An IRRESISTIBLE BookPerk for reading groups in St. Louis.   

Attend a Private Cocktail Party with New York Times Bestselling Author Susan Elizabeth Phillips.                    

Chat with Susan during an intimate evening of hors d'œuvres, wine and desserts at The Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis in St. Louis, MO on January 17, 2011 from 7pm-9pm. Be among the first to get a signed, personalized copy of her latest novel, Call Me Irresistible, before it goes on sale!

Get your invitation now. 

Author On the Bookcase
Ruth Downie

Welcome, Ruth Downie, to On the Bookcase. Ruth has written the fourth novel, Caveat Emptor, in her historical mystery Medicus series (Medicus, Terra Incognita, Persona Non Grata). The series centers around a doctor and defacto investigater, Gaius Petreius Ruso and his companion, (now wife) Tilla, in 2nd century Roman-occupied Britain. Ruth's entertaining series is full of history, mystery, culture, and a little British humor! Ruth sets the reader directly and competently in the era and place of the period. Caveat Emptor's Ruso is hunting down a missing tax man and brings to life death and taxes in that intriguing time.

Ruth writes that she is "constantly surprised by the gulf that can separate different readers’ views of the same novel." That's definitely is a reading group!

One of the best discoveries I’ve made in reading groups is that many good things lie beyond one’s comfort zone. I’ve frequently ended up reading something I’ve never heard of and wouldn’t naturally choose, but usually it’s been worth the effort. Over the years there’s only been one book I absolutely couldn’t bear. I thought it was hideously pretentious, although on reflection my description of it as ‘like wading through a bowl of over-ripe fruit’ wasn’t much better. Needless to say, the book won heaps of prizes and was acclaimed as a great work of literature.

I’m constantly surprised by the gulf that can separate different readers’ views of the same novel. I was deeply puzzled when several people whose tastes I thought I knew well didn’t share my ecstasy over Kate Atkinson’s Behind the scenes at the Museum. They agreed that it was funny and well-written, but they simply couldn’t see what the fuss was about. Only later did we realise that most of the enthusiasts in the group had shared the British childhood that was depicted in the novel. Readers who had been brought up elsewhere found it didn’t resonate with them in the same way.

Lolita, on the other hand, resonated all too well with the parents of young daughters: several of them found it impossible to finish the book and we spent much of the evening discussing whether it should have been published at all.

I suppose that, consciously or otherwise, we all interpret what we read in the light of our own experience – and it’s a deeply personal affair. Perhaps that’s why it can be so uncomfortable to hear disparaging comments about a book that you absolutely loved. (So if you’ve read A Town Like Alice’and didn’t swoon over the romance, please be kind enough not to explain to me what was wrong with it!)

I didn’t tell people in my first reading group that I was writing fiction in my spare time. It seemed both irrelevant and embarrassing: like announcing to a group of opera critics that you like to sing in the shower. Nor did I tell my fellow-diggers on a Roman Villa site that I harboured a secret passion for creating tales about the people of Roman Britain. Although they were very kind when I finally confessed, a tendency to make things up is not highly prized amongst archaeologists, for obvious reasons.
Besides, I wasn’t a born writer who’d been scribbling since childhood. I’d begun it as a hobby: a way to create some private space amid the demands of family and work.

When I finally began to send material out for others to read, it went to ‘safe’ places: competitions run by strangers whom I’d never have to meet. That’s how the early chapters of the first Medicus story were born. Only after they were published in a magazine, and one or two people asked where the rest of it was, did it dawn on me that it might actually be worth trying to finish the book.

The route to publication involved lots of very small steps spread over several years, many of them backwards. When The Phone Call finally came– the one all writers are supposed to dream about – I was somewhere between ecstasy and shock. I’d passed the test! Somebody liked my story! After all those years of warbling in the shower, I was finally being asked to perform in public!

A few minutes after I’d put the phone down came the awful realisation. If the book was published, people might read it. They would have expectations. Worse, they would have opinions. The gift of seeing of ourselves as others see us may be useful, but it’s also a very scary prospect. After all, I knew how impossible it is to predict whether people will enjoy a book. What if everyone thought my novel was dreadful?

All of this may sound remarkably dimwitted. Obviously books are published to be read, but the chances of it happening to mine had been so slim that I’d put the fear of exposure to the back of my mind, rather like a looming dental appointment.

I was lucky. Enough people liked the story about a Roman doctor and his British partner for the publishers to want more. The fourth Medicus novel, Caveat Emptor, has just appeared and I’m now working on the fifth. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing from readers who’ve enjoyed the books and the honour of being confided in by one or two who have found them a cheering distraction during exceedingly tough times.

However, when I’m writing I still try not to think too much about who will read it or what they’ll make of it. Not because I don’t care, but because trying to second-guess other people’s reactions is a quick way both to drive yourself crackers, and to crush any small shoots of originality.

It reminds me of the day I naively took my thirteen-year-old shopping for a winter coat. As the morning progressed but we didn’t, it became apparent that we weren’t alone. It seemed the whole of my son’s class was in the shop with us, invisibly peering over his shoulder, eyeing up the offerings on the racks and making comments on his taste – or lack of it. We finally went home with frayed tempers and the safest possible option, a coat as near as possible to what every other thirteen-year-old was wearing at the time.

On the other hand, when I worked in our local library, one of my favourite customers was an elderly man who always seemed to select his large pile of books with incredible speed. When I remarked on it, he confessed that he never bothered to look at them before picking them up. "I do end up taking home some awful old rubbish," he admitted. "Some of them, I just read a couple of pages and put them down." So why did he approach his reading in such a haphazard fashion? "Well," he said cheerfully, "When you’re willing to have a go at anything, sometimes you get a lovely surprise."

It seems to me that both as readers and writers, we can stay in our own comfort zone where the risks are minimal – but sometimes, a deep breath and a small step outside can bring rewards beyond anything we’d imagined.

Well-said, Ruth! Sometimes, members of reading groups forget to go outside their comfort and read something new and different. Thanks so much for the reminder to "push the envelope" a bit.

Praise for Caveat Emptor

"Superb…Downie excels in bringing the ancient world to life as well as making the attitudes and customs of its inhabitants accessible to a modern audience."—Publishers Weekly

"... Downie remains a peerless storyteller and a master entertainer. BBC's Masterpiece should take a long look at this series. It's a winner."— Kirkus Review

Ruth Downie, a part-time librarian, is married with two sons and lives in Milton Keynes, England.

Find out more about Ruth and the series. And, LIKE Ruso and Tilla's Facebook page.

Author On the Bookcase
Debra Ollivier

I'm so thrilled to welcome Debra Ollivier, author of What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind, to On the Bookcase. Debra writes that French women don’t give a damn. They don’t expect men to understand them. They don’t care about being liked or being like everyone else. They accept the passage of time; celebrate the immediacy of pleasure; embrace ambiguity and imperfection; and prefer having a life to making a living. American women might learn the basics of the liberating alternatives from the land that knows how to love. 

Bon Jour! Comment ca va? Debra, tell us about how studying French women led to a increase awareness of your our (American) culture. 

I wrote What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind partly out of frustration with the oo-la-la clichés recycled about French women. I lived in France for over ten years and all of the French women I know defy the cultural cream puffs thrown our way about their fashion, their infuriating lack of body fat, their lipstick, lingerie and high heels.  If French women seem so alluring and knowing, it has little to do with their surface glam and everything to do with their mindsets --  provocative things that are hardwired into them by French culture. I wanted to write a book that explored these things. Little did I know that in writing my book, I'd view my own culture through a different prism  and debunk a few enduring myths along the way.

For starters, contrary to what one might imagine I’m not a Francophile, though as a girl I was intrigued by French women and their “otherness” – or their “je ne sais quoi.” Like many American girls I vacillated between the desire to be cheerfully “popular” (a word and concept, by the way, that does not exist in the French lexicon) and the desire to be different -- in other words, to be myself. At the time French women seemed like icons of freedom precisely because their identity seemed all about being different. Their sophistication seemed wrapped up in the way they diverged from the aggressively sunny imperatives of “happy” and “perfection” that dominated my American girlhood. They were certainly a sensual and eclectic counterpart to the cookie-cutter beauty standard advocated around me. More importantly, they did indeed seem to have an elusive knowingness about them, and an ability to experience pleasure and enjoy men in ways that contradicted the zeitgeist of my own culture.

Decades later, the countless French women from all walks-of-life who I interviewed for the book described how these attributes play out in the realm of love, sex, dating (another word/concept that doesn’t exist in French), feminism (including why there's more complicity with men than commiseration about them), flirtation, marriage, parenting, adultery (it's not what you think!), aging, the perils of perfection and Happily Ever After, the dangers of dos-and-don’ts,  and art de vivre.

One interesting insight was the extent to which these attributes are fused into French women when they’re girls. For example, unlike American girls, French girls don’t grow up picking petals and pondering love with ‘He loves me, he loves me not.’ Rather, when they pick petals and ponder love, they intone: ‘He loves me a little, a lot, passionately, madly, not at all.’ Far more than an innocent schoolgirl refrain, this potent metaphor perfectly describes the different ways we look at love: While we grow up thinking in black and white, French women grow up inscrutably gray. While we grow up stuck in the absolutes of total love or utter rejection, the French girl grows up looking at love in nuances and as a range of possibilities. While we long for happy endings, they’re comfortable with emotional subtleties and ambiguity.

Similarly, one pressure that bears down on American girls is the pressure not only to be liked, but to be like everyone else. The wicked stress of that effort insinuates itself into the young heart and soul with a vengeance, and insecurities go from being hard little buds of confusion to overripe, tyrannical fruits that hang on the vine as we age. The cultural norms wired into the French brain at an early age, however, are almost exactly the opposite. If you don’t fit a standard mold, you’re alluring. If you look like everyone else, there’s something not right about you.  Sameness is suspect, "imperfections" are exalted and, as I mentioned, “popularity” – the word, the concept – never enters the French girl’s consciousness. No wonder many French women are so self-possessed they often don’t seem to give a damn what we think of them. (News flash: they don’t.)

Fast-forward: I’ve been fascinated by questions and discussions from readers about “What French Women Know.” Some of them are complex; others are deceptively simple. I’ll never forget one woman who asked how she could “be more French.” I told her that the point of the book is not to “be” French, nor is it, coming full circle, about emulating the surface glam we so often associate with French women. The point, if it can be distilled it to its essence, might be found in what was said by Michelle Fitoussi, the executive editor of French Elle. When I asked Fitoussi what she thought was the singular most defining thing about French women, she pondered a moment, then said: “French women have a keen sense of the brevity of time and the immediacy of pleasure.”
What a fitting counterpart, I thought (particularly since we Anglo-Saxons often have a keen sense of the brevity of pleasure and the immediacy of the future).

We will never “be” French – nor should we be -- but it wouldn’t hurt to live with Fitoussi’s mantra in our heads. It certainly might change the way we experience love and sex, not to mention other matters of the heart and mind.

Merci, Debra! Thanks so much for your ideas and giving us some topics for reading group discussion -- happy endings vs with "emotional subtleties and ambiguity," sameness vs otherness,  French culture vs American culture.

Praise for What French Women Know

"[Ollivier is] ideally suited to contrast and compare the two cultures that seem to fascinate--and irritate--each other." --Los Angeles Times

"A Gallic prescription for living a life that is richer, more sensual, messier, and a lot more fun" -- Boston Globe

Debra Ollivier lived in France for ten years, during which time she married her French husband and had two children. She was a frequent contributor to Salon and La Monde, and her work has appeared in Harper’s, Playboy, The Guardian, and Les Inrockuptibles. Also the author of Entre Nous: A Woman’s Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl, Ollivier lives with her family in Los Angeles and Paris.

Find more about Debra on her website.

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia of The Printed Page and is being hosted by Julie of Knitting and Sundries for the month of November. 

Did you get any books by mail last week? Or, did you picked some up at the book store and/or librarary? Let us know. 

Publishers send books that could be reading group-appropriate. So, here are the books that flew into my mailbox.

Read This Next: 500 of the Best Books You'll Ever Read by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittlemark (Harper)

Hummingbirds by Joshua Gaylord (Harper Perennial)

The Gentleman Poet by Kathryn Johnson (Avon A)

The Anatomy of Ghosts by Andrew Taylor (January 2011, Hyperion)

The Outside Boy by Jeanine Cummins (sent to me by Esme from Chocolate and Croissants)