September 2010 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!

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS

Sara Gruen

Tea parties and tickle tag with primates—the animal lover who wrote Water for Elephants describes the friendships she made with bonobos while crafting Ape House.

Jonathan Franzen

The celebrated scribe of The Corrections talks about his latest portrait of an American family in Freedom and argues that a book doesn't have to be difficult to be great.

Janet Evanovich

The criminal mastermind behind the Stephanie Plum mysteries leaves New Jersey for Salem, Massachusetts, with Wicked Appetite, a new series with a magical twist.

Margaret Atwood

Join the prize-winning pioneer of The Handmaid's Tale for a discussion of the end of the world and The Year of the Flood.

Cassandra Clare

The creator of the fantasy series Mortal Instruments chats about her new foray into supernatural steampunk in Clockwork Angel.

Joyce Maynard

Two babies at the same hospital and born to very different families—the author of The Good Daughters weighs in on her new novel.

William Gibson

The father of cyberpunk, cyberspace, and maybe even cybersex picks his five favorite books about London, the setting of his new techno-thriller, Zero History.

Terry McMillan

The dynamic female characters from Waiting to Exhale return 15 years later in Getting to Happy. The writer shares her currently reading list.

Told through the whimsical eyes of five-year-old Jack, life with Ma in an 11-foot-square room behind a locked door isn't all that bad. Then, after seven years of captivity, Ma decides to escape their prison.

The Tiger

by John Vaillant

In this gripping true story, a vengeful Amur tiger goes on a methodical man-eating killing spree in far-east Siberia—a region that even Russians think is remote. Vaillant vividly recounts the plight of an endangered species.

The Gendarme

by Mark Mustian

Regret plagues Emmett Conn when a brain tumor triggers long-suppressed memories of his role as a Turkish gendarme during the Armenian genocide. At age 92, he vows to find the Armenian woman he loved half a lifetime ago.

The Wave

by Susan Casey

Plunge into the adrenaline-junkie subculture of extreme surfing. As climate-change scientists seek to understand the rising frequency of monster 100-foot waves, surfers travel the globe hoping to catch Mother Nature's ultimate ride.

Maybe This Time

by Jennifer Crusie (Goodreads Author)

Just as divorcée Andie Miller is poised to move on, her dashing ex-husband persuades her to look after two orphaned children in his care. Andie learns that true love may need a second chance in this screwball comedy.

Paranormalcy

by Kiersten White (Goodreads Author)

As an employee of the Paranormal Containment Agency, Evie tags beasties like shapeshifters, faeries, and hags. When something starts killing paranormals, a dark prophecy dumps Evie at the epicenter of a mystery.

Jessica Francis Kane

In 1943, a stampede at a London tube station killed 173 people who were responding to a false air raid alarm. The Report covers the confusing aftermath of a historical disaster.

Books For Africa

On a continent where almost 50 million children have never attended school, Books For Africa ships books to classrooms in 45 African countries.

Oslo, Norway:

59 ° 56' N

10 ° 41' E

Broken

by Karin Fossum

A novelist's characters are literally lined up in her driveway—waiting to be written—but one anxious man can't wait his turn.

Read Books on the iPhone

Always have a book at your fingertips! Our newly launched eReader for the Goodreads iPhone app makes reading on the go a joy. Choose from a huge selection of free books or try one of the many eBooks for sale. Goodreads Authors selling eBooks on our site keep 70 percent of the profits!

Learn more

All Your Favorite Series

Sookie Stackhouse, Discworld, Outlander, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency—it can be tricky to keep track of what you've read. All books in a series are now linked for easy reference. How many Nancy Drews can you check off?

Find out

GOODREADS POETRY CONTEST

Want your words to reach 3 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 September winner!

THE COMING OF BLINDNESS

by Joan Colby

People become faces, the
Books had no illustrations,
I couldn't see myself in the
Looking glass.
—Jorge Luis Borges

Like blindness, losing each other was gradual
The petals of the white lilacs
Fell softly, vanished
And you held me at arms length
Like newsprint.
The streetlights wore haloes
Of martyrs.

There was a blankness
In the center of making love.
I no longer
Believed our bodies could
Solve equations of loss. We disengaged
To argue over coffee.

Every remark led
To a stupid argument the way
Failing sight makes a man
Stumble over thresholds.
If we had learned Braille,
The language of feeling,
Would anything be different?

Borges says black and red
Are the first colors to be dismissed,
Colors of drama, passion,
Deadly games of challenge.
The blind live
In a luminous greenish mist,
A sort of confusion and grief,
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