Michelle and I met because she mooched Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen and then ended up stopping by my blog when she received the book. We’ve had a few conversations over email and she’s agreed to answer some questions about her book club. If you read all the way to the bottom, you’ll be able to take a virtual tour of where her book club meeting is held!

Without further ado…

How long has your book club been in existence?

Members of our group have been meeting for about five years – since the original members started it as a different sort of “Mommy and Me” group. The “babies” are now between four and six years of age. Word got out about what a great group it was, and for the last few years, we have had new members joining at the rate of about four per year.

Does your book club have a name?

Nope – just “Book Club”.

How many people are in your book club?

There are fifteen of us on the e-mail list, which is how we handle most of our housekeeping issues. Many of the original members have moved on, and we’ve enjoyed being able to invite others to join us, on an on-going basis, with a particular emphasis on inviting people who have recently moved to our city. We live in a university town with a large military base, so there are always newcomers in need of new friends here.

Is your book club open to new members? How do new members end up in your book club?

Most of us have a hard time NOT chatting about books and book clubs whenever we are in a social situation, and it is surprising how many people are intrigued by the thought of  belonging to a book club. If someone expresses interest, we usually bring it to the rest of the group right away, and the potential member is added to the e-mail group and invited to the next meeting. To my knowledge, we have never turned anyone away.

When do you meet? Is it a set day every month, or do you work it out so it’s on a different day but convenient for everyone?

It is almost always the second Thursday of the month, at 7:30 pm. Since statutory holidays do not tend to fall on Thurdays, there is never any real reason to postpone a meeting. The number of members in attendance always fluctuates – we might have ten people one month and only four the next, but the show goes on, in any case!

What kind of books do you read?

We tend to read mostly current literary fiction, but we usually end up reading a “classic” and at least one memoir, every year.

How do you choose books?

Anyone can suggest a book at any time. One book is read and discussed per month. We usually choose the books two or three months in advance, in order to allow everyone enough time to find and read them. A couple of our members borrow copies from the library. Sometimes we borrow from friends or from each other. Lots of us buy our own copies, many by purchasing online.

Which book generated the best discussion?

None in particular stand out. We always seem to have something to say about what we’ve read. We’ve never had any nasty discussions – our club consists of a great group of supportive women who do their very best to make sure that everyone feels comfortable and safe sharing their thoughts and opinions.

Do you invite authors to join your discussion when you discuss their book? How do you handle having the author in on your discussion if some or all of the members didn’t absolutely love the book?

We’ve never invited an author to join us. Our city of about 120,000 people isn’t a great stomping ground for the big writers, as we are a good two hours from the major cities where they may have tour stops.

Do you have one person who moderates the discussion?

Yes we do, and we also have two alternate moderators in case our chief moderator can’t come. One important aspect of the moderator’s job is to summarize the evening and the discussion in an e-mail update to all of the book club members, which is sent out  within a few days. This also serves as a reminder about what needs to be read next, and a confirmation of our next meeting date, time and venue.

Have you ever had a professional moderator moderate one of your meetings?

No

How long does the discussion last?

We joke that the book discussion is only an incidental part of our evening, but in fact, we’ll start discussing it as soon as as few of us arrive, then catch ourselves and hold off until everyone who is expected arrives, go off-topic, and frequently come back to the book again before the night is over. The meetings usually last about two hours altogether.

Do you eat food at your book club meeting?

Always! Thursday night is wing night at our regular venue (a cozy restaurant lounge with couches), and most of us take advantage of the half-price special. In the summer months we try to meet at other restaurants – those with patios, to enjoy the nice weather and a change of scenery and menu.

How do you decide where the meeting will be held?

We always meet at a local establishment and we enjoy the freedom that this gives ALL of us to enjoy the meeting without any pressure to provide a clean home and refreshments. So many of us are moms that a night out “in public” is just what we’re craving.

Is there anything else about your book club you’d like to share?

Some of the books we’ve read include: Bel Canto, The Kite Runner, Suite Francaise, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Memory Keepers’ Daughter, The Red Tent and My Sister’s Keeper. We are always pleased to read books by Canadian authors when we can.

The running gag is that soon we are all just going to start going by the name “Michelle”. With three Michel(l)es, two Loris, soon-to-be-two Karens, and two sets of children named “Owen and Charlotte”, we are starting to wonder whether we need some more diversification in the group We’ve also decided that our husbands need a book club as much as we do. We’re hoping to invite spouses to one of our summer meetings to see if we can entice them into starting their own group.

Since Michelle’s group meets at a public place, you can take a virtual tour! Check out this virtual tour of Tom’s Place and you can see the couches that Michelle’s club plop themselves on to…in the back two corners of the room. How cool is that?!

There’s been some buzz in the blogosphere lately with how a couple of authors have handled negative reviews.

The first author to come unglued was Alice Hoffman. A reviewer for her hometown paper printed a negative review of her newest book, The Story Sisters. Most agree that she took her reaction too far when she posted the reviewer’s phone number and email address and asked people to “tell her what u think of snarky critics.” Now, I’m sure the review stung, but posting in a public forum someone’s name and email address and encouraging people to badger that person? That’s just not right.

If you want to see the all the tweets Alice Hoffman tweeted, then check out this post from Gawker. You should also check out the post at GalleyCat.

Not even 24 hours after Alice Hoffman sent all these tweets, she deleted her account and apologized for her response, though she notably never publicly apologized to Roberta Stilman.

Then ANOTHER author left a comment on a reviewer’s personal blog after reading the review of his book in The New Times Book Review and wrote this:

I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude.

This author was Alain de Botton, and Edward Champion interviewed Alain de Botton after he confirmed that Alain had, in fact, left that comment. Alain also guest posted on Edward Champion’s blog and talked about how to respond to critics.

(It should be noted that Alain de Botton publicly apologized for his actions and admitted he was in the wrong. Please do not lambaste him here, as he acted classy after realizing his mistake. Alice Hoffman, however…)

So I was thinking: How SHOULD an author respond to a negative review?

Some authors get Google Alerts for their books and their name, so they know when they are mentioned on the Internets. There are some authors, though, that don’t look at ANY reviews, positive or negative. They know how they would react to the negative reviews so they don’t bother with any of it.

Reviews can be hard to take, and venting about them anywhere but the Internet is okay in my book. I mean, Alice Hoffman deleted her Twitter account, but her tweets live on and can’t be undone even by deleting her account.

Can an author dialogue with a reviewer over a negative review?

Have you seen the site The Worst Review Ever? Authors submit their worst review ever (dur) and then answer stock questions and then people vote on how bad the review really was. I think many of the reviews aren’t that bad. At least one author has tried responding sarcastically, and she was chastised by others in the comments that she shouldn’t have acted so immature.

I’m not saying it’s easy to be an author and have to read negative reviews of your piece of art. Especially when reviewers and critics are not really on the same footing. Authors put themselves out there to be critiqued, but critiquing a reviewer over a negative review just sounds like sour grapes.

I don’t think there IS a way for an author to respond to a reviewer in a way that doesn’t make the author sound bitter. Oh, unless the author uses the old, “Thanks for reading my book. I’m sorry it wasn’t for you.” When reading a negative review, I’m sure THAT isn’t quite what the author would really like to say.

While discussing this on Twitter, one person asked why we hold authors to a higher standard of conduct than regular people. I don’t think we hold authors to any higher standard of conduct than anyone else. Bad behavior is bad behavior. Tweeting a person’s email and phone number and asking your friends to bombard them with “I don’t agree with you” isn’t okay for anyone.

I know it’s said that authors need to have a thick skin, but that’s obviously easier said than done. If someone was critiquing, say, ever blog post I wrote, I think I’d crawl under my covers and hide.

Authors, what do you think? How do you handle negative reviews?

Readers, how do you think authors should handle negative reviews? Have you seen an author handle a negative review gracefully? Or have you seen an author handle a negative review poorly?

Bloggers, how do you think you would react if someone was reviewing every blog post you wrote? And no, your readers are not reviewing every blog post you write. Just as not every reader an author has critiques their book. I’m talking about someone critiquing everything you write.

First, did you  know that Jodi Picoult pronounces her name pee-coh, not pi-colt? All you smarty pants who were able to look at her name and say, “Oh, Jodi Pee-coh,” well, you guys can talk amongst yourselves while the rest of us talk about how we’ve been pronouncing it wrong for as long as we can remember.

A new member of my book club suggested My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult for a book club pick, and even though I’d already read the book back when it was released (and really enjoyed it!), I didn’t want to read it for book club. However, I acquiesced and so April’s pick was My Sister’s Keeper.

My Sister’s Keeper is about two sisters, Anna and Kate. Kate has leukemia that she’s been battling since she was two years old. Anna is Kate’s younger sister, conceived to be a genetic match for Kate so that when she was born, Kate could get a single cord blood treatment from Anna. But then Kate needed something else, and since Anna wasn’t doing anything with whatever they needed (bone marrow, etc), they used her as a human pincushion. And that was her life for 13 years until Kate needed a kidney and Anna finally went to a lawyer to sue her parents for medical emancipation.

The story is told by various narrators: Anna, Anna’s mom Sara, Anna’s attorney Campbell, Anna’s brother Jesse, Anna’s dad Brian, and Anna’s court-appointed guardian Julia. Just in case you miss the chapter heading that says who’s narrating that chapter, the font is different for each narrator, so hopefully one of those two things will clue you in as to who’s narrating.

I told my book club that I was really disappointed that I re-read this book. Some books aren’t meant to be re-read, and I enjoyed the book when I read it the first time, whereas now it doesn’t even fall into the mind-candy category, just the meh category (or maybe even a worse category!).

See, the problem is that since I’ve been blogging, I’ve really been expanding my reading horizons. So when I went back to Jodi Picoult, I really found it clunky and lacking in any kind of subtlety. Every time I turned a page, I was beaten over the head with how deep this book is.

The dad’s being a firefighter has a double meaning with what is going on in his family life.

WHAM!

The mom’s not going back to work after Anna (the youngest) was born but instead choosing to stay home and raise her family has a deeper meaning in the context of Anna suing for medical emancipation and all the choices the mom has made.

WHAM!

The brother’s acting out and being a pyromaniac symbolizes his feelings of being ignored and wanting to be in control.

WHAM!

Everything was sooo symbolic that it felt forced.

I was particularly frustrated by the ending because I think it was a cop out.

*****SPOILER ALERT****** (spoiler has been formatted with white text, so to see it just highlight the section and you’ll be able to read my thoughts on the ending)

I mean, having Anna die misses the point of what I think the heart of the story is. The heart of the story is that there comes a point when you have to say enough is enough (even if it’s the sick person who has to say that). And it’s the people who make that decision who must live with the repercussions, the guilt, the anger, the sadness. I think the story would have been much more profound if Anna had had to live with the guilt of watching her sister die, knowing she could have kept her sister alive.

Also, I felt manipulated because I think Jodi Picoult purposefully held back an important piece of information so the reader assumes it’s Anna’s choice to not give Kate a kidney, when in reality that’s not exactly true. It wasn’t just that it was a surprise ending, it was that she did everything she could to make you believe one thing and then in the end she’s all, “PSYCH! Haha! I sure fooled you!”

*****END SPOILERS*****

Jodi Picoult is a good story teller, though how well she writes is debatable, in my opinion. I think what I’m learning, having re-read a few books this year, is that some books should be left alone once you’ve read them once. I read My Sister’s Keeper four years ago, really enjoyed it, and I should have left it at that. I enjoyed it at the time for what it was, but I’ve been expanding my reading so much in the past two years that I couldn’t enjoy it for what it was, which is just a good story.

(Also, I have to say I’m totally going to go see the movie when it comes out. Also, for details listed in the spoiler, I’m excited to see how they changed the ending.)

(One last thing: Just so you know, if you’ve read one Jodi Picoult book, you’ve read them all. At least, that’s my opinion after reading a few of her books.)

Rating: 69 out of 100

Buy My Sister’s Keeper at Powell’s | Buy My Sister’s Keeper at Amazon

Jodi Picoult’s website

Other reviews:

eclectic / eccentric

Behold, the thing that reads a lot

The Inside Cover

Just One More Chapter…

books i done read

Dog Ear Diary

My Own Little Reading Room

an adventure in reading