It may be widely accepted that the movie is never as good as the book but I’m excited for this one!  Author David Ebershoff recently visited the Calgary, Canada set of the forthcoming Lifetime TV original movie based on his novel, The 19th Wife. The book and film center around Ann Eliza Young, the 19th wife of Mormon Church leader Brigham Young. From left to right in the photo are the film’s cast, Matt Czuchry, Chyler Leigh and Jeff Hepner. Mr. Ebershoff is pictured on the far right. We don’t have to wait too long for the movie. It will premeire on Lifetime on September 20th.

If you haven’t yet read The 19th Wife, you’d better get on it. Historical fiction fans will especially love it! Read my review of the book in a past issue of our Random Revelations newsletter here.

-Marie

Last night, during the spin cycle at my neighborhood laundromat, I plopped myself down on the stoop outside to enjoy the summer evening air and finished David Nicholl’s acclaimed novel, One Day. The story of the friendship of Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley (”Dex and Em, Em and Dex”) the book provides snapshots of them from the late 1980’s to 2000’s on July 15th of each year. In alternating perspective, the reader is able to be a fly on the wall as the pair navigate their twenties and thirties, the highs and the lows, both together and apart.

The dialogue is witty (at times hilarious) and sharp, the characterization pitch-perfect and the plot all-too-familiar as Nicholls addresses the idea that life is fluid – full of ever-changing currents that ebb and flow within friendship, career, romance and everything inbetween. Sorry for the bad generalization there. Simply put, this book is a delightful yet simultaneously moving read and the British pop culture references captured this Anglophile’s heart. Thank you, Mr. Nicholls, for including many references to rocket. You made me feel so cultured and “in-the-know.”

Random House loved this book so much they gave all of us two copies – one to keep and one to share. I would love to share my extra copy with one of you. Comment below for your chance to win!

-Marie

So I just finished two weeks of grand jury duty where I spent my workdays sitting in a room with 22 other people hearing mutliple cases and voting on whether to indict the defendants. A case would come, we’d vote, and then we’d wait for another. Sometimes the wait time was 20 minutes and sometimes it was two hours. This means I had a lot of time to read so of course I flew through some wonderful books!

I started by finishing the last few chapters of Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly. Out in October from Random House Children’s this engrossing historical read combines the story of a troubled teen growing up in contemporary Brooklyn with that of a rebellious young woman living during the French Reniassance.

Next came Dracula in Love, a staff favorite and an alternate take on Bram Stoker’s classic from the point of view of his love interest, Mina Murray. It has been heralded as Twilight for grown-ups and I agree!

After Dracula I tried a non-Random House title, Matched, which is the newest in dystopian YA fiction and would definitely appeal to fans of The Hunger Games.

From there I did a little more cheating and buried my nose in two titles I’d been told to read for a while now: The Shadow of the Wind and The Help. Both were excellent reads.

Now it is back to the grind and while I find I very much enjoyed all my reading time, I’m glad to be back amongst my wonderful colleagues. What have you all been reading lately?

-Marie

Hot off the press and the ALA conference, our newly updated One Book, One Community catalog highlights the Random House, Inc. titles we think are the best bets for your community programs! 

For help planning your One Book, One Community program contact us at library@randomhouse.com.  We can answer questions about author availability, quantity discounts, and provide additional information about our titles, as well as preview copies.

To request a printed copy of our catalog, send your address to library@randomhouse.com and we’ll send one right out to you!

Last night, somewhere between the season finale of Glee and the NBA Finals, I saw a trailer I’d been anticipating for quite some time. The movie is called “Charlie St. Cloud,” based on The Life and Death of Charlie St. Cloud by Ben Sherwood, and concerns a young man so overcome with grief from his younger brother’s death that he takes an evening job in the cemetery just to be near him. Every evening, Charlie plays catch with his brother’s ghost, and they chat. But then Charlie meets a young lady, a beautiful “sailor girl,” and he must make a choice between a promise he made to his brother and a newfound love.

The Movie-Tie-In edition of the book comes out June 22. The movie, starring Zac Efron, is slotted for October 15. Check out the preview below!

Also on the rise in the book world and in the works for an Anne Hathaway film is David Nicholls’s One Day, which was a huge hit in the UK and is getting great in-house buzz here. If you have a book club, I suggest you give it a long look. Here’s some praise it’s garnered so far:

“Big, absorbing, smart, fantastically readable . . . brilliant on the details of the last couple of decades of British cultural and political life . . . the perfect beach read for people who are normally repelled by the very idea of beach reads.” —Nick Hornby, from his blog

“A wonderful, wonderful book: wise, funny, perceptive, compassionate and often unbearably sad . . . the best British social novel since Jonathan Coe’s What a Carve Up!. . . . Nicholls’s witty prose has a transparency that brings Nick Hornby to mind: it melts as you read it so that you don’t notice all the hard work that it’s doing.” —The Times (London)

 

We kept Karin Slaughter busy last month at PLA, attending the Booklist mystery booth party and the AAP’s Best in Mystery Authors Revealed program.

Karin is a huge supporter and advocate for libraries.  Her website has a page devoted to libraries and she creates discussion guides for each of her books. 

Make sure you’re on the holds list now for her upcoming release, BROKEN!

Piper Kerman was sent to prison for a 10-year-old crime that finally caught up with her. She spent thirteen months in prison, eleven of them at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, where she met a surprising and varied community of women living under exceptional circumstances. In Orange Is the New Black, Kerman tells the story of those long months locked up in a place with its own codes of behavior and arbitrary hierarchies, where a practical joke is as common as an unprovoked fight, and where the uneasy relationship between prisoner and jailer is constantly and unpredictably recalibrated.

One of the more interesting tidbits is that, while incarcerated, Kerman became a kind of impromptu librarian because of all the books she received from friends and family.  She is also a tireless advocate for justice reform and has many links on her website to guide those that wish to join her.

Orange is the New Black is a fascinating look inside the little-seen world of women’s prisions and a natural selection for Book Groups–there is much to talk about here.  For more info about the book, including links to recent articles and media, visit Piper’s website.

Dear Oh-So-Helpful Librarians!

First of all, thank you so much for all of your great suggestions. I’d never heard of many of the books and they certainly gave me food for thought. I’m sure you have all been unable to sleep and on the edge of your seats waiting to find out which book I ended up picking up. Turns out I found a recent Random House release on my shelf that sparked my fancy, though I am almost certain a blog suggestion will be next on the list. That book is… drumroll please…

The Wives of Henry Oades by Johanna Moran. Based on newspaper article, it is the story of a British family that has relocated to New Zealand where,  mother, Margaret, and the four children are kidnapped by native Maori. Presuming them all lost for good, father, Henry, picks up the pieces and moves to Berkeley, California (home of my alma mater!) where he meets and marries a young widowed mother, Nancy. Then Margaret and the children surface and turn up on the new couple’s doorstep…

I must say I’m really liking this one so far. It is a quick, engrossing read and I’m fascinated by the link to true events.  I received many suggestions via comments on the blog post and on Facebook. This is proof positive of what I have long believed to be true: who better to turn to when you don’t know what to read next than a librarian?

Check out my letter to see what was suggested. You may also find the post here on Facebook! Feel free to add to the growing list! One can never get enough good book recommendations, right?

Many thanks again,

Marie

PS – Want to enter to win a FREE finished copy of The Wives of Henry Oades? Simply sign up for our book group e-newsletter and watch your inbox over the next few days!

Do you Read it Forward?

If not, you should. Read it Forward is the monthly book group focused e-newsletter produced by our friends up in the Crown Publishing Group. In this month’s newsletter is a wonderfully original feature on the “editor-model hybrid.” Yes, you read right. And I thought meeting authors and going to ALA were a cool job perks. Click here to find out how an editor landed on a book cover! 

Visit the Read It Forward website for more fun stuff and to subscribe to the e-newsletter.

Oh, and sign up for our Library and Book Group e-newsletters while you’re at it.

Happy Friday, everyone!

-Marie

Perhaps I’m a bit late to the party but I just finished reading Lisa See’s Shanghai Girls last week. I admit I wasn’t too sure about it because the cover, while gorgeous, was so pretty I figured it was going to be a “too pretty”. I should have known better. See wonderfully illuminates the plight of the Chinese American immigrant in 1930’s through the story of May and Pearl, two sisters. And their story reads so realistically at points you can almost see the Angel Island Immigration offices, the streets of Shanghai and the palm trees of Los Angeles.  

If you have yet to pick this one up, take a look at the video below and then don’t stress about your tardiness. Paperbacks are sometimes better anyway, right?

-Marie