The Printed Page

MizB at Should Be Reading is the host of Musing Mondays.

Today’s MUSING is just going to be a simple one on reading…

WHAT ARE YOU READING RIGHT NOW? I’m about 80 pages from finishing Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block by Judith Matloff. This has been a very entertaining read. Talk about location, location, location when buying real estate. She bought in a way less than desirable ‘hood but it makes for a really good story.

WHY ARE YOU READING WHAT YOU’RE READING? PLEASURE? FOR REVIEW? SOMETHING ELSE? Home Girl is a review book I received from Julie at FSB Associates. Julie offered me 2 copies of this book so I will be giving them away sometime in October here at The Printed Page.

WHAT DID YOU RECENTLY FINISH READING? I just finished Immortal by Traci L. Slatton for The Literate Housewife’s online book group. For most part I enjoyed Immortal though I thought it was a bit too long.

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’LL BE READING NEXT? Either Buffalo Gal by Laura Pedersen or Wife in the North by Judith O’Reilly. Both are review books.

WHAT WAS THE BEST BOOK YOU READ THIS MONTH? WHY? Absolutely no contest here, hands down it was Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. This book has made my sidebar list of ‘Books You Shouldn’t Pass By.’ It’s a fabulous story about race, forbidden love, history, family and sacrifice set between WWII and present day. My humble review is here and you can check out what others are saying here. I’m giving away 15 copies of ‘Hotel’ here. A very close second was Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur by Halima Bashir with Damien Lewis. It’s another sidebar book.

WHAT WAS THE WORST BOOK YOU READ THIS MONTH? WHY? Well I didn’t DNF any so that’s a good thing. I guess it would have to be The Fire by Katherine Neville. It was very confusing, uninteresting and didn’t live up to it’s predecessor, The Eight. ********** So tell me how was your September in terms of reading? Any book you liked or didn’t? What are you currently reading and what’s up next?

Thank you to everyone who stops by Mailbox Monday. Whether you comment or visit I appreciate your taking the time to drop in.

Here’s what I found in my mailbox last week:

Memoir ~ Wife in the North by Judith O’Reilly

Memoir ~ Buffalo Gal by Laura Pedersen

Memoir ~ Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block by Judith Matloff

Favorite author/mystery ~ The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly

********** What books came into your house last week?

What’s On Your Nightstand is hosted by 5 Minutes For Books.

On my nightstand right now are memoirs and some favorite authors.

Memoir ~ Wife in the North by Judith O’Reilly

Memoir ~ Buffalo Gal by Laura Pedersen

Memoir ~ Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block by Judith Matloff

Favorite author/Thriller ~ Divine Justice by David Baldacci

Favorite author/mystery ~ The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly

Coming soon to the Nightstand:

Mystery ~ Oblivious by Cyndia Depre

Fiction ~ Life After Genius M. Ann Jacoby

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What’s on your nightstand right now?

So reading Run by Ann Patchett for Every Day I Write The Book‘s book club this month got me thinking about my expectations of what I want from a book. What is it I’m expecting when starting a new book? Does it depend if it’s fiction or non-fiction. Does it depend if it’s solely for pleasure or if I owe a review? Should it inspire me or teach me something? Should it depend on whether it’s an author I’m familiar with or someone whose work I haven’t read before?

After asking myself those questions it simply comes down to this: I expect my fiction reading to entertain and my non-fiction reading to get me thinking.

I want my fiction books to do nothing more than provide an entertaining story. Something that transports me to another time and place, another life, another world. I want to be gone from here and be there. Maybe I’m looking for a thrill, a new love, a different job, to see what’s around the next corner. I want to cry, laugh, have fun, feel a broken heart, start over, do it again the same way. Maybe I want to be someone I’m not just for a short while. Maybe I want to try having what I don’t ~ different values, different lifestyle. Most of all I just want to escape.

What I don’t want is a story that tangles me up in knots. I don’t want it to contain meaning and messages, make points, be thought provoking or deep. I don’t want worry about trying to ‘get it’ when I don’t.

Then again many of things I don’t want in my fiction reading I do expect from my non-fiction selections. I usually go into reading non-fiction with a purpose. I want it to enlighten me, get my thoughts rolling, bring new ideas and cultures into my world. I want to explore, travel to places I’d never go, experiment with ideas. I want to be tested. I want other perspectives, mental stimulation and challenges.

This is why my reading tastes vary far and wide. Why I’m willing to give just about every book I come across chance to make an impression.

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What do you expect from your reading? Do you feel the same way I do? Or are my expectations a complete 180 from yours?

Run Web site for Ann Patchett Harper Perennial; Reprint edition, 2008 320 pages Fiction Book provide by Book Club Girl for the Every Day I Write The Book book club.

I joined 2 online book clubs with specific goals in mind: to expose myself to new authors and to have a place to discuss books. While I love my f2f book club ladies we don’t stay on topic which is fine (I know some of you read this). Dinner always manages to diverge into hysterics which someday will get us thrown out of a restaurant. Speaking of off topic… sorry.

This book, Run, achieved both those goals the first time. Ms. Patchett is an author I’ve had exposure to simply by seeing her work mentioned throughout the book blogging community. Several places have raved about Bel Canto though I’ve haven’t read it myself. I always got this feeling that her books wouldn’t appeal to me. There I was not wrong. I don’t enjoy reading fiction that I feel has a ‘message’ hidden somewhere in the story. I find myself spending more time actually trying to figure out what it is that author wants me ‘to get’ then I do enjoying the story.  My mind is wandering off exploring, digging around instead staying focused. I actually got more out of this book from reading the author interview about her ‘purpose’ for writing this story then I did from the story itself. I found her insight into her thoughts behind this book enlightening and wish I’d read that part beforehand. I didn’t, though, because sometimes those interviews can contain plot line spoilers. 

Background ~ two brothers, Tip & Teddy, of ethnic origin are adopted at a young age by a white city mayor and his wife who already have one son. Current time ~ by fate, and tragic circumstances, all three brothers and their father meet the mother, and her daughter, of the 2 adopted brothers. We come to find out that Kenya, the daughter, is familiar with her brothers because her mother has been keeping tabs on them for past 15+ years. On the other hand the brothers find their lives turned upside down by a mother and sister that they’ve had no previous contact with or knowledge of. Over the next 24 hours complex family relationships are explored.

Ms. Patchett writes well and I can see why a legion of readers are attracted to her work. When she is simply telling a story she does a wonderful job ~ such as the track scene in the college gym with Tip and Kenya or Kenya testing Tip about the fish names. But the book goes off track, for me, when she starts exploring the deeper family ties and expectations of a father for his sons. When Doyle drags his sons to yet another political speech because he has dreams for his boys or Teddy follows his father’s dream for him instead of his heart.

Overall I’d say I’m split in on this one ~ I didn’t love it but then again I didn’t dislike enough to put it down. ********** You can find the complete book club discussion here **********

X-posted: Book Club & Publishers Blog

I’m so excited to offer you the opportunity to win one of the best books I’ve have the pleasure of reading this year. Katie, at Random House (thank you Katie!) has generously provided 15 copies of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.

These are Special Edition ARCs of Mr. Ford’s fabulous story about race, forbidden love, history, family and sacrifice. Personally I couldn’t put this book down. My humble review can be read here. But don’t take just my word about how wonderful this book is ~ check out what others readers are saying about Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.

Be one of the first in the book blogging community to get your hands on what is sure to be a break out book next year. The release date is January 29, 2009 but you don’t need to wait. You can get your copy now!

From Amazon: In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.

This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.

Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.

Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart.

********** Enter the giveaway for the Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

The September edition of the Read It Forward newsletter from Random House just hit my email.

The ARCs this month are: Against Us: The New Face of A Enemies in the M World by Jim Sciutto

The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler by Thomas Hager

The Walk-In: A Novel by Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo

Some fan favorites: Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal by Ben Macintyre

Switching Time: A Doctor’s Harrowing Story of Treating a Woman with 17 Personalities by Richard Baer

Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram by Dang Thuy Tram

and in honor of breast cancer awareness month: Taking Care of Your Girls: A Breast Health Guide for Girls, Teens, and In-Betweens by Marisa C. Weiss and Isabel Friedman

MizB at Should Be Reading is our host.

This week’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about book clubs!

Do you belong to a book club? Is it online, or face-to-face (f2f)? How long have you been with the group? What have you learned from them? Do you like how the group is run, or would you make changes to it if you could?

I do belong ~ of course I do. Don’t most, if not all, book lovers like to gather with their own kind? Just look at the book blogging community. Now that’s one big, really big, book club (IMO).

OK back the topic at hand ~ book clubs.

I’m a member of a f2f book club. Well that’s probably a polite way to look at it. We meet for dinner once a month and books are a sideline not a highlight. Actually I’m the driving force, the self-appointed founding leader. I’m a certified book hoarder and needed a support group for my addiction. It’s a small group of ladies, 5 of us, and we’re all really good friends. It breaks down like this:

~ One member who is there for friendship and dinner. She reads, maybe, 2-3 books a year. ~ Three members who read an average of 1-4 books a month. ~ Then there’s me who reads and reads and reads.

I pick the titles by searching blogs, book sites, newsletters, etc. and list 3 or 4 selections every month. I keep a separate blog so that the ladies can get the details for the upcoming month. Everyone likes something a little different and some want to explore new genres or authors they wouldn’t necessarily try without some prompting so I try to mix up the selections.

This style of f2f book club probably wouldn’t work for die hard readers but I love the ladies and it works for us.

To fill in the gaps I’ve decided to joined 2 online book groups. This is my first month participating in both and I’ve chosen:

Every Day I Write The Book. This month’s selection is Run by Ann Patchett. I can’t say I’m crazy about the book. It’s not something I would have chosen for myself and that could be a good thing. I needed something to force me out of my reading comfort zone and this has done that. I’m looking forward to Thursday when Gayle will open the group discussion. I’m interested to see how others liked this particular book.

I’m also part of the online book group that Jenn at The Literate Housewife has started. I knew this was coming as she announced it in August but I didn’t see any updates until today when I across it in her Sunday Salon post. Now I’m a bit behind the 8 ball, so to speak, but I’m so excited. This month we’re reading Immortal by Traci L. Slatton. This looks like it will be a lot of fun and it’s a great group of people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in the book blogging community. If you like to join us you can sign up here.

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So how ’bout you~ are you a member of a book club or more than one? If so, is it online or f2f? Do you have any online book clubs that you’d recommend to me?

Thank you to everyone who stops by Mailbox Monday. Whether you comment or visit I appreciate your taking the time to drop in.

Here’s what I found in my mailbox last week:

General fiction ~ Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. An ARC I received from Random House. This is one of my favorite books this year and makes my ‘must read’ list. My review is here and check out what others are saying about the wonderful book. Release date is January ’09.

Historical fiction ~ Guernica by Dave Boling

Historical fiction ~ The Lady Elizabeth: A Novel by Alison Weir

Thriller/mystery ~ The Night Villa: A Novel by Carol Goodman

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What books came into your house last week?

Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet Web site for Jamie Ford Web site for Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet; check out what others are saying Ballantine Books; release date January 27, 2009 304 pages Fiction Book provided by Random House

This book is one of my top picks for this year and it’s release date isn’t until January of ’09. There wasn’t any part of this book that I didn’t love it was that good. If you can get your hands on an ARC ~ do so. This is one of those times that I wish I wrote professional style book reviews but alas I don’t. I laughed, I cried and was touched many, many times.

** I tried very hard not to include major spoiler elements in this review yet I had to include some parts of the plot lines **

This story encompasses young love, race, family, sacrifice, race and internment camps. It is set on the border between Chinatown and Japantown in the heart of Seattle, Washington. I was born and raised in the Seattle area yet Mr. Ford includes pieces and parts of a city’s history that even I wasn’t familiar with.

This is Henry’s story and is told between current time (1986) and the war years (1942-1945). Switching between time frames is by chapter so there’s no guessing what year you’re in. Mr. Ford handles his subject matter beautifully and brings to life this touching, tender story. I was drawn into Henry’s world from the very first page. Mr. Ford writes with a sense of humor describing some of young Henry’s escapades yet switching to sensitive story telling poses no problem for this author.

As an adult Henry is struggling with family issues both past and present. As a young man he was raised by semi-traditional Chinese parents, especially a domineering father set in his ways and beliefs. A father who wants his son to act and think American and speak English. A father who harbors a hatred of the Japanese and forces his son to wear a button declaring he is Chinese. As an adult, Henry, who was married a number of years and raised a child is coming to grips with his spouse’s death and learning to communicate openly with his own child. He is trying to reconcile his feelings for his own father with how he relates and interacts with his son.

This is, also, a very touching story of young love between Henry, who is Chinese, and Keiko (Kay-Ko) who is a Japanese school mate. Over time his life as has been colored by the forbidden young love that he shared with Keiko. Henry and Keiko attended an exclusively white elementary school sent there by parents who wanted more for their children. They are outcasts and treated as such. They become best of friends and Henry does his best to protect Keiko from those who despise her because of her Japanese heritage. Along the way Henry must hide his friendship with Keiko from his parents while he is accepted and, even welcomed, into Keiko’s family. Eventually the war intrudes into their lives separating these two as her family is relocated to a internment camp in Idaho. What happens after that I’ll leave to Mr. Ford’s story telling.

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This book is a must read.

X-posted: Book Club & Publishers Book Blog