Book Club Connection by Susan LoTempio

Teens are reading, too

Kids have a lot of money to spend, we all know that. And adults assume they're spending their bucks on video games, iPods, computer software, cell phones and fast food.

  Some are, some aren't.

According to an interesting piece in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, we are in "one of the most fertile periods in the history of young adult literature." Teen book sales are booming, the article says, "up by a quarter between 1999 and 2005."

As someone in the word business, that's welcome news because getting people to read - including young people - is one of the missions of this newspaper. Why else would we have two Buffalo News book clubs - one for adults and one for younger readers (through our Wednesday NeXt section).

The Seattle article points to the quality of writing as one of the reasons teens are reading more, and the quality of the books chosen by the NeXt Book Club is impressive. If your kids haven't read some of the NeXt selections, put them on the list for your next visit to a local book store or library. Here are some that have been chosen over the years:

   "The Giver" by Lois Lowry; "Lizzie Bright and the Buckminister Boy" by Gary Schmidt; "Charlotte's Web" by E.B. White; "The Witches," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" both by Roald Dahl; "The Star of Kazan" by Eva Ibbotson; "Hoot" by Carl Hiaasen; "The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963" by Christopher Paul Curtis and "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis.

Literature doesn't get any better than that.

The best of the best

When we organized The Book Club, we decided to dedicate two selections a year (March and December) to the "classics." Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair" is one of those classics.

The most popular, though, was Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," which we read exactly a year ago. We got more response to that powerful novel than anything else we've selected.

Some Book Club members read it for the very first time that month, but even more read it for the umpteenth time and loved it just as much as their first reading.

"To Kill a Mocking Bird's" universal themes appeal to all generations of readers and seems to touch something deep in our souls.

Adding to the mystery around the book is the relative obscurity of its author. Though she's been seen in public a few times in the past year at events focused on her book, Harper Lee rarely makes any comments.

I doubt even Oprah could get her to talk.

Where did he get the story?

Here's an interesting tidbit about how Graham Greene got the story for "The End of the Affair" (our March Book Club pick).

As with many writers of fiction, he drew on his own life.

   In 1946, Greene met a married woman named Catherine Watson and they had an affair that lasted 10 years. She was married to one of the richest men in England and had five children with him.

In "The End of the Affair," Catherine became Sara Miles. Greene was Maurice Bendix.

Their relationship was turned into a second book, "After Two Years." Only 25 copies were printed, and most of them were destroyed.

For more info on Greene, go to www.kirjasto.sci.fi/greene.htm, which is where I found these juicy details.

First, the novel

"The End of the Affair" is this month's Book Club selection, and I hate to admit it, but I stumbled on the novel by first seeing the movie with Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes. I loved the film - until I read the book and saw how much the screenwriters had changed the story, played down the religious themes, and overplayed the sex. (No surprise there.)

Now, though, I see that as a victory for good literature. The novel is just shy of 200 pages but every single page is packed with raw emotion and beautiful writing. Universal themes - love, hate, romance, forgiveness - are everywhere.

  The 1999 film, while a heartwrenching love story, is trite in comparison to the novel. The film characters are one-dimensional, but in the print version they are flesh-and-blood people.

My advice: Read it as soon as you can. It will warm your soul during this surprisingly bitter March.

Your reading list

Each week on this blog, I'll offer some reading suggestions beyond our book-of-the-month.
 
   The titles have been heavily vetted by those of us at The News involved in the Book Club and by other readers in the community.  Why? How? The books have been past monthly selections that we've loved so much we don't want others to miss out on the joy.

The News Book Club has been up and running since October of 2003, and it's the very first book we featured that we suggest to you today: Richard Russo's "Straight Man."

This novel is funny, poignant, well-written and a must-read. As far as I'm concerned, Russo (who won the Pulitzer for "Empire Falls") is the best American fiction writer publishing today.