Problems not so Problematic

According to New York Times Best Seller Markus Zusak, he doesn't have a high IQ or a great imagination. "I try to do the simple things well....I just have a lot of problems."

With no written speech in hand, a great sense of humor, and fun Australian accent, 35-year-old Zusak candidly shared stories about problems he's had with his big brother, his writing, and becoming an author.

"I don't usually confess this sort of thing, but I feel like I can tell this audience anything."

The audience he felt so at ease with filled the Provo City Library ballroom, a much bigger audience than the one that "turned up" for his first book reading in western Australia. "Nobody turned up. That wasn't the worst part. The librarian still made me read to her."

The local librarians and other fans who "turned up" for Zusak Saturday, made him feel welcome enough that he greeted them by saying, "I'd like to move here!" After seeing "everyone plugged into something" while traveling 36 hours to Provo, "it made it that much more worthwhile to come just to see books in your laps."

When Zusak's first book, The Underdog, came out in 1999, he didn't want to invite family to his book launch. "I didn't want them there. I didn't want them to see that no one else was there." So, he recruited his rugby team who was more drawn to the box of beer than his box of books, and asked, "Can we come out every Thursday?"

Since the time a woman told him she liked his book, but his reading of it was atrocious, he hasn't read from his own works to an audience.

Saturday was a different story.

"This audience is so receptive," he said, grabbing for one of his books he never dreamed would reach so many. Reading from a chapter called "Confessions," his voice started wavering a bit towards the end.

When thinking about trying to sell this book, The Book Thief, to people, he imagined a conversation about it going something like this:

You've got to read this book. It's so good.
Really? What's it about?
WW II...Nazi Germany...death...
Oh.
Oh, yeah, and it's 576 pages long.

Even though this seemed problematic, Zusak said he went for it anyway because of a story his mom told him. While growing up in Sydney, Australia, his family would gather 'round their kitchen table listening about his mom's life in Munich, Germany, and his dad's in Austria. She'd tell how she saw a teenage boy who nobody liked in the town giving a piece of bread to an emaciated old Jew walking by. When a Nazi soldier saw this, he snatched the bread and threw it away. Then, he whipped the boy. "This story is why I wrote The Book Thief," and if no one else would have ever read it, he said he would have written it anyway.

Zusak's dad's stories also interested him. He was in Hitler Youth because he had to be. "'This is boring,'" he thought, and so he threw rocks in the river instead. "Then, the letters started showing up...I was always interested in opposites, like fire and ice." His parents would tell of going down into bunkers and coming out to find ice on the ground and fire in the sky.

As far as problems Zusak has encountered with his actual writing, he told about characters or points of view not working out quite right. But,"when you hear that voice in your head, you just go for it," he explained. This "voice" is what whispered the last line of the book to Zusak, "I am haunted by humans." By making his narrator slightly vulnerable, he was able to solve his problem of death being too comic-book like. This also introduced the unexpected, one of the essentials of a good story, he said.

He told of an Olympic swimmer who had that same voice inside his head tell him to "go (faster) now" earlier in a race thanhe'd planned. He listened and won the gold.

Just like Olympians put in their time, "If you want to be a writer, it has to be #1 or #2 for you," he advised.

Coming from someone who re-wrote the first 80 pages of The Book Thief 150-200 times, he's someone who's willing to put in the time required to be ready for those flashes of inspiration. "It's like waiting for a wild animal to come out of a hole. Put your hand in, and it'll bite. It takes patience to wait for it to come out. It's all about trial and error, spending time."

For someone who encountered a few problems during his humble beginnings as a writer, Zusak has no problem now getting hundreds of fans to line up for hours, waiting for his photo and a signature. Their only problem? Forgetting to bring their "paint tins" and "eskees."

Stay tuned for pics. and more on that story.

Book Club @ Kristie's House!

Sorry for being late getting these photos up.  Shauna has been calling me everyday begging me to get them up.  so with our further ado...

Lets start with the good eats!

As you can see the food was wonderful.  I know Britney has already made a plea for recipes so I will second that plea here. It all tasted so great.  And I was too busy eating my banana cake to take a picture of it -- you'll just have to take my word for it -- it was yummy!

Here are the lovely ladies of Books Appetit (one seems to appear more than the others?!? CAn you guess who the photo hog is?

Shannon, Bethany, Brenda & Mariana

Stephanie, Kristie & Shannon 

Christy, Shannon, Shauna & Kara 

Shannon, Britney & Heidi

Now we have another guessing game

Who sat in the gum?

hmmmmmmm

See you all in a few weeks @ Kara's!!

Calling All Cooks!!!

There have been several delicious bookclubs I have attended recently and I am hoping that the cooks from said bookclubs would be willing to share a few recipes. I'm remembering something banana-cake-y and something white-chocolate-bread-pudding-y, some great pasta salads, some amazing green salads, perhaps a chocolate cheesecake, and several delicious goodies from the Christmas party. So, if you are one of the cooks holding out, please hold out no longer and try to be more giving and sharing. :)

Please????

And the winner is...

Here are the vote getters from last night -- and when we will be reading them:

May -- Cutting for Stone

June -- The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

August -- The Forgotten Garden

September -- Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

October -- Room

November -- The History of Love

Jane Eyre!!

Here is the trailer for our next field trip!! 

It opens Mach 11th - let's make some plans!

Another...

This one was suggested by my sister-in-law Symonie.  She said it is supposed to be a great book club book.  It looks interesting and is on a lot of "best of fiction" lists.

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.

Shauna's Suggestions...

The Death of the Heart, a story of adolescent love and the betrayal of innocence, is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's best-known book. When sixteen-year-old Portia, recently orphaned, arrives in London and falls for an attractive cad--a seemingly carefree young man who is as much an outsider in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of 1930s drawing rooms as she is--their collision threatens to shatter the carefully built illusions of everyone around them. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sharp sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations.

In this contemporary, Victorian-style novel Charles Smithson, a nineteenth-century gentleman with glimmerings of twentieth-century perceptions, falls in love with enigmatic Sarah Woodruff, who has been jilted by a French lover.

Of all John Fowles' novels The French Lieutenant's Woman received the most universal acclaim and today holds a very special place in the canon of post-war English literature. From the god-like stance of the nineteenth-century novelist that he both assumes and gently mocks, to the last detail of dress, idiom and manners, his book is an immaculate recreation of Victorian England.

Not only is it the epic love story of two people of insight and imagination seeking escape from the cant and tyranny of their age, 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' is also a brilliantly sustained allegory of the decline of the twentieth-century passion for freedom.

Brenda's Suggestion...

BROOKLYN: Andi Alpers is on the edge. She’s angry at her father for leaving, angry at her mother for not being able to cope, and heartbroken by the loss of her younger brother, Truman. Rage and grief are destroying her. And she’s about to be expelled from Brooklyn Heights’ most prestigious private school when her father intervenes. Now Andi must accompany him to Paris for winter break. 

PARIS: Alexandrine Paradis lived over two centuries ago. She dreamed of making her mark on the Paris stage, but a fateful encounter with a doomed prince of France cast her in a tragic role she didn’t want—and couldn’t escape. 

Two girls, two centuries apart. One never knowing the other. But when Andi finds Alexandrine’s diary, she recognizes something in her words and is moved to the point of obsession. There’s comfort and distraction for Andi in the journal’s antique pages—until, on a midnight journey through the catacombs of Paris, Alexandrine’s words transcend paper and time, and the past becomes suddenly, terrifyingly present. 

Jennifer Donnelly, author of the award-winning novel A Northern Light, artfully weaves two girls’ stories into one unforgettable account of life, loss, and enduring love. Revolution spans centuries and vividly depicts the eternal struggles of the human heart.

Kristie's Suggestions...

After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own. (307 pages).

A strange terror coiled in the shadows behind the brooding elegance of the huge chateau. It lay there like some dark and twisted thing — waiting, watching, ready to strike. Was it only chance encounter than had brought Linda Martin to Chateau Valmy? Or was it something planned? The lovely young English governess did not know. She only knew something was wrong and that she was afraid. Now she could not even trust the man she loved. For Raoul Valmy was one of them — linked by blood and name to the dark secrets of the Valmy past. (352 pages)