How to Shop for Books Like a Pro

A couple of months ago, a popular site in the bookish corner of the internet posted a piece about how a lifelong book lover no longer knew how to shop for books in a bookstore. On the one hand, the author of that piece used gifs and that repetitive ridiculousness makes me want to hit people. On the other, I'm willing to acknowledge that bookstores can be overwhelming, particularly during the holiday season when stores are crowded. Here are a few tips to enjoy your trip to the bookstore.

One of the most beautiful stores I visit for work,
Full Circle Bookstore in Oklahoma City.

1. Find the store that fits you/your needs. I guarantee that you will be disappointed if you walk into a mystery bookstore and can't find that new Joan of Arc biography. That's stupid and frustrating for everyone, but believe me, IT HAPPENS. I don't go to the hipster foodie place to buy Diet Coke because all they'll have is nasty foodie artisan sodas. If you liked the Longmire series by Craig Johnson and want something similar, the mystery store is a great choice. I visit a lot of bookstores and most, even the large ones, have some specialties.

2. What's your objective? Figure it out in advance. Most people don't just wander into a grocery store without a specific goal in mind. For me, it's usually "I'm out of ice cream. I must buy ice cream. Where is the damn ice cream? For the love of god, I need ice cream now. NOW." For bookstores, it could be "I want to see what's new," or "I need a gift for Gianna's birthday four months from now," or "I heard about this book on NPR and it sounds amazing." It helps to have a goal in mind.

3. Call ahead if there's something in particular you want. If you heard about a book on NPR, that means that thousands of other people also heard about it. Sure, if we're talking about the new John Grisham thriller, the store most likely will have a fat stack of books waiting for you to walk through the door. If you are in search of a book that your friend mentioned at lunch as being the best she's read this year, and the publisher is Smaller Than a Butt Crack Press, call ahead. And when you go in to pick up your book, figure in time to poke around and see what else captures your interest.

Welcome to Maria's Bookshop in Durango, Colorado.
From here: new arrivals on the table in front, staff picks on the
endcap to the left, gift items under the table, and a canoe
hanging from the ceiling. 

4. When you get to the store, stand near the front door and get your bearings. Generally you will see: new arrivals, bestsellers (either national or for the store), gift items and seasonal merchandise like calendars, and possibly books for upcoming author signings. There may be themed displays. Where is the information desk in relation to where you are? Where is the restroom? If there's a cafe, where is it? Soak it in. Now it's time to play.

5. How to Browse. I like to start with the new arrivals because these displays change most frequently and are usually also the books featured in reviews and media. Insider tip: Tuesday is the best day to discover what's new since that's the biggest industry-wide release day of the week. Also, the Tuesday closest to the beginning of a month is more popular than, say, the third Tuesday. This year September 30th was a huge release date since it was a Tuesday, the day before a new month, and in the fall. You know how movie studios release the Oscar buzz movies in the fall? The same is true for the book industry.

Great book. Has nothing
to do with dog pictures.

From new arrivals I then head to table displays and any staff recommendation sections I can see. I want to know what the booksellers are reading because they tend to find the great books before anyone else. If a bookseller is recommending Margaret Atwood and I love Margaret Atwood, I'll check to see what else that bookseller is recommending. I regularly buy books based entirely on the bookseller's word. I trust a bookseller a zillion times more than I trust online algorithms. I loved Richard Flanagan's literary novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North. If I were to follow the online recommendation, then, I should also be interested in...a picture book about dogs. I loved Hampton Sides's In the Kingdom of Ice, a history of an arctic expedition in the 19th century. And thus, according to the computer, I should like We Were Liars, a young adult novel about a group of affluent teens spending the summer of the family-owned island. Sigh. Anyway, moving on.

What are you in the mood to read? There's no reason you have to spend time in every section of a bookstore. I almost never visit the religion section (fear of smiting). I don't like fantasy books, so I gloss over those. I do love fiction, but that's a broad category and typically the biggest section in most bookstores. So let's say that you want a novel. How do you find what you're looking for among thousands of books? Here's how I do it.

• Check favorite authors. What haven't I read? What's new? 
• Absolutely judge books by covers. If a cover jumps out at me, I'll at least read the summary even if I've never heard of the book or author or publisher. (That said, try not to rule out a book entirely based on the fugly cover.)
• Totally lost? Play bookstore bingo. Pick a shelf, pick the fourth book over, or the blue book, or the first book you find with a certain word in the title. You're exploring. 
• Visit a section that's off your radar. I've already said that I don't shop in the religion section, but the flip side is that I'm fascinated by religions from a cultural studies angle. I won't be interested in Joel Osteen's latest book, but I would be interested in a new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 
• Ask a bookseller. 

This is Consuelo at BookPeople in Austin.
She's a great reader. Don't be afraid to ask
 her for book recommendations.
She's there to help.

6. Seriously, ASK A BOOKSELLER. They know what's popular, they know some hidden gems, they know what's over-hyped. They most likely can remember the title of that book you heard about on NPR. They have ideas for your next book group pick. If you want to read something in the vein of, say, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, they will know where to start. Booksellers are your guides. They read all the time. They are members of reading groups. They have great suggestions for what to give to your uncle you only see every other Christmas. You are not disturbing them by asking questions. Booksellers are there to help you find the perfect book. Would you hesitate to ask a waiter for a beverage refill? Don't be shy.

7. Don't be a book snob, and don't tolerate it either. I think that people are afraid of booksellers (and others) judging their reading tastes. It happens...but it shouldn't. There are books that I think are awful, but at the same time when I'm working in a store, my goal is to help the customers find their perfect books. I was in a bookstore selling to a buyer when a customer came in and wanted recommendations. This customer, a woman in tennis attire, asked for "books that typically have pink covers." I admit it. I may have vomited in my mouth a little. The buyer stopped what we were doing, stood up, and assisted the woman in finding something she'd love. The customer left happy and the buyer made a sale. Do you think that the hardware store employee judges you for buying a certain shade of paint? When I bought my house, one of the rooms was painting a chartreuse color that made my head hurt. Someone sold that hideous paint color, but I doubt anyone thought twice about the transaction.

Let's say that the bookseller looks nothing like you. Maybe she's a goth girl with a bunch of piercings. Maybe he's the stereotypical preppy gay guy. Maybe she's a middle aged PTA mom type. So what? Here's what you have in common: you both like books. Keep in mind that many booksellers are a bit introverted. They are bookish people. Chances are that the bookseller is willing to set aside her social

From Beauty and the Beast, Disney

discomfort every day in order to be surrounded by the books she loves. The icebreaker you need to crack the introvert bubble is "What are you reading?"

8. Have an idea. It's easier for a bookseller to recommend a book if you say "I'm looking for a gift for my uncle. He's really outdoorsy and likes to birdwatch," or "I need a book for my friend's seven year-old daughter. She's not into the whole princess thing. Help?" If I were looking for a gift for Gianna, I might say "I need a present for my pal who loves literary fiction but also as a twisted sense of humor. She loves women comics like Kathy Griffin and Gilda Radner. One of her favorite books is Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply. I know she's already read Gone Girl." That's a lot for the bookseller to use in helping me find a book.

This fall, Penguin Random House, working with Save the Children,
 is donating a book to a US child in need for every #GiveaBook
hashtag on Twitter and Facebook.
Let's change the world one book at a time. 

9. Don't piss off the bookseller with your smartphone. Booksellers aren't paid a lot. Also, they aren't the ones setting the prices on books. It is an insult to whip out your phone and price shop online for the book they just spent time finding for you. You would never bring your food truck-purchased sandwich to eat at the table in the upscale restaurant because you like the ambiance but can't afford a souffle. If you are taking advantage of the availability, recommendations, and atmosphere of a bookstore, you should buy the book there. If I'm in Mississippi and one of the booksellers is raving about a novel, I buy it from that store instead of giving that sale to another retailer. Reward the store that did the work.

10. Have fun. I really don't like shopping for anything...except for books. Books are commodities, but they are also sources of inspiration, creativity, challenging ideas, great stories, fascinating histories. I think it's high time we celebrate bookie culture the way that the foodies have elevated the concept of destination restaurants and grocery stores.

Things I Love, Things I Hate, Things In Between, Volume 5

It's been awhile. Time to vent.

Most people love this book.
It didn't work for me.

Thing I Hate: Reading Slumps
They shouldn't occur, but they do. Mother Teresa had her crisis of faith, and occasionally I get bogged down in books that don't inspire me. It's not entirely unexpected, as I've been traveling almost nonstop for the last two months and removed from my regular routine. I started reading Philipp Meyer's The Son, a new novel which is generating huge praise from booksellers and critics, and one which has been compared to both the works of Cormac McCarthy and Lonesome Dove. I loved American Rust, Meyer's first novel, but this one didn't work for me. Weirdly, I was bored and the characters seemed flat to me. It's obvious that Meyer did his homework (this is a novel spanning 150 years of Texas history), but the most interesting sections--the ones focused on the abduction of a white boy by Comanches--seem like barely fictional retellings of the more engagingly written history, Empire of the Summer Moon. Some of my bookseller friends claim that The Son should win the National Book Award or Pulitzer. They said the same thing about Yellow Birds last year.

Thing I Love: Breaking the Slump
I don't have any magic trick to breaking the reading slump except to keep reading and trying different books.  I am in between sales conferences for work, which means that I have more of an opportunity to explore (fewer homework books). I picked up a novel coming out in 2014--yes, we read way in advance--by Evie Wyld. I loved Wyld's first book, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, a novel of fathers and sons set in rural Australia, about war and memory and family. Wyld is one of those up and coming writers, one of The Daily Telegraph's best British writers under 40, and After the Fire won several awards. Her new book is called All the Birds, Singing; when I picked it up, I had no idea what it was about. How does this sound? An Australian woman is living on a British island as a sheep farmer (rancher?). She is alone except for a dog named Dog. She has a past she's avoiding as much as she's avoiding the other residents of the island. And one by one, something is attacking her sheep. An animal? Something more sinister? I'm only about a quarter of the way through, but I'm hooked. The book has an eerie tone that's perfect for holding my interest.

Thing I Hate: Migraines
Yeah, so that's not saying much. Who loves a migraine? Gianna and I both suffer from them. I'm aware of my triggers (mostly flashing lights and fatigue), but too many early morning airport trips and a flickering bulb at the airport breakfast taco place created a monster two weeks ago. When I don't catch them in time, my headaches linger for a few days, and my nerves are shot. I drop things. Like my phone. Into the toilet. I had these grand plans of posting pictures from my travels this season, from snowy Colorado to swampy New Orleans to the majestic Grand Canyon, with lots and lots of bookstores mixed in, but that plan went down (into?) the toilet. Sigh. At least it was just water in the toilet, but I still lied to the woman at the cell phone store when I bought a replacement, saying that I dropped my dead phone in dishwater. I'm not ashamed. I'm not proud.

Thing I Love: Ice Cream
Gianna, it's your turn to bring me dessert. I think a waffle cone would be nice. Something chocolaty.

Thing In Between: Black Swan
This movie sort of stinks, but I like the soundtrack (perhaps because it's all just music from the ballet). It's the opposite of Titanic, which is only bearable if you mute it. It's too hot to go outside. I'm channel surfing as I work on this blog piece. Is it obvious? I met Natalie Portman once. She's about four feet tall.

Thing I Love: Cloud Atlas
I recently watched the film version of Cloud Atlas (see: hot, channel surfing) after holding out. Since I love the book so much, I hesitated to view a film version. Actors I love starred in it (Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Ben Whishaw who was Q in the last Bond movie, and my crush Jim Sturgess), but it also starred Tom Hanks. I don't dislike Tom Hanks, but when was the last time you were able to sever the "that's Tom Hanks" thought and just see a character? When Meryl Streep played Julia Child, you just saw Julia; that's what I want in a movie. That said, with the interwoven stories and having the same actors playing multiple characters, the Hanks factor was a non-issue. I was surprised how much I actually liked the movie, and it's an excellent echo of what makes the book so phenomenal--virtuoso storytelling and mind-blowing novelistic structure coming together to tell a story of freedom from oppression and finding hope. I love this book, and I appreciate the movie for reminding me of it.

Thing I LOVE: Postcard books filled with book covers
A few years ago, Penguin published a collection of their classic book covers as postcards. Just recently, New Directions did the same with the iconic covers of Alvin Lustig, one of the greatest book cover designers ever. I love these images. I hope that other publishers follow this trend. Pretty please?

New Year, New 30 Day Book Challenge, Day 17

Day 17: Favorite quote from your favorite book.

Gianna's favorite book

Gianna: 

Well, today's unrealistic goal is to pick our favorite quote from our favorite book. What a joke!

I thought I would pull some quotes from my favorite book The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor. I simply opened the book to a few different pages and jotted these down. What I hope you’ll get out of this is how absolutely hilarious she was.

This is a must have

“Harcourt sent my book to Evelyn Waugh and his comment was: 'If this is really the unaided work of a young lady, it is a remarkable product.' My mother was vastly insulted. She put the emphasis on if and lady. Does he suppose you’re not a lady?”

After the publication of A Good Man is Hard to Find, O’Connor began receiving mail from interested men. “The latest came from a Mr. Semple of Cincinnati who has not read anything of mine but doesn’t really see how I can say a good man is hard to find. He is an industrial engineer, likes to play bridge, is the active type, 31 years old, single etc. etc. I wrote Mr. Semple that I didn’t think I’d like him a bit but he would be crazy about me as I had seven gold teeth and weighed 250 pounds."

[Wait, is this Mr. Semple still available?]

“Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way.”

“My book has received considerable attention, most all of it simple-minded.”

"I have been in the hospital in Atlanta for the scientists to find out what is responsible for my feet swelling. He found out everything that was not responsible for their swelling so I figure we have accomplished something anyway."

Is there anyone cuter? No.

“Well thanks for the of yr. apartment but I ain’t coming to New York unless somebody pays me to and nobody is liable to pay me to. I do not attend autograph parties etc. Once only was I roped into any such as that and now I would rather be drawn and quartered. Been working on that book for seven years with time off occasionally to write a story. The relief of finishing it was extreme but I haven’t spit up or anything.” 

Some sweet soul gave this to me as a gift

“…I have only one complaint to make about you, I see only one blot on your character. This is the way you wrap up packages. By the time I got into these books, my fingers were bleeding and my disposition was shot for the day. I wished all your sticky paper in hell. Please get yourself a ball of string, a simple ball of string, and the next time you have occasion to post me a book, tie it up, just tie it up.”

Liz:

“What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.”

I'm not a quote person typically. Every now and then, a line from a book jumps out at me, but usually I tend to remember themes and emotional connections to characters more than specific phrases. My favorite book, though, stuck with me. I never remember character names, but I remember the characters of this book. With the hype around the movie this year, many, many more readers have discovered the stories, characters, themes, and, yes, quotes pulled from David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. It is my favorite book.

A few memorable lines:

“Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”

“The healthy can't understand the emptied, the broken.”

“Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.”

“You say you're 'depressed' - all I see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human.”

“The better organized the state, the duller its humanity.”

“Anticipating the end of the world is humanity's oldest pastime.”

I love this book. It reminds me that books can surprise, warm, comfort, challenge, and change lives.

David Mitchell. I like to pretend he writes just for me.

Things I Love, Things I Hate, Things in Between, Volume 2

Thing I Love Immature Humor.  Let's say that you're pals with Gianna, and let's say that the head of the CIA resigns due to an extramarital affair.  Even better, Book Land is involved because the woman of the night happens to be the good general's biographer.  And then you get an email from Gianna that asks if the lady's book about General Petraeus is really called All In.  And you know that Gianna is snorting as she reads the story in the Huffington Post.  It's a lovely way to end a busy work week.

Thing I Hate Contested election results.  Forget Florida.  How is it that Gianna is winning our Liz vs.Gianna poll on Facebook?  Well guess what?  Book Land is not a democracy, and the correct answer is always Liz.  Or at least the correct answer is always Liz as long as Gianna wants me to continue to correct her punctuation.

Thing I Hate Jellyfish.  I think I'm supposed to find them beautiful, but other than the amazing drawings by Ernst Haeckel from Art Forms in Nature, they just look like floating wounds to me.

Nasty.

Lovely.

Yes Jhumpa, you are allowed
to write books for me.

Thing I Love Fresh manuscripts.  Every Thursday, the Random House sales force receives an email listing all of the manuscripts posted in the last week.  Often these emails are the first hints the sales team sees of the books we will be selling months to a year from now.  And sure, we're surrounded by books and assigned reading all the time, but I never get tired of the possibility of new, great books that I'll have the opportunity to read and then share.  Here's the entire email I sent to a colleague last week:

Subject: manuscript                                        

Two words: Jhumpa Lahiri.
Squeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

It looks like there's a new Jhumpa Lahiri book for the fall of 2013.  That makes me happy.

Thing in Between. Cookbooks.  It's no secret that I don't like to cook.  Those people out there who read cookbooks for pleasure?  What the hell's wrong with you?  Do you need some reading recommendations?  Because we're here to help.  That said, I'm not averse to the joy of someone else cooking for me, which is why I'm giving copies of The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook to several friends.  One of my friends has been treating me to recipes from the SK blog for years, and my colleague Stacey has been making treats for her family and fellow telephone sales reps.  I'm pretty sure that she's going to send me cookies, and if you send me cash, I'll see if she'll cook for you too.  (No refunds.  No guarantees, and if you're Stacey reading this, no profit sharing.)

Thing I Love Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan.  The newest Ian McEwan novel goes on sale this Tuesday, and it's one of my favorites of the year.  Here is the Booker Prize winner and author of Atonement playing with the classic spy genre.  During the tedious part of the Cold War, 1973, a young woman is recruited by MI6 to join Operation Sweet Tooth.  Her mission: find susceptible writers and convince them to write pro-capitalist literature, thus combating Soviet pop culture propaganda.  Serena, our protagonist, finds an aspiring writer and convinces him that he's won a literary prize that will allow him to quit teaching and write full time.  She acts as his contact with the fictitious foundation, and eventually they fall in love.  Of course, their whole relationship is based on lies.  This is what McEwan does best--twisting characters through impossible scenarios and betrayals.  Good stuff.

Thing in Between Movie adaptations.  It's a bit cliche at this point to say that the book is better than the movie, even if there are instances when it's not true.  (The movie of Terms of Endearment was better than the book.)  This fall there's a movie version of my favorite book, Cloud Atlas.  I haven't decided if or when I'll see the movie, but regardless of the movie's quality, the publicity surrounding it has moved the brilliant novel onto the bestseller lists.  Here's a novel that takes some work--it's no young adult book masquerading as adult fiction, and structurally it's a challenge--and here it is selling all over the country.  That's something to celebrate.

Happy Paranormal Day!

Oliver, our youngest fan,
 with his Pete the Cat doll.
Both are too cool for this blog.

According to the nifty internet holiday calendar that Gianna emailed to me, today is auspicious.  Sure, there's National Day of Prayer; that's fine.  Also, today is National Two Different Colored Shoes Day, but I don't think I could post an entire piece about Pete the Cat.  I like Pete, but let's be honest...he's a bit juvenile.  Therefore we're going with Paranormal Day, and I'll spare you the wisecracks about the irony of the paranormal  and the praying on the same day.

Gods Without Men.  The latest book from super-talented Hari Kunzru is a revelation, a declaration of great literary promise arriving on the scene full force.  Fans of David Mitchell or Adam Johnson's acclaimed The Orphan Master's Son (which I declared the best book of the year back in January because I'm ballsy like that) must read Gods Without Men as well.

Hari Kunzru

Kunzru, like David Mitchell with Cloud Atlas, manages to blend several stories into a single, powerful narrative of time and place.  Gods Without Men follows the story of a family in crisis, a mother and father at odds with each other, a relationship strained by the birth and years of raising a severely autistic son.  Desperate, they head West on vacation and hope that the change of scenery will provide respite.  While walking through Joshua Tree National Park, the couple suddenly realizes their son is no longer by their sides.  Call the National Guard.  Add to this the Native American coyote legends with a decidedly modern--coyote makes meth--twist.  Ooh, and then there's a 60's hippie cult preparing for the aliens.  (See? I am loosely connecting this stuff to Paranormal Day.)  Leaving San Francisco to live life more fully, a young woman joins the group heading for Joshua Tree to prepare for the UFOs.  All of the stories, and a sense of the freedom and wildness of the American West, mesh into a compelling narrative.  And Hari Kunzru has serious literary chops.  The guy can write.

I think Gianna might be an alien.  She freaks me out.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 1

So we're stealing one of those list thingies from the FaceSpace and posting it here in tandem--the 30 Day Book Challenge.  I think the idea is to let people know you better through the books you read.  It might also be a way to find books that will become favorites (or topics of ridicule).  Both Gianna and I will participate, and since I (Liz) do all the of the posting, there's a strong possibility that I will make fun of Gianna's selections on occasion. 

Day 1:  Favorite Book

Not an easy question for either of us.  I know that I could fairly easily narrow down to a list of about five, but beyond that I struggle.  Eventually we just had to go with something.

Gianna

The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor (Fitzgerald)

I always say this is my desert island book, so I guess it must be my favorite book? I don't know that I really have one favorite book. I think if I had children I would certainly have a favorite (and I would tell that child often that he or she was/is my favorite - I just think that is good solid parenting)..but books, for goodness sakes now that is just too hard! But for now we will say Habit of Being because Flannery is my favorite writer. She pleases me on many levels (mostly she is easy on the eyes) and after thinking you know O'Connor because you've read everything she's written - and maybe you've read some critiques and interviews and blah blah blah..then you get your hands on these letters and its an entirely new world. She is really funny, she really had an interest in the business side of writing (as in where is my check?), and you get a real idea, maybe for the first time, how frustrated (and brave) she was in her battle with Lupus. Recently it's been revealed that Betty Hester is "A" in Habit of Being, a very interesting tidbit considering Hester was a lesbian and O'Connor did try to save her good friend's soul more than once. But those things are hard to do...

Liz:

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Like Gianna's pick, Cloud Atlas is my desert island book.  I read it during a time when I was reticent about sharing my book tastes with others, but found myself exuberantly telling my coworkers, including some uber-book snobs, how much I loved it.  Six interwoven tales that defy genre boundaries, Cloud Atlas is a virtuosic composition that manages to be clever, funny, frightening, philosophical, and moving.  It's a book that I probably should dislike for some of the reasons I dislike some of the overly clever McSweeney's Press books.  Mitchell plays with style and format and narrative...but he doesn't become trapped by the trickery.  I loved Cloud Atlas so much when I first read it that I sent a fan letter to a generic feedback email address at Random House, and my message eventually made its way to Mitchell's editor David Ebershoff and then to Mitchell himself.  Two weeks later I received a package in the mail from Ireland, and inside was a personalized copy of the UK edition of the book.  David Mitchell is tops on my list of writers I haven't yet met and I've liked all of his novels, but this one's special.

The End of the World As I Know It

I confess that I have a fondness for apocalyptic and dystopian fiction. The creepier the end-world scenario, the better--and what makes them creepy? The creepiest novels are the ones that seem eerily possible. Twenty years ago, Margaret Atwood predicted that a hyper-fundamentalist theocracy would begin to brainwash the country, subjugating women. And today, driving to Mississippi, I eavesdropped on a conversation at a convenience store that involved a woman telling a man that the reason a mutual acquaintance was still single was "'Cause she's lazy and she won't cook. How's she ever going to get a man if she can't cook?" I am pretty sure that religious cults insist that women know how to cook...writes the single woman who absolutely refuses to spend her free time in the kitchen. Pot? Kettle.

Anyway, there's a lot to fear in the near future, and here are a few of my favorite alternative, probably bleak, novels.

NEVER LET ME GO--Kazuo Ishiguro's terrific novel about exceptional teens raised in a "special" school will soon debut nationwide as the new film starrng Kiera Knightley. Ishiguro is a Booker Prize-winning writer, the story rivals all the great love sagas of literature, and then there's the creepy truth about these kids' lives and their special value to society. I can't wait for the movie.


CLOUD ATLAS--If you asked me what my favorite book of the decade was, it would be this experimental novel by the brilliant David Mitchell. CLOUD ATLAS ingeniously blends together six separate stories, from a Patrick O'Brien-esque naval tale to a "China Symdrome" nuclear threat to a dystopian future akin to Kevin Costner's "Waterworld," all centering on the theme of free will and independence. This book reaffirmed my desire to stay in the book business when I was considering graduate school. Books are just more fun.

THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD--No one manages to blend literary prestige with speculative fiction like Margaret Atwood, and THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD is her most recent stroll into the near future. The events of YEAR OF THE FLOOD are the same as those in ORYX & CRAKE, both book looking at what will happen if we continue to destroy the environment and tamper with potentially dangerous genetic engineering of the food supply. Killer viruses, a hippie gardening cult, and strippers make THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD highly entertaining as well as scary.

THE UNIT--Swedish authors are hot right now, with the Stieg Larsson trilogy dominating all of the top spots on the NYT Bestseller List, but don't think that Stieg is the only Swedish author out there. THE UNIT, by Ninni Holmqvist, is set in the near future and centers around Dorrit, a woman-of-a-certain-age who, upon turning 50, moves into a retirement community of sorts with other aging, childless singles. It's like a seniors mixer/party in a dorm facility, with classes and dances...and organ harvesting. THE UNIT questions a person's worth beyond one's ability to reproduce. Maybe if Dorrit had learned to cook and moved to Mississippi she'd have found a man....

THE ROAD--Cormac McCarthy's novel of a father and son trying to survive after global catastrophe, with cannibals roaming around and horrors around every corner, received a big push when Oprah picked it for her book group a few years ago. It's a bleak book to be sure, but also a moving portrait of love in the face of adversity.

THINGS WE DIDN'T SEE COMING--How could you not be curious about a book written by a guy who used to be a psychiatric nurse and then moved to Australia? These linked stories assume that the global shutdown foretold with Y2K does transpire and the world is thrown into chaos and famine. It could have happened.

THE RAPTURE--This creepy thriller centers around the daughter of religious fundamentalists who predicts the future...a future that involves 1,000 foot tidal waves destroying the earth. The cause of the waves? An offshore oil rig disturbs the dangerously volatile frozen methane at the bottom of the ocean, creating a massive explosion. You know, sort of like the recent gulf oil spill.

All of these books open lots of room for discussion, making them ideal for book groups.