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September, 2010
Greetings:
We're thrilled to bring you another summer issue of Buzzing About Books, featuring four terrific new titles.
In this issue:
- Deborah Schupack imagines what would ensue if neighbors came upon a million dollars in her novel, Sylvan Street
- Jim Minick chronicles the story of the Virginia organic blueberry farm he and his wife created in his memoir, The Blueberry Years
- Monique Truong writes of a young girl who can taste words -- and discovers the truth about her past -- in Bitter in the Mouth
- Anita Diamant takes us to Israel in 1945, with her story of four young Jewish women who meet in a British-run prison camp in Day After Night
We hope you enjoy Buzzing About Books. Please let us know what you think!
Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp
info@bookclubcookbook.com
bookclubcookbook.com
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Sylvan  Street by Deborah Schupack
Fiction / 352 pages / Paperback
Plume/Penguin / June, 2010
Dear Reader,
They say life imitates art. Since I finished Sylvan Street, I've been waiting for that to happen! In the novel ("art"), five households in a Hudson Valley neighborhood much like my own find a million dollars. But in reality ("life"), the recession has hit my close-knit cul-de-sac. Not only have my neighbors and I not found a pile of money, we keep losing it.
So, if we real-life neighbors came upon a million dollars, would we keep it? Turn it in? Divide it? Ponder moral issues? Determine, individually and collectively, that we would be better off with money than without?
The windfall raises these questions up and down the fiction al Sylvan Street, and on my real-life street, as well. I've had many fruitful discussions with readers and neighbors as to just what they would do. I hope the novel generates interesting discussions for you, too -- and your real-life book club. Please share your discussions on the Sylvan Street Facebook page!
Thanks for reading,
Deborah
DEBORAH SCHUPACK IS GIVING AWAY 5 COPIES OF SYLVAN STREET. ENTER TO WIN A COPY.
About Sylvan Street:
What would you do if you found a
suitcase full of cash -- with the whole neighborhood watching?
Residents
of this harmonious Hudson Valley cul-de-sac keep the money, and, almost
immediately, friendships and marriages are tested and moral compromises
are struck. A page-turner filled with luminous, memorable characters,
Sylvan Street explores to startling conclusion the power and limitations
of money.
Reviews for Sylvan Street:
"Sylvan Street is a work of pure magic, as funny as it is wrenching, as mysterious as it is revealing. This riveting novel raises timeless questions about money, class, and the daily deceptions among friends and neighbors, husbands and wives."
- Kate Walbert, author of A Short History of Women
"The page-turning pace never flags....Teeming with plot twists and social unrest, Schupack shows with poignant prose and commendable plotting the good, the bad, and the ugly that money brings out in people."
- Publishers Weekly
For more information about Deborah Schupack, visit her website, follow her on Facebook, get details for your book group, and visit her publisher's website.
Deborah Schupack is available to speak with your book club in person or though Skype. Please contact her by email.
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 The Blueberry Years: A Memoir of Farm and Family by Jim Minick
Nonfiction / 352 pages / Hardcover Thomas Dunne / August, 2010
Dear Reader,
At the beginning of The Blueberry Years, Sarah, my wife, and I are a young couple about to dig our hands into the soil of our dream -- to live on a small farm of our own.
Along the way we learned to laugh and listen to each other and all of our pickers as we fumbled along on this path that became The Blueberry Years. And we learned to love and celebrate this humble fruit. For blueberries are simply a beautiful plant -- red leaves in fall, red stems in winter, sweet perfume of white blooms in spring, and blue-laden stems in summer -- the perfect plant bearing the perfect food.
Most importantly, Sarah and I learned to balance love and work, dreams and reality, as we found the blueberry defining our lives in so many ways through these Blueberry Years.
Enjoy this book along with a blueberry muffin. I'd be tickled to talk with your book club after you've read it. Just email to set up a conference call.
Best in blueness,
Jim
JIM MINICK IS GIVING
AWAY 5 COPIES OF THE BLUEBERRY YEARS ENTER TO WIN A COPY.
About The Blueberry Years:
The Blueberry Years captures the story of Jim Minick's experience creating, operating, and eventually selling one of the mid-Atlantic's first certified-organic, pick-your-own blueberry farms. For a decade, the author and his wife planted, pruned, and picked while also opening the field to hundreds of people who came to harvest berries. These pickers shared blueberry-flavored moonshine and sober religion, warm hugs and cool hats, and always bushels of stories. To give a larger context to the Minicks' story, the author includes brief chapters on national issues such as organic foods and new farmers. He also includes short interludes on all things blueberry, like the fruit's many health benefits or the blueberry in literature. Ultimately, though, this book tells the story of a young couple pursuing their blueberry dream.
Reviews for The
Blueberry Years:
"There is so much to praise in this beautifully written memoir, but what I admire most is Jim Minick's utter lack of self-righteousness. In these pages we are given a wisdom that has, at its center, a quiet and abiding humility. What a fine, fine book The Blueberry Years is."
- Ron Rash, author of Serena
"A truly inspiring story, in gorgeous prose, about one family's journey into blueberry farming. Delicious reading."
- Naomi Wolf, author of The End of America and The Beauty Myth
For more information about Jim Minick, visit his website or his Facebook page, and try his favorite blueberry recipes.
Jim Minick is
available to speak with your book club. Please contact him by email.
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Day Aft er Night by Anita Diamant
Historical Fiction / 304 pages/ Paperback Scribners / August, 2010
Dear Reader,
I'm often asked where I get my ideas for novels. It's different every time, but
I distinctly remember the moment Day After Night came to me.
In the spring
of 2001, my husband and I went to visit our daughter in Israel, where
she was spending a semester of high school. We spent a good part of the week --
our first trip to Israel -- on history field trips. One of our stops was at the
Atlit detention camp, which has been turned into a living history museum.
There, we learned how Holocaust survivors were imprisoned by the British
authorities, and about the breathtaking story of the October 1945 break-out,
when all of the prisoners were taken to safety in the nearby mountains. I felt
the proverbial light bulb go off: "Now here's a novel."
Although Day
After Night is based on historical events, the characters are my invention.
I hope you will love them as much as I do. (And no, I don't have a favorite.)
Thanks for reading,
Anita
ANITA DIAMANT IS GIVING
AWAY 5 COPIES OF DAY AFTER NIGHT. ENTER TO WIN A COPY.
About Day
After Night:
Set in 1945, in
the summer immediately following the end of World War II in Europe, Day After Night tells the stories of
four young Jewish women -- survivors of four
different kinds of hell. They make their way to the land of Israel where
they
confront an uncertain future haunted by the past.
The
protagonists -- Leonie, Tedi, Shayndel and Zorah -- are interned when
they
arrive, locked up behind barbed wire fences in a place called Atlit, a
prison
camp run by the British, who ruled Palestine at the time. In Atlit, the
women
meet and befriend one another as they grapple with a new life in a new
land.
Reviews for Day After Night:
"Compulsively
readable... [An] astutely imagined story... Diamant opens a window into a time of
sadness, confusion and optimism that has resonance for so much that's both
triumphant and troubling in modern Jewish history."
- Publisher's Weekly
"Like The Red Tent, Day
After Night is a woman's-eye view of Jewish history, this time, though,
thousands of years after biblical times. Nearly all the action is set in 1945
at a British internment camp outside Haifa ... and zooms in on four women. ...In
bringing us into their stories, Diamant gives us vulnerability and heroism in
equal parts. Day After Night makes an unforgettable read and is her best
book yet."
- Deborah Finebloom Raub, Hadassah Magazine
For more information about Anita Diamant, visit her website and blog.
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 Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong Fiction / 304 pages / Hardcover Random House / August, 2010
Dear
Reader,
Over seven years ago, I heard about a neurological
condition that causes people to taste words. As someone who is obsessed with
food, I thought, "Great!" I imagined tasting the faint spiciness of a tree-ripened
McIntosh every time I said the word "apple" or the milk-enriched molasses of
the word "caramel."
Unfortunately, with more research, I learned that
this condition was not all apples and caramels. The flavor of a word rarely
corresponds to the meaning of the word ("apple" could taste like black pepper),
and the flavors that are experienced are not always pleasantphoto credit: Marion Ettlinger  | .
Linda Hammerick, the main character in Bitter in
the Mouth, has this condition. To me, she
is a vivid example of the differences that set us apart from one another.
Linda's story is also an invitation to question what it means to be a family
and a friend, to be foreign and to be familiar, and to be connected and
disconnected from our bodies, our pasts, and our histories.
Over seven years later, as I share Linda's story with
you, I hope that you too will agree that Bitter in the Mouth is ultimately about the ties that bind us to one
another, no matter how idiosyncratic or insular our worlds may be.
Take care,
Monique Truong
MONIQUE TRUONG IS GIVING AWAY 5 COPIES OF BITTER IN THE MOUTH. ENTER TO WIN A COPY.
About Bitter in the Mouth:
Growing
up in the small town of Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in the 1970s
and
'80s, Linda Hammerick believes that she is profoundly unlike anyone
around her,
including the members of her own family. Linda can "taste" words. In
this and
in other ways, her body is a mystery to her. She finds her path through
life
with the help of her great-uncle Harper, who loves her and who loves to
dance,
and her best friend Kelly, with whom Linda exchanges almost daily
letters. Even
as Linda travels north to Yale and then to New York City, she still does
not
know the truth about herself and her past. But when a family tragedy
causes her
to return to Boiling Springs, Linda uncovers the story of an unexpected
life
and of an uncommon family.
Reviews for Bitter in the Mouth:
"Truong's absorbing second novel, following The Book of Salt (2003), introduces Linda Hammerick of Boiling Springs, North Carolina. Truong is a gifted storyteller, and in this quietly powerful novel she has created a compelling and unique character."
- Booklist (starred review)
"Truong's mesmerizing prose beautifully captures Linda's taste-saturated world, and her portrait of a broken family's secretive pockets and genuine moments of connection is affecting."
- Publishers Weekly (starred review and Pick of the Week)
For more information about Monique Truong, visit her website or follow her on Facebook.
Monique Truong is available to speak with your book club in person, on the phone or through Skype. Please contact her by email.
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