June Book Groups: Carla's Favorites, "The Help" in Movie Theaters, and Quick Tips for Registering Books

Each book your group reads must be registered with us.

Registering your book ensures that we will have enough copies available for your group.

Don't forget to ask for the book group discount when you purchase your group's selection to receive 20% off the title.

It's our way to thank you for purchasing your group's books from us.

NIH Book Group
Wants Members

The National Institutes of Health Biomedical Computing Interest Group (NIH BCIG) always welcomes new members.

For the next meeting on June 23 the group is reading Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink.

For more information on the group, including meeting times and location, please e-mail Jim DeLeo at

jdeleo@nih.gov

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Registering Your Group's Book: It's Easier Than Going to the DMV

We're happy to support book groups! All book groups receive a 20% discount simply by registering your books with us. We'll order the books and we'll call to let you know when they've arrived.

Register each title your group is reading at least 3 weeks ahead of your meeting to receive the discount.

You can register as many titles as you want--as far in advance as you want.

REGISTER YOUR BOOK IN 3 EASY STEPS:

1. Choose Your Book
This can be hard, we know.

2. Let us know!

Call 202-364-1919.
E-mail bookgroups@politics-prose.com
Register online
Tell us in person at the store.

We need a 3 week advance notice to make certain the books are available in time for your group to read.

3. Wait for us to call/e-mail.
When your books are in, we'll contact the person who registered the book.

Carla's Favorites

Carla Cohen's list of 25 Books, 25 Years, represents well-loved, all too often overlooked favorites that she enjoyed recommending to customers over the years. These books represent a piece of her legacy, and express both her joy in sharing books and our memories of sharing those books with her.

Carla was a passionate reader, and many of the books in the list below also ended up in the hands of book groups. As Politics & Prose makes our transition to new owners, we share with you a highlight of our founder's favorites, books that are also excellent selections for book groups.

FICTION

For the Relief of Unbearable Urges by Nathan Englander

Englander's literary debut is a collection of irreverent and inventive stories ranging from a Hasidic man whose rabbi grants him permission to see a prostitute to a fantastical turn of marvel in a story about Polish Jews on a train bound for the death camps.

Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane

A hugely acclaimed first novel that was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Deane's mesmerizing story of childhood set against the violence of Northern Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s is a unique coming of age tale.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

A modern American epic, Eugenides follows Calliope Stephanides and three generations of her Greek-American family from Asia Minor to Detroit in a story that spans the decades from the Great Depression to the race riots of 1967 and the present-day. Along the way, Callie becomes Cal and a family's secrets become mythological.

The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer

Greer's narrator, Max, is born in San Francisco with the physical appearance of an elderly man who seems to grow younger every year. As he ages backward, Max attempts to win the love of the same woman in this startlingly imaginative and contemporary re-telling of Fitzgerald's classic short story.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

Two city boys are exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China's Cultural Revolution. The pair make friends with the daughter of a local tailor and their grim lives take flight when they discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation.

NON-FICTION

Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language by Eva Hoffman

Eva Hoffman's personal story of her experiences as an émigré who loses and remakes her identity in a new land is a remarkable book. Her personal struggles as she translates her sense of self into a new culture and a different language are both inspiring and humbling.

Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero

by David Maraniss

On New Year's Eve 1972, following eighteen magnificent seasons in the major leagues, Roberto Clemente died a hero's death, killed in a plane crash as he attempted to deliver food and medical supplies to Nicaragua after a devastating earthquake. Clemente was that rare athlete who rose above sports to become a symbol of larger themes. Maraniss uses his narrative sweep and meticulous detail to capture the myth and a real man.

My Own Country: A Doctor's Story by Abraham Verghese
Working in the conservative community of Johnson City, Tennessee, Verghese became, by necessity, the local HIV/AIDS expert. He soon was besieged by a shocking number of patients whose medical and spiritual emergencies came to occupy his mind and take over his life. A doctor unique in his abilities, Verghese's singular perspective as an outsider who could talk to people suspicious of local practitioners transforms into a movingly told story of grace and compassion.

To read the complete list of Carla's favorite fiction and non-fiction titles, click here.

Book Group Favorite - The Help
Coming Soon to a Theater Near You

Kathryn Stockett's novel The Help, about a young white woman in Mississippi in the 1960s who challenges the assumptions about the black women who serve as housekeepers to affluent white households in town, has been a bestseller in both hardcover and paperback. Book groups devoured this runaway bestseller and, to date, we've sold over 1,000 copies of the book.

Now Hollywood is on the bandwagon with a movie adaptation for The Help, due in August. Check out the movie trailer below.

In March 2010, Katie Couric interviewed Kathryn Stockett about The Help. Members of book groups at Politics & Prose were invited to participate in the discussion via video, which you can watch in its entirety, below.

Little Know Facts About Kathryn Stockett:

- Stockett's father, Robert, was friends with the writer Eudora Welty.

- The British cover for The Help--a 1960s photograph found in the National Congress archives featuring a little white girl in a stroller attended by two black women in uniforms--was deemed too controversial for the U.S. cover.

- Stockett received 45 rejection letters from agents before the agent Susan Ramer agreed to take the book, which had a publisher a week later.

New in Paperback, Perfect for Book Groups

Island Beneath the Sea
by Isabel Allende

Allende's sharp storytelling comes to life in the tale of Zarité, a teenage slave on the island of Saint-Domingue shortly before the Haitian slave rebellion of the late 1700s. When Zarité becomes deeply involved in the life of Toulouse Valmorain, a young plantation owner on the island, Allende's novel evolves from slave narrative into a family saga that winds through four decades. Interspersed with African spirituality, Caribbean history, voodoo, slavery and race, Island Beneath the Sea is a searing portrait of a troubled country in tumultuous times.

Private Life
by Jane Smiley

Smiley's first novel in almost five years, Private Life is a searing and intimate portrait of marriage and life in the Midwest and West between the Civil War and World War II. Intelligent, quick-witted Margaret Mayfield has faced down tragedy in the sudden deaths of her two brothers and her father but manages to marry the scientist and naval officer Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. They move to San Francisco and experience the chaos of the 1906 earthquake; they lose an infant and experience both World Wars. Gradually, Andrew's eccentricities reveal themselves and Margaret must navigate difficult terrain for her loveless marriage. Private Life is a gorgeous book of one woman's loves, losses, disappointments and the inevitable bitterness that occurs after years of emotional isolation and demonstrates a fine writer at the top of her craft.

This book is due in paperback June 14, 2011. Call 202-364-1919 to order a copy for your group.

Bliss, Remembered
by Frank Deford

Deford's historical fiction is set against the backdrop of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where the confident American swimmer, Sydney, falls for Horst, the charming son of a German diplomat. Their passionate affair falters as their nations, and their perspectives, are confronted by war. The novel discusses whether love and politics can co-exist, and whether love once lost can be regained, or even if it should.

This book is due in paperback June 28, 2011. Click here to order a copy for your group now.

Hitch-22
by Christopher Hitchens

Over the course of his life, Christopher Hitchens has been both a socialist opposed to the war in Vietnam and a supporter of the U.S. war against Islamic extremism in Iraq. He has worked as both a foreign correspondent in some of the world's most dangerous places and as a legendary bon vivant with an unquenchable thirst for alcohol and literature. Hitchens' capacity to see all sides of an argument melds with his belief that the personal is political. Hitch-22 is the story of his life, lived large.