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Wednesday Night, Peter Orner Concludes the Booktalk Nation Previews
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Peter Orner will discuss his inventive new novel, Love and Shame and Love, which is getting raves from book lovers and professional critics, with writer Michelle Richmond at 10 p.m. EST/7 p.m. PST Wednesday, Dec. 14 during a live call-in event sponsored by Books Inc. in San Francisco. Readers can sign up to participate and order a signed copy of Love and Shame and Love at booktalknation.com.
“With its short and evocative chapters, its charged and playful language, its movement to and fro in time, the novel is indeed poetic. It’s epic too…” Maria Russo wrote in this week’s New York Times Book Review, adding to the voices praising Love and Shame and Love.
The novel covers four generations of a politically connected Chicago family, focusing on the experiences and observations of one member, Alexander Popper. While much has been written about the book’s nonlinear narrative, Orner says he didn’t set out to do anything experimental.
“To me it’s a realistic style,” he says. “I was trying to track how my memory works, which is, I think in moments.”
Orner’s other fiction includes the collection, Esther’s Stories, and the novel, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo. Orner is also the editor of two nonfiction books, Underground America and Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives (with co-editor Annie Holmes).
Richmond is the author of four books, including the bestselling novel, The Year of Fog.
Sponsored by the Authors Guild, Booktalk Nation is a new series of live phone-in author interviews, each hosted by a bookstore with ties to the featured writer. Orner, who lives in San Francisco, says he frequents Books Inc.—the independently owned retailer has 12 locations in California—because of its thoughtfully chosen selection and its atmosphere. “It’s an extremely friendly place,” he says. “When you walk in, they’re happy to see you.”
The Guild, which is previewing Booktalk Nation ahead of a formal launch in January, is seeking to support independent booksellers and highlight the key role they play in promoting a vibrant literary culture.
Jeffrey Eugenides, Judy Blume, Jennifer Egan Wrap Up Booktalk Nation Preview
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Booktalk Nation concludes its preview this week with Jeffrey Eugenides discussing The Marriage Plot with host Jennifer Egan tonight, Judy Blume discussing Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and other books with host Rachel Vail tomorrow night, and Peter Orner discussing Love and Shame and Love (great review in yesterday’s NYT) with host Michelle Richmond on Wednesday.
Booktalk Nation formally launches in January, when we’ll invite bookstores around the country to organize their own book talks with authors.
Booktalk Nation coordinates national, phone-in book talks, in which an author talks about a new book for 30 minutes with another author, who “hosts” the talk — as the host of a radio program would — and may (optionally) take questions from callers. Each event has a traditional bookstore sponsor that’s convenient to the author. (Labyrinth Books of Princeton is sponsoring Jeff Eugenides’s talk; Bank Street Bookstore of Manhattan is sponsoring Judy Blume’s talk; Books Inc. of San Francisco is sponsoring Peter Orner’s talk.)
Traditional bookstores benefit in two ways:
1. The sponsor bookstore has the opportunity to sell books nationwide. Through the Booktalk Nation website, readers can order books to be personally inscribed by the author. The order goes to the sponsoring bookstore. A day or so after the talk, the author visits the sponsoring store and inscribes the books. The store then fulfills orders nationwide. (Last year, our very quiet test of the service with a few events led to sales in more than 15 states.)
2. Other brick-and-mortar bookstores can act as affiliates on the sales, roughly splitting the net proceeds if they refer their customers who order books through the system. For example, each of these sponsor bookstores in this week’s events is acting as an affiliate for the other stores’ events. (The Flying Pig Bookstore in Shelburne, VT, which acted as sponsor for our inaugural event with children’s book author Katherine Paterson, is also acting as affiliate for these events.) An affiliate merely promotes the events through its e-mail and website.
Our aim is to have a service that will allow traditional bookstores to support each other and sell books where they never would otherwise — outside their immediate areas. It will also, of course, benefit the authors who participate in it. We see this as a supplement to, not a substitute for, a traditional book tour.
Monday Night, Dial in to Join Two Pulitzer Prize Winning Novelists – Jeffrey Eugenides and Jennifer Egan
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Book lovers can join a conversation between two of contemporary fiction’s most original and exciting novelists when Jennifer Egan interviews Jeffrey Eugenides at 9 p.m., Monday, Dec. 12 during a national, live call-in event sponsored by Labyrinth Books in Princeton, NJ. Readers can sign up for the call and order a personally inscribed copy of Eugenides’ latest book, The Marriage Plot, at booktalknation.com.
Greeted as a major new voice in American literature with the release of his debut novel, The Virgin Suicides, Eugenides sparked even greater enthusiasm with his second book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Middlesex. The sweeping intergenerational story of a Greek American family, narrated by a hermaphrodite named Cal, has sold millions.
The Marriage Plot—called “wry, engaging and beautifully constructed” in the New York Times Book Review and “relentlessly charming, smart and funny,” in USA Today—takes readers to Brown University in the 1980s, focusing on three college seniors on the cusp of that disorienting transition from student to adult.
Egan and Eugenides have been friends since the early 1990s, when they both worked at the Paris Review. Egan’s bestselling, strikingly imaginative fourth novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Eugenides is a professor of Creative Writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. Labyrinth Books is an independent bookstore and official course book provider for the university.
Booktalk Nation is a new series of phone-in author interviews sponsored by the Authors Guild, which seeks to support independent booksellers and highlight the key role they play in promoting a vibrant literary culture.
Each talk in the series is hosted by a bookstore with ties to the featured author. The Guild is previewing the service this month and will formally launch it in January.
Judy Blume Featured in Second Booktalk Nation Phone-In Event, Monday Night
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Justin Case Author Rachel Vail to Take Readers’ Questions, Interview Blume
Judy Blume will answer questions about her life and work from author Rachel Vail at 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 5, in a live, national, phone-in event hosted by R.J. Julia Booksellers of Madison, Connecticut. Readers can sign up for the call at booktalknation.com. Blume will sign books for delivery to readers nationwide after the call.
Frequently targeted by censors and always loved by readers, Blume’s books are among the most enduring and controversial written for young people. In 2004, Blume, the author of 28 titles that range from picture books to bestselling novels, was awarded the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
Through Booktalknation.com, readers from across the country can order personally-inscribed copies of Blume’s classic, Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret?, as well as three more of her best-known works: Friend or Fiend With the Pain and the Great One, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, and Tiger Eyes. R.J. Julia Bookstore will fulfill the orders after Blume inscribes the books a few days after the phone-in event.
As for what she and Vail will talk about, “Tiger Eyes is very, very dear to my heart because we just filmed a movie based on Tiger Eyes, it was like working on the book all over again.” Blume co-wrote the screenplay for the 30-year-old book with her son, Lawrence, the film’s director. She’s also eager to discuss her novel-in-progress, which is set in the 1950s in her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey. “You’re always more excited about the book you’re working on now,” she said.
But for readers, Blume’s older books continue to be thrilling discoveries. “I read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing when I was in third grade,” said Vail. “I remember that feeling to this day, that ‘she knows me.’” Rachel Vail’s novel for kids, Justin Case, won a 2011 Kiddo Award and was named a Best Book of 2011 by Bank Street Bookstore. Her novels for teens include Brilliant, Lucky, and Gorgeous; her books for kids include Righty & Lefty and Jibberwillies at Night.
Booktalk Nation is a new series of phone-in author interviews sponsored by the Authors Guild, which seeks to support traditional, physical booksellers and highlight the key role they play in promoting a vibrant literary culture.
“They just should be cherished and celebrated,” said Blume.
Each talk in the series will be hosted by a local bookstore with ties to the featured author. The Guild is previewing the service this month and will formally launch it in January.
Katherine Paterson to Inaugurate National, Phone-In Book Talks
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Children’s book author Katherine Paterson, selected by the Library of Congress as the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, will answer questions from writer Tanya Lee Stone at 7 p.m. this Thursday, December 1, in a live, national, phone-in event hosted by the Flying Pig Bookstore in Shelburne, Vermont. Readers can sign up for the call at booktalknation.com.
A two-time winner of the prestigious Newbery Medal and the National Book Award, Paterson is the author of more than 30 books, which include contemporary and historical fiction, in settings that range from realistic to fantastical. She is best known for Bridge to Terabithia.
Paterson’s latest title, The Flint Heart, is a retelling of the 1910 fairy tale of the same name by Eden Phillpotts. Paterson’s husband, John, first tried to get publishers to bring the original back into print. But Phillpotts’s style was deemed too long-winded for modern audience, so husband and wife collaborated on a new version, picking up the pace but preserving Phillpotts’s plot, characters and tone.
“It still has that sort of old-fashioned voice,” said Paterson “It’s a charming voice; it’s a storyteller’s voice.”
In the book, a Stone Age man demands a talisman that will harden his heart so he can rule his tribe. The tribe’s magic man creates the Flint Heart, which leads to the destruction of the tribe. Thousands of years later, the Flint Heart reemerges, threatening to cause trouble all over again.
Readers from across the country can order personally-inscribed books, including Paterson’s The Flint Heart, Bridge to Terabithia, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, and The Great Gilly Hopkins.
BookTalk Nation is a new series of phone-in author interviews sponsored by the Authors Guild, which hopes to support traditional booksellers and to highlight the key role they play in promoting a vibrant literary culture. Each talk in the series will be hosted by a local bookstore with ties to the featured author.
“I just hope everybody will support their independent bookstores,” said Paterson, who lives in Vermont. She said she was eager to participate because she’s seen first-hand how knowledgeable, committed booksellers help readers find just the right book.