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‘Reading’ the Downton Abbey Wave

January 18, 2012 – 3:36 pm


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Fans of Downton Abbey, the UK-produced drama about the Crawley family and their servants that PBS imported for Masterpiece Classic, will be happy to know that NY publishers have taken notice.   In addition to the companion book, The World of Downton Abbey by Jessica Fellowes, dozens of 20th century novels about the British aristocracy are being rushed to print in hopes of cashing in on  what one New York editor describes as the Downton Abbey wave.  According to the New York Times “Mad for Downton?” , the last time this much interest in the British aristocracy was shown by the book buying public occurred in the 70′s when “Upstairs, Downstairs” was the PBS darling.  Booksellers are also looking to push titles about the Titanic and World War I as well.


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For an inside peek at the real Downton Abbey, the Countess of Carnarvon has written a biography of  Lady Almina and  Highclere Castle, the setting for the series.  As Bookbeast so aptly puts it,

Despite the fact that Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle  contains no references to Downton Abbey beyond its sales-friendly title, it is a fascinating insight into how the seriously rich once lived.

The British online Daily Mail suggests the following Downton  inspired literature on shelves now.

1.   New paperback edition of Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford

2.  The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy by David Cannadine

3.   Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

4.   A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd

5.   Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor by Rosina Harrison

 

By helen | Posted in Book Buzz, Book Clubs, Book World | Comments (0)

2012 Reading Trends

January 4, 2012 – 4:58 pm

Happy 2012 readers!  Even tho’ I can’t predict what new titles will become this year’s hot reads, I did run across a few note worthy trends that book insiders are betting on and buzzing about.

Contemporary dilemma-type titles, sequels of classic tales, YA/adult crossover titles and short story collections are just a few of the fiction trends that Bookseller editor Alice O’Keefe reflects on in Looking Ahead to 2012.  

“There’s a strong showing for unreliable narrators—always an intriguing read. Three of the best I’ve read so far are Alys, Always (W&N, February), a debut by Harriet Lane and a Barbara Vine-esque tale about a lowly newspaper sub-editor who sees an opportunity to upgrade her social circumstances. The heroine of Charlotte Hogan’s The Lifeboat(Virago, March) relays her experiences of three weeks on the open sea—was she innocent or complicit in the events which took place? And In When Nights Were Cold (Mantle, March) by Susanna Jones, a young Edwardian lady escapes her stifling upbringing to pursue her mountaineering dreams, with tragic consequences.”

Dystopias and steampunk will remain hot Teen Reading Trends “…especially with the Hunger Games movie coming out in March.” says Sarah Flowers, president of the Young Adult Library Services (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA).  Fantasy is also trending up.

Book Clubs are here to stay, but even well run ones often look for new and interesting ways to experience a good read. Online College Courses has put together a terrific list of  20 Cool Book Club Trends .  Love idea #12 Blend Books with Crafts.

Published writer wannabes take note.  Apparently publishers believe there is a reading thirst for knowledge and understanding of the crazy world we live in.  Nonfiction will rule this year as book agents  focus on themes of  war, survivor stories, fall of the empires, and demise of dictators, revolt and rebellion in the countries (and politics I assume, this being an election year).    Publishing Trends For 2012  via The Direct News is a must read for anyone connected to the business of books.

 

By helen | Posted in Book Buzz, Book Clubs, Book World, Writer's Salon | Comments (0)

Best Book Club Reads of 2011

December 9, 2011 – 6:07 pm

Don’t ask me where the month of November went.  Somewhere between dishing out the Halloween candy; creating a book group blog for The Mercer Island Patch;  attending my first ever ACBL bridge convention over Thanksgiving weekend;  finalizing the refinancing of our home; celebrating my mom’s 96th birthday and creating a family photo Christmas calendar… the days simply have melted away.  So here it is, December 9th and way past time to get my nose back to the blogging grindstone, so to speak.

As the year winds down, the best of 2011 lists are slowly coming out.  What I like to pay attention to is  ’the best book club lists’ since those are the type of books I like to read and there are less of them to pour over and become over whelmed by. So far, only Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder (a personal favorite), Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic and Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 appear on two lists each.  However, I don’t think you can go wrong with any of the suggested titles.  I will keep adding when and if other lists pop up. Let me know if you run across a good list yourself.  Have a great holiday season and

Happy Reading and Book Giving to All!

The Washington Post’s Best Books of 2011 would all make excellent book club choices.

NPR’s Conversation Starters: 2011′s Top Five Book Club Picks

Book Group Buzz recommends The Kansas City Star’s top ten list because they combine fiction, non fiction, YA and children’s for “a Best of the Best list.  All of the nonfiction selections would be great titles for books groups.”

The Women’s National Book Association lists 20 titles on this year’s 2011 Great Group Reads.

Library Journal came out with their first ever top ten list last year stating,  ”Librarians—and booksellers—should feel confident in recommending them to their readers, suggesting them to book groups, and promoting them through a variety of venues.”  Here is the 2011 list.

By helen | Posted in Best Of, Book Clubs | Comments (0)

The Madoff Memoir You Might Not Know About

October 31, 2011 – 5:03 pm


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There has been a lot of  TV hoopla surrounding the ‘exclusive’ interviews with Ruth Madoff and her youngest son Andrew as part off the promotion for a new book Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family by Laurie Sandell.  Bernie Madoff, of course, is the financier convicted of running a 50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme which led to his oldest son, Mark, committing sucide.  What you might not know is that Mark Madoff’s widow, Stephanie Madoff Mack,  has written her own book The End of Normal which was released last month to much less fanfare.  Below is part one of an interview Mack did with Robin Roberts when she appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America.  I could only find the link to the second part of that interview which I have provided for you  here.

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Fall Book Season

October 3, 2011 – 5:01 pm

I love fall book season. This is when publishers release their big books of the year.  Book Beast has put together a very good list of what they feel are the stand out books of the season.  Click here and take notes.

Book Beast’s Must Read Books of the Fall 
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Read A Book This Week – Banned Or Not

September 28, 2011 – 11:10 am

Was Banned Book Week invented by the American Library Association (ALA) as a way of using reverse psychology on reluctant readers?  Don’t laugh.  I can see why a book listed as ‘subversive’ might be an attractive read for an adolescent.  Earlier this month, I read USA Today contributor Jonah Goldberg’s opinion piece Column: Banned Book Week is just hype.  Goldberg argues that what the ALA terms “banned” are really “challenged” books.

“For starters, as a legal matter no book in America is banned, period, full stop (not counting, I suppose, some hard-core illegal child porn or some such out there). Any citizen can go to a bookstore or Amazon.com and buy any book legally in print — or out of print for that matter.”

He goes on to point out that the number of challenged books is down from an average 400-500 a year to just 348 last year which is the equivalent of having less than one parent for every 200 public schools or 100,000 students even registering a challenge at all.  Goldberg is all for encouraging reading in young people but wonders about Banned Book Week’s less desirable themes.

“As an educational enterprise, it denigrates the United States as a backward, censorial country when it’s anything but. It demeans parents and other citizens who take an interest in the schools. And it attempts to elevate the judgment of professional librarians to unimpeachable heights — the same librarians who’ve sometimes pushed to allow nearly unfettered access to porn in public libraries. Fighting mythical censorship with real propaganda hardly seems like a worthwhile trade.”

I personally like Banned Book Week and all the hoopla surrounding it. For one, it gets students, parents, libraries, and schools on the same band wagon…your First Amendment rights as an American citizen.  And consider this,  taken from a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) compendium titled To Read or Not to Read.  

“Less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers, a 14 percent decline from 20 years earlier. Among 17-year-olds, the percentage of non-readers doubled over a 20-year period, from nineteen percent in 1984 to nine percent in 2004. On average, Americans ages 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading.”

photo via  The Lisa Simpson Book Club

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Kirkland Hosts Northwest BookFest 2011

September 17, 2011 – 10:58 am

Save the date! Northwest BookFest 2011 is only a few weeks away…and for the first time ever, the Eastside will host.   This year’s theme (giving us hope there will be many more years to come) is It’s Raining Books!  By the looks of the program schedule there is lots to choose from.  Readers can pick from panels of thrillers, romance, young adult, mystery, literary fiction, memoirs and even steampunk.  Would be writers and authors can listen to publishing professionals talk about book development, small press publishing, marketing, and more. The weekend festival is billed as a family event so parents, plan on stopping by before or after that soccer game.

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A Summer Toast to the Fall Reading Season

September 12, 2011 – 12:16 pm

My Facebook friends know that I have been chronicling a backyard vegetable garden project that a friend and I collaborated on. Of course, all summer long we’ve been bragging to friends that we would host a harvest garden party to celebrate all the wonderful produce we were sure to grow. What we didn’t expect was a lousy, cold, wet summer that never got above 70 until early August and the bugs, mildew and disease that got most of us buying our veggies in a super market in the first place. We did have some successes. The lettuce, arugula, shallots, french beans, beet greens and chard love wet cool weather. The tomatoes did not. We kept our word, however, and held our farm potluck (my friend Linda’s term for it) last weekend. Lots of great food and one very delicious signature drink Vodka With Lemon & Rosemary (from the garden) that proved to be a hit.  So as summer winds down, and with all the crazy summer weather everyone around the country has had to endure, CHEERS!  Here’s to family, friends and a fall of wonderful reading ahead!


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The recipe is from Food Network hottie Dave Lieberman‘s 2006 cookbook Dave’s Dinners: A Fresh Approach to Home-Cooked Meals which I found online courtesy of the blog site Well Fed.

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What The Class Of 2015 Is Reading

September 8, 2011 – 5:52 pm


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My son and daughter have been out of college for several years now, but I still love to see what schools are asking their incoming freshman to read.  I found this  list on the College Confidential Forum.  Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks looks to be the favorite pick this year.  Do you know what your Alma Mater is reading?

 

UPDATE: 9/12/2011  NPR recently asked their listeners to suggest books that they feel incoming college freshman should read.  http://www.npr.org/2011/09/08/140266970/you-recommend-freshmen-common-reads

 

Adelphi University – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Amherst College – Race and Class Matters at an Elite College by Elizabeth Aries (just Ch. 3)

Bates – Winning: Reflections on an American Obsession, by Francesco Duina

Baylor U. Honors Program – The Whole Five Feet, by Christopher R. Beha

Beloit College – The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

Bentley U. – The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch

Brown University – Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, by Leslie T. Chang

California State U. at Northridge – The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

Colgate U. – Acts of Faith, by Eboo Patel

College of Wooster – Brother, I’m Dying, by Edwidge Danticat

Colorado College – Ludlow, by David Mason (professor English at CC)

Cornell University – Homer & Langley, by E.L. Doctorow

Duke – Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

Earlham College – Rooftops of Tehran, by Mahbod Seraji, and How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer

Elon University – Creating a World Without Poverty by Muhammed Yunus

Florida Gulf Coast University- Life Safari, by John P. Strelecky

Florida State University – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Hampshire College – Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, by Sherry Turkle

Illinois Wesleyan University – “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri

Johns Hopkins: Strength in What Remains, Tracy Kidder.

Macalester College – What Is the What, by Dave Eggers

Marquette University – “The Other Wes Moore” by Wes Moore

Methodist U. – Scratch Beginnings, by Adam Shepard

Miami University (OH) – “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

Meredith College – Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario

Mount Holyoke – “Half the Sky” by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn

NC State – “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot

Northwestern University – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot

Occidental College – Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, by Anna Deavere Smith

Pomona College – Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Reed College – The Odyssey

Rice – The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, by Kwame Anthony Appiah

Rutgers Honors – Monsters of Templeton

St. John’s College (Md. and N.M.) – Iliad, Homer

Saint Michael’s College – Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer

Shepherd U. – This I Believe, edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman

Smith College – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot

Stanford University -
• March, Geraldine Brooks
• The Violence of Peace: America’s Wars in the Age of Obama, Stephen Carter
• One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer, Nathaniel C. Fick

Tufts University – Zeitoun by David Eggers

Tulane University- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot

University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB) – Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism by Dr. Temple Grandin.

University of Delaware – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

U. of Maryland-Baltimore County – Outcasts United, by Warren St. John

University of Missouri – Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

UNC-Chapel Hill: Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

University of Pennsylvania – Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal

University of Pittsburgh – Oryx and Crake

University of South Carolina – No Impact Man

U. of Tennessee at Knoxville – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot

U. of Virginia School of Engineering – Packing for Mars, by Mary Roach

Vanderbilt – The Good Life, by Peter Gomes

Virginia Tech – “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” by Barbara Kingsolver

Washington U. in St. Louis – The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway

Whitman College – “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures” by Anne Fadiman

Wofford – Memoirs of a Geisha

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DIY Book Clutch

August 15, 2011 – 10:17 am

Are you looking for an end of summer bookish project or a literary fashionista pining away for one of those cute book clutches ala Olympia Le-Tan or Kate Spade?  Then this DIY project is for you.  Courtesy of See Kate Sew, the directions look fairly easy.  The hardest part is apparently finding the right size purse and book to meld together with a glue gun.  I’m tempted to give it a go myself.  How fun to have a Janet Evanovich One For The Money clutch (for example) to jump start a fall wardrobe.  A definite conversation starter… in  my book.

A little vintage book… upon further review is actually a clever clutch.
By helen | Posted in Book Design | Comments (3)