Book buzz: ‘Guernsey’ is a literary hit
By Craig Wilson, Deirdre Donahue and Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2008-08-13-book-buzz_N.htm
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows is shaping up to be one of the summer’s sleeper hits.
Media attention has included a four-star review in People and a feature in USA TODAY. In its second week of release, the epistolary novel about the Nazi occupation of the English island of Guernsey jumps from No. 43 to No. 34 on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list. “People here fell in love with these characters, and now their voices are charming readers of all ages,” says the book’s editor, Susan Kamil. “The book has a kind of magic that you don’t see that often. It’s taken on a life of its own.” Guernsey, which had an original printing of 75,000, has gone back to press six times; now more than 180,000 are in print. It’s the No. 1 IndieBound Pick (formerly BookSense) for August and a “Barnes & Noble Recommends” title.
Vladimir Nabokov’s son to publish last manuscript
BERLIN (AP) — Vladimir Nabokov’s son says he will publish the Russian author’s last manuscript despite his dying request that it be burned.
Dimitri Nabokov says in an interview with the German edition of Vanity Fair that his father must have wanted the work published.
He is quoted as saying: “Had my father really wished that this novel not be released, he would have destroyed it himself.” The interview is to be published Thursday.
The work titled The Original Laura was left behind on 138 notecards when the author died in 1977. He asked his wife, Vera, to burn the work. She never did.
His 74-year-old son says The Original Laura is scheduled for release in September.
New Releases
When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
Once again, David Sedaris brings together a collection of essays so uproariously funny and profoundly moving that his legions of fans will fall for him once more. He tests the limits of love when Hugh lances a boil from his backside, and pushes the boundaries of laziness when, finding the water shut off in his house in Normandy, he looks to the water in a vase of fresh cut flowers to fill the coffee machine. From armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds to the awkwardness of having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a sleeping fellow passenger on a plane, David Sedaris uses life’s most bizarre moments to reach new heights in understanding love and fear, family and strangers. Culminating in a brilliantly funny account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris’s sixth essay collection will be avidly anticipated.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
“ I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.” January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb….
As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.
\Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.
Book of the Month
September 2008 Book of the Month - Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
by Ivan Turgenev
From the Inside Flap
When Fathers and Sons was first published in Russia, in 1862, it was met with a blaze of controversy about where Turgenev stood in relation to his account of generational misunderstanding. Was he criticizing the worldview of the conservative aesthete, Pavel Kirsanov, and the older generation, or that of the radical, cerebral medical student, Evgenii Bazarov, representing the younger one? The critic Dmitrii Pisarev wrote at the time that the novel “stirs the mind . . . because everything is permeated with the most complete and most touching sincerity.” N. N. Strakhov, a close friend of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, praised its “profound vitality.” It is this profound vitality in Turgenev’s characters that carry his novel of ideas to its rightful place as a work of art and as one of the classics of Russian Literature.
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