Have You Ever Contacted an Author of a Book?

When I was very young, I wrote to Steven Spielberg as a part of a class project. All the other kids heard back from the people they contacted. Some received a form letter. Others received personal hand written letters & gifts!

I was the only one who didn't hear back at all & it crushed me. :(

Up until recently, this was my only experience in reaching out to someone in the public eye.

Then, I wrote to Douglas Rogers, the author of the May book our book club read called, The Last Resort. He responded back almost immediately & the little girl in me squealed with delight. 

I contacted him after our last book club discussion where we discussed the memoir piquing everyone's curiosity.  Was the resort (Drifters) still open & how were the author's parents doing? I thought Drifters was open pointing to a couple of links I found online. Club member Judy Shenk believed the links referenced a tour group instead.

So to find out the truth, I decided to ask the author directly & here is his response:

It was gratifying to hear back from Douglas, but even more so to know what actually happened to Drifters as well as Douglas' parents. (Special thanks to Judy whose discussion point made me curious enough to reach out to our Zimbabwean book author.)

So have you contacted an author you love or hate? If so, what drove you to send a message & what was the response?

Our Guatemalan July book is...

Thank you to all who voted! All votes have now been tallied. I'm excited to read Guatemala & support an author from a country with such a low literacy rate.

I hope that you'll be excited as I am to read this book, but I also want to note for all our new members that we want reading to be fun. We hope you to read the book & participate in the discussion. However, if this doesn't happen, that's ok. Mia & I will love you anyway. :)

So without further ado, the winning book chosen by our book club members for July is...

"'Right from the start I picked her for a thief, although that day she didn’t take anything. . . . I knew she’d be back,' the narrator/bookseller of Severina recalls in this novel’s opening pages. Imagine a dark-haired book thief as alluring as she is dangerous. Imagine the mesmerized bookseller secretly tracking the volumes she steals, hoping for insight into her character, her motives, her love life. In Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s hands, this tale of obsessive love is told with almost breathless precision and economy. The bookstore owner is soon entangled in Severina’s mystery: seductive and peripatetic, of uncertain nationality, she steals books to actually read them and to share with her purported grandfather, Señor Blanco.
 
In this unsettling exploration of the alienating and simultaneously liberating power of love, the bookseller’s monotonous existence is rocked by the enigmatic Severina. As in a dream, the disoriented man finds that the thin border between rational and irrational is no longer reliable. Severina confirms Rey Rosa’s privileged place in contemporary world literature."

View on Amazon (US) | (UK) | (Canada)

VOTE: Which Book Should We Read From Guatemala?

It was difficult to discover book suggestions for Guatemala. Many of the books found weren't written by Guatemalan authors, weren't available in both electronic & paper format, were only in Spanish, or were from authors who left Guatemala as young children. However, we persevered & together came up with 6 wonderful Guatemalan books.

But before I get into the books, I'd like to introduce the book club member who made a Guatemalan book suggestion this month which fit all of the criteria, Aisha Esbhani. We have a wide variety of passionate book club members, but Aisha is pretty special. Just like Mia & I, she realized that her book shelf was filled almost entirely with books by North American & British authors so she set out to change this by reading the world. But her story is a bit different from ours in that she made this decision when she was just 12 years old last year. Here's her full story if you want to find out more. We're happy to have Aisha as a book club member & pleased that she helped us craft our list of Guatemalan books this month!

You have a number of genres to choose from for our Guatemala book: nonfiction, literature, history, poetry & testimonio (the latter of which is described in more detail in that book's description).

You can vote until Tues., June 20. To participate:

1. Review the books.

2. Vote by ranking each book in order from most want to read to least want to read.

We'll publish the anonymous results afterwards so you can get the book in advance.

Our New Book Suggestion Method & New Country

With our book club growing, we're adjusting how we compile the monthly book list. We'll now create a list of 6 books per month as follows:

• I will suggest 2 books
• Mia will suggest 2 books
• We'll use 2 suggestions from members*

(This list is later voted on by members & the most popular book becomes the book we'll then read.) 

*Notes:

• If more than 2 books are suggested, the entire list of suggestions will be entered into a lottery with 2 randomly chosen.
• If fewer than 2 books are suggested, than Mia/I will add to the list to ensure a total of 6 books is compiled.
• If more than 1 suggestion is provided by a single member, Mia & I will choose the book we feel will work best for the book club.

With all of this in mind, we'd love to hear book suggestions from you. Just let us know by Wed., June 14 11:59PM US ET. Also, please note we're specific in the books we read, they must: 

• Largely occur in the country specified unless the world described is an alternate universe
• Be written by an author born there who has spent a good portion of their life there
• Exist in paperback & ebook available on both Amazon & Kindle at least in the US & hopefully elsewhere

But what country will we be reading?

We'll be adventuring to a place we haven't been before as a club: Central America. Known for its volcanoes, ancient Mayan ruins, coffee & crazy bus rides, we'll be reading Guatemala!