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Newbies to Note

Bone Fire
Bone Fire
By Mark Spragg
(3/9/2010)

The characters from An Unfinished Life are back! The sheriff, Crane Carlson, finds a kid not yet twenty murdered in a meth lab. His other troubles include a wife who’s going off the rails with bourbon and pot, and his own symptoms of the disease that killed his grandfather. Einar Gilkyson, taking stock at eighty, counts among his dead a lifelong friend, a wife and—far too young—their only child; and his long-absent sister has lately returned home from Chicago after watching her soul mate die. His granddaughter, Griff, has dropped out of college to look after him, though Einar would rather she continue with her studies and her boyfriend, Paul. Completing this extended family are Barnum McEban and his ward, Kenneth, a ten-year-old whose mother—Paul’s sister—is off marketing spiritual enlightenment.

Angelology
Angelology
By Danielle Trussoni
(3/9/2010)

A thrilling epic about an ancient clash reignited in our time- between a hidden society and heaven's darkest creatures. Sister Evangeline was just a girl when her father entrusted her to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in upstate New York. Now, at twenty-three, her discovery of a 1943 letter from the famous philanthropist Abigail Rockefeller to the late mother superior of Saint Rose Convent plunges Evangeline into a secret history that stretches back a thousand years: an ancient conflict between the Society of Angelologists and the monstrously beautiful descendants of angels and humans, the Nephilim.

 Invite an Expert to Your Mother-Daughter Book Club Meeting 
by Cindy Hudson

Have you ever thought of inviting someone other than the author of the book you read to your book club meeting? When you think about the topics covered in your book and who may be able to give you more information about them, you open up a world of possibilities for guests to invite. For instance, when the members of a mother-daughter book club near Chicago read the book Hoot by Carl Hiaasen, they invited a naturalist from a nearby forest preserve to attend their discussion. He brought a real, live owl, and was able to talk about owl habits and habitats. Click here to read the rest of the article.



Author Interview with Bernardine Evaristo

Don't miss our interview with author:
Author of "Blonde Roots"
Award-winning writer Bernardine Evaristo’s novel Blonde Roots asks: What if the history of the transatlantic slave trade had been reversed and Africans had enslaved Europeans?

Book-Blonde Roots

Weekly Featured Book

The Journal Keeper
The Journal Keeper: A Memoir
By Phyllis Theroux

Essayist Theroux has long captivated readers with her pitch-perfect rendering of the inner lives of American women. "The Journal Keeper" is a memoir of six years in her life, covering universal topics such as love, loneliness, growing old, spiritual growth, and death.

“I loved this singularly honest and graceful book. The Journal Keeper reminds us that there is no such thing as an ordinary moment, and certainly no such thing as an ordinary life.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love


Book Clubs for Preschoolers 
by Dawn Little

Book Clubs are nothing new.  Since the inception of “Oprah’s Book Club” people everywhere have participated in their own book clubs.  Then the idea trickled down to classrooms and literature circles popped up, essentially a book club for students.  Honestly, literature circles may have been around before Oprah!  I think they just became a more accepted way of teaching since Oprah.  More recently, children have begun to participate in book clubs outside of school, for pleasure!  How wonderful is that! I’ve heard of adult book clubs, teen book clubs, and book clubs for elementary readers. . . all independent readers.  But what about our smallest readers?  Our pre-readers deserve book clubs, too.
Click here to learn "How to Start a Book Club for Preschooler"...



Finding that niche for your Book Club
By Melissa LR Handa

How do you find your book club's niche? Sure, I guess, it’s possible for your book club to be niche-less, but—believe me—the more guidance you give the group from the get-go, the easier it will be for you to manage later on (and even to attract members initially). Without a theme, you may have a hard time shooting down Fred’s suggestion that you read “Dianetics”…again… Without a theme, you will struggle to find your direction. Every time you need to decide which book to read next, that decision will be a little tougher without that added push in the right direction. Maybe Vicky has joined the group hoping to read lots of novels, but when selection after selection is a dry piece-of-nonfiction, she feels like her opinion doesn’t matter to the group, and maybe to you, as her friend. In short, craft out that specialty. Maybe, according to the will of your members, it will be modified later, but for now, think of something to get you started.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Chocolate Truffles and More Chocolate Gifts at Chocolate.com
Author Interview with Cullen Dorn
Don't miss our interview with author:
A semi-autobiographical account of a young man born and raised in the worst slums of New York who ventures out to discover the meaning of life, and finds romance, mysticism, and purpose behind its very mystery.
Book-The Hierophant of 100th Street


Sooo... you've picked a stinker of a book for book club, now what?

How timely a topic! I picked "The Year of the Flood" for our November BB Book Pick, and well... I did not like it. As soon as I was about 50 pages in I started getting REALLY nervous. Had I just picked the ultimate stink bomb of a book? Am I now forcing several people to labor through this reading when they could be doing something else? What have I done? Are they going to kick me out of Book Club? Or just dread the next time I have to pick the book and suddenly all have plans for the night I am suppose to host? Agghhh!!

Click here to read some hints and tips to use in case you pick a stinker book

Looking for Gold Medal Book Club Members


Can you read this line? 
by Reese

Un krindle pou bubin de fut ert juin mi wesda! Nib vu y cantu fenti ki bannte gup.

Reading that line, what did you just feel? confusion? frustration? a little inadequate? Or did you give up after trying to read 3 words? If you could not read the line above, don't worry - it's made up. But the inability to read is VERY real for many people. 

According to ProLiteracy: In the U.S., 30 million people over age 16 — 14 percent of the country’s adult population — don’t read well enough to understand a newspaper story written at the eighth grade level or fill out a job application. 

Check out the rest of the article

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