I bought a book for my grandkids last week. Having read it at ALA 2010 in June, I knew it was a lovely and funny book starring a mouse, a jackass, and a monkey. Everyone who is a booklover will enjoy it. Here are beginning lines I with use for my TT. 

"What do you have there?

It's a book.

How do you scroll down?

I don't. I turn the page. It's a book.

Do you blog with it?

No, it's a book." 
-- It's a Book by Lane Smith

The discussion goes on from there. And, the illustrations are so cute.

Here is the great trailer for It's a Book. Love it!

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Miz B from Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current read. Open to a random page. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

What have you found for Teaser Tuesday?

Author On the Bookcase
Kate Ledger

I'm thrilled to have Kate Ledger, author of Remedies, writing for On the Bookcase. In Remedies, Simon and Emily seem to have it all -- good jobs, nice house, a healthy thirteen year old daughter. But things are not always as they seem. There are some old scars and wounds that haven't been treated and addressed. Will the "elephant in the room" been the end of this seemingly perfect family. Kate's debut novel reveals marriage, parenthood, loss, grief, and hope. Most importantly, Remedies explores the complicated nature of pain, in the nerves of the body and the longings of the heart. To what lengths would you go to avoid feeling pain? And would you believe in a cure? What topics for book club conversation!

Kate writes about how exploring her own life -- marriage, children -- assisted her in understanding her characters. "Then came a moment in writing—I can still see the page of notes in my hand, the way my pen trembled—when I took stock of what was most important to me in the world. I had a new, fragile, tender recognition of what loss would mean, and I understood Simon’s painful world in a way I hadn’t before."

Welcome, Kate.

The initial idea for Remedies grew out of the medical magazine writing I do for a living. Over the years, I’ve met many doctors and researchers who developed amazing and helpful treatments for patients. Some of those therapies have even defied the current scientific thinking of the time. These people have fascinated me. I’m awed by their vision, not to mention their tenacity. As I pondered the core of a novel, I wondered: what about a doctor who believes he’s discovered a cure for pain?

The idea seemed beautifully complex. You can’t measure pain, like the size of a tumor, to know if a treatment is working. The success of a treatment might very well depend on the relationship between the doctor and the patient. And yet the ability to resolve pain could make such a profound difference in a patient’s life. But this was only a nugget of a story. The burning question, and what really intrigued me, was about character: what kind of person would believe that he was right and that even the textbooks were wrong? What would he be like? How would he think about the world?

I began writing about a doctor, Simon Bear—a passionate man full of ideas and ambitious, hopeful plans—who believes he’s stumbled across a pain cure. I imagined he would be confident in his views of the medical world. I also felt certain he had a devoted, earnest desire to help people. But as Simon’s character began to evolve, I realized that, despite all his confidence and professional success, he was plagued with insecurities. In fact, what came clear was that his desire to cure other people’s pain came from an inability to address his own.

I wasn’t certain for a while about the source of Simon’s emotional pain, until I took a look at my own life. I had begun writing the story when I was still dating the man who would become my husband. Over the course of a few years, as the novel was still taking shape, we had gotten married and had children. The emotional poles of my own life had widened with these new relationships and responsibilities. Then came a moment in writing—I can still see the page of notes in my hand, the way my pen trembled—when I took stock of what was most important to me in the world. I had a new, fragile, tender recognition of what loss would mean, and I understood Simon’s painful world in a way I hadn’t before. Simon Bear has suffered the loss of his first child, many years earlier. He still wonders whether, as a doctor, he was responsible for not having saved his son’s life, but he’s never dared to raise the question. Instead, he and his wife, Emily, a public relations executive, have attempted, as valiantly as they can, to move on. And in some ways, they have. They’ve become professional successes and are the parents of a daughter, who’s now thirteen. The grief, however, is still with them.

Remedies evolved into the story of a marriage, and the journey of recovering from profound loss, as individuals and as a family. Like other married couples, Simon and Emily are aware of each other’s vulnerabilities. They respectfully avoid discussing the past. But the conversation they’ve never had is still simmering under the surface of their everyday interactions. Simon can’t help doing provocative, potentially destructive, things, hoping to prompt the confrontation with Emily that he’s feared for years. Now, he’s discovered what may be a miracle cure for pain, and he’s willing to put his medical practice in jeopardy as he promotes it. Meanwhile, Emily encounters a lover from her past and begins an affair. But this chance meeting offers her a unique opportunity to connect with her past, in particular, to recall what she was like before grief entered her life. Suddenly, she finds the means to look at her marriage, and her role as a mother, entirely anew.

Thanks so much, Kate, for sharing your inspiration and understanding of your characters.

Praise

"An immediately gripping, expertly woven tale of pain and healing. Ledger is a brilliant writer; the book is dazzling, but more importantly, it is moving."—Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of Barefoot

Find more about Kate!

To what lengths would you go to avoid feeling pain? And would you believe in a cure?

Teaser Tuesday and Man Booker Longlist, Part Three

Today's selection:
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas plus giveaway of The Slap for review. Just comment and I'll let you know if you won.

First selection was Room by Emma Donoghue and second selection was Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

First lines of The Slap

HECTOR

"His eyes still shut, a dream dissolving and already impossible to recall, Hector's hand sluggishly reached across the bed. Good. Aish was up. He let out a victorious fart, burying his face deep into the pillow the escape the clammy methane stink. I don't want to sleep in a boy's locker room, Aisha would always complain on the rare, inadvertent moments when he forgot himself in front of her."

Publisher summary
In this powerful and riveting novel, literary phenomenon Christos Tsiolkas unflinchingly exposes the inner-workings of domestic life, friendship and parenthood in the twenty-first century, and reminds us of the passions and malice that family loyalty can provoke.

When a man slaps another couple’s child at a neighborhood barbecue, the event send unforeseeable shockwaves through the lives of all who are witness to it.

Told from the points of view of eight people who were present, The Slap shows how a single action can change the way people think about how they live, what they want, and what they believe forever.

“Tsiolkas is a hard-edged, powerful writer….The novel transcends both suburban Melbourne and the Australian continent, leaving us exhausted but gasping with admiration.” –Washington Post

“This astute exploration of suburban aspirations and failings . . . . vividly demonstrates the wide-ranging effects of a single moment’s rash decision. . . . Beyond simply igniting the plot, the fateful slap draws attention to generational and philosophical differences regarding family life and the complex political, social, and ethnic milieu of contemporary Australia.” —Publishers Weekly

“Radiates with vitality as it depicts the messy complications of family life.” –Booklist

Reading Group Alert -- family, culture, social issues, relationships. great conversation starters.

Christos Tsiolkas is an award-winning novelist, playwright, essayist, and screenwriter. His fiction has won numerous prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers Award, The Age Fiction Prize, and the Melbourne Best Writing Award. The Slap is his first book published in the US.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Miz B of Should Be Reading What is your TT, today?

A comment, with or without a Teaser, will enter you in the The Slap giveaway. Giveaway closes Aug. 27. Thanks to Penguin Books for providing this copy.

This is the second installment of the  Man Booker longlist book selections.

The first was Room by Emma Donoghue.

Today's selection

Parrot and Olivier In America by Peter Carey

First lines

I had no doubt that something cruel and catastrophic had happened before I was born, yet the comte and comtesse, my parents, would not tell me what it was. As a result my organ of curiosity was made irritable and I grew into the most restless and unhealthy creature imaginable -- slight, pale, always climbing, prying into every drain and attic of the Chateau de Barfleur.

Publisher Summary Olivier—an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville—is the traumatized child of aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant English printer. They are born on different sides of history, but their lives will be connected by an enigmatic one-armed marquis.

When Olivier sets sail for the nascent United States—ostensibly to make a study of the penal system, but more precisely to save his neck from one more revolution—Parrot will be there, too: as spy for the marquis, and as protector, foe, and foil for Olivier.

As the narrative shifts between the perspectives of Parrot and Olivier, between their picaresque adventures apart and together—in love and politics, prisons and finance, homelands and brave new lands—a most unlikely friendship begins to take hold.

And with their story, Peter Carey explores the experiment of American democracy with dazzling inventiveness and with all the richness and surprise of characterization, imagery, and language that we have come to expect from this superlative writer.

Written with Carey’s unmistakable narrative brilliance, Parrot and Olivier is a historical novel in the best sense of the term, in that it inhabits a historical era with utter accuracy and authenticity but in doing so holds a mirror up to our time as well.

Praise

“Another feat of acrobatic ventriloquism, joining Carey’s masterpieces, Jack Maggs and True History of the Kelly Gang . . . Carey’s most marvelous invention is Tocqueville’s traveling companion, Parrot . . . It’s a brilliant alteration of history and a source of rich comedy . . . Outrageous and witty.”
 —Ron Charles, Washington Post

“Carey braids his story carefully, lovingly. It has all his telltale favorite elements—lawlessness, revolution, hope for the future, men driven by passion. At its heart, Parrot and Olivier is a western; the simplest story in history, sculpted down to a twinkle in a philosopher's eye: Man’s search for freedom.”—Los Angeles Times

Reading group alert -- history, humor, great characters, friendship, romance, adventure, intrigue. This book has it all for discussible conversation.