BookBrowse Free Newsletter 09/20/2012

Sept 20, 2012

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Here's the latest issue of our free twice-monthly newsletter to keep you up to date with some of the new books and authors featured at BookBrowse.

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Davina,
BookBrowse Founder & Editor

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Win

The Forgetting Tree
by Tatjana Soli

Publication Date: Sep 2012

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Buy at Amazon

From the Jacket

From The New York Times bestselling author of The Lotus Eaters, a novel of a California ranching family, its complicated matriarch and an enigmatic caretaker who may destroy them.

When Claire Nagy marries Forster Baumsarg, the only son of prominent California citrus ranchers, she knows she's consenting to a life of hard work, long days, and worry-fraught nights. But her love for Forster is so strong, she turns away from her literary education and embraces the life of the ranch, succumbing to its intoxicating rhythms and bounty until her love of the land becomes a part of her. Not even the tragic, senseless death of her son Joshua at kidnappers' hands, her alienation from her two daughters, or the dissolution of her once-devoted marriage can pull her from the ranch she's devoted her life to preserving.

But despite having survived the most terrible of tragedies, Claire is about to face her greatest struggle: An illness that threatens not only to rip her from her land but take her very life. And she's chosen a caregiver, the enigmatic Caribbean-born Minna, who may just be the darkest force of all.

Haunting, tough, triumphant, and profound, The Forgetting Tree explores the intimate ties we have to one another, the deepest fears we keep to ourselves, and the calling of the land that ties every one of us together.

Browse an excerpt on the author's website.

Reviews:

"With her knack for beautiful prose and striking detail, this is a solid follow-up to her debut." - Publishers Weekly

"A lush, haunting novel for readers who appreciate ambiguity, this work should establish Soli as a novelist with depth and broad scope." - Library Journal

"Soli writes with such passion, it is inescapable, lyrical, and profoundly moving. The Forgetting Tree goes on my top-ten list." - Jonis Agee, author of The River Wife

"Tatjana Soli's elegant and sensuous prose will keep you spellbound." - Maria Semple, author of This One Is Mine

"An incredible book, richly imagined and beautifully written." - Nancy Zafris, series editor, The Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction

5 people will each win a hardcover copy of The Forgetting Tree.

This giveaway is open to residents of the USA only, unless you are a BookBrowse member, in which case you are eligible to win wherever you might live.

Enter the giveaway here

Past Winners

Featured Review

Below is part of BookBrowse's review of The 100-Year-Old Man... Read the review in full here

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

by Jonas Jonasson

Paperback (Sep 2012), 400 pages.

Publisher: Hyperion
ISBN 9781401324643

BookBrowse Rating:
Critics' Consensus:

Review
I'll admit it: try as I may to be open-minded about the aging process, I am still a vain American who attempts to moisturize away wrinkles and scrupulously pluck every strand of gray hair. So I was intrigued when I heard about a novel that stars a spunky geriatric protagonist. For the past few years this debut novel from Swedish author Jonas Jonasson has been a European bestseller, and now it has finally been translated from Swedish and is available to English readers. Any seasoned reader will assume that this work is riding off the laurels of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, but this novel offers an entirely different Sweden from the dark, crime-ridden one we have come to associate with Nordic novels.

The story opens on the 100th birthday of Allan Karlsson, an elder care resident with nerves of steel and a penchant for vodka. Allan refuses to be defined by his age alone, so he decides to walk away from the care home just minutes before his big birthday. His escape sets the town - and eventually all of Sweden - into an uproar. Not necessarily looking for adventure, but still managing to attract a great deal of it, Allan becomes involved with some criminals, to comedic effect, and meets several memorable characters (including an elephant) who join him on his escapades across Europe.

This modern-day story of Allan's centennial adventure is interspersed with chapters that tell the story of his long life, often tilting into farce and satire as Allan calmly and somewhat blithely influences the course of the twentieth century. In Los Alamos he becomes entangled with the Manhattan Project, and there are appearances by Stalin, President Truman, Kim Il Sung (the first leader of North Korea), the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco, as well as a great many other characters who are less memorable not merely because they are not historical figures, but also because they don't play essential roles that prove important in the scope of Allan's life.

While at times the novel does feel a little baggy, a little too big for the relatively simple, one-life narrative it is, it also offers the rarity of treating old age with grace, humor, and joy. Allan is a role model for those who fear sinking into disuse and decrepitude, and the novel's value is in exploring old age as a time that is as lively and colorful as youth.

Jonasson's sense of humor relies on the subtle effects of understatement, repetition, and timing. His light tone and Allan's blasï¿½ attitude are reassuring that, despite the great amount of dictators, explosions, and wars that are folded into the narrative, our main character will survive safely and without serious incident. What compels a reader to continue, therefore, is the desire to untangle the humorous absurdities of Allan's lifespan and to confront some of the twentieth century's most grave moments with the gentle sarcasm of a world-weary protagonist who has truly seen it all. After visiting the newly inaugurated President Truman, who wishes to speak to him about Chinese communism (yes-like I said, this character gets around!), Allan merely sighs and grumbles that he "should have guessed this was about politics."

Continued...

Above is part of BookBrowse's review of The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. Read the review in full here

Reviewed by Elizabeth Whitmore Funk

Beyond The Book

At BookBrowse, we don't just review books, we go 'beyond the book' to explore interesting aspects relating to the story. In our current issue we reviewed three novels set against the back drop of genocides; and, for the backstory to one of these books, Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon, we explored the Armenian Genocide in particular.

Read the back-story & review in full here

Blaxploitation

In Telegraph Avenue, Luther Stallings, Archy's dad, was once a star in blaxploitation films that were all the rage in the '70s. Even though the term appears to be a loaded word, blaxploitation movies were actually powerful vehicles of self-identification for many blacks. Understandably this view was not held by all. Many black organizations including the NAACP believed most blaxploitation movies reinforced common white stereotypes about black people.

Picture by Garry Booth

During the heyday of blaxploitation movies in the early '70s, the civil rights movement was still a nascent thing and black stars - especially leading heroes - were not commonly found on the mainstream Hollywood big screen. Sure there was Sidney Poitier who starred most famously in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, but he was the exception that proved the rule: blacks were not going to become big-budget stars in Hollywood any time soon. Blaxploitation movies were similar to exploitation movies: low-budget films with B-grade actors and a lot of s--
and violence*. But blaxploitation also embraced many genres including drama, horror and comedy, and, most important, urban black audiences could identify with these movies because they actually reflected their everyday lives. Most Hollywood movies just didn't do this. Luther Stallings, in Telegraph Avenue, might well be the fictional counterpart of Richard Roundtree, the star of the wildly popular Shaft movie series - Shaft, Shaft's Big Score and Shaft in Africa. The movies also spun off a short-lived television series. Years later, in 2000, Samuel Jackson starred in a remake of Shaft but it could be argued that the movie, removed from the '70s, couldn't make quite as much of an impression. As the owner of Scarecrow Video (the largest independent video store in the country) in Seattle put it in a story for the Seattle Times, "People who are into them are curious about the '70s. They get a feeling of what was it was like to be alive in the '70s. A lot of these films capture a cultural aspect back then that you don't read about in the history books."

Another cultural contribution of blaxploitation movies was its music - a brand of funk, jazz and soul that provided much of the backbone for the narratives and became the genre's calling card. This playlist features some great soundtracks from blaxploitation movies
... continued

Click here to continue reading, and for links to playlists etc

*3-letter word intentionally blanked out due to problems with email filters!

Blog: When a Book Club Member Never Attends & Doesn't Respond

A few weeks ago I got an email from Sarah asking advice on an all too common book club problem. She wrote:

"I started a book club about a year ago which has 14 members. The members make book recommendations every six months and then we vote on what books to read. It is expected that everyone rotate being a host and a discussion leader.

One member has not attended a meeting since late 2011, and doesn't even RSVP to let us know that she won't be attending (which we agreed was something we'd all do when we formed the group). I know she is not sick or traveling. Should I try to feel her out and ask if she wants to continue as a club member? Should our club care when members are no-shows and don't participate?"

I posted Sarah's question on BookBrowse's Facebook page and soon we had a couple of dozen thoughtful and helpful responses.

About three quarters felt that it's definitely appropriate to care about book club members who don't participate - with a number stating that attending is, quite simply, the first rule of book club!

The advice from those who felt it does matter fell into two camps ... continue reading

News

Sep 19 2012:
The longlist for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2012 has been announced today, Tuesday 18 September, the birthday of Samuel Johnson. The 14 titles on this year's longlist take readers around the world to countries including India, Russia and Spain, and span subjects as diverse as...(more)

Sep 18 2012:
Louis Simpson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose work often explored the darker side of life in the US suburbs, has died at his New York home aged 89.
He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1964 for his fourth collection At the End of the Open Road. Its title was...(more)

Sep 15 2012:
Amazon and other large online retailers will begin collecting sales tax in California today. At the time California Governor Jerry Brown signed the sales tax fairness bill in September 2011, American Booksellers Association CEO Oren Teicher called the change "a huge victory for sales tax fairness,...(more)

Sep 14 2012:
More than half the consumers of books classified for young adults aren't all that young. According to a new study, fully 55% of buyers of works that publishers designate for kids aged 12 to 17 -- known as YA books -- are 18 or older, with the largest segment aged 30 to 44, a group that alone...(more)

Sep 11 2012:
The six titles on the 2012 Booker Shortlist have been announced ...(more)

Sep 06 2012:
In a decision that could start an e-book price war in the publishing industry, a federal judge on Thursday approved a settlement between the Justice Department and three major publishers in a civil antitrust case that accused the companies of collusion in the pricing of digital ...(more)

Read these news stories, and many others, in full