Reader's Advisory Workshop Links

Links that will discussed on Wednesday, April 2, 2008:

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield - Click on the ivy clad doorway and enter the world of the book.

Liam Callanan's website - Everything Liam Callanan with the same unique sense of humor evidenced in his two novels!

Good Reads - See what real people think about books. (Facebook)

Book Browse - (Reading guide for Thirteenth Tale but not Liam Callanan's novels) Bills itself as exception books for discerning readers. There are free features and member features ($30/year). There are hints on choosing titles for a reading group as well as guides, which are available to everyone.

Google Books - Lots of information about your title brought together in one place. In some cases you can search within the book or even read a few pages.

The Cloud Atlas

I wasn't particularly interested in reading this title, but I am presenting Liam Callanan's second book All Saints at a workshop so I felt that I needed to be conversant with The Cloud Atlas as well. As it turns out both books are amazing and Liam Callanan is certainly a writer to watch.

In one of the strangest episodes of World War II, the Japanese created rice paper balloons with bombs attached, which often reached the shores of North America and sometimes detonated and sometimes did not. Thrust into these events, 18-year old Sergeant Belk is seduced by the mysteries and secrets of Alaska. He falls under the spell of Lily, a Yup'ik Eskimo woman and her lover, who is also his Superior Officer.

As in All Saints the story travels backwards and forwards in time seamlessly. The 18 year old boy is now a Catholic Priest looking back over his life. Perhaps the book is his final confession.

NOTE: Not to be confused with David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.

The Safety of Secrets

How could I resist this book! Lifelong friends, who become actresses in Hollywood, share everything including a secret from their childhood in Louisiana. DeLauné Michel writes beautifully and with great humor and insight about all the important parts of a woman's life: friendship, marriage, motherhood and career.

Fiona has a good life. She has a career, is happily married, and has just found out she is pregnant. But seeing the world through her eyes, like all of us, she frets and worries and analyzes EVERYTHING anyway. We find out why as the story takes us back and forth from the present to the past adding a little more each time until we understand the secret burden Fiona and Patricia have carried all these years.

This is one of those books that you don’t want to end because you like and care about the characters and wish they were your friends too. Luckily this is DeLauné Michel's second book (her first was Aftermath of Dreaming and all 12 reviews at Amazon awarded it 5 stars) and she is working on a third. You can recommend this title to all your friends when it is published in June 2008!

By the way, her cousin is James Lee Burke (Dave Robicheaux mysteries) and her uncle is Andre Dubus (House of Sand and Fog).

HBO Picks Up "Ladies' Detective Agency" Series

Alexander McCall Smith's popular five-novel series follows Precious Ramotswe, who starts Botswana's first all-female owned and run detective agency. Anthony Minghella (Cold Mountain) and Richard Curtis (Love Actually) have written a two-hour pilot for HBO based on the series The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, which was also directed by Minghella and filmed on location in Botswana.

Jill Scott has been cast as female detective Precious Ramotswe.

HBO plans to air The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in early 2009, with filming of the remaining episodes scheduled to resume in August.

Picture: Me and Alexander McCall Smith at BEA in NYC a couple of years back.

New ARC Titles

This past week I returned my first three ARCs to Bridget at the Nomad Bookhouse in Jackson promising myself that this time I would chose just ONE book to read. Instead I ended up with an armful of books and had to put all of them back except for TWO. I just couldn't stop at one.

This morning I finished reading Final Theory by Mark Alpert. In his debut thriller, Alpert has used science, history and politics to create a unique page turner. He majored in astrophysics at Princeton University and actually wrote his undergraduate thesis on an application of Einsteins's theory of relativity according to the book jacket.

After reading the first chapter where an old professor is brutally tortured, I thought about putting the book down. It's a great story but the torture throughout makes for very uncomfortable reading.

The story concerns Einheitliche Feldtheorie. There is much discussion of science and Einstein's proposed Unified Theory, which he died without finding. The story supposes that Einstein may have discovered the theory but created an elaborate plan to keep it away from those who would use it for evil. Suddenly our hero, Professor David Swift, is running for his life and trying to find the theory so it can be kept safe.

Already translated into 16 languages, this could be a big title once it is available in June 2008. Look for a movie down the road!

Here's a short video where the author talks about the book.

The other title that caught my imagination was The Safety of Secrets, a novel by DeLaune Michel. Two girls forge a friendship in first grade in Louisiana that follows them to L.A. on a quest to become actresses. According to the back cover, Michel is "from a Louisiana literary family that includes her uncle Andres Dubus (House of Sand and Fog) and her cousin James Lee Burke (Dave Robicheaux mysteries)". The book is set to go on sale in June of this year (2008).

Honorable Bandit

Back on December 30th, I wrote about the Citizen Patriot newspaper interview with author Brian Bouldrey, who grew up in Jackson. Since I promised to write about his new book Honorable Bandit: A Walk Across Corsica, today I signed on to the Jackson District Library website and discovered to my dismay that they don't own a single copy! Luckily Jackson participates in the statewide catalog so I was able to request the book from Bloomfield Township Township Public Library. Anyone with a Jackson District Library card can use this incredible resource. Called MeL or Michigan Electronic Library, it provides access to free online resources like tests and tutorials, genealogical databases, ebooks and online courses. There are resources for children and older students too.

Adam Gopnik - Writer & Essayist

There can't be too many people named Adam Gopnik running around out there so I felt compelled to do a little research. It turns out that Mr. Gopnik is a writer, essayist and commentator best known perhaps for his work which has appeared in The New Yorker magazine since 1986.

You can read more about Mr. Gopnik and his writings at Wikipedia.

NOW: Adam Gopnik writes book reviews for The New Yorker.

THEN: Adam Gopnik was in a play, Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates at the John B. Kelly Playhouse in the Park in Philadelphia, with me. I was Hans Brinkers' girlfriend. I think he was Hans Brinker's little brother.