Category Archives: book club

May 25, 2011   Stacey   BEA, book club, reading, Stacey  
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A Worldwide Book Club

It’s BEA this week, so we are all running circles around the Javits Center and waiting for news of book deals, gossip, and trying to catch up with friends and editors we only have a chance to see during this annual book pilgrimage.

I thought it would be a good time to talk about something that aims to get people reading. Jeff Howe, a professor at Northeastern and contributor to The Atlantic, has resurrected the very cool book club he started last spring that attracted 12,000 reader to Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. He’s renamed it 1book140, and its goal is to get as many people as possible around the world together reading a single title chosen by his readers. Check out the list of books for a fun exercise in commercial and literary fiction. You’ll have ample time to get involved, even if you miss the first month since it will continue indefinitely with a new book being chosen each month. It’s a little hard to navigate the articles about the club, but here’s a bit about the criteria for chosen books.

I think it’s a great opportunity to get reading, and get involved in the larger reading community. The nominations are based on popular demand, so vote for your favorite before polls for this month close May 26. My pick is The Keep by Jennifer Egan, who just won the Pulitzer. Let us know what your picks are, and if you’ll be reading along with this new literary endeavor. Do  you have any suggestions for titles that aren’t on this first lengthy list?
May 16, 2011   Jane   book club, e-books, fun, future of publishing, Jane, reading, self-publishing  
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This month’s selections at the DGLM book club

As many of you know, we have a book club here at Dystel and Goderich Literary Management.  Every month or so, we pick a category (of fiction usually) and each of us selects a different title in that category to read.  On the designated day, we meet after work and each of us presents our evaluation of the book:  first, we pitch it as if it were something we were representing, then we describe what we really thought  and, finally, we talk about how the book sold, its reviews, awards it was nominated for or won, and anything else we can find out by bugging the editor who worked on it.  In this way, over the years, we have all learned a lot about these categories and what is currently going on in our business.

This month we are doing something different—each of us is reading one of the top 100 bestselling e-novels from the kindle store.  We are curious about whether these books differ from those sold to traditional publishers and, if so, how.

More and more these days, books are being sold electronically.  There are now e-book bestseller lists in The New York Times and some of these titles are exclusive e-books—not published traditionally in any format.  We are trying to learn more about this phenomenon for our existing clients and maybe identify future clients as well.  It is a whole new era in the world of publishing, and we are going to be very much a part of it.

Are any of you published exclusively online and, if so, what has your experience been?

March 09, 2011   Stacey   book club, fun, Stacey  
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An Inspirational Book Club

I came across this article in my B.U. alumni magazine and was compelled to share it with our readers. After reading Miriam’s recent post about book clubs, Clubbing, this story struck me as a fresh and inspiring way for a small number of people to do so much good, as well as to send such a positive message about the power and importance of literacy and reading in our culture while highlighting the myriad of benefits we can receive from participating in such a group. It also illuminates how much our common interests can bind us together, despite our backgrounds or circumstances. Books have the power to transform lives, in big and small ways. I just love this story, and it puts a smile on my face thinking about the impact of books, and how just a little bit of that is in our control as agents working on books that mean something to people.

How cool, too, that the concept of this homeless book club has expanded to other cities and that several authors have gotten involved. It makes me feel good about the work that I do, and serves as a good reminder to keep the faith when things aren’t going as well as I’d like. Ok, enough with the woo woo rambling, but I hope you enjoy the piece and it puts a smile on your face too!

March 02, 2011   Miriam   book club, fun, Miriam, reading  
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Clubbing

Because I seem to be one of those (un)fortunate people who needs books around all the time in order to stave off a massive anxiety attack—one of my worst fears is getting stuck in an elevator with nothing to read (Okay, you have your fears, and I have mine. Don’t judge.)—and because, clearly, my job doesn’t provide enough proximity to and discussion of literature, I belong to a neighborhood book club.  This, of course, is in addition to our very own DGLM book club which happens six or seven times a year and which is the source of great infighting, churlishness, resentment and lively debate. Oh, and there’s a lot of name calling and dissing of each other’s literary tastes as well.

My point, and I do have one, is that I think book clubs are swell.  I love hanging with my neighbors over cheese and wine or elaborate appetizers (made by some of our more gourmet minded members) and chatting about why we loved, hated or were ambivalent about that month’s selection.  What we read and how we discuss it gives me wonderful insights into the books, but also my friends.  Every title inevitably leads to a conversation about someone’s past, dreams, fantasies, fears and just as inevitably showcases how much we all have in common despite our very different personalities and experiences.   From a business point of view, I’ve learned invaluable lessons about what people outside our business like to read and why and I’ve come to understand that we publishing folks are sometimes a bit too insular in our thinking about what constitutes great literature.

This piece from the Huff Post made me think about our neighborhood’s current book club selection, Mary Stewart’s Nine Coaches Waiting (which was actually suggested to me by our wonderful client Anne Stuart).  Written over 50 years ago, the book is a master class in romantic suspense and as fresh and engaging as any read from today’s bestseller lists.  If you haven’t discovered this author yet, get on it!

What do you all think about book clubs?  Do you belong to one (or more)?  Do you find that they change the way you think about the books you read and the whole process of choosing them?

September 16, 2010   DG&B   book club, genre, Jessica, urban fantasy  
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On Reading Urban Fantasy

by Jessica

As my colleagues have mentioned at various points, DGLM has its own bookclub. Every couple of months we choose a general category of fiction—for example, Booker Prize winners, young adult novels, debut novels, etc.—and each of us reads a representative work, usually something fairly recently published. It’s a good way to stay in touch with the market, keep tabs on the trends, and broaden our exposure to writers we might not otherwise gravitate toward. This go-round was urban fantasy, a category that I’ve not read, and despite the fact that I had to hide the book’s crimson cover from my always inquisitive four-year-old: “Why, mommy, does that man have such big teeth? And why does that lady have blood on her neck?” I was glad to finally get a glimpse of a genre that has, as we all know, proven tremendously popular. The last vampire novel that I read was Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, and before that I’d wager that it was Bram Stoker’s Dracula, neither of which offer much insight into the present paranormal trend. After reading my bookclub selection, I did some further investigating—not least trying to figure out why the genre is called “urban fantasy,” which strikes me as an odd and imperfect sort of label. I’ve read a few explanations, but again: Why urban? The fantasy part I get.

So obviously I’m far from expert, but I find it interesting that the romantic tropes are fairly similar to non-paranormal romance: the heroine must discover her own heart and secure the love of a brooding, mysterious, slightly-threatening-but-ultimately-good man. The surrounding stakes, however, are a good bit higher (and where the undead are concerned, sharper). Here the conflicts are cosmic in scope. To proceed to her happily-ever-after, the heroine must dispatch demons, fight the armies of evil, and often save the planet. The domestic space that was once the usual canvas for women’s fiction is not quite big enough to contain the kind of challenges these women face, nor are these ladies simply resilient—they are physically powerful, sometimes lethal, and pretty much undaunted by gore. At risk of reading too much into the present trend, I wonder if the epic nature of the conflicts in which these fictional women triumph does not, in some small way reflect the way real women view their own less fantastical, but perhaps no less challenging, lives. Indeed, there’s something appealing about the notion of seeing myself as the action hero of my own story. In which case, I’m off to battle the forces of darkness, one pitch letter/contract clause at a time.

If you are a reader of urban fantasy, I’d love to hear what you love about it.

June 15, 2010   DG&B   book club, fun, lists, Michael, reading  
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I usually say no to bookclubs

by Michael

With all the reading I have to do for work, I’ve turned down a few requests to join book clubs. Plus, in my spare time, I want to be sure I’m reading the things I really want to read, not a book chosen by committee. But if I were going to join a bookclub, I’d love to be in this one. I can dream, can’t I?

June 03, 2010   DG&B   book club, fun, Michael, reading  
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For the forgetful

by Michael

I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time keeping track of all the books I’ve read. I’m pretty sure I’ll never again be able to recall everything I read in high school and college, and as I read more and more submissions, books just slip from my brain. We do a book club here at work, and I’m often surprised when I read the coverage I did—I’d say I forget about a good third of the books.

But now there’s an app to help me remember! The BookLover app lets you keep track of the books you’ve read, what you’re currently reading, and what you want to read. It’s really simple, but seems pretty helpful. If anything is keeping me from buying the app, it’s that “currently reading” section. I’m afraid every book I start but don’t finish will live there forever, quickly eclipsing the books I’ve finished!

Do you need help remembering the books you need to read? Or are you all elephants?

December 04, 2009   DG&B   about us, book club, Chasya, favorites, fun, great books, Jane, Jessica, Jim, Lauren, Michael, Miriam, Rachel, reading, Stacey  
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Book Clubbing at DGLM

by Rachel

 
This week, the DGLM office talked more books, as another book club meeting was held around the all-purposes back office table.

The book club is a little different to any I’ve been involved with before because, for starters, we don’t all read the same book. The DGLM book club usually involves all of us reading a different book–this time we chose novels from the great books lists that were compiled over the summer by staff and interns. Another thing that makes this book club different is that we’re not only evaluating books as readers, but as people in the publishing industry. The reports we give involve ways we would pitch the book, offering our real opinions (some in praise, some…not so much in praise), and then talking about how they performed and whether we’d have picked them out of slush.

This time around, here is what we read:

  • Jane read The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken
  • Miriam read Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
  • Chasya read The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
  • Jessica read What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
  • Jim read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
  • Lauren read The Secret History by Donna Tartt
  • Stacey read Ordinary People by Judith Guest
  • I read After All These Years by Susan Isaacs

Following the DGLM book club this week, a few of us were eager to get our hands on books others had reported on, so the idea of a book club where everyone reads a different book is especially great because it allows us to hear about books we might not have heard of or seen in bookstores, and it also introduces us to amazing new authors. I really like this concept because bookstores can sometimes be overwhelming with all those titles on display, and it can be difficult to know what or who to start reading.

  

And, believe it or not, we’ve already chosen books to read for our next book club meeting next month. This time we’ll be reading books from the New York Times Notable Books of 2009, which Jim wrote about recently. I’m excited about this because I’ll be reading from an author I’ve never heard of, and discovering new writers is a passion of mine. Have you discovered amazing authors from book clubs? 

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