BEA14- Speed Dating with Publishers

BookReporter.com has been hosting a Book Group Speed Dating session at BEA for the past few years, and each year it grows bigger and bigger. This year, over 200 participants heard from 21 publishers about their upcoming books that would be perfect for book clubs.

The participants, many of them librarians and bloggers, sit eight to a table and the publishers rotate from table to table talking about their books. It's very well organized and always a great, informative event.

At my table, we heard from Mary at Harper Perennial. She talked about these books:

• This Is The Water-by Yannick Murphy, about a murder on a girls' swim team and the parents who try to find the killer.
• We Are Water- by Wally Lamb that tells the story of a marriage, artistic expression and the secrets a family keeps that can harm for generations. This is coming out in paperback, and I read it in hardcover, it's another thought-provoking Wally Lamb novel. My review is here.
• What I Had Before I Had You- a debut novel from Sarah Cornwell is coming out in paperback in August as well. I read this one too, and it is heartbreaking look at how bi-polar disorder affects a family. My review is here. 
• Sea Creatures- by Susanna Daniel is described as a "beautifully written" domestic drama about a woman who has to choose between her husband and her son. This one intrigues me.
• The First Phone Call From Heaven- by Mitch Albom is coming out in paperback in October, and would be a good holiday book club read.
• This Is The Story Of A Happy Marriage- by Ann Patchett is coming out in paperback in October as well. I loved this book of essays that tells the story of Ann's life, from childhood to a first marriage to finding her voice in writing to a successful second marriage and her new career as a bookstore owner. My review is here.

Carla and Hannah from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt shared their thoughts on these books:

• Wonderland by Stacey D'Erasmo is a stunning debut novel about a female rock star looking to "find the artist within."
• The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances- by Ellen Conley is a redemptive novel about a young woman who signs up to train dogs at a sanctuary, where she learns about friendship from the dogs.
• The Lion Seeker- by Kenneth Bonert is an immigrant saga, an "epic event" about a Jewish immigrant living in Johannesburg after WWII. This one is perfect for Jewish and male book groups.
• Florence Gordon- by Brian Morton has a New York City setting and is a novel about a 75-year-old "feisty feminist" who teaches her granddaughter about feminism, and unwillingly ends up in the middle of her family's catastrophes. This is one I really want to read.
• Fire Shut Up In My Bones- by Charles M. Blow, a New York Times columnist who writes about finding his voice after a painful childhood in Louisiana. It's also about the community he grew up in, as well as sexual politics, and has garnered great reviews.
• Falling From Horses- by Molly Gloss has also gotten great reviews and is called "good old-fashioned storytelling" about a cowboy who goes to Hollywood to become a stunt rider and meets a woman who wants to be movie star.
• The Jaguar's Children- by John Valliant is a novel that HMH is very high on. It's a page-turning thriller about a man hiding in the back of a truck trying to sneak into the US from Mexico. The truck stops and he only has a cell phone that has government secrets on it. 

Liveright, a new imprint to me from Norton, had some intriguing books.

• Epilogue: A Memoir by Will Boast has an awesome cover- a school photo of the young author. It's the true story of a young man who loses his family only to find a deeply hidden secret that changes everything.
• Internal Medicine: A Doctor's Stories- by Terrence Holt is another true story, a collection of stories written by an emergency room doctor about the cases and people he has met in his work. 
• The Last Days of California- by Mary Miller about a family who travels across country by car preparing for the Rapture. It was called "Carson McCullers meets Karen Thompson Walker" and Miller has an "incredibly strong voice." This would be a good YA pick too.

Norton shared three books.

• An Italian Wife- by Ann Hood is one I really want to read. It tells the story of a 15-year-old Italian girl arranged to marry a man who moves to the US. She follows ten years later, where she and her husband have seven children, one of whom belongs to the man she really loved. It is portrait of America from 1890s-1970s, with "lots of love and sex".
• Orfeo- by Richard Powers is a novel about science, music and love and is called Powers' most emotional book yet.
• The UnAmericans by Molly Antopol has received terrific reviews and will be out in paperback in October. It is about immigrants and families, changes from the Old World to the New World, and has been compared to Jhumpa Lahiri's The Intrepreter of Maladies.

I will cover the books presented by Soho, Simon & Schuster, Picador and Penguin in a post next week.

A Reader's Book of Days- February

A Reader's Book of Days by Tom Nissley

Published by W.W. Norton ISBN 978-0-393-23962-1

Hardcover, $24.95, 448 pages

My father-in-law gave me a copy of Tom Nissley's A Reader's Book of Days, and since the book is broken into sections by month in calendar form, I decided to recap the entries each month. Here is January's post.

In the suggested readings for February, the ones that intrigued me most are:

• Persuasion by Jane Austen, chosen because February is Valentine's Day and a love letter plays a key part in the story.
• Life and Times of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, his third autobiography, here because Douglass celebrated his birthday on Valentine's Day
• The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam- the story of the Portland Trailblazers' 1979-1980 losing season

Some of the most interesting February facts are:

• On February 3rd, NYPD undercover officer Frank Serpico was shot in what may have been a set up for his testifying against fellow cops regarding corruption in the NYPD. Peter Maas told his story in Serpico.
• Author Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique) was born on February 4th, 1921 and died on February 4th in 2006.
• On February 12th, 1976, author Mario Vargas Llosa punched his friend Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the face at the movie premiere of Survivors of the Andes over something Marquez allegedly said to Llosa's wife. Possibly the first (and last?) time Nobel laureates had fisticuffs. (Or maybe not, who knows with those crazy Nobel laurates?)
• Malcolm X calls author Alex Haley to check on his manuscript for The Autobiography of Malcolm X on February 20th, 1965. Malcolm X was assassinated the next day and Doubleday canceled the contract.
• Sylvia Plath meets her future husband Ted Hughes at a raucous poetry review party in Cambridge, England. He kisses her, she bites his cheek bad enough to draw blood, they stumble drunkenly back to her home and they marry that June.
• Is dord a word?

I'll check back in March; it looks like a fabulous month so far.

A Reader's Book of Days by Tom Nissley- January

A Reader's Book of Days by Tom Nissley
Published by W.W. Norton ISBN 978-0-393-23962-1
Hardcover, $24.95, 448 pages

My wonderful father-in-law found the perfect gift for me for Christmas- a book titled A Reader's Book of Days. It reminded me in some ways of The People's Almanac, written in the mid 1970s, a book I read so much that the binding fell apart.

A Reader's Book of Days shares literary facts for each day of the year- authors who were born on that day, who died on that day and then takes it a step further. For each day, there are interesting facts regarding that date mentioned in books or something literary that occurred on that day. There is also a Recommended Reading page for each month, containing books that have some relationship to that particular month.

Each month, I will give a wrap-up of the previous month's entries, along with the entries that interested me most. So starting with January, the recommended reading list includes:

• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, the basis for the movie Blade Runner, and included because it is set on a single day in January.
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith, her debut novel which begins with a character's failed suicide attempt on a January. 
• Airport by Arthur Hailey, set during a snowstorm at Lincoln International Airport in Illinois.

I would like to read one book from the recommended reading list each month. I chose Airport for January, but am having a problem locating a copy of the book from 1968.

Some of the interesting facts from January include:

• Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) began writing children's books because it was the only writing that wasn't excluded in his contract with Standard Oil, where he wrote ad copy. (January 14th)
• Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the Little House On The Prairie series of books, was pushed to write by her daughter Rose, who was one of the country's best-paid freelance writers. Many people believed both women wrote the books. (January 17th)
• The character of Popeye began as a minor character in E.C. Segar's The Thimble Theatre in New York Journal, which starred Olive Oyl and her boyfriend Ham Gravy. (January 17th)
• The true story that inspired Toni Morrison's classic novel Beloved was also the basis for the book Deed by Harriet Beecher Stowe. (January 30th)

I'm going to enjoy reading this beautiful book as much as I enjoyed The People's Almanac. This is a wonderful gift for the reader in your life, and you know, Valentine's Day is next week. I'm just sayin'.

rating 4 of 5