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  Queues, dodgy carols, aching legs, confusion over what size feet my nephew has. Not for me, this Christmas. This year I’m avoiding the festive-season shopping chaos and buying everyone a book and a pig (or maybe an orangutan). Here’s what my Christmas list looks like. For my Teen Son: Legacy by Tim Cahill Blurb: The […]

The free digital Publishers Lunch Buzz Books have proven themselves accurate predictors of bestseller and best-of-the-year titles, before they are published. This season Publishers Lunch has gathered substantial excerpts from 54 of the most buzzed-about books scheduled for publication this fall and winter in two exclusive, free new ebooks, BUZZ BOOKS 2015: Fall/Winter and BUZZ BOOKS 2015: Young Adult Fall/Winter, offered in consumer and trade editions.

Book lovers get an early first look at new books from New York Times bestselling authors Mitch Albom, Geraldine Brooks, Alice Hoffman, and Adriana Trigiani, and popular and critically acclaimed writers Lauren Groff, Janice Y.K. Lee, Elizabeth McKenzie, and Belinda McKeon; columnist and television host Jason Gay’s first book, the \"whip-smart\" fiction debut of Academy Award-nominated actor Jesse Eisenberg; an unprecedented look at feminist and legal pioneer Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik’s Notorious RBG; Dick Van Dyke’s memoir Keep Moving; Jesse Itzler on living with a Navy SEAL; and the first novels from essayist Sloane Crosley and award-winning short story writer Claire Vaye Watkins.

Following its highly successful introduction last year, Publishers Lunch again is presenting a stand-alone volume previewing exciting and outstanding material from publishing’s powerhouse sector, young adult and middle-grade novels, in BUZZ BOOKS 2015: Young Adult Fall/Winter. This edition holds a taste of eagerly awaited books like new work from bestselling and award-winning leaders in the field including James Dashner (The Maze Runner series), Jennifer Donnelly (A Northern Light and Revolution), Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls and the Chaos Walking trilogy), and Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall, Panic); authors best-known for their adult books (Eleanor Herman and Cammie McGovern); and a good number of exciting debuts (Tessa Elwood’s Inherit the Stars, Moïra Fowley-Doyle’s The Accident Season, and Estelle Laure’s This Raging Light, among others). Aaron Hartzler, author of the critically acclaimed YA memoir Rapture Practice, makes his fiction debut with What We Saw. In what appears to becoming a YA trend, four Buzz Books entries are highly graphic or archival-looking in form via vignettes, diary entries, texts, charts, lists, illustrations and more. These include Hannah Moskowitz’s History of Glitter and Blood, a lyrical fantasy with an unusual graphic format.

Of the 24 adult books previewed and published to date in the 2015 Spring/Summer edition, 19 have made \"best of the month/year\" lists and five are New York Times bestsellers.

BUZZ BOOKS 2015: Fall/Winter and BUZZ BOOKS 2015: Young Adult Fall/Winter are available for free download now on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Apple’s iBookstore, the Google Play Books store, and Kobo.

The historical fiction course I’m taking at Coursera continues to delight me, and this week’s Geraldine Brooks seminar on her plague novel, Year of Wonders, pretty much knocked my socks off. The professor, Dr. Bruce Holsinger of UVA, posted a long excerpt from what was also my favorite part of the seminar–Brooks on how she writes characters from other eras, how she forms their consciousness.

“And as a foreign correspondent in the contemporary world, I would hear people all the time saying, ‘They’re not like us.’ One side saying about the other—white South Africans about black, Palestinians about Israelis—‘Their values are different, they don’t love their kids, they’re willing to sacrifice them, they don’t have the same material needs that we have,’ and it’s all BS in my view. You know, the sound of somebody keening for a dead child, is exactly the same, no matter if they’re in a…New York apartment, or an Eritrean refugee camp. There’s a fundamental belief that the human heart hasn’t changed that much. … At a time when you couldn’t expect to raise your kids, when death was ever present, there would’ve been a different approach to loss. But I don’t think it felt any different, I don’t think the emotion of loss felt any different, and I don’t think hatred felt any different, and I don’t think love did. And so, that for me is, where you start, with believing that human beings have these strong emotions in common.”

There’s more, well worth the click-through. And if you sign up for the course (free), you can watch the videos. Such a treat to hear smart people talk about their work. Author Jane Alison’s seminar on her Ovid novel, The Love Artist, was also fascinating and thought-provoking. I haven’t yet watched the Katherine Howe videos (The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane)—greatly looking forward to it. Dr. Holsinger’s lectures have captivated me, to a one. Lots of peeks at rare first editions from UVA’s special collections library (swoon) and really excellent, meaty discussion of various historical fiction novels in their own historical context: Tale of Two Cities, Clotel, Anna Katharine Green‘s detective novel The Forsaken Inn (new to me, and the genesis of a subgenre, historical mystery). Dr. Holsinger even has me wanting to give James Fenimore Cooper another shot, which is saying something.

Looking forward to upcoming seminars on Mary Beth Keane’s Typhoid Mary novel, Fever, and Yangsze Choo’s The Ghost Bride.

• Plague, Witches, and War: The Worlds of Historical Fiction •

I have never read Geraldine Brooks before but have wanted to, have heard good things about her books, especially People of the Book. I always figured that would be the one I read first, but it hasn’t turned out that way. Brooks’s book Year of Wonders is one of the contemporary historical fiction books on the reading list for my historical fiction MOOC. She will even be attending one of the classes to talk about the book.

I was expecting a lot from this book which might explain why I finished it a bit disappointed. Not that it wasn’t good, I did enjoy it, but I was not wowed by it. Before I explain that further, let me give you a bit of plot summary.

The book is based on the real village of Eyam in Derbyshire, England. In August of 1665 a tailor living in the village received a bundle of cloth from London and was dead of plague a week later. The village made the momentous decision to quarantine themselves so as not to spread the disease to other villages and towns. The infection spread through the village, never leaving its precincts, and by the time it ended 14 months later only 83 of the 350 villagers had survived.

Year of Wonders begins a few weeks before the plague comes to town. The narrator is Anna Frith, the widow of a lead miner and housekeeper to the minister and his wife. Anna married when she was about fifteen to get away from her abusive father. She had two sons with her husband before he was killed in a mining accident. She is still quite young, twenty perhaps.

When a new tailor came to town and needed a place to stay she took him in as a lodger. Just as they were starting to romance each other, he gets the cloth from London with the fleas that have the plague and then the rest of the book is death after death after death.

The village has quarantined itself so no one leaves and no one enters. It becomes a microcosm of what happens during times of extreme crisis. While the minister is preaching fortitude and faith in God, the villagers are stringing up the midwife and herbalist as a witch. Meanwhile the entrepreneurial among them are charging extortion rates for burying the dead, even going so far as to dump one poor soul into his grave before he is dead. While others succumb to superstition and still others go completely insane.

Our narrator is generally in the thick of things. She finds herself elected the new midwife since she has experience birthing lambs from the small flock of sheep she keeps. She also helps an orphan girl extract enough lead from her dead father’s mine so no one can take it away from her. And because the minister’s wife Elinor takes a liking to her, she is also taught how to read. She is an altogether too good to be true sort of woman. This was one of the causes of my disappointment with the book, Anna was not entirely believable, especially with what happens at the end. It boggled my mind.

But that was not the only thing I had a hard time with. Brooks’s style also made me grind my teeth from time to time. She wrote the book in modern English but so we would know it was really supposed to be 1665 – 66, she’d throw out some odd phrasing now and then that was meant to sound old. And then there were certain word choices. She’d use words like “chouse,” “whisket,” and “boose.” I ignored it at first but they started catching me up and bothering me. Okay, I thought, if you are going to toss out old words I am going to check the OED and make sure you chose ones that would really have been in use. While she did pretty well, I did catch her out a few times like with “jussive,” a word not known to be in use until 1846. To my mind you either go all in with the phrasing and the word choice and you get it right, or you don’t do it at all.

But it wasn’t a bad book in spite of all the things that annoyed me. The story moved along at a good clip but would slow down for some introspective moments too and these things were nicely balanced. It was also interesting watching the different ways faith in God changed. For some it grew stronger and stronger, for others God ceased to exist, and for many more there was much confusion and doubt. What really got my attention and made me think how horrible it must have been was this passage:

I had words with the carter over it, but he told me we were lucky to get as good as we got, and I suppose it’s true enough. There are so few people to do the picking. So few people to do anything. And those of us who are left walk around as if we’re half asleep. We are all so tired.

What do you do when suddenly the people you relied on for daily goods and skilled services are gone? Mines went unworked, fields unplowed, crops unplanted. No blacksmith. No one to buy winter hay from to feed your sheep and horse. A bustling village decimated and not a day goes by when someone doesn’t die or become ill. And suddenly a mild cough or fever becomes a thing of terror. Should it turn out to not be the plague, what a relief!

That passage is what saved the book for me. The plague was an end-of-the-world scenario that really happened. Between 1347 – 1351 the plague reduced the population of Europe alone by about one-third. And there were regular and continuous outbreaks. The plague is still with us and people still die of it, though, thanks to modern medicine, not in the numbers they once did.

I am looking forward to what Brooks has to say about the book in my class. If she says anything particularly interesting, I’ll let you know.

At Powell's, our book buyers select all the new books in our vast inventory. If we need a book recommendation, we turn to our team of resident experts. Need a gift idea for a fan of vampire novels? Looking for a guide that will best demonstrate how to knit argyle socks? Need a book for [...]

Penguin Group (USA) has partnered with the online BlogHer community to create a book club. Sassymonkey Reads blogger/BlogHer contributing editor Karen Ballum will host.

According to Book Business Magazine, the book club will average two titles per month. Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks is the first pick. Participants will enjoy special book club features such as live chats, behind-the-scenes looks at the researching and writing process, and writing tips.

The article has this quote from Penguin Group (USA) president Susan Petersen Kennedy: “The BlogHer community is smart, opinionated, and influential—in other words, the perfect match for our authors and books. I’m looking forward to creating a forum in which women can discuss books, speak with authors, and grow as writers.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Power of Good: True stories of great kindness from total strangers

This book counters the overwhelming media bombardment about a violence, cruelty, war.

The world has also KINDNESS.

One just has to see the terrible disaster in Japan with the earthquakes and read the stories of human kindness – neighbour helping neighbour.

The Power of Good is a celebration of those acts of kindness we have all experienced.

Let brotherly (and sisterly) love continue.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers:

for thereby some have entertained angels unaware.

Hebrews 12:1-2

 A percentage of sales of this book go to the Australian charity HOPE STREET www.hopestreet.org.au

There are seventy very short stories – easy to read, easy to relate to, easy to care.

Some of the stories are written by:-

Writers:  Peter FitzSimons, Geraldine Brooks, Libby Gleeson,  Susanne Gervay

Media personalities: Jean Kittson comedian, Anthony Ackroyd comedian

 TV Reporters: Simon Reeve presenter ‘Sunrise’ channel 7; news presenter Tracey Spicer; Anton Enus SBS World News

Leaders of Charities: Simon Rountree Camp Quality; Father Chris Riley Youth off the Streets; Stephen Murby Cystic Fibrosis Victoria

Sports, politicians, many others: Eric Bailey former NBA player;  Tim Fischer AC former Deputy Prime Minister; Professor David de Kretser AC Governor of Victoria .

This book of acts of kindness – ‘the power of good’-  is being launched now.

For more details contact: www.mccrindle.com.au; [email protected]

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SHOW NOTES:

The Book of Life takes you on a virtual trip around the world for Passover!

> Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks discusses People of the Book, her fictional history of the Sarajevo Haggadah.

> Basya Schechter talks about her band Pharaoh's Daughter, which mixes world music and psychedelic rock with Middle Eastern sounds.

> Author Ilana Kurshan describes her compilation of translations, Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights? The Four Questions Around the World.

> If you like Ilana's book, you may also like 300 Ways to Ask the Four Questions from Zulu to Abkhaz by Murray Spiegel and Rickey Stein. It comes with a CD and a DVD to demonstrate the translations!

NEWS:

In our next episode we'll celebrate Israel@60! Don't miss it!

CREDITS:

Thanks to Dan Krimm for permission to use Ma Nishtana - The Blues Version! Our regular background music is provided by The Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band.

Books and CD's mentioned on the show may be borrowed from the Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel. Browse our online catalog to reserve books, post a review, or just to look around!

Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to [email protected]!

I'M SO EXCITED! I received my copy of Picture Writing last month and I have finally set the time aside to begin working in the book. It takes 18 weeks to go cover to cover. I will be finishing up week #1 tomorrow. I've been writing and drawing all my life but have always had a difficult time putting the two of them together. I've learned so much in just the first week...I believe there is hope! To anyone who has read Ms. Suen's book or taken her online class...you will understand when I say that I am a hare who is trying to learn to be a tortoise!