Launch of the Mostly Books YA Bookgroup

It’s a big jump from reading children’s books into reading adult books and one of the fastest-growing and most dynamic areas of publishing in recent years has been books aimed at creating great reads that particularly appeal to children of twelve and over – ‘YA’ books (or 'Young Adult').

There's some very exciting things happening in the world of YA this year - so we'll hand over to Mostly Books YA expert Imogen to tell you more about her passion for YA, the YA Book Prize 2015 - and the launch of our new YA Bookgroup...

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"Anyone who knows me knows that I have one huge book weakness: the Young Adult section in any book shop I come across.

Over the past few years, this section has bloomed. With the success of books like 'The Hunger Games' and 'The Fault in Our Stars', it has rocketed into the minds of both teenagers and adults alike. As that has happened, more and more books have come out, meaning that YA is no longer just a ‘genre’ but a group of books that stand out all on their own.
 
There is no one way you can sum up Young Adult books. It holds infinite worlds inside its name, from the alien invasion where you cannot trust a soul ('The 5th Wave') to the assassin who must work for her enemy for the chance at freedom ('Throne of Glass') and finding friendship and love in an unlikely place ('Anna and the French Kiss') to a dark fairytale set in the future ('Cinder').

What I love about this collection of books is that the word ‘Young’ does not put people off reading them. In fact, many parents will pick up a book after seeing their teenager read it, and end up wanting to read more.

This sudden growth in the YA sales, alongside the successes of films such as ‘If I Stay’ and ‘Mockingjay: Part One’ have prompted people to start thinking about this as a whole new section. Before, it might have been put down the end of the children’s books, or hidden near the adults, but treated like people were not sure what to do with it.
 
There are many awards that both adult and children’s books can win - the Costa Book Awards, Blue Peter Book awards, etc. - but YA have never had one for themselves.

Until now!

The YA Book Prize is a brand new award for 2015, and it looks at YA books from both the UK and Ireland. Shortlisted this year are:

• A Song for Ella Grey, David Almond
• Salvage,  Keren David
• Say Her Name, James Dawson
• Lobsters, Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison
• Half Bad, Sally Green
• Finding a Voice, Kim Hood
• Only Ever Yours, Louise O’Neill
• Goose, Dawn O’Porter
• Trouble, Non Pratt
• Ghosts of Heaven, Marcus Sedgwick

Well, my To-Be-Read list just grew...

The winner of this award won’t be announced until March, but to coincide with it, we’ve decided to start something in the shop. For teenagers that love to read, or just want to try something different, we’re starting a YA Bookgroup. 

I have a passion, not only for the YA books, but for getting teenagers and young people to grow into reading them as well. The excited spark in their eyes as they talk about books they have found and loved, and the debates about what character/book/series is the best...

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So - fancy getting involved?

We will read three of the titles nominated for the first YA Book Prize before the winner is announced. The first book we are going to read will be Sally Green’s thrilling ‘Half Bad’ about one boy's struggle for survival in a hidden society of witches, blending the hard-hitting realism of ‘The Hunger Games’ with a supernatural twist (Kate Atkinson described it as 'Brilliant and Utterly Compelling' and film rights have already been sold...).

If you are over twelve and would enjoy the chance to get your teeth in to the best in YA fiction and join in to discuss what you loved/loathed about the books, then we’d love to welcome you to this new book group. Let us know you’d like to join and all you need to do is to have read the book in time for the first meeting on Saturday Feb 14 at 9.15am in the shop. You get 15% discount on the book if buying it from the shop.

Louise Millar and Kate Clanchy help to discuss 'What Makes a Good Bookgroup Book?'

A fine sultry, summer evening – the perfect occasion to sit in the courtyard garden of Mostly Books to discuss ‘What Makes a Good Bookgroup Book?’ And even better if we entice a couple of authors to discuss the topic with us...

As our opening event to mark Independent Booksellers Week (a week in which everything wonderful about independent booksellers is celebrated), it was a great opportunity to gather and discuss what is so great about being in a bookgroup – and why we get more fun and pleasure out of debating some books rather than simply enjoying them privately.


Our first guest speaker, Louise Millar said she had been invited to join in many bookgroup discussions about her psychological thrillers and said the thing she noticed people particularly liked to discuss was the issues that are raised in her books (her books are so popular with reading groups that they feature reading notes and points of discussion in the back, something not universally popular with the audience).

Louise explained that her books have domestic settings where the characters are often faced with very modern dilemmas – who to trust to pick up your children from school, what lies you would tell to cover any cracks in order to successfully adopt a child? – the sort of issues people can relate to - or at least imagine themselves in - and find it stimulating to debate.

On the evening, Louise read from her latest novel 'The Hidden Girl', another taut tale that ratchets up the tension and suspense, involving a woman who 'moves to the country' in an attempt to improve her life ahead of an impending adoption, but the rural idyll turns into anything but.

Thrillers are really popular choices for book groups, perhaps as crime fiction is predominantly read by women and women tend to outweigh men in book groups. In a discussion actively joined in by the audience - many of whom were bookgroup members themselves - the consensus was that the act of meeting up and discussing a book - the social aspect - was more attractive to women, which might explain the dominance of women at groups. (Mark did make the point, however, that there is at least one all-male bookgroup that meets regularly in Abingdon).

Publishers know that bookgroups are hugely popular and that meeting to discuss books is a great way to extend what you read and also to think in different ways about a book you may not have got very much out of if you’d read it alone.

Kate Clanchy, our other guest speaker, an acclaimed and award-winning poet who has written for radio, a memoir and a novel said that her book ‘Antigona and Me’ had been marketed as a bookgroup book because it is full of issues and opinions, even though it is a memoir.

On the evening she read from her first novel, the Costa shortlisted ‘Meeting the English’, which is on many bookgroup reading lists as a great summer read.

We agreed that it might be difficult to put your finger on what exactly makes a good bookgroup book, but definitely the book that is not a good book group book is one where everyone agrees, opinion is not divided and there is not much to discuss. 

Often bookgroups are groups of friends and they can all have the same viewpoint. We felt that bookgroups work best if people come ready to discuss rather than expecting to have loved everything they read. In addition, an atmosphere or tolerance and respect in discussions is far better than just an 'I loved it / I hated it' approach.

Publishers increasingly view the ‘bookgroup’ book as a genre in itself, with books published that are targeted at being read and discussed in a group, reading group notes provided to help readers to scratch beneath the surface of whether a book is simply an enjoyable personal read or not.

There was general agreement that it is not always the books that you think will be good for discussing that stimulate the best debate, which sometimes can make it difficult to choose what to read. The event rather took on the form of a good bookgroup discussion: most of the audience contributed, and it was interesting to get a poll on the types of genre that made a good bookgroup memoir: most did not read exclusively fiction for book group choices, mixing in travel writing and biography/memoir as popular alternatives to mix things up a bit.

But the final vote of the evening was: is there such a thing as a 'bookgroup book'? It wasn't unanimous, but the majority felt 'no'. In the end a strong bookgroup with plenty of mutual respect and a good standard of discussion can deliver the best discussions when allied to a well-written novel with plenty of themes.

Many thanks to Louise Millar and Kate Clanchy for inspiring such an interesting debate, and thanks to all the bookgroups who not only came along, but who support Mostly Books by choosing and buying their books from us (and feeding back which books have lead to a great discussion!). Huge thanks to Macmillan for making the whole thing happen.

If Independent Booksellers Week is a time to celebrate bookshops, for us it is also a great time to say thank you to our customers for supporting high street bookselling and being part of the bookish community here in Abingdon.

What Makes A Good Bookgroup Book? IBW event with Kate Clanchy and Louise Millar

What makes a good bookclub book? Is it a chance to read an author you wouldn’t have otherwise discovered? To provoke or to entertain? To divide opinion – or help to unite it?

On Wednesday 25 June at 7.30pm – as part of celebrations for Independent Booksellers Week – we’ve invited two dynamic, and very different, authors to Mostly Books to help us find out.

Louise Millar writes psychological thrillers, and Kate Clanchy is a poet and Costa-shortlisted author. Together they are going to debate the qualities that make a book that gets book-groups talking.

Louise Millar has published three novels and is making a name for herself as a writer who puts her characters in almost unbelievable situations – but also ones we can all imagine happening to us.

She began her journalism career in mainly music and film magazines, working as a sub-editor for Kerrang!, Smash Hits, the NME and Empire. She later moved into features, working as a commissioning editor at Marie Claire. Her books ‘The Playdate’ and ‘Accidents Happen’ have won huge critical acclaim for her combination of family drama and slow-building psychological suspense.

Her latest novel 'The Hidden Girl' is another taut, psychological thriller in which wife Hannah Riley and her musician husband move to Suffolk, and an idyllic life threatens to unravel - but are the increasingly sinister events Hannah is witnessing simply in her head?

Kate Clanchy was born and grew up in Scotland and now lives in Oxford. Her poetry collections have brought her many literary awards, she is the author of the much acclaimed Antigona and Me, and was the 2009 winner of the BBC Short Story Award. She has also written extensively for Radio 4. In 2011 she was appointed as the first Oxford City Poet to encourage the reading and writing of poetry in Oxford and the region.


Her Costa-shortlisted debut novel ‘Meeting the English’ is about a group of characters living in that quintessentially English borough of Hampstead, but whose backgrounds could not be more different. It’s a richly conceived, original and very entertaining social comedy about the lies we tell to fit in.

The two authors will be debating what makes a good bookgroup book – as well as talking about their own writing.

Even if you are not a member of a bookgroup, we promise an evening of lively discussion – and a celebration of a good read in the company of two writing talents. The event takes place at Mostly Books at 7.30pm, on Wednesday 25 June. Tickets are £3, to include a glass of wine.

Places will be limited – so please email to reserve your tickets, or call in at the shop.

3 4 Friday: Join us for storytime, bookgroups...or a journey to the stars

If you have little ones (or know anyone who does!) we will be launching a brand new, weekly Storytime for Under 5s starting on Tuesday 22nd January at 2pm. Lasting for about half an hour, we’ll be picking a mix of classic and brand new picture books to read on the big story mat in the front of the shop.

Storytime will be free – simply drop in and take a seat! More details can be found if you take a look at a rather special bear sitting in our window at the moment. There's a clue here to one of the books we'll be reading from during the first storytime...

If ‘joining a bookgroup’ made it onto your new year resolutions list, we have a few places free for our Wednesday evening bookgroup which takes place at St Ethelwold’s House on the first Wednesday of the month at 7.30pm. There is an annual fee of £25 which covers room-hire costs.

Email us if you are interested and come along to a ‘taster’ on Wednesday, February 6 at 7.30pm – we shall be discussing 'Land of Decoration' by Grace McCleen, and copies are available at Mostly Books (ask for a bookgroup discount if you want to read along).

Finally: did you watch the BBC’s Stargazing Live this week? Have Professor Brian Cox and Dara O’Briain got you yearning to point a telescope at the planets? As some of you will know, Mark is a tiny bit obsessed with space (that's an understatement) but we've put together a selection of astronomy titles (for all ages), for beginner to seasoned telescope-wielding pro.

DK's excellent 'The Practical Astronomer' is a good place to start for the beginner - but come in and have a look at our ‘stellar’ display...

The bookgroup discusses: Sisters Brothers

Mark's preamble: Before opening Mostly Books, I would never have thought of joining a bookgroup. Yet running a bookgroup, which has met every Thursday at 7pm almost continually for the last six years, has been one of the highlights of my bookselling life.

Aside from the camaraderie, the cut and thrust of debate and the sometimes ‘robust’ opinions that fly back and forth, to watch two people, both equally well-read, knowledgable and passionate about books, have two completely different opinions about a ‘good’ book allows you to move past your own prejudices about a title or genre. It teaches you that the way you read a book – all at once, in chunks, when you are tired, or down, or busy, or if you come to a book with high expectations, or even no expectations – all influence how you will enjoy it. It also teaches you tolerance about books that you may not ‘like’, to examine your own feelings about reading. It allow you to enjoy a book on different levels – rather like a bag of chips versus a gourmet meal (and it’s nice to do both occasionally).

At the risk of getting all pretentious, I think it helps you gain the deeper truths that exist in all fiction, building self-knowledge and giving you confidence that different opinions are equally valid. Not bad for a bunch of different people sitting around having a chat about a book...

Anyway – here’s some insights into February’s book – Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers...I’ve tried not to include any spoilers, but as a general health and safety warning – ‘spoiler alert’ if you read on...

Plot summary: The Sisters Brothers is a novel about two brothers - Eli and Charlie Sisters - hired gunmen, who are making their way to California during the Gold Rush of the 1850s, at the behest of the mysterious 'Commodore'. En route, and often through discussions between the two very different brothers, a change starts to come over Eli as he starts to question the 'business' that they are in...

The first thing to get past was the violence. There are some sensitive souls in the group, and even I blenched a bit at a particularly gruesome bit of violence (involving someone’s skull) at the start of the book. But most of the group were surprised at how much they enjoyed the novel – or at least were compelled to keep reading – despite this.

In fact, we did have quite a discussion about the level of violence in the wider society at the time the book is written (the American Gold Rush) and this led on to America, violence and guns in general. I had printed out an interview that author Patrick deWitt had done for Granta, and he feels this was never a point he was trying to make in the book, but does seem to come up outside America – but never in the country itself.

Most agreed that the quality of prose was very high – and that the plot was gripping. Most were struck by the ‘filmic’ qualities of the book – and a few directors names came up: The Coen Brothers and David Lynch. Dewitt has obviously acknowledged his debt to movies – there’s even a couple of ‘intermissions’ in the book – and again, it is interesting that the book apparently grew out of a series of dialogues between key characters that he wrote when starting the book.

The way the book was typeset even reminded us of a film script at times.

We were searching for what books may have served as inspiration (in interviews, authors can sometimes provide a list of inspirations which leave out a main title!). Suggestions included Of Mice and Men (Eli, the younger brother, reminding one of the group of Lenny), Candide (the heightened reality, even surreality, of some of the settings), The Ned Kelly Gang and even the representation of Eli as a male Fanny Hill: someone who had a dawning realisation of the moral problems of the life he led and thus setting out to make changes.

For those that really enjoyed the book, however, the heart of it was the relationship between the two brothers, and even though there was some doubt about the ‘literary descriptions’ as seen through Eli’s eyes (given his background), the voice of Eli was good, and the relationship well characterised and very enjoyable. Most of us really enjoyed the humour (once we could push past the violence) and we dwelled for some time on just how deep the novel was supposed to go beyond just the story. I was very taken with the number of metaphors in the book (environmental destruction, the ‘Commodore’ representing political corruption, and even Eli himself as a very modern man – with his tooth powder and desire for ‘light bites’ at meal time, his care for animals). There was even a signifier to the general state of society –the unnamed weeping man – but ultimately the novel delivers a large dollop of redemption by the end.

(Nicki’s bookgroup also read the book for their bookgroup, and one of the points discussed there was the skill in which Eli ‘resolves’ the problem with the Commodore at the end, without the bloodshed and recriminations that might have resulted had his brother taken the lead. This is Eli’s triumph in working out a different path).

Ultimately Eli represents a moral force, and his influence and power, partly because of what he thinks, partly the actions he takes – grow as the book proceeds. Everyone saw this as a very American book (the end point of going home to ‘Mom’, the desire to be self-reliant), were themes that perhaps didn’t seem so important to British readership.

One of the group made the comment that some of the descriptive pieces seemed ‘imported’ from elsewhere (such as the San Francisco harbour scene, with the boats abandoned due to the Gold Rush) and the opinions of the group ranged from ‘didn’t really get into it’ through to ‘one of the best reads we’ve ever done’. But overall, a very positive response and a book that pushed several people out of their comfort zone.

Interestingly, in the DeWitt interview, the author himself talks about getting bored with books if you just read the same things all the time. “I’ve since learned to mix up my reading. The moment it begins to feel like homework, I head for something more welcoming”. I can recommend he join a bookgroup...

The Sisters Brothers is by Patrick deWitt, and published by Granta Books, and is available for £7.99 from Mostly Books, or as an eBook here.

(Are you looking for recommendations for yourself or for your own bookgroup? Would you like to have us recommend something as a gift? For more information, take a look here).

Roma Tearne at Mostly Books

Last night we welcomed Mosquito and Brixton Beach author Roma Tearne to Mostly Books. Roma was utterly delightful, even more so given the daunting task of meeting members of our Wednesday evening bookgroup who had all read Brixton Beach. The group met earlier, chatted about the book, and then Roma arrived about half an hour into the discussion. As those of you who know the shop well, when there is an event on in there there isn't much room to swing a paperback, so Roma had to push her way to the front and begin to answer questions immediately. Very intimidating - but Roma was well up to the challenge. What followed was a fabulous discussion, where we were able to really get under the skin of Roma's writing, the themes of her book, how autobiographical it is - and her experiences of writing, and how it compares to her work as an artist. It was all over far too quickly, and I personally could have talked to Roma half the night about some of the 'loops' opened during the discussion, but Roma stayed behind after the meeting formally ended and chatted with everyone - a really great evening. Roma is such a beguiling speaker, and she has insights into the writing process that (IMHO) make her a must-see for anyone writing. At the end of April Roma will be the Writer In Residence at Blackwells bookshop in Oxford for the week. It sounds a fascinating exercise in bringing a writer and readers together, so have a look at her residency page (link above) on Blackwell's website for more details...

The Richard & Judy effect

A few weeks ago we received an email from someone at Cactus TV enquiring about whether any of our bookgroups would like to be filmed for Richard & Judy. I was intrigued, and when I asked for more details, it transpired that they were really keen to film a bookgroup discussing Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. Two of our bookgroups were reading/had already read the book, so I indicated we might be interested. I then fired off an email to someone in my bookgroup whom I considered a bellweather of whether or not I could get eight people to come along for the filming, and on the strength of her extremely positive (not to mention excited) response, told them to go ahead - and we fixed a date. We appeared in the show last Wednesday. We were introduced as the 'Mostly Books Reading Group' by Richard Madeley after a high-quality discussion on the couch with Honeysuckle Weeks and David Morrissey. I've done my best to upload the bit of the show to YouTube that we were on: (BTW, I'm sure this is illegal, so if you can't see anything above we may have been leaned on by someone to remove it - not by Cactus of course, 'cos they're lovely. If anyone asks, just say we can get away with this as 'Fair Use' under copyright law. Sounds convincing to me) Anyway, it's interesting to know what transpired behind the scenes to get to the point above. As is often the case, things in 'tellyland' are not always what they seem... The shop had been suitable spruced up for its appearance on the gogglebox (even if the table looked as though we were expecting Paul Daniels round to show us a few tricks.

(Our regular bookgroups don't get the black cloth ordinarily BTW). Now, strictly speaking, there is no 'Mostly Book Reading Group'. We have the Mostly Books Wednesday Evening bookgroup, Thursday Evening bookgroup, and Wednesday Morning bookgroup. The people taking part in the filming were made up of members of the last two. Here was the group photographed pre-filming looking terrified nice and relaxed. That's real wine in the glasses as well:

Now, because the filming date had been arranged at such short notice, most members of the two groups couldn't make it. So having rashly said we'd go ahead, four days before the filming, I had three people signed up. Beginning to panic, and worried that I might get a roasting from Richard & Judy themselves, I fired off an email to our entire mailing list offering a seat in the group for anyone who had read the book and wanted to come along. I had an enormous response to this email - mostly of the "ooh, how exciting, good luck" type, lots of the "you've got to be kidding, no way" type, a few well-argued, strongly-worded essays on the benefits (or otherwise) of Richard & Judy in general - and one extra person for the filming. So that made six. Anyway, back to the filming. There were three people from Cactus - Jo, Roxanne, and the man who put us all at our ease, Tom (standing below):

At least two of our group found Tom "dishy", looking not unlike Damien Lewis. This sparked an excited debate about Mr Lewis, and I had to intervene to calm proceedings, and get us back onto track for the main event of the evening. The discussion of Kate Summerscale's book, and the filming. What I had neglected to mention to anyone (because I thought it might definitely send them away screaming) was that Tom and the team were not filming the discussion per se (although they did film for about 10 minutes for the opening shots) but instead, each of us would need to do a piece to camera. This is quite daunting - but essentially you sit in front of the camera, and are filmed as Roxanne asks a few questions. Each of us chatted away in response, and the results you see are the edited 'highlights'. They filmed everyone in a different part of the shop. The filming was great fun, and we were all (by and large) pleased with the result (for some reason the group looks as if it's obsessed with references to the weather in the book, but I'm sure that's just down to the editing process). Our thanks to Jo, Tom and Roxanne for sticking to time and making the whole experience as painless as possible.

Separated at Birth

We're doing The Virgin Suicides as the next book for the daytime bookgroup in a couple of weeks time. I noticed the cover of the new edition of Jeffrey Eugenides' debut novel for the first time today:

Something stirred in my mind, and I mosied over to grab a copy of Tim Pears' novel In The Place of Fallen Leaves (also, his debut). There were some startling similarities:

Almost a whole girl I thought. But it did get me thinking - are there any other cover designs that go together this well?