Book Club Resources Galore

By Julie

I mentioned last week that I've been attending a lot of book club meetings this year in support of Calling Me Home (and in fact am now enjoying my holiday break until the paperback releases!). As a result, I'm always thinking about book clubs: how they get started, how they work, how they pick the books they pick, etc. And as a result of that, I've compiled a wealth of book club resources. I thought I'd share a few.

There are several online book clubs that do a MARVELOUS job of selecting books, bringing in extra materials from the author, igniting discussion, and in general making it easy to read along--whether you're a member of a physical club that chooses the same book or not.

I'm a little partial to one in particular: She Reads. But not just because they selected Calling Me Home as their February 2013 pick, which was the month it released. I believe what they did that month, along with their book blogger network, was huge -- no, INSTRUMENTAL -- in giving Calling Me Home a successful launch. But besides that, I'm signed up to receive each post from the She Reads blog by email, and I really do read every one, because it's good stuff! I've read many of the books they've chosen along with them this year--one of which will go on our "Best books of 2013" post in December, and I always enjoy reading the special posts from the authors.

But wait, there's more!

Target has "Club Picks." Each month a book is featured in stores and online. I've been thrilled to see novels by good friends Priscille Sibley and Lydia Netzer featured this year.

Ladies Home Journal has a book club pick each month, both in their magazine and online. They also have a featured book club each month! Imagine how much fun it would be to see your club in the magazine and online!

Or, you can join Real Simple's "No-Obligation Book Club." Just read along with them and discuss if you want to. No guilt if you forgot to make snacks for the meeting at your house in 20 minutes.

Suzanne Beecher has created a reader advisory service online called Dear Reader. If you sign up, each day she sends you a five-minute excerpt of a book to enjoy with your morning coffee. She also features books weekly. Not sure what to pick for your club when it's your turn? She guarantees you'll be hooked with all the choices she presents.

On Goodreads, you can see what books people have shelved as "Popular Book Club Picks."

Book Movement and LitLovers are two sites that are a whole wealth of information for book clubs. Each site has discussion guides for vast numbers of books, guides for starting book clubs, and lots of "favorites" lists, as well as site picks. Booklist lists these two and several more on a resources for book clubs list.

Book Club Girl recently featured Joshilyn Jackson (who has been a guest here at What Women Write in the past) in a post about getting an author to attend your book club meeting. I can vouch for what she says, though of course #1 is a future dream. :)

I've always loved the Bookreporter.com newsletter that arrives in my inbox each and every Friday. It's like a "Welcome to your weekend" buzzer. I see it and remember it's Friday! I can count on Bookreporter to tell me about all kinds of books releasing in upcoming weeks.

Finally, what if you just want to join an existing club that's accepting new members? One of the best ways I've discovered to look for active book clubs in a particular area is Meetup.com. Simply sign up with your zip code, search by "book club," and voila, you might find yourself struggling to make a choice which one to visit first.

And this is just scratching the surface. What it boils down to is there is a slew of information online for book clubs. If you think you'd like to join one or are in need of resources, never fear, the Internet is here.

Are you in a book club? How do you pick books? What was your club's favorite read of the year so far?

Our Connections

By Pamela

Last week I wrote my mother's obituary.

She didn't pass away but she is quite ill and, being 'the writer in the family,' I assumed the task would fall to me--an honor I didn't want to attend to in the midst of inevitable grief.

A month ago she underwent a procedure that didn't go quite the way any of us had planned, and she wound up with a feeding tube inserted and the inability to swallow. Coupled with several other serious health issues, she lives now in skilled nursing care near her home in Indiana. Fortunately, I was able to stay with her for a period of time in the hospital but had to return to Texas. Coordinating her care long distance, along with my siblings and a case manager (who can't possibly be paid what she's worth!), has created a level of stress in me I've not experienced before.

So, this past week, when a girlfriend trip that had been planned for months loomed nearer, I simultaneously panicked that my mom's health might cause me to cancel (three friends flying here from three different states) and looked forward to a welcome distraction from my worries.

Trisha, Traci, Sonya and me at the Dallas Arboretum on Saturday.

These three friends--Sonya, Trisha, Traci--and I share a rich history, one that began with a book club that started over a dozen years ago. Together we've cried over tremendous loss and heartbreak and celebrated adoptions (four!) and births. It was no surprise then, this long weekend, that we found ourselves talking about and sharing books.

In our book club we read classics such as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and The Scarlet Letter, popular fiction including A Prayer for Owen Meany and Year of Wonders and one or two titles that no one really liked--ahem, The Corrections. In the eight years since I've moved away, we've shared several titles long-distance (from me: Jantsen's Gift and, of course, Calling Me Home, and more). Being able to recommend books and knowing that my friends are experiencing the pages I've read has helped bridge the physical gap between us.

After four glorious days of shopping, eating, movies, eating, talking, eating, shopping ... it's no surprise, that in the somber stillness of this Monday morning--with my dear friends back in their faraway homes--the church pew that sits in my foyer is stacked with items too large/heavy/breakable to be tucked into suitcases. Among the treasures waiting to be mailed home are books--books I've read and feel my friends must read, too.

What a lovely thing, this sharing of stories--our own and others', some true and heartbreaking; some fictitious that have allowed us to escape, to laugh, to indulge. What a lovely experience, to have friends come to visit and spend time together after many long months apart. What a lovely gift, to know people and to allow them to know you--even your flaws and mistakes and shortcomings--and realize you are loved.

What Alice Forgot--a review

By Pamela

It's the age-old interview question: Where do you see yourself in five years? Or, we might even ask of ourselves: Where do I want to be in ten? What we never consider is: What would today be like if I had no memory of the last ten years of my life? In What Alice Forgot we meet Alice as she's just suffered a nasty fall off a stationary bike during a spinning class. Here's what the author, Liane Moriarty, who is Australian, writes about the story's premise:

I had always wanted to write a story about time travel but I found the logistics made my head explode. Then I read a story about a woman in the UK who lost her memory and behaved like a teenager--she didn’t recognise her husband or children. I realized that memory loss is a form of time travel. So I came up with the idea of a woman, Alice, who loses 10 years of her memory. She thinks she is 29, pregnant with her first child and blissfully in love with her husband. She is horrified to discover she is 39, with three children and in the middle of a terrible divorce. It’s like the younger Alice has travelled forward in time. 

I read the book because it was selected for my book club this month and admit I found myself a little bogged down with the pacing in the beginning. The first half of the book covers the day Alice fell and the day following. We meet an intriguing cast of characters including Alice's sister, her mother and some of her friends, but not until much later in the book does she encounter her husband and her children. And what a frightening thought! To think you have three children of whom you have no memory!

That concern aside, once I got into the heart of the story and walked with Alice--as she tried to piece together how she went from a happy-go-lucky, much-in-love, soon-to-be mother to an about-to-be-divorced, over-involved mother of three whom people both admired and feared--I was enraptured by this woman's journey. 

Moriarty writes Alice's story from only Alice's POV (in third-person), but we hear her sister's perspective through journal entries and her grandmother's perspective through letters. But it's the author's handling of the marriage, through the scenes with Alice and her husband, Nick, that kept me turning the page. Moriarty's ear for dialog and her sense of humor is enviable, to say the least. 

My friend who selected the book pitched it as a 'light, fun read' but I beg to differ. Yes, the story was fun because it was quite hilarious in spots, but it's also the kind of story that feels much weightier. It's a story that gives you pause and causes you take stock in your own life and makes you wonder that if you had the chance to see yourself ten years from now, would you like the person you'd become? And would you try hard to change that outcome? 

I encourage you to read What Alice Forgot to find out what Alice did eventually do with her life. No spoilers here! 

In Praise of Book Clubs

By Pamela

I've yet to meet a writer who wasn't also a voracious reader. It's akin to saying you compose songs but never listen to music or sing. One can't be proclaimed without the other.

Me (bottom left) with my Illinois book club friends, circa 2002.

So when my neighbor, Tracy, asked if I might be interested in joining a book club that was just starting out, I said sure! Before I moved to Texas from Illinois, I was in a book club that met for five years. We started out with about six women and grew to around a dozen or so, varying in attendance each month, as most groups do. I've been gone for over six years now but still stay in touch with most of them and always will.

I must admit, my book reading has been a bit off lately. Whether it's due to the fact that I 'read' at the computer so much during the day or that I tend to be a little fickle in my reading preferences, I'm not sure. Maybe a bit of both. I'm excited about the reading prospects this new group will bring.

My new book club met this past Wednesday and for our first selection we read Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. I felt a little smug about his title being our first: Not only do I have an autographed copy of the book but I also heard Jamie speak when he was in town.

As the discussion got under way, I contributed little to the conversation and instead enjoyed hearing the women around me speak so passionately about the story. They talked about the characters they loved, the ones they didn't really relate to and others they felt made the tale come alive.

Then I imagined what might be debated if they had read my manuscript. Which characters would they find intriguing/irritating/forgettable? What issues would they discuss and possibly disagree on? Would they love or hate the ending? Would they wonder what happened to my characters after the story ended? Would they even care?

What I concluded, after pondering these questions, was: I have to up the stakes. I need to create more passion in this story--make the reader really care about how these characters relate to one another, make the people in the story come alive on the page and dwell in the mind of the reader. The reader needs to become invested in the outcome of the book enough to keep reading--even wish the story didn't end.

Time to get busy!

Bonding through Books

By Pamela

The common bond between the six of us at What Women Write is obviously our writing. But I’m pretty sure, had our paths crossed by other means, our love of reading would have cemented our friendship as well.

I feel extremely blessed to have so many amazing friends. Some I’ve met through my children’s activities. Others I’ve known since grade school and we keep in touch through Facebook. But one core, significant group of my friends bonded over books.

When I moved to the St. Louis area while my boys were starting grade school, I met a great mom named Wila while volunteering. She moved on, as many people did in that area with it being home to an air force base, and then, coincidentally, I met the woman who bought Wila’s house the first day of the next new school year. Sonya and I connected immediately. A vivacious redhead, she chatted easily with me, and soon we found we both attended the same university in Indiana. She had a boy named Ben; so did I. She had an older son in my other son’s class. Like me, she liked to sew…and bake…and read.

Soon afterward, we formed a book club with her neighbors and some friends of mine. Here’s a list of what we read—some classics, others best-sellers, still more that members suggested--a collection as unique as the women who attended.

2001

• September, Patty Jane’s House of Curl by Lorna Landvik
• October, A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
• November, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells



One of our early meetings--at Sonya's house.

• December, The Giver by Lois Lowry

2002

• January, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
• February, She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
• March, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty White
• April, Daughter of Fortune by Isabelle Allende
• May, Bald in the Land of Big Hair by Joni Rodgers
• June, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• July, Sea Glass by Anita Shreve
• August, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• September, White Oleander by Janet Fitch
• October, Durable Goods by Elizabeth Berg
• November, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• December, The Christmas Train by David Baldachi

Racing for the Cure together in St. Louis.

2003

• January, The Nanny Diaries by McLaughlin & Kraus
• February, The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• March, At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon
• April, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• May, Angry Housewives Eating Bon-Bons by Lorna Landvik
• June, Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg
• July, The Elegant Gathering of White Snows by Kris Radish
• August, Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
• September, Sins of the Seventh Sister by Huston Curtiss
• October, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
• November, Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• December, The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

2004

• January, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
• February, The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
• March, The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
• April, Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
• May, The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
• June, The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
• July, Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found by Jennifer Lauck
• August, A Widow for One Year by John Irving
• September, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• October, Mammoth Cheese by Sheri Holman
• November, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett



Getting together in St. Louis again in 2009.

• December, Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris

2005

• January, Myth of the Welfare Queen by David Zucchino
• February, Sleep Toward Heaven by Amanda Eyre Ward
• March, Light on Snow by Anita Shreve
• April, The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
• May, The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
• June, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
• July, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosselini
• August, The Midwife’s Tale by Gretchen Moran Laskas

Taking a cooking class in Savannah this past April.

Forty-eight meetings later, I said my good-byes and moved to Texas. But before I left, I'd forged a bond with these women that time and distance has not broken. Today, they still hold a very dear place in my heart. And even though it’s now been nearly six years since I tearfully sat through my last discussion, nearly everyone of us still stay in touch—via Facebook and in person on our annual excursions, some pictured here.

Just this spring five of us met in Savannah, home to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Not a book we read as a club, but a book we’d all read prior to meeting each other. We ate, we shopped, we talked into the wee hours of the night about many things, but still about books. Always about books. It’s part of what binds us still.

I Have a Book to Finish

By Kim

The blogosphere has many posts about balancing the writing life with real life. I even wrote one myself at this time last year. Summer vacation loomed and I despaired at the thought of accomplishing nothing on my novel during it. My children were, to be fair, only a fraction of the problem. I had reached a point in the manuscript where my muses weren’t talking, or perhaps I just didn’t like what they had to say. I needed to tune them out for awhile.

Now I can’t ignore them. They jabber away in my head while I run errands, do laundry, and tend to my family’s needs. Even when I have the house to myself, other obligations prevent me from taking dictation for hours on end.

If I didn’t share posting duties at What Women Write with five other women, there’s no way I’d ever finish my manuscript. I’m not the sort of writer who can bang out five hundred words in an hour and throw it up on this blog anymore than I can compose three (or even two) thousand words in a day. I envy authors who can, but I’m too much of a compulsive editor.

A typical post takes me a full day to compose, edit, and put up on Blogger, and that’s after I know what I intend to write about. A book review is far less time consuming to compose, but requires me to read a novel before I can write it. The same goes for an author interview, only in that case I need to tack on at least an hour’s worth of time to come up with questions the author hasn’t already answered on twenty blogs, in the Q and A sections of their books, or on their websites.

Before the tone of this post scares my WWW colleagues or you, I should clarify that I have no intention of bowing out of my blogging duties. I’m simply taking stock of the time commitment involved in the hope that our readers who may toy with the idea of starting a blog of their own will find it helpful.

Painting by Carl Ahrens

Having to write on a deadline, even when ideas and words don’t flow, is a valuable exercise. Someday I hope to have a new novel to write, a finished one to edit, and a published one to promote. I’ll have book club meetings to attend, guest blog posts to write, Facebook and Twitter to update, interviews to give and, I suspect, my sanity to lose. I know I’ll look back with longing on this time when I had no writing obligations other than a novel to complete and a blog post every other week.

That said, I still must prioritize my time. I have roughly 80 pages left to write before The Oak Lovers is complete. My posts may get shorter. I may have a looming blog deadline and not be at a place where I can leave Carl and Madonna’s world longer than it takes to recycle an old post. My prose may be less than perfect once in awhile. I’m not slacking, and I trust that you will forgive me.

I have a book to finish.

Photo of Kim and her children by Deborah Downes