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Bookreporter.com Newsletter	February 28, 2003
This Week on Bookreporter.com Bookish Musings and A Question About the Shortest Month of the Year... ATONEMENT by Ian McEwan - The NBCC Fiction Winner! Suspense/Thriller Feature: New This Week about Jeffery Deaver and Announcing William Lashner What's Nelson DeMille Reading? ALMOST THERE: The Onward Journey of a Dublin Woman by Nuala O'Faolain 1,040 Reading Group Guides This Week's Book Reviews Poll: Do you ever laugh out loud when you're reading a book? Question of the Week Word of Mouth: Tell Us What You're Reading	On The Book Report Network Bookreporter.com Past Reviews Past Poll: Do you read books about sex? What, to you, is the most romantic book you have ever given, or would you want to give?
Bookish Musings and A Question About the Shortest Month of the Year... Is it just me, or did February fly by? I am wondering who decided to give this month just 28 days! Answers to this burning question are welcome. Busy week for books. Oprah announced that she will be doing her Book Club again, this time reading classics. I see this as a lovely anecdote to the mindless reality TV that has me wondering where American culture is heading. I watched the Grammys (and for the record, this year I actually recognized some of the music...thank you Simon and Garfunkel) and thought how we recognize actors, actresses, musicians and sports stars with large televised ceremonies, but not authors. I am tempted to run a trivia game where we put up author photos to be matched with their names. Perhaps instead we could put up opening lines of their books! I attended the National Book Critics Circle awards on Wednesday night and had a thought after listening to the citations for the winners. Can we all please talk about books and authors in words that readers actually understand instead of opting for lofty and haughty? It might encourage more reading. I had another thought this week flipping through the Book Review section of The New York Times. Why are there no book covers accompanying the reviews in most newspapers? I don't know about you, but often can't you remember a cover more than a title? Of course, my second question to myself was why did I not realize there were no graphics till now! This week we introduce our April Suspense/Thriller author, William Lashner. His third book is FATAL FLAW, a story set in the suburbs of Philly that is literary suspense reading. He writes with an edge and a voice that is both lush and cinematic. Each word is crafted and readers will savor the writing. Here's a line that sums up the story --- "Lust will make a fool of any man, but it is only love that can truly ruin him." Ponder that one, read more about Lashner below, and get ready to explore this author with us. BITTER TRUTH, his latest paperback will be in stores on March 25th, along with a paperback re-issue of his bestseller, HOSTILE WITNESS. Also, we have the third chapter of Jeffery Deaver's THE VANISHED MAN to share with you, as well as advance reader comments. I thoroughly enjoyed my first Deaver book as I read this one. It's nice to see so many readers feel the same way. The great thing about reading these authors is that each has a backlist (a list of previously published work) that you will be able to explore once you discover them. It's been one of the real pleasures of doing this feature as I read backwards and see how some of these authors have evolved! I thank all of you who have shared your comments and feedback about each title with me. Speaking of comments and feedback...my online mailbox purged itself this week. I heard the hard drive spinning and spinning and wondered what was going on. Well, it was chomping up 2.5 years of mail. All this to say that if you wrote me in the last week and did not hear back, this is why. Write again! Have a great week. Let's hope March does the lamb/lamb thing. I think we did enough lion this winter. Enough musing...time to get reading. -- Carol Fitzgerald (Carol@bookreporter.com)
ATONEMENT by Ian McEwan - The NBCC Fiction Winner! ATONEMENT by Ian McEwan won the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award this week. Bookreporter.com co-Founder Jesse Kornbluth called it the Best Book of 2002. Readers on ReadingGroupGuides.com have requested a reading guide for this title since the week it was published. This week we are sharing that guide with you...and encourage you to read this award-winning title. Read the reading group guide for ATONEMENT here.
Suspense/Thriller Feature: New This Week about Jeffery Deaver and Announcing William Lashner Jeffery Deaver, author of THE VANISHED MAN (in stores March 11th): -Read the third chapter of THE VANISHED MAN -Read what our advance readers had to say about THE VANISHED MAN In case you missed last week.... -Play our trivia game about THE STONE MONKEY, now in paperback -Read Fast Facts about Jeffery Deaver -Read about Jeffery Deaver's recurring characters Our Author of the Month for April is William Lashner, author of FATAL FLAW (in stores May 9th) -If you want to submit your name to be selected to read an advance reader copy of FATAL FLAW and comment on it, send an email to SuspenseThriller@bookreporter.com by Friday, March 7th. Important: Please include your name and snail mail (street) address. -Read about FATAL FLAW -Read about BITTER TRUTH (coming in paperback on March 25th) -Submit a question to William Lashner Stephen White, author of THE BEST REVENGE: The BIG NEWS: THE BEST REVENGE hit The New York Times list at number 8! What's new here: A trivia game about THE BEST REVENGE Read our suspense/thriller feature here.
What's Nelson DeMille Reading? Get Inside Today's Best Books Enjoy all the values and benefits of Book-of-the-Month Club Great Books Chosen by Great Authors Like Nelson DeMille "Scott Turow all but invented the legal thriller... The premise of REVERSIBLE ERRORS is not new: a lowlife is accused and convicted of a vicious murder that he may not have committed and is awaiting execution. But what always sets all of Scott Turow's novels apart from his contemporaries is his elegant writing style, his absolutely convincing characterizations and his perceptive insights into American society... In fact, from PRESUMED INNOCENT to REVERSIBLE ERRORS, the man who invented the genre has always transcended it."-Nelson DeMille Get up to 75% off REVERSIBLE ERRORS, plus one for FREE! Join today and get FREE shipping and handling! Click for Details
ALMOST THERE: The Onward Journey of a Dublin Woman by Nuala O'Faolain ALMOST THERE: The Onward Journey of a Dublin Woman Nuala O'Faolain (Memoir) Reviewed by Roberta O'Hara The success of Nuala O'Faolain's intriguing memoir ARE YOU SOMEBODY? has led to the publication of this intelligent and thoughtful book, in which she continues to reflect on a life that has been lonely and disappointing at times. She recounts the six years that have passed since her first memoir and also talks about earlier incidents that have helped to inform her present self. Read a review of ALMOST THERE and an excerpt here.
1,040 Reading Group Guides Take a look at the new guides we added this month on ReadingGroupGuides.com: 1959 by Thulani Davis The Blessing Stone by Barbara Wood Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell The Forgetting: Alzheimer's by David Shenk The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo by Paula Huntley House Of Women by Lynn Freed Illuminated Soul by Aryeh Lev Stollman In Open Spaces by Russell Rowland In the Fall by Jeffrey Lent Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser Misconceptions by Naomi Wolf Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy On Green Dolphin Street by Sebastian Faulks One Step Behind by Henning Mankell Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore Stealing the Ambassador by Sameer Parekh The Vine of Desire by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks What Are You Like? by Anne Enright Go to ReadingGroupGuides.com.
This Week's Book Reviews FLASHBACK by Nevada Barr (Mystery) Reviewed by Ava Dianne Day In Nevada Barr's 11th Anna Pigeon novel, Anna is investigating the cause of a mysterious boat explosion. She soon begins to unravel an eerie connection between the current turmoil and past troubles that were documented in letters that her great-great aunt wrote. THE LAST DETECTIVE by Robert Crais (Thriller) Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub With his acclaimed bestsellers HOSTAGE and DEMOLITION ANGEL, Robert Crais has been lauded for his unstoppable pacing, edgy characterizations and cinematic prose. Crais now returns to his signature character, Los Angeles Private Investigator Elvis Cole, in this dark tale that probes the meaning of family and the burdens of the past. THE SPEED OF DARK by Elizabeth Moon (Science Fiction) Reviewed by Pauline Finch This provocative and poignant novel explores the mind of an autistic person as he struggles with profound questions concerning humanity and matters of the heart. CUBA STRAIT by Carsten Stroud (Thriller) Reviewed by Kate Ayers Carsten Stroud pumps up the action in this non-stop thriller when an ex-New York State cop rescues a charter pilot downed in stormy seas --- and they try to find out why the Cubans are willing to torture and kill for the mysterious and lost cargo. WONDER WHEN YOU'LL MISS ME by Amanda Davis (Fiction) Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman In Amanda Davis's stunning new novel, a teenage girl runs away to join the circus after a life that has been shaped by brutal tragedies. THE NATURAL: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton by Joe Klein (Nonfiction) Reviewed by Colleen Quinn Joe Klein, a political analyst and bestselling author of PRIMARY COLORS, has written an insightful and highly readable account of Bill Clinton's presidency --- his successes and failures, exactly what was accomplished and why, and how the decisions made during his tenure affect us all today. Read this week's reviews here.
Poll: Do you ever laugh out loud when you're reading a book? Our poll question this week came from one of readers, Heringbess@aol.com. She wrote to say that she has been in several book clubs (for 35 years!) and is a very active reader. She never laughs out loud when she reads so she is surprised to hear that people think a book is funny and laugh out loud! So we are asking.... Do you ever laugh out loud when you're reading a book? All the time Some of the time Sometimes I crack a smile Never Answer the Poll here.
Question of the Week Here's our question of the week: Which book or author has made you laugh out loud the most? Answer the Question of the Week.
Word of Mouth: Tell Us What You're Reading Tell us what books YOU are reading and loving --- or even those you don't. Five lucky reader will each win a copy THE MASTER BUTCHERS SINGING CLUB by Louise Erdrich. Need more details about Word of Mouth? Click here.
As always, here are a few housekeeping notes. If you are seeing this newsletter in a text version, and would prefer to see the graphics, you can either read it online (see the link on the upper right) or change your preferences below. Those of you who wish to send mail to the general mailbox at Bookreporter.com, please write to: Mail@bookreporter.com. If you would like to reach me, please write Carol@bookreporter.com. Writing any of the respond buttons below will not get to us. Quick observation --- we have noticed that many of you have been changing your Internet providers in the past month. If you do, please be sure to "take us along" by signing up for the newsletter in your new name! Happy reading....and don't forget to forward this newsletter to a friend. --- Carol Fitzgerald (Carol@bookreporter.com) Back to top.