name out there. But one tactic they don't employ--and perhaps should since it seems to work like a charm!--is to somehow get a celebrity just to casually tote a book around so the papparazzi can get a nice juicy shot of it. See Angelina Jolie above, for example. 

These bookworm celebs vary from week-to-week: Angelina, James Franco, Paris Hilton. But the one celeb who publishers know can make or break a book, and always will have that ability, is Oprah. Her book club is probably the most widely known and trusted book club in the world. If she likes a book, you can bet your boots that thousands of people are going out the very next day to their local booksellers to buy it. Her choices--like Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett in 2007--instantly skyrocket in sales and climb their way up the bestseller lists. If Oprah wants it, so does everyone else. 

But it seems she has some hearty competition. In President Obama.

Today, Politico.com reported that all five books on Obama's "summer reading list" have shot up in gross sales since it was announced:

The Way Home" shot up to No. 328 on Amazon.com's Best Seller list Tuesday
from No. 33,349 when Obama's list was first announced Monday. The others
followed suit. "A Lush Life"? From No. 74,289 to No. 10,295 on Wednesday.
"Hot, Flat and Crowded"? From No. 231 to No. 41 on Wednesday. "John Adams"?
No. 14,301 to No. 7,067 on Wednesday. And "Plainsong" rocketed to to as high
as No. 189 from its Monday position of No. 8,155.

And even though the likelihood of the President reading every page in his summer reading list is slim ("at a collective 2,300 pages, Obama would have to pour through 300 pages a day while on vacation," acording to politico.com), people are racing to their computers and clicking away at Amazon.com to read along with the Pres. Just as they did when he was spotted reading The Post-American World by Fareed Zakarie.

Ethical or not, aware of it or not, celebs have all the power when it comes to selling products. Just as Michael Jordan helped Nike sell millions of shoes, familiar faces from the President to Oprah to Angelina Jolie and are helping to sell books like it's nobody's business.

If only us normal folks' opinions were held in such high esteem.