Spring Book and Author Festival

This past week Penguin/Random House, Library Journal, and School Library Journal hosted a fabulous day of book chats and panel discussions featuring hot titles coming out for avid readers this spring. I could sign up for as many or as few hour-long sessions as I liked. I did not want to be too greedy with the virtual LJ Day of Dialog looming in May.

The morning session “Illuminating Book Club Picks”, two memoirs and two novels based on memoir, led to a timely investigation of the fine line between fiction and truth and why certain authors choose one mode over the other in which to interrogate their pasts. Moderator Migdalia Jimenez from the Chicago Public Library pointed out the themes that each book shared that would force book groups to look deeper than the average reader might. Among these are:

Point of View – multiple characters who have very differing perspectives and make alternate choices in their lives that others may not approve of or understand.

Coping with Grief – illuminating the myriad responses people have to grief and recognizing the validity of each person’s individual reaction.

Trauma and Loss – investigates how people’s lives are changed by historical events, WW II, 9/11, Brexit, etc.

Childhood Connections – the best and the worst parenting and how we cope, growing up in multi-generational homes, sibling rivalry, and mother/daughter conflict.

These four diverse authors shared their stories with us and each sounds unforgettable. Keep your eyes peeled for Danielle Henderson’s “The Ugly Cry, A Memoir,” a reckoning with her fractured family using humor and grace.

Michelle Zauner also chose the memoir format for her new book “Crying in H Mart,” about re-discovering her Korean identity and her relationship with her mom as she helps her face a cancer diagnosis.

Vietnamese American debut author Eric Nguyen chose fiction, and a glorious title, “Things We Lost to the Water,” to examine the lives of two immigrant boys and their homeless, jobless mother as they relocate and try to forge a life in New Orleans, always waiting for their father to join them in their strange new world.

 And then, “Rainbow Milk” by a British debut novelist, Paul Mendez, tells the story of nineteen-year-old Jesse, a gay, Black man raised in a Jehovah Witnesses household trying to come to terms with his sexuality, the color of his skin, and the lack of means to support himself in a country that will always see him as different.

 

The afternoon session was all about the so-called “Big Summer Reads,” all novels and all sounding fascinating. I’ll tell you all about them tomorrow and follow that up with a blow by blow of our neighborhood book discussion on “Anxious People” by Fredrik Bachman.