The guessing yesterday was leaning towards the idea that Oprah might channel Alanis Morissette’s Isn’t it Ironic and choose Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom.  Yes that Franzen.  The guy who said ‘no thanks’ the first time Oprah wanted to feature his book.  The guy who is getting so much press that other authors are feeling the lack for themselves.  The guy who has a hashtag on twitter devoted to the whole shebang - #franzenfreude.  Though the early betting was on his book, Publishers Lunch doesn’t think so:

“There was some speculation online that the selection could be Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (which also lists for $28), but it would appear not. We say this because Indigo lists the Canadian edition as also coming from Macmillan (with the same ISBNs as are listed on US bookselling sites) at a Canadian price of $29.50. But Jonathan Franzen has long been published by Harper Canada, which sells Freedom for $34.99 CA.

“We were tempted to infer that it’s a Farrar, Straus or Henry Holt book, since they price new titles in even dollars, whereas St. Martin’s usually releases hardcovers at $x.99. But Walmart.com lists St. Martin’s as the publisher, and the ISBN uses SMP’s 312 ISBN prefix. Which leaves further speculation and metadata searches inconclusive.”

Seems to almost be a science to this guessing thing doesn’t there?

Earlyword had their own suggestions based on the St. Martin’s ISBN.  They’re guessing maybe Some Sing, Some Cry by Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza or A Secret Kept by Tatiana de Rosnay.  And Book Page says early predictions are coming up with Nelson Mandela’s Conversations with Myself.

Which way do you think she’s going to go?  Any books you’ve read lately that you’d like Oprah to pick?

Eve Dallas is a loner who puts the law above all else.  She is prickly and has stepped on toes within the police ranks.  She lives alone, loves junk food and in the beginning of the series meets the multi-billionaire Roarke (who no surprise, will eventually become much more to her).  He finds her stubborn and single-minded about her job and is unreasonably attracted to her.  Once they do become a pair he accepts her for who she is but stands up to her when necessary.  Oh, and somewhere along the way she gets a cat.  Sound familiar?  In Naked in Death Eve is investigating the death of a licensed prostitute and Roarke is a possible person of interest.  What Robb/Roberts does so nicely is balance the romance with the mystery.  As the series progresses there are books where relationship issues take a back seat and it’s all about the mystery and others where emotional baggage held by Eve or Roarke comes to fore.  I like that mix.

Talking about the most recent episode of The Closer and its morally ambiguous ending at lunch yesterday reminded me of another series I loved.  Margaret Maron is known for her mystery series featuring Deborah Knott, a judge in North Carolina who has a large and complicated family.  Though I enjoy that series; more dear to my heart are her earlier books starringNYPD detective Sigrid Harald who was introduced in 1981(!).  Sigrid, like her successors Eve and Brenda Lee, focuses on her professional life.  She doesn’t carry as much emotional baggage as the others but does get frustrated with colleagues who aren’t as focused as she is.  Let’s just say she does not suffer fools gladly.  In her first outing, One Coffee With, Sigrid is called in when the chairman of the art department at New York’s Vanderlyn College is murdered - someone put potassium dichromate in his coffee and he died a gruesome death. Though this was published nearly 30 years ago the book holds up well.  And the series gets better and better as Sigrid’s team gels and her personal life becomes more interesting.

So I’ve found my summer TV show book matches for True Blood and The Closer.  What books would you recommend that match my other summer fave, Mad Men?

**Getting to see publisher catalogs of forthcoming books was one of the best perks of working in a bookstore, second only to unpacking the boxes of new books as they came in.  Yes, I am a book geek.

The full story of what happened is told by Wes Moore, the Rhodes Scholar, veteran, White House Fellow and successful businessman in The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates. This book should be required reading for all middle school students.  That’s around the age things really started to fall apart for the other Wes Moore.

Both boys grew up with loving mothers who wanted their sons to succeed and tried their very best to protect them from a tough environment.  Both boys had other family members looking out for them.  Both boys were bright but had issues with school.  Both boys rebelled at about the same age.  One got sent to military school and the other started dealing drugs.  By the time they were teenagers, their futures were set.  One was on his way to becoming an officer in the military and the other had been arrested multiple times and was headed toward life in prison.

Man, is this a sobering book.  I can’t say that I enjoyed it, but I’m so glad that I read it.  Even though the subject matter is heavy, it’s very readable.  Author Wes Moore is even-handed with details and was able to obtain in-depth background information from the other Wes Moore and his family, as well as family photos.  I imagine this title will also be popular with book groups.  There’s much to discuss.

The longer version is an ongoing debate about what gets included in the limited space of the review section of the Gray Lady.  Authors Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner tell it as they see it in this Huffington Post interview.  Weiner starts off with:

“I think it’s a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it’s literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it’s romance, or a beach book - in short, it’s something unworthy of a serious critic’s attention.”

And even when more commercial fiction (or genre fiction) is included she argues:

“when genre fiction that men read gets reviewed but genre fiction that women read doesn’t exist on the paper’s review pages? It would be as if the paper’s film critics only reviewed tiny independent fare and refused to see so much as a single frame of a romantic comedy, or if the music critics listened to Grizzly Bear and refused to acknowledge the existence of Katy Perry or Lady Gaga. How seriously would a reader take a critic like that?”

I do agree with that.  Mysteries are included in their review section (written by men and women) but romances, chick lit and woman’s fiction are not.  Others don’t agree with Weiner and Picoult’s broader point about the content of the books and how they compare.  Certainly they write about the same topics as ‘literary’ authors but is the writing quality the same.  Lisa Solod Warren doesn’t think so nor does she think it matters.  While others think the battle is lost if it is framed around calling Weiner and Picoult’s books Chick Lit.  Linda Holmes of NPR writes:

“If you’re going to try to report on the fact that a couple of women who write books have tried to start a discussion of whether the mega-response to Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom is symptomatic of a too-narrow view of interesting fiction, it might be a good idea to stay away from the formless and dismissive term “chick lit” in discussing them.”

And all this because Jodi Picoult Tweeted “Would love to see the NYT rave about authors who aren’t white male literary darlings.”  Jennifer Weiner got in on the tweet discussion and the Times responded that anyone who thought she was right “should meet in front of Jennifer’s TV during Oprah.”  Not very constructive response I must say.

So the technology has changed but the clashes continue.  I mentioned that this makes me happy and it does. Partly, and I’ll admit it, who doesn’t love a good literary train wreck (oops I mean debate)? And partly because it gets us all thinking and talking about books and what they mean.  Never a bad thing.  So, have you read of any good literary feuds lately?

Imperfect Birds is a sequel to the novel Rosie, published in 1983.  In that book, Rosie was a child whose father has died and whose mother Elizabeth is an alcoholic.   Now Rosie is almost 18, and is a scheming and troubled young woman while her mother, Elizabeth is remarried to James, a writer and commentator.  Rosie is using and abusing multiple drugs: speed, alcohol, cough syrup among them.  Both her mother and stepfather are seemingly ignorant and delusional in their view of Rosie’s behavior and her social interactions.  When Rosie is finally sent into treatment, against her will, their major concern seems to be how much it will cost.  It is difficult to decide which character is the most exasperating, mother or daughter.  Although Elizabeth is an alcoholic, she is sadly clueless to the signs of addiction in her daughter; she also puts up with a lot of verbal abuse from Rosie.  This book might be of interest to readers involved with addiction issues.  It could be a case study for disfunctional and abusive families but it makes for frustrating and depressing reading.

Anna Quindlen’s novel was also disappointing, but is is hard to discuss without spoiling the story for her many fans.  Again, I did not find the main character very realistic or likeable.  Mary Beth Latham is leading an idylic suburban middle class life, with a good marriage and three children; she is excessively involved in their lives.  Not surprisingly there is a tragedy, and although there are hints about it in the early and slow moving first chapters, it still comes as a shock.  The second half of the book is quite different from the first as the effects of the tragedy take hold, but it left me feeling manipulated.  I would suggest skipping this odd combination of domestic detail and family tragedy, and trying some of Quindlen’s earlier novels like Blessings.  She was an entertaining columnist for both Newsweek and the New York Times, but no longer writes for either publication.

Are there favorite authors who have disappointed you lately?

Our group was small, but there was a great deal of discussion.  The group unanimously loved the book and several voiced their hope to find out the rest of Pei’s story in Tsukiyama’s sequel, The Language of Threads.  The writing was simple, gentle and quiet yet didn’t always seem to express the depth of the hardships that the women were experiencing.  While most liked the writing – one member loved that it was pragmatic instead of flowery – at times it seemed incongruous with what was going on in the story.  One member noted that we are generally used to more graphic descriptions of violence and suffering in contemporary writing, so the difference was noticeable.

Everyone agreed that they genuinely liked and cared about the characters.  They were surprised by the degree of autonomy and independence the women had during this era, and the kindness they were treated to in the girls’ house where the workers lived.  All agreed that although the working conditions were difficult, their treatment at the hands of the house mothers where they lived could have been just as harsh.  All of the readers were thrilled to have read about a world they didn’t know existed.  One member of the group talked about her travels to poorer areas of the world, where she has observed similar bonding and cooperation among groups of women.

There was debate about the nature of a relationship between Pei and Lin, an older girl who takes Pei under her wing at the silk factory.  Most of the readers thought relationship was meant to be sexual, and one did not.  It was unclear why, but it seemed that the author was deliberately vague.  The book was generally written in less graphic terms than it could have been, so perhaps the author was aiming the book at a wider audience of readers, including teens.

For September, we will read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot as part of the UW’s Go Big Read program.  Some of our other branches are holding discussions of Skloot’s book as well.  Check out the book discussion calendar for the dates and times.

Set in 1992 at a private college in Maine, it’s more of an homage to the grunge-era.  Will young adult readers who love the stylish Upper East Side New York girls with their society parties and scandals be captivated by the granola-y Dexter College campus and college freshman with their J. Crew sweaters and flannel L.L. Bean dorm sheets?  I don’t know.  Adults who read the GG series and are curious about this foray into adult fiction might be interested, but the writing is just so-so.

There is some recreational drug use and sexual activity, but no more than in any GG novel, in my opinion.  I’m thinking the book got marketed as adult fiction because the characters are starting college, but the book does not feel like an adult novel to me.  It feels more like an episode of Felicity, again minus the NYC setting.

According to the author bio, Von Ziegesar is forty and attended Colby College in the late 80s/early 90s.  So I guess she is probably marketing the book to me, an adult fan of Gossip Girl who also attended college around that time, loves J. Crew and is looking for something easy and fun to read.  That sounds kind of lame, though, doesn’t it?  So, I will end this review encouraging everyone to read Cum Laude!  It’s full of sex and drugs and Pearl Jam!

In my case I picked up a new urban fantasy novel and loved it.  I’d been a little burned out on the whole vampire/were-animal/gods and goddesses/witches, paranormal thing because everyone and their brother were writing a book.  Finding the ones I like as much as the Charlaine Harris books and the True Blood series is an ongoing challenge.  There are many I pick up and put back down after a few chapters.  Authors I have liked?  Kat Richardson, Ilona Andrews, Patricia Briggs, Rob Thurman and Ann Aguirre are a few of the very good ones.  Now I can add a new book/series to the list.

Cat Adams’ (the nom de plume of writing team C. T. Adams and Cathy Clamp) Blood Song introduces Celia Graves.  Celia is a plain vanilla human (as she likes to describe herself) with no special abilities.  She works as a bodyguard and relies on her wits, fitness and a few magically enhanced tools to do the job.  When she is hired to guard the prince of a tiny eastern European country, Celia runs into more trouble then she bargained for.  After a night of visiting one trashy dive after another, she is ambushed in a vampire attack.  When next she wakes, she is told that she has become an Abomination.  Neither fully human anymore or fully transformed into vampire, Celia is something in between.  The master vampire who attacked her would like to finish the job and the human authorities are torn between committing her or simply staking her.  What’s a girl to do?  While trying to learn how to cope with the massive changes the physical transformation has caused; can’t swallow anything but liquids, the sun now burns her with just a minute’s exposure and a set of pesky fangs that not only cause a serious lisp but make everyone she sees terrified of her, Cat must survive long enough to figure out why all of this has happened.

This wasn’t a perfect book.  The various baddies after Cat had confusing motivations and I wasn’t altogether clear on why certain things had happened.  These issues didn’t affect my enjoyment.  Cat’s voice as narrator is sharp and strong, her struggles to figure out how to navigate her new reality is emotionally engaging and the new take on how all these supernatural creatures was interesting.  I look forward to the next (Siren Song) and luckily for me it is due in September - just when True Blood will be ending for another season, sigh.

The central event in the novel is the discovery of an affair between a teacher and a student.  Mr. Saladin, a young teacher at a private school for girls, has been having a relationship with Victoria, a saxophone player in his jazz band.  Predictably, the school is in an uproar, and Victoria’s family will never be the same.  Her younger sister, Isolde, feels betrayed and oddly distant from her sister, who has an entire life she never knew about.  At the same time, Stanley, a recently admitted student at a prestigious acting school referred to simply as the Institute, becomes enmeshed in the situation from afar, as he and his classmates use this local scandal as fodder for an experimental performance.  When the two sides of the story inevitably come together, both Isolde’s and Stanley’s lives become even more complicated.

While the teacher/student affair story has been told by many authors in many different ways, (Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller pops into my head, but that’s just one of many) Catton’s telling stands out both in the way she tells the story and the skill with which she tells it; her characters are so fully realized yet completely transparent through many layers, and the truths that they speak are so unexpected and brutally honest that I found myself putting post-its on passages I wanted to revisit.  The book gets very meta - it’s a play within a play within a play, with scenes from all of these plays shuffled together into one novel.  If this sounds confusing, it is, but that’s part of what makes this book so good.  It’s one of those literary puzzles that invites the reader to linger in its pages and marvel at how cleverly the author has fit the pieces together (if this is your thing, you might also like Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen, Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl, and As Simple As Snow by Gregory Galloway, expertly reviewed here).  Each scene could be a glimpse into the characters’ real lives, a scene from Stanley’s final production, or a rehearsal of this production, or of any number of the scenes that the characters envision in the theater of their own lives.

Essentially, this is a book about the performance of life itself, and the roles we play.  Yes, this sounds pretentious, but I think it actually really works.  Catton manages to incorporate a sense of humor into the scenes that keeps the book from being overly intellectual or deliberately obscure.  The characters in the scenes often speak with a distinctly theatrical tone, communicating in unwieldy chunks of dialogue overrun with overwrought descriptions of their innermost feelings, which could simply be unreadable, but Catton really manages to pull this technique off.  Within these melodramatic rants, her characters manage to convey a sense of self-consciousness and awareness that leads them to ultimately touch on the basest truths behind their feelings, the things that normally remain unsaid or hidden in subtext.  By layering these scenes and speeches so completely, she ultimately manages to strip down the story to the essential motivations and qualities of her characters.  It’s a paradox of a book, and extremely difficult to describe, but it’s one of those rare books that’s exciting to read all the way through, and I can’t wait see what this innovative author does next!

In the ever expanding genre of celebrity memoirs, Tip It: The World According to Maggie by Maggie Griffin is a charming, light addition for fans of both Griffins and for those looking for a refreshing perspective on Hollywood.  Tip It is a sweet, funny book that is a combination of memoir, advice and family anecdotes.

Margaret Corbally was one of sixteen children born to Irish immigrants who ran a local grocery in Chicago.  She and her husband raised a large family of their own in Oak Park and worked hard to send the kids to Catholic school and then put them through college.  Marge, or Maggie as she is known now, moved to California with her husband and daughter Kathy after retirement.  Kathy worked her butt off to establish a career “in the biz” with much support and encouragement from her parents.  Her parents worked hard to track down stars by crashing celebrity golf events and awards shows.  Apparently, Hollywood security was looser in the 1980s and two darling retirees could wander into red carpet events if they happened to be traveling by foot on Santa Monica Blvd.  Crafty!

In between the memoir chapters, Maggie provides sensible Depression-era advice on topics like how to recycle rubber bands and paper towels, which golf courses and bars and restaurants to frequent when in L.A. (gay bar Rage has the best happy hour) and an open letter to the “bastard who stole our sword” - you’ll have to read it to believe it.  Kathy makes comments in parentheses throughout.  I found this annoying at first, but it quickly grew on me.

All in all, this is a very entertaining book.  You can’t help but love and admire Maggie.  Even if she does think Bill O’Reilly is handsome.