Comments on: World Book Night is April 23

By: Claire

Claire — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 20:51:18 +0000

I hear the website is fixed, so you all can sign up now!

By: emmadogs

emmadogs — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 18:40:22 +0000

George Saunders has written the best book you’ll read this year

By: Claire

Claire — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 23:38:16 +0000

I liked Barbara Taylor Bradford myself, so no worries, Emmadogs.

By: emmadogs

emmadogs — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 23:17:05 +0000

I should add that the books of Judith Krantz and Bret Easton Ellis, sordid tales involving very rich, beautiful people engaging in shenanigans I shall not detail here, also impacted my life. So take my literary recommendations with a grain of salt.

By: Claire

Claire — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 21:34:45 +0000

Even though the WBN/USA people ignored my nominations of Danielle Sosin’s Long Shining Waters and Margi Preus’ Heart of a Samurai, it indeed is an incredible list of books above. There is something for everyone — except for Paul Lundgren. No Hemingway. Maybe they will include The Paris Wife next time though…

I like selecting books that are set in this region… I feel like people are more likely to take a book from a stranger if it relates to their lives somehow, and setting is a pretty strong draw.

By: Paul Lundgren

Paul Lundgren — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 20:41:36 +0000

I’ll be hanging out at Curly’s Bar waiting for someone to bring me my Hemmingway.

By: emmadogs

emmadogs — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 20:28:54 +0000

What a great list! I wonder how many lives Handmaid’s Tale and Fahrenheit 451 changed (mine, for sure). It’s funny — I remember that a popular game in college was, “What book would you memorize if you were one of the outcast professors in Fah. 451?” And I always said “Handmaid’s Tale,” as well as “The Sun Also Rises,” which I recall Paul Lundgren saying he wanted to read, in another unrelated post here. I would add “Cloud Atlas” to that list now.

Anyway, I’ve read several books on this list and all were great. Nice touch with the Sedaris choice.

By: Claire

Claire — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 19:40:46 +0000

The titles selected for World Book Night 2013 are:

The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (Anchor Books/Random House)
City of Thieves, David Benioff (Plume/Penguin Book Group)
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (Simon & Schuster Paperbacks)
My Antonia, Willa Cather (public domain; edition tbd)
Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier (Plume/Penguin Book Group)
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (Vintage/Random House) -- also in Spanish
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho (HarperOne/HarperCollins) -- also in Spanish
The Language of Flowers, Vanessa Diffenbaugh (Ballantine Books/Random House)
The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan (Mariner Books/HoughtonMifflinHarcourt)
Bossypants, Tina Fey (Regan Arthur/Back Bay Books)
Still Alice, Lisa Genova (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster)
Looking for Alaska, John Green (Speak/Penguin Book Group)
Playing for Pizza, John Grisham (Dell/Random House)
Mudbound, Hillary Jordan (Algonquin Books/Workman Publishing)
The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster (Yearling/Random House)
Moneyball, Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton)
The Tender Bar, J.R. Moehringer (Hyperion)
Devil in a Blue Dress, Walter Mosley (Washington Square Press/Simon & Schuster)
Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life, James Patterson (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Population: 485, Michael Perry (HarperPerennial/HarperCollins)
Good Omens, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman (HarperTorch/HarperCollins)
The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan (Disney)
Montana Sky, Nora Roberts (Jove/Penguin Book Group)
Look Again, Lisa Scottoline (St. Martin’s)
Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris (Back Bay Books/Little, Brown)
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith (Anchor Books/Random House)
Glaciers, Alexis M. Smith (Tin House Books)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain (public domain; edition tbd)
Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury)
Favorite American Poems; Large Print edition, various authors (Dover)

By: Dawn Marie

Dawn Marie — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:55:05 +0000

As an avid reader this sounds really cool. Their website is currently having technical issues though so I could not get any more info. And without any more info, I’m taking a guess the books they offer to hand out are not anything I’ve read (VERY picky and have a short attention span so if it doesn’t pull me in right away I have a hard time finishing it). But if someone walked up to me in a bar and handed me a book and said “here, try this and see what you think” I would think it was cool as heck!

By: Claire

Claire — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:00:01 +0000

Dude, I don’t care what you call it, as long as you either give away 20 copies of a book you love, or else receive a book from a book giver without making them feel like a crazy person!

Cute, though, Whirled Book Night…