Hot Off the Press Winter/Spring 2021
Our Hot Off the Press book discussion class is celebrating its tenth year! Join the new 2021 session, launching January 13th! If you love a book conversation that’s lively and engaging, where we talk about the book thoroughly and thoughtfully, then this class is for you. Led by long-time teacher and publishing professional Lynn Rosen, this class tackles brand new literary fiction. Class conversations include analysis of the book as well as background information provided by Lynn about the author and the book’s path to publication. We talk serious book talk, but have a lot of laughs too! The 2021 session of HOTP includes five class meetings in which we will be reading some recent award winning new books. CLASS DATES/TIME: Class meets virtually via Zoom on Wednesday evenings from 7pm EST to 8:30pm EST on:January 13February 10March 10April 7May 5 CLASS COST & LOGISTICS: LOCATION: via Zoom; link to be provided to participants. COST: $165Books are not included in the cost. Email lynn@lynnrosen.com to register. Payment can be made by check or Venmo. Special Offer: If you’re new to the program and want to try out a class or two, contact lynn@lynnrosen.com and we’ll arrange that for you. CLASS READING SCHEDULE: January 13Shugie Bain by Douglas StuartWINNER OF THE 2020 BOOKER PRIZEShuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher’s policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city’s notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, February 10A Children’s Bible by Lydia MilletFinalist for the 2020 National Book Award for FictionOne of the New York Times‘ Ten Best Books of the YearPulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet’s new novel follows a group of twelve eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their families at a sprawling lakeside mansion. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group’s ringleaders—including Eve, who narrates the story—decide to run away, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside. March 10Hamnet by Maggie O’FarrellOne of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the YearA bold feat of imagination and empathy, this novel gives flesh and feeling to a historical mystery: how the death of Shakespeare’s 11-year-old son, Hamnet, in 1596, may have shaped his play “Hamlet,” written a few years later. A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a tender and unforgettable re-imagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, and whose name was...
Get Lit with Lynn
A bi-weekly conversation about books and publishing from @lynnreadsabook Free! Meeting dates (program begins at 7pm): May 10May 24June 7July 21 Location: Barnes & Noble, 4209 Concord Pike, Wilmington, DE 19803 Talking about books makes people happy! Join bookseller and publishing industry professional Lynn Rosen for Get Lit with Lynn for a conversation about literary and publishing news. Tuesday is the day that publishers release new titles, and Lynn will highlight notable new books. She’ll share publishing and bookselling news and trends, and engage attendees in discussions about their recent reading and literary likes and dislikes. Lynn is the store manager at Barnes & Noble in Wilmington, Delaware. Throughout her publishing career, she has been an editor, a literary agent, a professor of publishing, and an author. For a complete bio, click HERE. You can also read Lynn’s book blog on this website, follow her on Instagram and Facebook @lynnreadsabook, and watch Lynn’s video book reviews on her Lynn Reads a Book YouTube channel. Watch and subscribe HERE. How to Join Get Lit with Lynn Attendance is free. Regular attendance is not required – join us when your schedule permits. And bring friends! Want to join via Zoom? Email lynn@lynnrosen.com to sign up and get the Zoom...
You Again by Debra Jo Immergut
I just finished reading You Again by Debra Jo Immergut and I enjoyed it very much. It was the kind of book that I couldn’t wait to get back to, that I stayed up way too late reading, and was late getting back from my lunch break because of, and then, after finishing it in a few days (eating it up, as it were), I felt sad to no longer be immersed in it. I can’t remember why I chose this book out of the huge pile of advance reader copies I had to winnow down when we moved out of our house. The colors of the cover caught my eye. And I thought maybe I remembered hearing that this author was the friend of another author I know, but now I can’t remember whom that might have been. But something about the plot description on the back of the book grabbed me (even though I really do try not to read back cover copy because it often gives too much away). All this factors made me hold on to the book and once I started to read it, within the first few pages, I was hooked. The book is mostly in a journal format written by Abby, the main character. It’s 2015 in NYC (it was time for a good NYC book!), and Abby and her husband Dennis have given up their promising art careers for workaday jobs to support the two teenage sons with whom they live in a Brooklyn brownstone in a not-quite gentrifying neighborhood. (Speaking of which, this book has a lot of characters driving places and parking in garages or, at the very least, easily finding parking spots, which is not something I ever experienced in NY!) The action is kicked off when Abby spies a girl on the street who looks exactly like herself 24 years ago, when she was a freewheeling NYC party girl and before the occurrence of some as yet undisclosed hazily recalled traumatic event. Back when she was still aspiring to be the promising and highly regarded artist she would become, and before she gave that part of herself up. Is this girl on the street the younger Abby? Is she even real? Are we experiencing some sort of rupture of the space-time continuum? All of those are the questions the book asks, and I do love a good time travel book! Debra Jo Immergut is a graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop and she has been the recipient of fellowships at respected places like the MacDowell Colony. This is her second novel and third book, the other...
Kaiserman JCC Summer One Book
DUE TO A SCHEDULING CONFLICT, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN INDEFINITELY POSTPONED. OUR APOLOGIES! We’re excited to be partnering with the Kaiserman JCC to feature the wonderful new novel The Book of V by Anna Solomon, with a virtual visit from the author planned for Wednesday, August 26th. Anna Solomon will talk about her book and her writing process and take questions from the audience. Details below! ABOUT THE EVENT DATE: Wednesday, August 26TIME: 7PM – 8PM ESTLOCATION: VIRTUALLY VIA ZOOM (You will be sent a password-protected Zoom link prior to the event.)COST:Event Ticket: $12Event Ticket + a copy of the book: $36(Books will be available for curbside pick-up or can be shipped for an extra shipping cost; the author will provide signed book plates.)Extra copies of the book: $25 per copy CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP ABOUT THE BOOK The Book of V is a bold, kaleidoscopic novel intertwining the lives of three women across three centuries as their stories of sex, power, and desire finally converge in the present day. Lily is a mother and a daughter. And a second wife. And a writer, maybe? Or she was going to be, before she had children. Now, in her rented Brooklyn apartment she’s grappling with her sexual and intellectual desires, while also trying to manage her roles as a mother and a wife in 2016. Vivian Barr seems to be the perfect political wife, dedicated to helping her charismatic and ambitious husband find success in Watergate-era Washington D.C. But one night he demands a humiliating favor, and her refusal to obey changes the course of her life—along with the lives of others. Esther is a fiercely independent young woman in ancient Persia, where she and her uncle’s tribe live a tenuous existence outside the palace walls. When an innocent mistake results in devastating consequences for her people, she is offered up as a sacrifice to please the King, in the hopes that she will save them all. In Anna Solomon’s The Book of V., these three characters’ riveting stories overlap and ultimately collide, illuminating how women’s lives have and have not changed over thousands of years. Praise for The Book of V “The engrossing, highly readable, darkly sexy third novel by Anna Solomon…The Book of V. is a meditation on female power and powerlessness, the stories told about women and the ones we tell about and to ourselves.” —The New York Times Book Review“An absorbing story about desire, power imbalances and the quest for self-determination—a feminist rallying cry born in the private spaces of women’s lives.” —People Magazine, *Book of the Week*“The Book of V. is brainy and sexy and roots us so completely...
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
Mrs. Dalloway turns out to be a good choice of a book to read during a pandemic. Mrs. Dalloway, as is noted on page 2 of the book, has been ill (“…she was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness.”) She has had “the influenza,” and it has affected her heart. The book takes place in 1923, so it is likely that Mrs. Dalloway became ill during, and survived, the flu pandemic of 1918. In a recent article in The New Yorker, Evan Kindley writes about how the famous first line of the book – “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” – is being repurposed in social media for our current situation, as in “Mrs. Dalloway said she would make the mask herself,” or “Mrs. Dalloway said she would order from @Instacart herself.” (Read more HERE.) Pandemic references or not, Mrs. Dalloway is always a good choice of a book to read, for it never ceases to yield new insights, and Woolf’s prose never fails to astound (and often confound) with its brilliance. In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf gives us so much: her brilliant stream of consciousness writing, a portrait of post-war London in the midst of modernization, and the story of a 52-year-old woman trying to discern meaning in her life, while twinning this with the story of Septimus Warren Smith, a “shell-shocked” WWI veteran on the verge of madness. Clarissa Dalloway has begun the day by purchasing flowers for the fancy party she is hosting that evening, and throughout the course of the one day during which the book takes place, the chain of actions set off by this sunny June day weave their way through London’s streets and in and out of the consciousness of so may of the city’s denizens. I had scheduled a virtual class about the book as part of my Women’s Words series because: how can you teach a program on important writing by women without Woolf? I also scheduled the class as a challenge to myself: can I teach Woolf? Am I, as a teacher, ready to take this on? I think my students will tell you that that I ably guided them through a thoughtful and careful examination of the book. As one of them said the next day: “I think we did justice to Clarissa.” But, knowing Woolf as much and also as little as I do, I’m guessing we missed more than we found. Which means that Mrs. Dalloway will be ripe and ready for my next reading, whenever that may happen to...