June 2011 Newsletter

Hi Goodreads Member,

Here's our monthly newsletter from Goodreads—giving you the latest and greatest in our quest to connect people through reading!

SUMMER READING

Announcing the First Goodreads Book Club!

We've created a total book immersion extravaganza for readers worldwide. Join us this June and July for a new kind of book club: Ask the author questions via live chat, join chapter-by-chapter discussions, answer polls and trivia, and much more. Find out which book we selected for the inaugural Goodreads Book Club! »

Find out!

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS

Ann Patchett

Malarial mosquitoes, 15-foot anacondas, and a fertility research team gone AWOL—the author of Bel Canto talks about State of Wonder, her new Amazonian adventure.

Jeffery Deaver

The Cold War is over; what's a sexy superspy to do? Deaver's new thriller Carte Blanche reboots James Bond, transplanting the suave secret agent to 2011.

Darren Shan's Favorite Horror Novels

The master of macabre shares his favorite works of terror just in time for his new noir fantasy, City of the Snakes.

Kate Christensen's Favorite Books About Losers

This novelist loves antiheroes, listing her top five losers in literature, not including the hapless subject of her new book, The Astral.

Oscar Hijuelos's Favorite Latino Literature

The Pulitzer winner pens his first memoir, Thoughts Without Cigarettes, and picks his favorite works by Latino writers.

Maggie Stiefvater

Ask the fantasy writer a question about her new young adult book Forever, the conclusion to the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy that mixes two thrills: werewolves and first love.

Libba Bray

Teen pageant contestants turn feral when their plane crash-lands on a deserted island. Chat with the author of Beauty Queens, a subversive comedy for young adults.

S.J. Watson

In his psychological thriller, Before I Go to Sleep, a woman with amnesia must relearn her life each day with the help of a man she does not recognize or trust—her husband.

Don't Breathe a Word

by Jennifer McMahon (Goodreads Author)

A 12-year-old girl who believes in the King of the Fairies goes missing one summer night. Fifteen years later, her brother gets an unnerving phone call that urges him to investigate the past.

The Murder of the Century

by Paul Collins (Goodreads Author)

New York City, 1897: A dismembered corpse fuels a media circus led by rival tabloid heads Pulitzer and Hearst in this true crime account. The public eats up all the grisly details of a Gilded Age love triangle gone wrong.

Jamrach's Menagerie

by Carol Birch

In this 19th-century adventure story with echoes of Moby Dick, a street urchin named Jaffy in hardscrabble London finds work with an exotic animal importer and embarks on an ocean voyage to capture a fabled dragon.

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair

by Nina Sankovitch (Goodreads Author)

Nina Sankovitch vows to read one book every day for a year, choosing books she would have shared with her sister, if she were still alive. A memoir of grief, family ties, and lots and lots of books.

Joy for Beginners

by Erica Bauermeister (Goodreads Author)

A Seattle cancer survivor named Kate makes a pact with six of her closest friends: They must each do one thing that's always scared them. The catch? Kate gets to choose the challenge for each woman.

Hourglass

by Myra McEntire (Goodreads Author)

Part science fiction, part paranormal romance, this young adult novel tells the story of an orphaned teen suffering from hallucinations. But then an enigmatic Hourglass consultant tells her she might not be crazy but powerful.

Montreal, Canada:

45° 30' N

73° 40' W

I Am a Japanese Writer

by Dany Laferrière

This offbeat novel defies traditional perceptions of author identity with its story about a Haitian writer living in Montreal who becomes a cult sensation in Japan.

Android Barcode Scanner

Our Android app keeps getting better. Now you can use our new barcode scanner to quickly access book reviews on the go or even scan your entire home library!

If You Like This Book, You'll Also Enjoy...

As a first step toward a Netflix-style algorithm for book recommendations (more about our future plans here), you can now find a list of titles on any book page that other readers also enjoyed. Find something new to read on every page of Goodreads!

GOODREADS POETRY CONTEST

Want your words to reach 4 million people? Goodreads and the ¡POETRY! group have partnered to host an ongoing poetry contest. Join the ¡POETRY! group to vote each month to pick a winner from among the finalists. You can also submit a poem for consideration. Here is our June winner!

Handbook

by Susan Elbe (Goodreads Author)

1

Go out into the corn's green arms.
Let its silk slip
through your fingers.

You won't need it.
This is rougher work.

Stand there among the dark wings,
in the middle of their chaos,
yawp and thievery.

2

Find the blueprint in a blackbird's eye:
your own pupil-startled eyes
reflecting back at you,
your summer-frizzled hair,
your limbs limp from lifting
the world's heavy bales.

Scavenge—cloth, mud, denim, chaff.
For this task,
soft silhouettes work best.

Give it wildness and bewilderment.
Lend it terror with a heart stuffed full
of threshed hopes.

Kiss a mouth on with your own
jam-smeared, crooked mouth.

3

Give in when bargaining begins, this existence
moving fire to fire,
straw to tinder, sleeve to kindle,
memory to miracle.

You're the noon betrayer.
Understand
you will be monstrous to those
whose quarrel you reject.

4

Come back when the wind turns red
and the moon is just a whisper.

Climb the shaky ladder. Lift the hand-hewn,
time-slacked soul above
the cracked earth,
hung as if you pinned it to the star-pricked sky.

You will want no down-on-bended-knee,
no set jaw, no tears or finger-pointing.

5

Prepare to be lonely.

You're the made-in image.
In this field, you're the god.