I'm home from the whirlwind of the Virginia Festival of the Book (VABOOK). What an exciting and fun time! I met so many authors, reading group members, book bloggers. people working in the book business and loving it! What a great weekend. Here is my post on the awesome panel I have the pleasure of moderating. More VABOOK posts later -- maybe some author posts!!

Thursday night, I invited my reading group choices panelists to dinner to talk about the panel on Friday and to get acquainted with each other. Masha Hamilton (31 Hours), Sheila Curran (Everyone She Loved), Mary Sharratt (Daughters of the Witching Hill), and Laura Brodie (The Widow's Season)chatted the evening away. I was happy that they got along so well. Masha, Sheila, and Mary are alumni of the reading group choices panels from previous years. Laura fit right in! 

The panel was great (I thought!) I counted over 75 attendees. Each writer summarized their books, read a little, and made reference to ideas and themes in their work that reading groups could engage in their discussion. Here is a brief summary of the panelists' ideas and thoughts from and of their books.

Masha's 31 Hours ideas include spirituality, isolation, disconnection, motherhood, terrorism. Discussion points, such as, should we give moral guideleines -- attend a formalized church when kids are young to help ground them in some sense of right and wrong? Or, let them find answers on the own?   

Friends, family, death, grief, control, hope, love are centered in Shelia's Everyone She Loved. One main question the book asks is "If we could, we would control our kids' lives, after we are dead, in order to protect them?" 

History doesn't give the whole story, usually. Do we every hear the voices and feelings of those involved? In Daughters of the Witching Hill, Mary embodies the women accused of witchcraft in 1612 and lets them tell their story. Mary pointed to many great converstion starters: history, social issues, class system, womens' lives in that period, motherhood, forgiveness, and womens' bonds in terrible times.

Laura spoke on her dissertation on widows in literature as the inspiration for The Widow's Season. Ghosts, widows, hope, the aftermath and psychology of grief,  and the enduring cycle of life are great discussion topics for reading groups.

I had an excellent time -- they were a thrill to moderate. These authors and their books are awesome! Bring them to your next book club meeting and select them for your reading list.

Teaser Tuesdays (Hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading) is here again.

1. Grab your current rea
2. Open to a random page
   Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
   BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
3. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! 

"What I realized from being with all those writers in Charlottesville was that I was with people who use their imagination as easily and unself-consciously as other people use a towel. That was the thrill: to go to different authors' readings and listen as men became women and women became men and writers got inside the hundred-year-old heads of Alamo survivors. This is no different from acting, and I wonder if I can take some new steps on a new stage. In many ways, I have taken no risks and made no changes for a long time, if ever. This is no way to live." -- p. 17 The Journal Keeper, A Memoir by Phyllis Theroux

Very odd that I started reading this book yesterday. Ms Theroux is writing about the Virginia Festival of the Book (VABOOK) held each year in March. On Friday, I am moderating a reading group panel at VABOOK. And, Phyllis Theroux will be at VABOOK this year on another panel! DoDo-DoDo! Very spooky. I must attend her panel.  

Here's a video of Phyllis on the hunt for the perfect book cover photo! excellent!

What's your TT, today? 

Masha Hamilton will be chatting about her book, 31 Hours, on March 19 at the Virginia Festival of the Book. (Details below) 

31 Hours tells the story of a young man pondering his new faith and his special mission. Over the next 31 hours, he prepares for the violent action he means to do when the subways are the most crowed. This is also the story about his family and friends knowing something is wrong with him. But it can't be that bad, can it? The novel reveals the isolation of a man and the helplessness and frantic hope of somehow reaching him before it is too late.  

NO SPOILERS!! excellent book with great themes for reading groups -- motherhood, love, family, disconnection and isolation, spirituality, fanaticism, divorce, parenting.

Panelists with Masha Hamilton: Laura Brodie (The Widow's Season), Shelia Curran (Everyone She Loved), Mary Sharratt (Daughters of the Witching Hill)

VABOOK!

March 19, Friday 12 Noon
The Southern Cafe and Music Hall
103 S. First Street, Charlottesville
(434)977-5590

Here's Masha talking about 31 Hours

Mary Sharratt will be one of the panelists on Reading Group Choices' panel at the Virginia Festival of The Book on March 19 in Charlottesville. I'm really excited! Mary's new novel, Daughters of the Witching Hill, is filled with great discussion points for reading groups -- mothers and daughters,  historical views of men and women, religion, forgiveness, personal, social, and moral challenges. 

Daughters of the Witching Hill takes place in Lancashire, England. Based on historical facts, Mary retells the story of the Pendle Witches and their subsequent hanging in 1612 for witchcraft. Many books have be written about the Pendle Witches but none have told the story from Bess Southerns (aka Mother Demdike) and her family's (the witches) point of view. Mary channels their voices so the reader can discover the joy and beauty and the poverty and suffering of their world. 

Mary lives on the spot where the Pendle witch-hunt unfolded. What history! She researched the court accounts and the major characters and events come from those accounts. Seven women and two men were hanged.

In this video, with the landscape of Lancashire in the background, Mary tells us why she was inspired to reveal Demdike's story. 

Mary is the author of Summit Avenue, The Real Minerva, and The Vanishing Point. An American, she lives in Lancashire, England. (That's her horse in the video!)

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY:
Starred Review

The 1612 Lancashire, England, witch trials that resulted in nine executions inspires Sharratt’s gorgeously imagined novel that wonders if some of the accusations of witchcraft might be true. Sharratt (The Vanishing Point) focuses on the Southerns family of Pendle Forest. Widowed mother Bess Southerns tries to save her family from bleakest poverty by healing the sick, telling fortunes, and blessing those facing misfortune, conjuring “charmes” that combine forbidden Catholic ritual, medicinal herbs, and guidance provided by her spirit-friend, Tibb. Though Bess compassionately uses her powers, her granddaughter, Alizon, unwittingly endangers her family while under the interrogation of a conniving local magistrate. Sharratt crafts her complex yet credible account by seamlessly blending historical fact, modern psychology, and vivid evocations of the daily life of the poor whose only hope of empowerment lay in the black arts. Set in forests and towers, farms and villages, deep in a dungeon and on the gallows, this novel grows darker as it approaches its inevitable conclusion, but proves uplifting in its portrayal of women who persevere, and mothers and daughters who forgive.