Growing up as the daughter of the only rabbi in the state of Utah (there are more now, but he was the only one for almost twenty years), Passover seders at my house were a raucous annual event. The holiday involved the out-of-town visit from my grandmother (who bore a striking matriarchal similarity to the Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey, with a Jewish twist), an elaborate dinner party of at minimum twenty-five guests, loud singing with banging on the table, bottomless glasses of wine and religious-sanctioned underage drinking, and even one year because of a lost bet, my dad leading the ceremonies while riding an exercise bicycle.

Over the years we tried out many different haggadot (the text that laid out the order of the event). As the evening progressed, the dinner party would often turn into a specialized book club, critiquing the various aspects of that year’s edition. My brother and I preferred the haggadah we knew from religious school because of the large font size, extensive pictures, and line numbers. That was the 1966 edition of Nathan Goldberg’s Passover Haggadah, which is sadly no longer in print. The line numbers made it easy for my dad to say, “Miriam, read lines 64-69.” For some reason we liked that.

The thing about the haggadah is, the contents are relatively eternal, but it’s the editions that have a life span. Many versions reflect the political and cultural sentiments of the publication date, or trends (like “going green”). A strong argument could be made that the strength of a haggadah lies in the tactile experience and the price point more than anything. Can the book stand up to being sat on during the meal, spilled on, bent, and chewed by the dog? Are the pictures pretty and entertaining? And, if twenty-five people are coming to the seder and you want everyone to have a copy, is it worth buying an expensive hardcover edition and skimping on the free-range kosher chicken?

It was with great surprise that I discovered that the bestselling author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer, is bringing out his own edition, New American Haggadah, on March 5th. Translated by Nathan Englander, the author of What we Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, these guys have both street cred and a youthful jumping off point for a new look at an old text. As Foer told the Jewish Chronicle: “The haggadahs we used didn’t meet the standards we apply to secular books. The discussion was interesting, but not interesting like Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic is interesting, not thought-provoking like Rebecca Goldstein is thought-provoking. I wanted a haggadah that would involve a richer engagement with the text and images.” (*Note: Goldberg and Goldstein both offer commentary in the new edition.)

Curious? Frankly, I am, although I’m turned off by the $29.99 price, but if the buzz is true it might be worth it even if that means photocopies for the guests. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m sure my dad has already ordered his copy, or will when he reads this post. Have a look and let us know what you think, or tell us which haggadah is your family favorite and why.

—Miriam

This year, six of the nine films up for the Best Picture Oscar are based on books. This reliance on adaptations isn’t a new trend for Hollywood. Books already have a built-in audience for the movie, so why not make a movie out of a story people already like?

The Help, The Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,War Horse, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and Moneyball are the six book-to-movie nominees this year (The Artist, The Tree of Life, and Midnight in Paris are the remaining three, and even though Midnight in Paris wasn’t based on a book, it’s author-rich with appearances by Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, the Fitzgeralds, and more). To prep for the big night, I’ve collected some interesting facts about these adaptations.

1) This is the first time since 1940 (when Gone With the Wind and Wuthering Heights were among the contenders) that we have films based on two books by female authors in the running for Best Picture (The Help and The Descendants).

2) The director and writer for the movie version of The Help, Tate Taylor, was a childhood friend of the author Kathryn Stockett. They grew up together in Jackson, Mississippi, where the story occurs.

3) In the book The Descendants, the youngest daughter wears a t-shirt that says “Mrs. Clooney.” Author Kaui Hart Hemmings was obviously a George Clooney fan long before he was cast as the father in the film.

4) Despite the popularity of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in book form, with a 45% Fresh grade on Rotten Tomatoes, EL&IC ranks as one of the lowest-rated Best Picture nominees in the site’s history.

5) The painting mentioned in the preface of War Horse, a portrait of Joey painted by Captain Nicholls and now hanging in the Village Hall (of an anonymous village), was imaginary. As the story gained popularity, many tourists came to the village of Iddesleigh, where author Michael Morpurgo lives, and asked to see the painting in the village hall. In 2011, Morpurgo commissioned an artist to paint just such an oil painting to hang there. He used equine artist Ali Bannister, who acted as the “equine hair and make-up” artist on the film set and also drew the sketches of Joey for the film.

6) Brian Selznick, the author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, is a relative of the infamous David O. Selznick, the producer of King Kong (1933) and Gone with the Wind (1939).

7) Michael Lewis wasn’t sure if his book Moneyball would make sense as a movie. Brad Pitt likes to tell the story of how when Lewis sold him the film rights, the author said something like, “Don’t call and blame me when it doesn’t work.”

So am I the only one revisiting these books before the Academy Awards air next Sunday, February 26th? My loyalty remains with The Help, both for book and movie, although I suspect The Artist will take home the prize. That one doesn’t have to worry about expectations to live up to a book.

As we watch customers take a special interest in these books this time of year, we’re wondering, which book is your favorite, and which movie do you predict will take home the statue?

—Miriam

When Back to the Future came out in 1985, time travel involved a mad scientist, a teenager, and a cool car. Things change. I bet you didn’t know that a decade later, time travel happened via Facebook. The Future of Us, by Jay Asher and Caroyln Mackler, is set in the mid-90s, and tells the story of how Emma, a senior in high school, and her best friend and next door neighbor, Josh, download a free AOL disc on her computer. Up pops a mysterious website with a big blue header that says “Facebook.” Much to their amazement, logging on takes Emma and Josh to their own profiles created fifteen years in the future.

The premise is brilliant. Who wasn’t totally lost at eighteen and dying to know what their future would be? Here’s a refreshing addition to the young adult category that for once isn’t about vampires or queen bees. Emma and Josh both get a glimpse at their future spouses and children, and while Emma immediately sets about trying to change her fate, Josh struggles to make sure his turns out as planned (according to Facebook, he is going to marry the most beautiful girl in school). The fun part is watching their status updates, profile pictures, and hometowns change as a direct result of their actions in the present. 

There are flaws in the story, of course. Why can’t Emma and Josh comment on their own walls? Can the time of day that Emma goes for a run really affect her entire fate? I think probably not. And regardless of Emma and Josh’s attempts to control their futures, it’s obvious what’s going to happen. Not that I minded one bit. The Future of Us is whimsical, optimistic, and fun to read. The book makes a convincing argument for the value of living in the present. It also made me look at my own Facebook profile and think, gosh, what would my eighteen-year-old self have thought reading this? I bet she’d be amazed. In real life, we just never know what’s going to happen.

One of the co-authors, Jay Asher, made a huge splash in 2007 with his bestseller Thirteen Reasons Why. In that book, a teenage boy receives a mysterious box with thirteen cassette tapes. The tapes are from his classmate and crush, who took her own life just two weeks prior. On the first tape, his friend explains that there were thirteen reasons that led to her decision, and he is one of the reasons. She proceeds to tell her story, which becomes a revelation about the common confusion and loneliness that affects most teenagers.

If you’re looking for a lighthearted read, go with The Future of Us, and for a good cry, Thirteen Reasons Why. Whichever you choose, Jay Asher deserves some applause.

—Miriam

In his praise for The Lost City of Z, Malcolm Gladwell’s “central question of our age” addresses the ongoing fascination with the jungle. He wants to know, “In the battle between man and a hostile environment, who wins?” What I’m wondering is, what is this thing we have about the jungle? From the popularity of films like Jurassic Park, Avatar, and Tarzan to books like State of Wonder, The Lost City of Z, and The Jungle Book, we obviously find the alternative to civilization compelling. Or maybe it’s just that writers who excel at descriptive prose jump at the opportunity to create their own vision of a rainforest.

One writer who recently tackled the jungle challenge is Ann Patchett. As Janet Maslin said in her review in The New York Times, “Perhaps the temptations of the Amazon are overwhelming for any writer with such a gift for animating her surroundings.” I’m close to finishing State of Wonder and hooked by Patchett’s vivid descriptions, so I think she was up to the task. The story is about a physician/pharmaceutical researcher who goes to the Amazon to find out what caused her colleague’s mysterious death. He had been sent by their employer to chart the progress of a study of a “miracle drug” and never returned. The doctor running the endeavor, a powerful and elusive personality, has ceased to share information with her source of funding and provides only the sketchiest details of the how the deceased met his end. She reminds me of Sigourney Weaver’s character in Avatar. The biggest character, however, is the jungle itself, rife with bloodsucking insects, miracle plants, and killer anacondas. I’ve been a fan of Patchett’s since Bel Canto, and I’m enjoying Wonder. Fingers crossed that the end delivers when I get to it this weekend. And even if the ending isn’t perfect, I’ve had a satisfactory trip into the jungle during the time I’ve spent reading it.

Before State of Wonder, the last “into the jungle” book I read was The Lost City of Z. If you prefer nonfiction, Z is the way to go. Author David Grann decided to retrace the steps of the legendary explorer Percy Fawcett, who went into the Amazon in 1925 in search of a legendary civilization and was never seen or heard from again. Fawcett was an odd character and ambitious enough to set off into the dangers of the jungle with his own son. His mission received plenty of notoriety before he even disappeared.

“What happened to Percy Fawcett and his expedition?” became the question of generations, with countless groups following him into the jungle attempting to find either him or the elusive city. David Grann comes up with some plausible explanations, and that mystery is what kept me reading further and further into the jungle.

If you read to seek out adventure from the safety of your own couch, both books are a good choice. Going back to Gladwell’s question about who wins the battle, human or jungle, I’m going to posit that usually the jungle wins. With that in mind, I can’t say I’m planning my own adventure to the Amazon any time soon. I am happy to report, however, that nowadays when I close my eyes I can practically smell the rainforest and visualize the wildlife. If a writer does the job right, you’ll still sort of get to go there—safely—for the mere cost of a book. Not too shabby.

—Miriam

In the bookstore, we talk about books most of the day. We discuss them with customers (“You’re looking for How I Stole Johnny Depp’s Alien Girlfriend? Sure, right this way.”), with each other (“I’m reading Q right now, it’s good, you should check it out), and with kids (You like dragons? Me too. I think I have just the book for you…) So I don’t think much about how we talk about books in our personal lives. Then, the other day I was riding in the car with my husband, and while he was telling me yet another anecdote from Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, something occurred to me. “Honey,” I said, “why is it that when you read a book, you love to talk about it chapter by chapter, but even though I read at minimum a book a week, I never say much of anything about what I’m reading?”

It may just be that he reads so much for his work that when he actually does get around to reading for pleasure, it’s a rare event, unlike my constant literary diet. Or the reason could be that he reads mostly nonfiction, I read mostly fiction, and it’s easier to tell anecdotes from nonfiction because there’s no need to explain an entire plot when it comes to real events. There’s also the likelihood that I read too fast and so everything I read blurs together.

Whatever the reasons, that conversation made me curious: how many of us discuss the books we read in our personal lives? I’m not talking about book clubs here (although Island Books has an excellent monthly gathering). When you eat dinner at home, do you bring up what you’re reading, describe plot lines, express opinions, and share anecdotes? Or are your dinner conversations consumed with what the kids did today, bills that need paying, and social plans? My guess is the latter.

I give my husband props for wanting to share what he’s reading with me. Reading is an intimate and lonely endeavor, and always provides a way to know yourself better. If you give people who care about you a window into what you’re reading, it can bring you closer together. Talking about it can also help you convince your spouse to let you buy things like THE PICTURE HERE:

I kid you not, he was so enthusiastic and happy over that Jobs book that he wanted to buy one of these retro iMacs off of Craigslist. And how could I say no to him when he was essentially talking to me about books?

—Miriam

Well, it’s almost here. Valentine’s Day, that holiday filled with inflated expectations. The good news is that even though there aren’t many places on the Island to buy gifts, we are stocked and ready to make you a hero on February 14th. Now more than ever, the store is filled with thoughtful presents, including fine jewelry, chocolates, bags, soaps, candles, and more. We carefully curate our gift offerings, and everything we feature has been carefully thought through and hand-picked. You can learn more about our gift options here.

Okay, done with that pitch now. Besides all the great gifts, we’re busy working on our February eNewsletter (if you aren’t signed up yet, get on the list), and that means we’ll spend the next week compiling all kinds of gluttonous lists of our favorite “love” books. Stay tuned for those coming soon and share any of your suggestions in the comments section below. In the meantime, here’s a hint of books that come to my mind this time of year.

It’s always been a popular classic romance, but it’s only recently that Jane Eyre has completely captured my imagination. I know, I know, late the the party, Miriam. Better late than never at least! I recently watched last year’s film adaptation and if you haven’t seen the 2011 remake, I highly recommend it. The movie left me wanting more and so here I am, cracking the first pages on something I haven’t read in over a decade.

I’m lucky enough to have a copy of Penguin’s acclaimed Couture Classics edition with a cover design by Ruben Toledo. Penguin recently came out with this series of new Toledo’s covers for some of the classics in gothic literature. I received the book as a gift last year and I’ve had it on prominent display in our house ever since.

But there’s no need to commit yourself to the book just yet. If you’re not convinced you’re ready to tackle it, try the movie first. Here’s the trailer:

James says the leads are too pretty, but I don’t have a problem with that. Now for those readers who sneer at the sweeping romance of Jane Eyre, I have something else for you on a lighter note. One of my favorite Valentine’s-appropriate books is How to Talk to Girls. Get a load of this kid:

Believe it or not, he actually has some good advice!

—Miriam

The fact is we all speak in short sentences like “How’s it going?,” “I’ll have a tall nonfat vanilla latte,” or “No, officer, I didn’t know I was speeding.”  In last Wednesday’s post, James set out to conquer the 56-word sentence and posited that the way we speak is a window into our personality. I’m going to follow that magnificent piece (which managed to include a dazzling array of literary feats, including a rework of the Gettysburg address, a haiku about the post itself, and an impressive triumph of achieving exact word counts) by comparing some similar opening sentences. In the three instances below, do you prefer A, B, or C?

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A) Stephen King’s The Mist: “This is what happened.”

B) Stephen King’s Cell: The event that came to be known as The Pulse began at 3:03 p.m., eastern standard time, on the afternoon of October 1st.

C) Stephen King’s It: The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years—if it ever did end—began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

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A) Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway: “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

B) Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own: “But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction—what has that got to do with a room of one’s own?

C) Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: “He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.”

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A) E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web: “Where’s Papa going with that axe?”

B) E.B. White’s Stuart Little: “When Mrs. Frederick C. Little’s second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse.”

C) E.B. White’s “The Practical Farmer” from One Man’s Meat: “Mr. Highstone, being himself a practicing farmer, knows one important truth about country life: he knows that farming is about twenty per cent agriculture and eighty per cent mending something that has got busted.”

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As you can see, I put the quotes in order from shortest to longest. Did the wordiness, or lack thereof, have an impact on you? Once you get further along in these books, there are certainly longer sentences, but by then the author has hooked you enough that you’ll put up with them. In general, though, I’m a fan of a shorter sentence, although it’s probably a reflection of my short attention span and the influence of Facebook and Twitter. So, what says you, reader? Short or long?

—Miriam

We love local food and we love local chefs. Fortunately, if we feel like a Tom Douglas special, we can drive over to Dahlia lounge and avoid doing the dishes. If, however, you want to eat like Ethan Stowell every night of the week, there’s another way to do it: at home. Here are some guides to perfect cooking at home, Seattle-style:

Tom Douglas’ Seattle Kitchen by Tom Douglas: He’s everywhere in Seattle (this year he hit a total of twelve local eating establishments), and his broadest cookbook is as diverse as his many restaurants. Imbued with humor and his larger-than-life personality, Tom Douglas’s cookbook offers a wide range of recipes, including Dungeness Crabcakes with Green Cocktail Sauce, Roast Duck with Huckleberry Sauce and Parsnip-Apple Hash, Udon with Sea Scallops in Miso Broth, and Triple Cream Coconut Pie. There are a lot of comfort foods here as well as creative uses for local ingredients. He also picks out his favorite places to shop and eat around town.

My Tom Douglas restaurant pick: Serious Biscuit (order the Fried Chicken Biscuit)

Ethan Stowell’s New Italian Kitchen by Ethan Stowell: Here’s a great mix of Italian tradition and the best local ingredients the Pacific Northwest has to offer. I’m a sucker for beet salad with homemade ricotta, and that’s just the beginning. Ethan Stowell’s restaurants encourage “family-style” eating, meaning you order a sampler of small dishes off the menu, and his cookbook encourages the same. Mix it up with Crispy Young Favas with Green Garlic Mayonnaise, Corn and Chanterelle Soup, Duck Leg Farrotto with Pearl Onions and Bloomsdale Spinach, and Campari sorbet. Whenever I eat at one of his restaurants I’m surprised how many dishes that sound like something I would never eat turn into the highlight of the meal, and his unusual-sounding recipes surprise in a similar way.

My Ethan Stowell restaurant pick: How to Cook a Wolf (less trendy nowadays but still a sure-fire winner)

Pacific Northwest Wining and Dining by Braiden Rex-Johnson: Her cookbook is a feast for the eyes, replete with beautiful photography and appetizing anecdotes. It also took a lot of work. The author traveled all over the region to meet with our most accomplished chefs and winemakers, collecting some of the Pacific Northwest’s best recipes. If the dishes look familiar, it’s because you’ve probably eaten these meals out at some of your favorite restaurants, like Canlis, the Herbfarm, and Tilth. Recipes include Dungeness Crab and Pine Nut Lasagne from the Willamette Valley, Wild Salmon Gravlax Salad from Vancouver, Cream of Morel Soup from the Columbia Gorge, and Idaho Lamb Medallions with Plum-Brandy Jam. 

There’s no place like home, especially when it comes to our food.

—Miriam

The Madoff scandal spawned plenty of books, and starting in February, a new version of that sordid tale enters the realm of fiction. The Darlings by former Goldman Sachs analyst and attorney Cristina Alger presents a wealthy New York family strikingly similar to the Madoffs.

When the attorney husband of society princess Merrill Darling loses his job, his billionaire father-in-law hires him as an attorney at his hedge fund. Money is essential to these characters, as their lifestyle revolves around Park Avenue, Wall Street, and the Hamptons. The job seems like a blessing in the midst of the country’s economic meltdown, until the suicide of a key player in their financial transactions exposes insider trading and bribery. How far will the Darlings go to protect the family business? As the media and legal teams close in, the characters face irrevocable decisions and moral quandaries that make this book read like a thriller.

Despite a high-rated episode of 60 Minutes to promote new Madoff books last fall, the sales for those nonfiction titles remained meager. I’m curious to see how the topic fares in the fiction category, and predict it will do better this way. People who want to read the facts about the financial crisis flock to Too Big to Fail, not to Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family. For readers who want to know more of the emotional side of this story, it makes sense to turn from reporting to fiction. Because there’s a general dislike for the real Madoffs, I predict The Darlings will do better than books about the real family (although I don’t guarantee you’ll like these characters either). Somehow with this topic, it seems easier to examine a fictional character’s life rather than that of a real person.

One of the biggest questions that came out of the Madoff scandal was: How could the family not have known? (At least that was my big question, followed by an emphatic, “Of course they knew.”) Since the public will never really know what went on behind closed doors at the Madoff house, even with a full 60 Minutes episode on that topic, it’s entertaining to see a fictional re-imagining of that scenario. What makes it even better is the authentic feel of the setting and behavior. The author obviously knows the inside-outs of the real personalities and lifestyles in that slice of society.

So what do our loyal Island Books readers think? Which books about the financial crisis have appealed to you? Will you pick up a copy of The Darlings?

—Miriam

This post is for Jodi Picoult, Lisa Scottoline, Anita Shreve, and Jennifer Weiner fans. If you like any of those writers and you haven’t read Kristin Hannah yet, this is a good time to start because Hannah has a new book coming out at the end of January. Home Front is about a struggling family confronted with an unexpected military deployment, and if Hannah’s extensive body of work is any indication, her latest will give your heart strings a powerful yank.

All of Hannah’s novels explore the relationships shared by families and friends, like the best friends in Firefly Lane whose lives go in different directions, or the sisters who uncover their unloving mother’s secret life in Winter Garden, or the teenage love triangle complicated by a terrible accident in Night Road. And even though Hannah insists she doesn’t set out to write tearjerkers, there’s a reason her publisher sends out advance copies to booksellers packaged with a box of tissues. Her books home in on women at the most difficult moments of their entire lives, and because she’s so skilled at building deep three-dimensional characters, I feel their pain as if it were my own (Picoult is also a master of that trick).

One thing I find interesting is that Hannah writes all her books in long-hand on yellow legal pads. We don’t find writers doing that nowadays. She’s a former lawyer and because she lives in our neck of the woods, most of her books take place in Seattle and the surrounding areas. Perhaps I have hometown narcissism, but I love reading stories set here (big points for Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain for that).

I recognize that this genre is often dismissed as soap-opera-ish (we’re not quite at the Nora Roberts level, but the reader profile isn’t that different), and that’s okay. I once knew an editor who said, “The people who dismiss Lifetime movies and Danielle Steele miss the fact that millions (millions!) of people flock to these stories. To write an epic soap opera that connects that widely with an audience is an often unrecognized and under-appreciated talent.” As corny as it might be, these stories get at the guts of life, even if they sometimes seem over-dramatized. And getting us to think about the struggles of others makes for a more empathetic world. Understanding others is one of the best lessons reading can teach. If we learn how to see the world through the eyes of others, we’ll be better people and well-equipped to be friends, partners and citizens.

On that note, I point you towards Kristin Hannah as one of the best contemporary writers in this genre. Her characters could be people we know, and they react and cope as most of us would facing the challenges they tackle. Her books will get you out of your own head and into hers, which as far as I’m concerned, is a compelling place to spend time.

—Miriam

Bestselling YA author John Green has an absurd number of online followers: 1.1 million on Twitter, 526K on YouTube, 62K on Facebook, 60K on Nerdfighters.com, 27K on YourPants.org, and 26K on Tumblr (Source: Fascinating article on Green on WSJ.com). He didn’t let that power go to waste last summer, when he announced that his new book, The Fault in Our Stars, would come out in 2012 and launch with an unprecedented gimmick: all copies via all sales channels from the first printing would come personally signed by the author. Within a day of his online announcement, Green’s book became the #1 pre-order on all the major online book retailers. A story about two teens with terminal cancer who fall in love, the subject matter alone promises to break a few hearts.

The pub date for The Fault in Our Stars is coming up fast on January 10th and the book had been heavily embargoed. Green felt strongly he didn’t want early spoilers getting out on the web, so imagine his horror when a few copies were accidentally shipped ahead of the tightly guarded release date. You can watch his reaction in the video above.

John Green posts a lot of videos, and the secret to his success (besides being an awesome writer) is that his energetic and neurotic personality comes shining through on the web. I’ve never watched a John Green video I haven’t been delighted by. This is a guy you want to hang out with. To know him through his books is to love him, not just his work, although I highly recommend his earlier books, particularly Will Grayson, Will Grayson and Paper Towns. Imbued with plenty of heart and wisecracking humor, his characters are as irresistible as the author himself. There are going to be a lot of happy readers out there in January, and the launch of Green’s new book will hopefully introduce a lot of fans to his gold-standard back list as well.

—Miriam

Here’s a fable to start the new year:

The north wind and the sun were disputing which was the stronger, and agreed to acknowledge as the victor whichever of them could strip a traveler of his clothing. The wind tried first. But its violent gusts only made the man hold his clothes tightly around him, and when it blew harder still the cold made him so uncomfortable that he put on an extra wrap. Eventually the wind got tired of it and handed him over to the sun. The sun shone first with a moderate warmth, which made the man take off his topcoat. Then it blazed fiercely, till, unable to stand the heat, he stripped and went off to bathe in a nearby river. Persuasion is more effective than force.  —Aesop

Sometimes, if I listen closely when I walk into Island Books, I hear these little whispers rising up off the tables and wafting off the shelves: “Read me, read me!” Tell me you haven’t heard it too. I know you have. There they are, books big and small, competing for an audience. So how do you choose? What persuades you?

When I was a young kid, my brother used to try to influence my reading selections: “Have you read The Hunt for Red October yet? Why not? I told you to read it. Go read it now or I have a knuckle sandwich with your name on it.” (Confession: I faked reading it and still haven’t paid my dues. What twelve-year-old girl wants to read a military thriller?)

In high school, it was my English teacher: “We’re going to read The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. You have until tomorrow to read it and write a ten-page essay on whether you agree or disagree with Maggie’s final choice (Result: I didn’t agree, and cried at the end).

College reading was either more assigned reading, and/or peer pressure to appear scholarly. That was an era of Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and Herman Melville.

Beyond that came real life, where everyone I knew either didn’t read at all, subsisted on newspapers and magazines, read only what their friends recommended, joined a book club and read whatever they were commanded, or just continuously read one author for the rest of their life (yes, I mean you, Nora Roberts fans).

Along with reading obligations for work, I typically had a mish-mosh of books on my nightstand selected by all the influences listed above. Along the way, I noticed that I never liked books that were shoved down my throat (with the exception of The Help, since it really did live up to the hype). Half the joy of reading was the feeling of discovery, when I would end a book thinking I was as clever as Christopher Columbus sailing up to the Americas because I was the first person to ever realize what a great book I’d read.

That fable from Aesop reminded me of how a good book creeps into our consciousness like a slow sunrise. There are always subtle signals that help me choose what to read next, whether it’s the sight of several people reading the same book on the bus, a snippet of an author on the radio, or browsing the bookshelf of a friend.

That all being said, if Uncle Harry gave you his favorite book as a gift for the holidays and it holds no interest for you, save your time. You’re under no obligation to read something that doesn’t excite you. That’s what exchanges are for, so we won’t tell if you bring in a science fiction novel and leave with a romance. Your time is precious, so don’t waste it on books that force themselves on you like a gust of cold wind. At least for January, while you’re doing your best to stay warm, I say let the sun in with a book that speaks gently to you.

—Miriam

As 2011 comes to an end, it’s a good time to lay out some new annual reading goals. What I’d like to do is finally start writing down every book I read, so at the end of the year I can look back and remember my annual literary life. I’ve been meaning to start that list forever and it just keeps getting away from me. Can you remember every book you read in 2011? I know I can’t, and that’s frustrating because I read about a book or two a week. I remember my narrow list of favorites at least, so maybe that’s enough (Before I Go to Sleep, The Paris Wife, 22 Brittania Road, and Sister spring to mind).

Disclaimer: Considering that I’m partial to thrillers and fiction, take my personal list with a grain of salt. If you want the stellar collaborative Island Books list, go here.

That said, it’s time to close the 2011 chapter and move on to 2012. And wouldn’t you know, just as I started researching what’s coming out next year so I could plan my must-read list, I received an email from one of my favorite publishing insiders who happens to know my taste a little too well. He said, “I’m thinking I have a galley for you which you will want to be the first book you read in 2012.”  Somehow I just knew what he meant and let me just say, thanks for the best holiday gift ever, you-know-who. Pretty soon I’m going to get my hands on an advanced copy of Broken Harbor by Tana French, and I hope no one expects to hear from me until I finish reading it. The pub date isn’t until the end of July, so I know I’m getting way ahead of myself. There’s no cover or book description available, so why, you ask, am I already blogging about it?

There are three reasons: Faithful Place, The Likeness, and In the Woods. Over the last few years, Tana French’s work has become hard to surpass on the psychological thriller shelf. Her writing is as intelligent and crafted as the finest fiction and her plot twists are masterful and thought-provoking. It’s incredibly rare to find a thriller that succeeds on both fronts. To say I’m a fan would be an understatement. Not only does French manage to make all of her troubled Irish characters three-dimensional, she links her novels together by making a supporting character in one the protagonist of the next. Her books imprint themselves so deeply on my brain that I can still talk passionately about them years after I read them. She keeps a plenitude of secrets up her sleeve while she makes readers hopelessly invested in the emotional lives of her characters, then masterfully drops a bombshell that turns a novel on its head. Another reason I like Tana French? Each book gets better than the last.

I’m already checking my mail for that advanced copy of Broken Harbor, and to be reasonable, I’ll keep my expectations in check. Look for my review sometime before it comes out next summer, and in the meantime, if you haven’t read French’s first three books, by all means get on it.

—Miriam

I have a soft spot for ballet books (it might be because of my former dance career). Before the gift-giving season is completely over, I’d like to call attention to a special title in that category. Named one of the best books of 2010 by the New York Times Book Review, Apollo’s Angels is an unprecedented cultural history of the art of ballet.

Perfect for anyone who appreciates the arts, the book traces ballet’s full evolution from 16th century court performances to the present era. The author, Jennifer Homans, was a professional dancer herself and is also the dance critic for The New Republic. She filled her book with beautiful illustrations and glossy photo inserts, meticulous research, and her own commentary and critical lens. It’s no easy task to cover an art form that mostly exists only when dancers are dancing, and the world will be forever richer to have all this information recorded in such a comprehensive book.

There are many surprising and amusing anecdotes, and underneath it all lie two perplexing questions. 1) Can ballet continue to exist in a world dominated by low-brow entertainment and the instant gratification of the internet? and 2) With no major visionaries since George Balanchine (the legendary choreographer and founder of the New York City Ballet) where can the medium go from here?

—Miriam

Photo by Costas

Before the internet became the most popular book discussion forum of them all, and outside of the fact that I tend to discuss books whenever and with whomever I can, I have belonged to two different book clubs in the last ten years. That doesn’t count one-hit wonder book clubs that didn’t hold my attention. Because I spent many years working in the book industry, often my version of a book club was “what did you read this week?” over the water-cooler. But that was no substitute for making the most out of what I read: by putting the rest of the world on hold, sitting down with other readers, drinking a glass of wine, and pounding out questions and opinions until we sucked a great book dry. Whenever I read a standout book, I want to share it with a group who can spar and cheer and expand my enjoyment of reading.

A short plug now: We host an open book club at the store that meets the last Thursday of every month at 7:30pm (This month’s choice is Consequences by Penelope Lively). Our staff facilitator chooses both fiction and nonfiction titles and everyone is welcome. Another perk is that if you purchase your copy in the store you’ll always get a 10% discount. The books we read this past year inspired some interesting discussions, so if you haven’t joined us yet, I encourage you to participate in 2012. Reading can be like getting to yoga class—it helps to have friends who push you to do it.

Back to my original story now, which I meant to be a portrait of my two book clubs. The first club was a group of twenty-somethings in New York, mostly artistic types in publishing. Surprisingly, that group had a few men in it. The most memorable book I read over the course of that year was the bestselling coming-of-age-in-a-challenging-family memoir, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

If you haven’t read it, The Glass Castle is about forgiveness, full of compelling anecdotes about dysfunctional family behavior (and triumphing over it). What started out as a discussion about the book turned into one personal story after the next, from dealing with so-and-so’s crazy brother to another woman’s lingering childhood trauma over her parents’ divorce. It was amazing, really, the way a powerful book made readers want to talk all about the intimate secrets of their own lives. At that age, we were all trying to come to term with the end of our childhoods, and a big part of that was forgiving our family members for all the things they did wrong. I remember that memoir as much for what it brought out in us as for the actual contents of the book.

Just a few years ago, right after I turned thirty, I joined a book club in Seattle that included a mix of professional women and stay-at-home moms. The meeting I remember most was after we read the beautifully written novel about a transsexual growing up within a multi-generational Greek-American family, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.

That conversation was one for the books, no pun intended. Reading Middlesex brought out painful memories of situations where we didn’t fit in. In our thirties, we were all at the point of where we were ready to find our real place in the world, and the theme of that book was all about finding self-acceptance. Were we really at an age when we could like ourselves? That was a painful topic. Reading about such a strong character with huge challenges somehow made it easier to talk about.

—Miriam