Three women, ‘Three Wishes’

Posted on 5 April 2010 by Trisha, Managing Editor

One of the more unusual titles going on sale this week is Three Wishes: A Story of Good Friends, Crushing Heartbreak and Astonishing Luck on Our Way to Motherhood. Written by three friends, the memoir chronicles their unusual path to motherhood. All three were single and pushing 40. All three had made the decision to go the sperm donor route. And as soon as they did, all three met a man and had a child the old-fashioned way.

Today we’re featuring a Behind the Book story from authors Carey Goldberg, Beth Jones and Pamela Ferdinand, explaining why they felt compelled to tell their tale to readers.

Authors Goldberg, Ferdinand and Jones

As Goldberg puts it, “They say you write the book you need to read; I was doing that, writing just what I would have liked to read as a single woman facing a harsh biological deadline, looking for role models and inspiration.”

Continue reading the story behind Three Wishes here.

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Monday contest: Win ‘Imperfect Birds’

Posted on 5 April 2010 by Eliza, Associate Editor

Now that the April print edition of BookPage is available online and in bookstores and libraries, I want to highlight one of our features: Karen Holt’s interview with Anne Lamott about Imperfect Birds, a poignant family story about the harrowing challenges of raising a teenager—an experience Lamott knows well as the mother of a 20-year-old.

The teen in the novel is the volatile 17-year-old Rosie: “She’s affectionate one minute, then furious, then scornful, forcing her mother onto a harrowing emotional rollercoaster Lamott thinks many parents will recognize,” writes Holt. Rosie’s mother, Elizabeth, battles her own demons, and the novel alternates between each character’s point of view.

To learn more about some of the personal experiences that inspired this story, read Lamott’s interview in BookPage. Also, leave a message in the comments section to enter to win a copy of Imperfect Birds. We’re giving away four copies, so enter now—your chances are good!

What’s a favorite or memorable mother-daughter pair from literature? The Deadline is Friday, April 9 at 10 a.m.

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“Reach out and pick up a book”

Posted on 2 April 2010 by Eliza, Associate Editor

Today is International Children’s Book Day, a celebration sponsored by the International Board on Books for Young People. Children’s Book Day is celebrated annually on Hans Christian Anderson’s birthday (April 2) “to inspire a love of reading and to call attention to children’s books.”

Every year, a different country sponsors the celebration, and this year Spain is the host country. Eliacer Cansino, a children’s author from Sevilla, has written a message to children in honor of books and reading. (Cansino has written many books, perhaps most notably his award-winning El misterio Velázquez, which tells the story of the famous painter and one of the dwarfs from Las Meninas.) Book illustrator Noemí Villamuza designed the Day’s poster.

I really enjoyed Cansino’s message, which you can find translated in English at this link. He quotes a popular children’s rhyme about learning to sail, then describes how a forgotten book is able to unfold its sails when a child picks it up—and the child, likewise, is able to be transported “to a world that was at once exciting and unknown”:

And that is the story of how I discovered that beyond my home there was a river, and behind that river a sea, and in the sea was a boat setting sail.  The first boat I embarked was called La Hispaniola, but it could just have easily be called Nautilus, Rocinante, Sinbad’s Ship or Huckleberry’s Great Big Boat… All of these, no matter the passing of time, will be there waiting for a child’s eyes to look upon them, unfold their sails and set them sailing…

So, don’t wait any longer.  Reach out and pick up a book. Read it and you’ll find that much like that childhood song of mine, there is no boat, no matter how small, that in time doesn’t learn how to sail.

Do you remember when you first had this experience with a book? (For me, several Lois Lowry titles come to mind.)

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Best of the Blogs

Posted on 2 April 2010 by Eliza, Associate Editor

Are there any book blog posts that you’d like to recoginze? Give them a shout out in the comments. Happy reading!

A few interesting posts I’ve stumbled on in the past week include:

Welcome to National Poetry Month
Posted by Savvy Verse & Wit

Yesterday I posted a few poem-a-day e-mails hosted by several different websites, but Savvy Verse & Wit takes National Poetry Month coverage to a whole different level. This week she posted a blog tour, so you can see which blogs are showcasing poets and poetry on every day of the month. For example, on April 9, Rhapsody in Books will feature W.B. Yeats and Literate Housewife will blog about Alan Ginsburg. Look out for discussion of contemporary poetry on Savvy.

Book Plant Potters: A DIY Project
Posted by Entomology of a Bookworm

Alright, booklovers, I can understand if you’re unwilling to rip apart a hardback in the service of a nifty project. But still: think of all those books in the giveaway box at your local bookstore! Recycle them into plant potters—sounds like a great springtime activity to me.

Kurt Vonnegut Reads from Slaughterhouse-Five
Posted by Open Culture

Vonnegut fans will definitely want to check out this post, which links to an online recording of the author reading from Slaughterhouse-Five. (I guess you probably figured that out from the title of the blog post!) Open Culture also provides a link to Vonnegut’s 1962 Sci-Fi story, “2BR02B.” This reminds me: Has anyone had a chance to read Look at the Birdie?

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A literary Easter basket

Posted on 2 April 2010 by Eliza, Associate Editor

Anyone seen all the TV commercials for Walgreens, Wal-Mart and everywhere else about the “perfect” Easter basket? I don’t know about you, but I think a great Easter basket includes a couple picture books next to those chocolate eggs.

In the April print edition of BookPage, beloved author and illustrator Jan Brett writes about her new book, The Easter Egg. (Click the graphic below to see the whole interview.) You can also catch Brett on The Martha Stewart Show today.

For a lovely book that focuses on Christian teaching (rather than Easter bunnies), check out Carol Wedeven’s The Easter Cave.

Do you have a favorite book to share on Easter?

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Reading for laughs

Posted on 1 April 2010 by Eliza, Associate Editor

Maybe you don’t want to devise an elaborate hoax for April Fools’ Day (see: Google as “Topeka”), but there is another way to get in the spirit of practical jokes—reading, of course!

What are your favorite books to read when you need a good laugh? A few humor books we’ve covered recently in BookPage include Cake Wrecks, Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog and When You are Engulfed in Flames. Look out for a hand-written Q&A with Sarah Silverman in our May print edition.

Click here to browse our archive of humor books.

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Crazy for poetry

Posted on 1 April 2010 by Eliza, Associate Editor

National Poetry Month poster from Poets.org

Novels and memoirs perpetually show up on the BookPage most-viewed list, but since April is National Poetry Month, I want to encourage readers to branch out a bit and enjoy some verse.

Before you do anything else, read this poetry roundup from our April print edition. Diann Blakely highlights several new collections, including Poetry in Person by Alexander Neubauer, The Apple Trees at Olema by Robert Hass and others. Younger readers will enjoy our roundup of children’s poetry books—with titles like Can You Dig It? and Everybody Was a Baby Once, this feature proves that poetry can be silly and fun.

Many websites are hosting special series or e-mails in honor of National Poetry Month:

  • Every year, Knopf offers a free poem a day. (Click here to sign up.) The poem of today is “Self-portrait” by Edward Hirsch. (“My left leg dawdled or danced along, / my right cleaved to the straight and narrow. / My left shoulder was like a stripper on vacation, / my right stood upright as a Roman soldier.”)
  • Poets.org also delivers a poem-a-day. (Sign up here.) Today’s poem is Philip Levine’s “A Story.” (“The worn spot on the sill / is where Mother rested her head when no one saw, / those two stained ridges were handholds / she relied on; they never let her down. / Where is she now?”) They also have an iPhone app called Poem Flow, so you can read poetry on the go.
  • FSG sends daily poems, too (Sign up here), in addition to keeping an entire Poetry Month blog (“The Best Words in Their Best Order“), where you can find event highlights, audio coverage and posts from big names such as Jonathan Galassi, poet and publisher of FSG. Today he writes about poetry in translation.

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to celebrate Poetry Month!

Who are your favorite poets? What poems do you like to re-read? Leave a comment and you’ll be entered to win Shel Silverstein‘s classic A Light in the Attic (a special edition with 12 new poems!). Deadline: Next Thursday, April 8 at 10 a.m.

I will always love Robert Frost’s “Home Burial“—probably because the first time I heard it was when Frank Bidart read it out loud in my senior year poetry seminar in college. (” ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,’ she cried.”) And Pablo Neruda’s Odes are very special to me. Trying to teach a kid to love poetry? Pick an ode, any ode. I like “Ode to Tomatoes.” (And after reading it out loud, hand her a copy of Pam Muñoz Ryan’s fabulous The Dreamer—read an interview with the author here.)

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How ghostwriting works

Posted on 1 April 2010 by Eliza, Associate Editor

Ann M. Martin

Today is the publication date of The Summer Before, the Baby-Sitters Club prequel, and my interview with author Ann M. Martin is now available on BookPage.com.

One topic that Martin and I talked about that did not make it into the feature was the issue of book collaborators (a.k.a. ghostwriters). It seems obvious that an author can’t possibly pen 12 books a year, but the process of collaborating on a book has always been mysterious to me, until I spoke with Martin.

Here’s how it worked with the BSC:

Martin wrote the first 20 Baby-Sitters Club books in succession. When the books became popular, they started coming out more frequently: once every other month, and then quickly after that, once a month. Then the “Little Sister” series started and they were also coming out once a month. “Clearly there was no way I was going to be able to write all the books,” says Martin:

I started writing—first I think I wouldn’t write one every year. So I was writing 11 a year, and then every other month, and fewer and fewer books. But I was very happy with all of the other writers. One reason I think that it worked so well was because Scholastic kept the number of other writers small. It’s not like there were 40 other people working on the series. It was a pretty small number of people. I don’t think it was more than 10. Each one of the writers had to read all of the books in the series up until the point when he or she was going to begin writing. I outlined each of the books, and then gave the outline to the writer, and the writer wrote from the outline. And I also edited the manuscript. So I felt that I had a hand in every one, but because there were so few other writers and because they were so closely tied to the series as a whole I think that the voice remained consistent. And that was very important.

James Patterson, another incredibly prolific author, works with co-authors, too. That process is explained in a recent New York Times profile: Patterson writes a book’s outline (sometimes up to 50 pages) and the co-author drafts the pages for him to edit. Interestingly, Patterson pays his co-authors out of pocket. You can listen to Sara Evans, country music superstar and author of The Sweet By and By, talk about her experience with a co-author at this link.

What’s your opinion on collaborators? Do you ever sense an inconsistent voice when authors are working together on a book? Do you think ghostwriters get enough credit? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Celebrate Spot and Shrek

Posted on 1 April 2010 by Eliza, Associate Editor

We occasionally commemorate author birthdays on this blog (none more popular than Jane Austen’s), but today I want to give a shout out to some book birthdays—Where’s Spot? and Shrek!.

Spot turns 30 this year, and there will be many festivities to celebrate his big day—he’ll make an appearance at the White House Easter Egg Roll and even at Dollywood here in Tennessee. An interesting fact that’s arisen in the media coverage is that Eric Hill‘s first Spot book was the first-ever “lift-the-flap” book. Apparently the author was working on an advertising flyer that involved a flap covering a picture. His young son was responsive to the idea, and that enthusiasm led him to create Spot, and his books have now sold 50 million copies. In honor of the 30th anniversary, Putnam is issuing a new edition of Where’s Spot? that comes with a special seal. Isn’t it amazing that Eric Hill created lift-the-flap books (a favorite among my old babysitting charges—that and scratch-and-sniff)?

Shrek!—William Steig‘s picture book that inspired the movies—turns 20 this year. For this anniversary, FSG is releasing a special edition, as well.

Do you have any fond memories of reading Where’s Spot? or Shrek! to your children (or yourself)?

Related in BookPage: Read a review of Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig.

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What we’re reading Wednesday

Posted on 31 March 2010 by Lynn, Editor

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
Random House, June 29, 2010

David Mitchell is one of those authors who has been on my personal must-read list for a long time. His four previous novels — Ghostwritten, number9dream, Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green — have all received breathless, ecstatic praise and earned him a near-cult following among admirers. Now, I’ve finally been able to experience the creative genius of David Mitchell by reading his hotly anticipated summer novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. In a letter included with the advance reading copy, the book’s editor, David Ebershoff, stoked my interest even more: “As a book editor, I get asked all sorts of questions about all sorts of things, but there is one question I get more frequently, and with more nearly deranged fervor than anything else: When is David Mitchell’s next book coming out?” Ebershoff writes. “There is a simple explanation for this, I believe: Once you’ve read David Mitchell, it’s pretty much impossible not to become obsessed.”

Count me among the obsessed. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is an amazing historical novel that has it all—mystery, romance, adventure, betrayal and scenes with so much intensity, complexity and historical detail that you’ll wonder if Mitchell was reincarnated from an earlier life.

The novel opens in 1799 in Japan, where the Dutch East Indies Company has a trading post at Nagasaki. The young Dutch clerk de Zoet arrives at the post with high hopes of making his fortune and impressing the family of his beloved fiancee, Anna. But soon after his arrival he is drawn to Aibagawa, a Japanese woman whose beauty shines through the disfiguring burns on her face. As he settles down to sleep one hot summer night with his servant Hanzaburo nearby, Jacob can’t keep his mind off the alluring and mysterious Aibagawa:

Night insects trill, tick, bore, ring; drill, prick, saw, sting.
Hanzaburo snores in the cubby-hole outside Jacob’s door.
Jacob lies awake clad in a sheet, under a tent of netting.
Ai, mouth opens; ba, lips meet; ga, tongue’s root; wa, lips.
Involuntarily he re-enacts today’s scene over and over.
He cringes at the boorish figure he cut, and vainly edits the script.
He opens the fan she left in Warehouse Doorn. He fans himself.
The paper is white. The handle and struts are made of paulownia wood.
A watchman smacks his wooden clappers to mark the Japanese hour.
The yeasty moon is caged in his half-Japanese half-Dutch window . . . Glass panes melt the moonlight; paper panes filter it, to chalk dust.
Day break must be near. 1796′s ledgers are waiting in Warehouse Doorn.
It is dear Anna whom I love, Jacob recites, and I whom Anna loves.
Beneath his glaze of swat he sweats. His bed linen is sodden.
Miss Aibagawa is untouchable, he thinks, as a woman in a picture . . .

If you’re looking for an ambitious and dazzling historical novel to add to your summer reading list, this is it.

All you Mitchell fans: we know you can’t wait for this one. But how about the rest of our readers? Does anyone plan to join me as a first-time Mitchell reader and dive into The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet?

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Judge a book by its cover?

Posted on 31 March 2010 by Eliza, Associate Editor

There sure are a lot of book jackets in the news this week (see an earlier post on the jacket for Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom).

In July, Bloomsbury UK will release seven new covers for the Harry Potter books in an effort to draw new readers; profits are down 35% at the company, in part because it’s been a year without a Potter release. Chief executive Nigel Newton envisions this project as “a new look for a new generation of readers who did not grow up with the Harry Potter series coming out book by book.” (As a side note, do you have a favorite Potter cover? This isn’t a very creative answer, but I will always love the Mary GrandPré editions.)

And yesterday, there was an interesting story in the New York Times about a problem with e-books: people can’t see the book jacket when you’re reading in a public place, which in the past has been free advertising for publishers (not to mention a means for self-expression). Here’s an excerpt:

“There’s something about having a beautiful book that looks intellectually weighty and yummy,” said Ms. Wiles [a reader interviewed for the story], who recalled that when she was rereading “Anna Karenina” recently, she liked that people could see the cover on the subway. “You feel kind of proud to be reading it.” With a Kindle or Nook, she said, “people would never know.”

As I mentioned in a Best of the Blogs post a couple weeks ago, some writers have taken to blogging about books spotted in public places. The blogger at The Subway Book Club actually makes her TBR list based on what she sees others reading.

When was the last time you read a book based on a cover you saw in a public place? The NYT article mentions Chris Cleave’s Little Bee as book with an appealing jacket—which is funny, since last week I picked it up in a bookstore because the cover is so striking.

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Novella news from King and Meyer

Posted on 30 March 2010 by Trisha, Managing Editor

Today brings news of two novellas from two of fiction’s biggest names: Stephenie Meyer and Stephen King. First up is King’s baseball-themed story, Blockade Billy. The book is being released by Cemetery Dance, a small publisher, and is currently only available through their website as an e-book—though you can also pre-order the hardcover for a mid-April delivery. They describe the book as “an original, never-before-published novella that only the King of Horror could have dreamed up! Even diehard baseball fans don’t know the true story of William Blakely, but in just a few weeks you’ll be holding this dark tale in your own two hands so you can read it for yourself.”

Stephenie Meyer fans will have to wait for June 5 to read her novella, a tale told from the perspective of Bree Tanner, a member of Victoria’s vampire army in Eclipse. The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner will have a 1.5 million copy first printing, which pretty much answers my question from the previous post about whether anything a Twilight connection overshadows Meyer’s other projects! One dollar from every sale of the $13.99 hardcover will be donated to the American Red Cross. USA Today has more.

Will you be seeking out either book?

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Trailer Tuesday: 31 Bond Street

Posted on 30 March 2010 by Eliza, Associate Editor

A historical murder mystery. . . a widow (framed?) put under house arrest. . . political scandal. . . a looming Civil War. . . sexual intrigue. . .

Does that sound like your cup of tea? If so, 31 Bond Street may be just what you’re looking for (and it’s on sale today!). Based on a real-life murder—and the frenzied media coverage that followed—Ellen Horan’s debut novel seeks to answer the question: Who killed Dr. Harvey Burdell?

The trailer features foreboding music and details of the case:

Also don’t miss this behind-the-book essay for BookPage, in which Horan describes her chance encounter with the case—and how the “process of writing unraveled slowly, much like an archeological dig.”

Will you read 31 Bond Street? Seen any good book trailers today?

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A looming Cerulean Warbler

Posted on 30 March 2010 by Eliza, Associate Editor

A couple weeks ago Trisha posted details of Jonathan Franzen‘s highly-anticipated follow-up to The Corrections. Freedom will hit stores on August 31 and clocks in at 576 pages. And yesterday, book blogs were abuzz with talk of the newly-released cover:

Is this seemingly peaceful scene mocking a family rocked with discord? We’ll have to wait until August to find out. (But, hey, if you’re interested, The Millions reports that that’s a Cerulean Warbler to the right.)

Like Trisha, I was surprised that commenters didn’t like The Corrections—I thought it was hilarious; that the dialogue (especially where Enid Lambert was concerned) was almost painfully true to life. You can bet I’ll be fighting to get my hands on our review copy when it arrives at BookPage.

Do you like the cover of Freedom?

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Are Meyer’s adult projects eclipsed by Twilight?

Posted on 30 March 2010 by Trisha, Managing Editor

The Host pb On April 13, Stephenie Meyer‘s first adult novel, The Host, will be released in paperback. Little, Brown has big plans for the new edition, which includes a bonus chapter and a telling “author of the Twilight saga” stamp on the cover. (Check out the handwritten Q&A Meyer did with BookPage when The Host was published in 2008.)

But are Meyer’s future projects doomed to be overshadowed by the sparkly vampire juggernaut? Sure, The Host sold more than 2 million copies in hardcover, but the fourth Twilight novel, Breaking Dawn, sold 1.3 million copies in its first day of release.

All that may change when the film version of The Host is released. According to a Little, Brown press release, the movie rights have been “optioned by Nick Wechsler and Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz, the team that produced the film of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Andrew Niccol of Gattaca and The Truman Show will write the script and direct.” Meyer has said though she preferred relative unknowns for the film version of Twilight, she’d enjoy seeing actors like Matt Damon, Casey Affleck and Ben Affleck starring in The Host.

Confession: I’ve read the Twilight saga AND most of The Host, which features body-snatching aliens and, yes, another love triangle. Meyer told Vogue that she sees The Host as a story about body image. “I’m not critical of others, but I am very critical of myself. . . . When I was working on this, I had to imagine what a gift it is to just have a body, and really love it, and that was good for me, I think.” She has two sequels mapped out, but no pub date has yet been announced.

Other readers who found the male-female dynamic in Twilight slightly troubling will have even more to chew on with The Host, whose heroine endures actual physical abuse in order to prove her love/loyalty. (You can download a PDF excerpt from The Host by clicking here.) Anyone else read both books? How do you think they compare?

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