Book Club 2.0

Book Club 2.0

People love to talk about books they have read, and authors REALLY love to talk about books they have written.  Wouldn’t it be great if the two could meet up?  Well they can!

Recently I have talked to several authors who love to talk to book clubs and lead the discussion of their books. I first heard of this idea before I even opened a book store when my cousin’s wife (cousin-in-law?) mentioned that her book club often has authors as guest leaders – even skyping them in occasionally.   At the time I could not imagine how you contact the authors, but suddenly a few authors have asked me about meeting with book clubs.  I love this idea, and one of the most fun parts is I get to act sort of like the matchmaker and help “set your book club up” with a selection of authors.  You can think of me as a bookish match.com. 

Does your book club like mysteries and thrillers?  I have an award winning author for that!

Does your book club enjoy a regional story ?  I have an author for that?

Does your book club prefer non-fiction about the area?  I can find you an author for that!

To kick this off I thought we would revamp our own book club and kick off with a discussion of the Secret to Hummingbird Cake by Celeste Fletcher McHale.  I was introduced to Celeste’s books by The Storied Life Book Club of Baton Rouge.  The ladies of this book club held a book club girls weekend retreat in St Francisville a few months back and mentioned that they had read this fabulous book and then skyped a discussion with the author.  They could not stop saying great things about the author and her books, so of course I had to contact her myself.  As a result Celeste will join us for a book signing the Friday night of Christmas in the Country (December 1, 2017) from 5:30 until 7:00 and she has graciously agreed to discuss the book with us at the beginning of this event.  So come into the bookshop and pick up a copy early, read it , then bring it back to have the author sign it on December 1.  I started reading my copy last night and I am so looking forward to getting back into it tonight. 

If your book club would like to contact an author to participate in a discussion with your group send me an email at missy@conundrumbooks.com and let’s see who we can match your group with for Book Club 2.0!

Do you ever get a "Good Book Hangover"?

Do you get a “Good Book Hangover” ?  You know what I mean? You have just finished a book you really enjoyed, you have the next book you want to read right on the side of you ready to go, but… Every time you read a line in the new book you still have a movie in your head of the cast of characters of the last book wondering what they are up to now.  So much so that it is keeping you from truly focusing on the new book.   But then you decide to push through anyway and keep reading, and eventually you start to at least partially focus on the new book and it’s characters.  Then you fall asleep and find yourself dreaming next chapters for the last book characters, or maybe incorporating them into the current book.

It can be very confusing, and very frustrating.  You can’t take an Excedrin to make it go away, you could have “hair of the dog” but re-reading the old book would only make it worse.  What you need here is a “sorbet for the brain” .  You know. a little something to cleanse the book palate.

Maybe you need to read a story or two from a favorite magazine, or a chapter from an inspirational book that can be taken in pieces (I’m thinking “Make your Bed” or something similar that is written in short standalone chapter/lessons), or maybe you just need to play two or three dozen hands of online solitaire  - whatever it takes BUT you cannot just jump into that new book because you have  Good Book Hangover.

I would love to hear your good book hangover remedy ideas, email me at missy@conundrumbooks.com and I will share them with our followers and maybe we can all stop suffering these hangovers and start moving on the next great book even faster!  

From Both Sides Now...

I have had the most interesting opportunity to see the other side of bookselling  these past few weeks.  As I previously told you,  we recently started our own publishing company, Feliciana Publishing Partners, and published our first book.  Suddenly,  I found  myself calling and visiting other bookstores to ask them to carry the book and to host book signing events with our author, Ronnie Virgets.  

This has been so eye opening.  In my previous experience when authors and publishers reps have approached me I thought about it from the bookseller prospective.  Did I think I could draw a sizeable crowd?  How would we build interest in the book and the author with our patrons? Quite frankly, what was in it for me?   And then I would spend time advertising the event through our newsletter, facebook page, the newspaper , our website and anywhere else we can think of to spread the word. Then when the author arrived, I was a nervous wreck thinking I might embarrass myself by not getting a respectable crowd. 

Now flip the script and I am on the other side of the glass arriving with the author after having spread the word via our newsletter, website, facebook page,  etc and I still find myself  getting terribly nervous  worrying about drawing a respectable crowd so as not to embarrass myself and my author in front of the bookseller.

All of which begs the question: whose responsibility is the success of a good book event anyway?  And I submit to you I believe the answer is BOTH.  The bookstore knows the local area and has local contact lists who will want to know about upcoming events. The writer may have a national following and there may be people on his ( her )  friends lists who live in the area but until now (and particularly with a newer bookstore)  do not even know your bookstore is  there! When bookstores, authors and publishers partner together everyone benefits.

Its fabulous that I have had this opportunity to see both sides of this equation so early in my bookselling career.  …. Or maybe all of this can be boiled down to the simple fact that I am going to feel guilty and responsible regardless of what I do in life or what side of the fence I am standing on.  Call it catholic guilt, call it a stress disorder, call it just being a worrywart, call it whatever you like. I choose  to see this as an opportunity to learn and assume that all booksellers and publishers feel the same way. I have just been lucky enough to , in the words of Joni Mitchell get the chance to look at clouds from both sides now!

So many books, so little time!

So many books, so little time.  Do you ever feel like that?  This past weekend I attended the Southern Independent Book Sellers Association’s annual conference and trade show.  There were over 50 authors in attendance to tell us about their new and upcoming books, and representatives from just about every publishing house also attended to pitch the books of authors that couldn’t be there (again with the “So Little Time” part) .  And then they all want to give you advanced copies of the books so that you can read them, fall in love with them and order them before they are released – you know so that we will inevitably fall in love with the book and tell everyone who walks into the shop about it.  Only now there are 57 new adult fiction and non-fiction books spread out over my dining room table awaiting their placement in my TBR (To Be Read) list.  Ok, so far I have read One, only 56 more to go! 

Now don’t get me wrong, someone handing me 57 not even yet released books to read is by no means a hardship – actually it is a bit of a dream come true, but also rather over whelming and intimidating.   How will I ever read them all?  What if I miss one and it is the big hit of the season?  What if I love one and no one else does?  Where do I even begin, alphabetically, by release date, by genre ? Decisions, decision! 

The first one I read was a mystery about an agoraphobic woman who loves old noir films.  I chose it because he was on a panel with our friend Michael Rubin’s whose new mystery Cashed Out has just been released.  (Oh, I already read Cashed out so that’s 2 read!)   As you would expect from Mr. Rubin “Cashed Out” was a fast paced thriller with lots of twists and turns.  It stars a failed lawyer, his ex-wife, a toxic waste entrepreneur and almost $ 4.5 million dollars in cold hard cash.   If you enjoyed his first novel “The Cotton Crest Curse” you will definitely enjoy this one, and if you did not enjoy Michael’s award winning first novel it is probably because you haven’t read it (we can help you fix that). 

Next up?  I think we will stick with mysteries and go with Laura Lippman’s upcoming Sunburn.  I’ll let you know what I think. 

Is It Just Me?

Is it just me, or are there certain words and phrases that just make you smile when you hear them used in conversation or on the news even (imagine the news making you smile these days!) , or read those words or phrases in a book?

For me it all started with any mention of July 3.  July 3rd is arguably the best day of the year.  It is the exact mid-point of the year, in most years it actually has it’s own name (aphelion: the point of orbit where the earth is farthest from the sun ), and it is my birthday.  But I digress.  So hearing July 3rd in a song or reading it in a book has always made me happy .

Other words and phrases that make me happy are when people honestly use the word Serendipity  in their everyday lexicon (Serendipity has been my favorite word since the third grade when it was the title of my English class textbook reader). 

Of course, another favorite word is Conundrum.  I swear I hear and see it used more and more.  I think it is on used on the news at least twice a week (puzzling times we live in ) , and I seem to see it used in nearly every book I pick up.  It is even the name of a great book of literary puzzles and a heck of a wine!

And finally it is words and names of home that make me happy when I run across them in my reading.  Well this week, I hit a home run on this front.  I was reading C.H. Lawler’s new book “Living Among the Dead” and on PAGE ONE  I see that the main character lives on Prytania Street in New Orleans – I LIVE ON PRYTANIA STREET IN NEW ORLEANS!   Then I get to page 41 and I read “At the river across from Bayou Sara, I stopped and pondered the town”.  I KNOW THAT TOWN!   The main character leaves the area for some time and many pages later  on  page 212 I read “My path headed north , up into a place called the Felicianas.” And then a few pages later on page 222 “We had just followed another dead-end trail, one that lead us to the river at Bayou Sara”.  And all the while the book is flashing back and forth to the narrator who is writing  the tale from his bed as an old man, you guessed it on Prytania Street.    Since my real life is spent continually travelling between Prytania Street in New Orleans and the Felicianas you can bet I enjoyed seeing it through someone else’s eyes as I read the book.

And guess what? Dr. Lawler will be joining us to sign his books this Saturday starting at 5pm during Polos and Pearls, so we will get to ask him the inspiration for this and his other books “The Saints of Lost Things” and “The Memory of Time”. 

So , is it just me ?  Or are there words and phrases that make you happy too?

Introducing Feliciana Publishing Partners !

First it was “Let’s open a bookstore”  , and that has gone pretty well so then I said “I know, we should start our own Children’s Book Festival, and that was more of a success than we dreamed it would be in our first year.  So what’s next you may ask ?  Well our own publishing imprint of course! 

Introducing Feliciana Publishing Partners, LLC !   And in early September we will launch the first book published by our new entity. 

So why start this new publishing company?  According to Forbes the first rule of developing a successful new business is to identify a need in your community and in our first year and a half in the bookselling business we saw a need for a Publisher who would truly partner with their authors to make the books they publish a success. 

With that in mind this new publishing partnership was established based on a belief that to have commercially and critically successful books requires the publisher to partner with the author.  It must select only those books with which the publisher can realistically assist the author. This involves carefully curating the books it selects for publishing; partnering the author with the right editor to make sure the book has both the author's voice and rigorous , helpful editing;  selection of the right printer so that the if one chooses the book by its cover, the author's book is selected; the right strategy and implementation of that strategy is used to publicize the book;  and every reasonable step that can be taken, is taken to actually sell the book producing a reasonable return for both the author and publisher.

Our first book will bring together the two towns we call home by publishing a collection of essays and articles written by New Orleanian Ronnie Virgets.  Not only is this book stories of New Orleans published by Feliciana Publishing but like us Ronnie also now divides his time between New Orleans and our little slice of heaven north of Baton Rouge.  In Ronnie’s case it is New Roads, in ours it is St Francisville,  but in both we have found a perfect balance to the crazy go-go life style of New Orleans in our laid back “country” life. 

Feliciana Publishing Partners will release this first book in early September and we hope you will join us to celebrate the launch of this new venture and a fabulous new book.  Details on the launch will be coming soon so stay tuned and watch for your next newsletter for more information. 

Hello Summer

Welcome to summer in south Louisiana.  It’s hot, it rains, it’s steamy , it’s humid but it is also fabulously relaxed , the seafood is abundant and (knock on wood) the air conditioner works just fine! 

So what do you do when it is just too hot to move and there is no way you will even consider (either due to rain or heat or humidity or a combination there of) going outside?  Well you read a book of course , and there are a ton of new releases out there just waiting for you to pick them up. 

Here is a list of some of our recent favorites are :

1.       Camino Island by John Grisham.  Not your usual John Grisham novel.  This one is set in an Independent Bookstore in South Florida and the only lawyer to show up in it has a very small part and does not arrive until very late in the book. 

2.       Blackout by Marc Elsberg.  Fast, tense thriller about what would happen if someone were to hack into the power grids worldwide. 

3.       Bayou Sara Used to Be by Anne Butler and Helen Williams.  The history of this region is so rich and it is always good to learn more about where we live.  This fascinating book replete with photos will bring this region of our community and history into focus.

4.       Ollie’s Odessey by William Joyce.  This is a beautiful story about a boy and his favorite toy.  About “Favorites” in general and about Big Adventures.  Absolutely destined to be a classic.  Target age 7-11 (but I really liked it and I’m 49!)

Wow, What A Whirlwind !

Wow, what a whirlwind!  My last email was sent out on May 1 and you will not believe everything that has happened since then. 

In the first week of May we hosted The Inaugural West Feliciana Children’s Book Festival.  The weather was beautiful, we had a fabulous group of authors, illustrators and story tellers as well as wonderful community volunteers that all pulled together to make the event a success.  I can hardly wait until Saturday May 5, 2018 when we will host our SECOND ANNUAL WEST FELICIANA CHILDREN’S BOOK FESTIVAL .   To see pictures and news articles from the event and to stay up to date on plans for next year’s event be sure to follow our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/WFCBF/ .

Soon after wrapping up the children’s book festival I was able to check a whole bunch of things off of my bucket list.  It all started several years ago when my husband, who of course knows what a fan I have become of gardening and all things British, started talking about going to see the Chelsea Flower show.  We have talked about it for several years but when he floated the idea of going last year I refused because the dates of the show fall the week before The Walker Percy Weekend .  Over the course of the year I have finally come to realize that life is short and we have to grab hold of experiences like this when they are available because they may not ever come around again.  So just before Christmas time last year we made a plan and started to get things in line and I tried to come up with something I could add on as a Christmas surprise for Rob.  As luck and coincidence would have it when I looked up information on touring Highclere Castle (we are both huge Downton Abbey fans) there was a notice on the website about a special event which happened to be taking place while we would be in England.  Did you know both Jane Austen and Henry James had once lived within 10 miles of Highclere?  Well they did and in celebration of this fact Highclere was staging a “Landscapes and Literature” tour where you would tour the gardens, the house, have tea and hear a lecture on the great age of British Literature.  The lecture we attended was titled Women Behaving Badly .  It was delivered in the main hall of Highclere Castle (yes the room with the staircase and the stone pillars and arches encasing the upstairs gallery – yes, where the annual Christmas party is held in Downton Abbey!) .  The talk focused on the impropriety of the heroines in Jane Austen’s  : it was shocking that women would walk alone, speak up for themselves, basically have a backbone.  It was a fabulous day.  The flower show was Absolutely Amazing – I can’t even begin to try to describe it but if you are ever given a chance to attend TAKE IT !   And in between the two my sweet husband arranged a spontaneous Saturday for me where we went down to Nottinghill, wandered through the  Portabello Road Market and best of all paid a visit to The Nottinghill Bookshop.    But eventually we had to return to reality and home sweet home.

No sooner were we home than it was one week out from The Walker Percy Weekend.  This event is my favorite annual event in St. Francisville, it has been since the first year when I was an attendee not at all involved in the planning or staging of theweekend.  This year’s event did not disappoint – even though it rained cats and dogs!  And the best part of this year’s event was hearing people making plans to come back next year and what friends and family they were inviting to join them here in St. Francisville.  We are already underway making plans for the 2018 event which will be held June 1 – 3, 2018.  Mark your calendars and make plans to be here – you won’t want to miss our Fifth Annual Walker Percy Weekend.   Get more information on The Walker Percy Weekend at www.walkerpercyweekend.org or on Facebook at : https://www.facebook.com/walkerpercyweekend/

So now it’s time to breathe, restock the shelves, play in my garden, chat with people about books and basically live the dream.  Why don’t  you come visit Buster and I at The Conundrum some day ? Tell us about what you are reading, or what you think we should be reading, or just grab a seat and visit a bit?  See you soon!