May 2003
Happy May, Friends and Readers! Spring is sprung, and we all know that in spring a young man's thoughts turn to those of love. In this most mellifluous of months, it's time once again to give thanks to those who helped turn those amorous thoughts into offspring--our moms, the conquering heroines. In our second annual Mother's Day edition of LATELIES, we have tried to select books to appeal to the refined and robust taste of the reading mothers in our midst. Even if you aren't a mother, however, you most likely have or had one in some form or another. So remember to spoil your mother or your mother-figure this month, and maybe buy her a good book to read in the hammock. Otherwise, flowers, lunches, and movie dates are always nice.

What We're Reading Now: GBL picks for May 2003
Hot Fresh Dirt: news from book industry insiders
Notes From the Field: we ask you, you tell us

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What We're Reading Now

Why did the National Book Award Fiction Judges choose this novel as the very best of 2002? We'll let them speak for themselves: "Word alchemist Julia Glass weaves gold into straw into gold again in this novel that proves to us that neither ancient privileges nor modern passions absolve us from the regrets, losses, comforts, and ineffable joys of family love. Perhaps not since E.M. Forster have we been led down the ladder of generations with such simple majesty. Our only longing on finishing Three Junes is that we do not have four, because Julia Glass's steady hand at our backs is an uncommon pleasure." We're guessing that first-time novelist Glass is pretty happy with this praise, and so she deserves to be, since this novel is making readers pretty happy all over the world. Each of the three Junes in question (1989, 1995, and 1999) chronicles an era in the life of a member from an internationally expanding Scottish family, yielding an unforgettable portrait of the mysterious forces, chances, and dynamics that transform one generation's choices into the challenges of the next. These characters will stay with you long after you've given the book to another beloved but bewildering member of your family.

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J.K. Rowling raves that "This book has one of the most charismatic narrators I've ever met." If the unparalleled popularity of Rowling's main character (some boy named Harry Potter) is any indication, it would appear that she knows a thing or two about charisma. As it happens, we couldn't agree more-you'll find it hard not to fall in love with seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain and with her delicious account of life in a most unconventional British family. True, the Mortmains live in a castle, but they're wearing the rags of clothing purchased in an earlier decade, and wondering about the exact whereabouts of their next meal. As Cassandra decides to devote herself to writing, hoping to pick up a literary career like the one her father has so inexplicably left off, a new family moves into the neighborhood and provides ample material for her diary. Originally published in 1948, and brought back into print to the thunderous gratitude of worshipful readers the world round, I Capture the Castle is a reading experience utterly unlike any other we have encountered. It's one of those awesome family stories that might have earned your undying loyalty as a youngster, but it's clever enough to capture even the most sophisticated reader long past the coming of age. Oh, and for extra incentive, the movie is coming out this month too.

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Hot Fresh Dirt

It's List Season Again!

So You Didn't Win This Year Either?

As you may have heard, the Pulitzer winners were named last month. To recap, here are the book awards:

FICTION: Jeffrey Eugenides for Middlesex
DRAMA: Nilo Cruz for Anna In the Tropics
HISTORY: Rick Atkinson for An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943
BIOGRAPHY: Robert A. Caro for Master of the Senate
POETRY: Paul Muldoon for My Sand and Gravel
GENERAL NON-FICTION: Samantha Power for A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide

76 Trombones Come Marching In

Celebrating list season last month, Book Sense has posted their Top 10 2003 - 2004 Reading Group Suggestions 76 list. You can view the entire list at www.booksense.com. The Top 10:

1. THE POISONWOOD BIBLE, by Barbara Kingsolver (ReadSmartGuide available)
2. THE RED TENT, by Anita Diamant
3. GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, by Tracy Chevalier (ReadSmartGuide available)
4. HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, by Andre Dubus III
5. MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, by Arthur Golden (ReadSmartGuide available)
6. THE SPARROW, by Mary Doria Russell
7. THE HOURS, by Michael Cunningham (ReadSmartGuide available)
8. ANGLE OF REPOSE, by Wallace Stegner (ReadSmartGuide available)
9. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, by Harper Lee
10. PLAINSONG, by Kent Haruf (ReadSmartGuide available)

Yet Another Reason to Send Your Kid to Oxford

Apparently, there has been some talk among the National Book Circle folks that the group must take a more "America-first" approach to its annual awards. After Ian McEwan (Amsterdam) claimed the fiction medallion for 2002, making it five wins in six years for British authors, a representative from the National Book Award judging panel offered these thoughts to explain the phenomenon: "American literary tastes are still framed among intellectuals and academics who inhabit the Northeastern seaboard," while Brits offer "A whole range of subject matter and writing styles -- for every Anita Brookner or A.S. Byatt, there's an A.L. Kennedy or Hanuf Kureishi -- giving us a diversity of views and experience that's appropriate to the present world. What's more pertinent here is that, pound for pound, this group of writers displays a precision with language that suggests they either have had better schooling or have lived in a place where literature is taken more seriously than that which we Americans are used to." Not everyone feels that the English have the corner on the writing market: in a survey associated with World Book Day, British readers actually selected American Bill Bryson's NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND as the book that best sums up England today.
Heltzel column

Rumsfeld: The Next Laureate?

Here's a fresh attempt to relate to current events in a bold new form. Author Hart Seely has discovered poetry in the briefings of Donald Rumsfeld. Seely asserts that "Rumsfeld's poetry is paradoxical: It uses playful language to address the most somber subjects: war, terrorism, mortality. Much of it is about indirection and evasion: He never faces his subjects head on but weaves away, letting inversions and repetitions confuse and beguile. His work, with its dedication to the fractured rhythms of the plainspoken vernacular, is reminiscent of William Carlos Williams'." Seely's agent David McCormick claims that he "Had an offer within 20 minutes" of his first pitch. Our favorite example of Rumsfeld's lyricism:

"The Unknown"

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

A Nation of Free-Speech Advocates Owes Joyce Meskis Big Time

As many readers may already know, Denver's Tattered Cover Book Store fought and won its First Amendment battle to keep purchasing information confidential. Police had been investigating a suspected manufacturer of methamphetamine and hoped to tie a how-to manual on the subject directly to its alleged purchase from the store. Get this: the book that the suspect actually bought was about Japanese calligraphy, A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters. Tattered Cover Attorney Dan Recht noted, "The Tattered Cover believes that all information about customer purchases is private. The bookstore is not in the business of determining what is helpful to law enforcement and what is not." This lawsuit cost the store big time, but store owner Joyce Meskis stuck to her guns on this minor point of American principal.
Rocky Mountain News article
Denver Post item

Can You Believe that Piglet and Eyore Are Such Slackers?

Material Mom Madonna told VH-1 that she has been shocked and disappointed to discover that most children's books don't assert any important life lessons: "Now I'm starting to read to my son, but I couldn't believe how vapid and vacant and empty all the stories were. There were like no lessons, just all about princesses and like the beautiful prince arrives and he takes her for his wife and nothing happens, no efforts are made. Nobody asks her what her opinion is, or I didn't see anybody struggling for things. There's like no books about anything." The source for the lessons in Madonna's forthcoming series of children's books? The Kabbalah, of course!
The Wire story

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Notes From the Field

"Deep Dark Secret" Adamantly Nixed

In last month's Latelies, we told you about the Denver journalist who asked us to confess to the "deep dark secret" about book groups: "They're all women and none of them read the book." We received almost 30 replies to put this myth to rest. Here are some excerpts:

• "What?? Nonsense! Our book club -- Booklover's Ink, founded by yours truly -- is democratically made up of members of both sexes. We have provocative discussions enlightened by various viewpoints. We shun bestsellers and favor classics: works by French, Irish, Canadian and English writers -- we return repeatedly to Nabokov, Ishiguro, Falkner, Balzac, etc -- learning about the art of the novel now for over seven years. We are interested in regional voices, award winners, Native American writers, Colorado authors and more. Our male members are doctors, lawyers, restauranteurs, media people -- the works. Whoever so blithely panned book clubs as women's clubs is generalizing. Ours as been hetero from the beginning and will always be so. We also have a gifted, brilliant mentor who is a true classicist, send a monthly newsletter with news of what transpired and who thought what, and include brilliantly researched discussion questions mailed out ahead of each read. This happens 10 months a year. I cherish this responsibilty (I love writing these -- they are often quite fun and an exercise in summary skills) and enjoy rereading the old newsletters and question sheets. We have a perspective on reading that few college survey courses could give. Bah-humbug to whomever you were questioning! He should be forced to read Grisham for an entire month as punishment. Or join our book club -- he doesn't know what he's missing!"
  --Corinne Joy Brown
  
  
• "Our book group really enjoys reading the books we select for each month. Everyone in my household knows that book group is a very important evening for me and they know the amount of work I put in to get ready for the discussion. I cannot answer for all groups, but as far as our group (which has met for 3 1/2 years) is concerned, we read the books."
  --Corinne Stahl
  
  
• "For those not in a book group, book club is just an excuse to get together, drink wine, and gossip. Anyone in a group knows that it's so much more. The first question that someone in another group will ask you is 'What are you reading?' The next is, 'Did you like Book X? What did you think about Books W, Y, or Z?' They may make a recommendation for your club, and they will jump right into discussing an author or book if you have one in common. After five years with a group, I am truly amazed at what incredibly busy women are reading and the research and depth they bring to a discussion about a new novel."
  --Leigh Grimstead
  
  
• "True, our book group is all women. But we usually have all read the book and discuss it either with a study guide or with our own thoughts and questions. We discuss some pretty 'heavy-duty' issues -- yes, we do also share lots of laughter and 'gossip,' but it's not the bulk of the evening. My friends and co-workers ask about the book group, and all who ask like the fact that we DO read the books and choose a variety of books to discuss. Men are welcome in our group; we just don't have any interested, apparently. We hold our group in a small-town public library and advertise on the bulletin board so it's open to all. Many people I talk to read books but don't want to commit the time to come to another 'meeting,' or to feel the pressure to read in a certain time frame. It's hard but rewarding work."
  --Sally Harms
  
  
• "Not read the book!? Not a chance. Almost without exception we all read the book. However, if we found it dull and lacking in discussion matter, we feel no qualms about turning the evening into a social one rather than intellectual. Of course, all of our husbands 'jokingly' say the focus of our group is to drink good wine."
  --Joyce De Kock
  
  

Thank you kindly, Ladies! We're still waiting to hear from the book group men out there, and we know you are out there -- we meet you in groups and talk to you on the phone about reading choices almost every day. So if any men, or women, want to address the question "Why do you think the majority of book group members are female?" please use the form below to write in and give us your two to two hundred cents.

Your Name:


E-Mail Address:


Why do you think the majority of book group members are female? Share your thoughts -- your feedback may appear in next month's LATELIES!

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For questions, suggestions or comments, please give us a call anytime at (303) 744 - 8000 or e-mail us at kira@goodbookslately.com