October is National Reading Group Month, originated by the Women’s National Book Association in October 2007.

Reading groups are proving that good books bring people together. National Reading Group Month salutes reading groups. It fosters their growth and promotes the love of literature.

The National Reading Group Month Selection Committee has chosen 13 books, 12 novels and one memoir, as this year’s Great Group Reads.

National Reading Group Month Selects
Great Group Reads

2010 Selections

Blame by Michelle Huneven
The Blessings of the Animals by Katrina Kittle
Cheap Cabernet: A Friendship by Cathie Beck
Eternal on the Water by Joseph Monninger
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli
Molly Fox’s Birthday by Deirdre Madden
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin
Room by Emma Donoghue
Safe from the Sea by Peter Geye
Up from the Blue by Susan Henderson

I am reading Jonathan Franzen’s FREEDOM along with the millions of other Oprah Book Club members. I am diligently following the reading schedule mapped out by the OBC  (although I may be a little ahead of the group because we are supposed to be on page 119 right now and I’m on 303…okay, a lot ahead of the group, but it’s just that good). Here is what I have discovered through my reading of this truly riveting story, freedom is not what you think it is, or at least it isn’t portrayed in the way you expect. I recently watched Diane von Furstenberg on television (I can’t lie, it was on America’s Next Top Model) and she made the statement, “Freedom gives you the power to soar like a bird.” That closely parallels my initial reaction to the word “Freedom.” Looking at the cover of Franzen’s FREEDOM and the blue bird perched in the corner made me reflect on this immediate reaction and wonder if it somehow pertained to the overall story. I was wrong.

When I started the book, I thought freedom represented all that we strive for in life and I believed that it ultimately leads to our happiness and overall contentedness. However, as I continue to read, I can’t help but feel my perception of “freedom” is being challenged and I wonder if Jonathan Franzen is exposing some animosity towards this perception. For example, here is a quote relating to Patty Berglund, the matriarch of the novel, from page 181:

“She had all day every day to figure out some decent and satisfying way to live, and yet all she ever seemed to get for all her choices and all her freedom was more miserable. The autobiographer is almost forced to the conclusion that she pitied herself for being so free.”

Does too much freedom alter the way you live your life? Does it change relationships? Does it ruin things? Joey (Patty & Walter’s son) resents the freedom he experienced during his adolescent and teen years. He has animosity towards his mother for how “free” she felt in telling him about her past and the experiences she had in her own adolescent years. Ironically I compared freedom to being like a bird in a beautiful and hopeful way while Joey compares his mother, Patty, to a bird but with a negative connotation.

“Or as if she were one of his dad’s endangered birds, singing its obsolete song in the woods in the forlorn hope of some passing kindred spirit hearing it.” (p. 250)

He also resents the time he spent with his high school girlfriend Connie, living in her house, because it created an unhealthy attachment and placed him in a position that he can’t seem to escape from in his college life.

“He’d asked for his freedom, they’d granted it, and he couldn’t go back now.” (p. 241)

This freedom that Franzen writes about is depicted as having too many options. With too many choices comes a lack of focus and an inability to succeed at one thing. Too many choices leads to a fragmentations.

“It’s like the internet, or cable TV- there’s never any center, there’s no communal agreement, there’s just a trillion little bits of distracting noise. We can never sit down and have any kind of sustained conversation, it’s all just cheap trash and shitty development. All the real things, the authentic things, the honest things are dying off. Intellectually and culturally, we just bounce around like random billiard balls, reacting to the latest random stimuli.” (p. 218)

Too much freedom leads to a life of excess where appreciation for what we do have is often overlooked for what we could potentially have. Is this what Franzen is saying? Do we have too much freedom?

When we are introduced to Patty, she is presented to us as a jock. ”Patty frightened nobody, but she’d been a standout athlete in high school and college and possessed a jock sort of fearlessness.” (p.4) There is a sense of freedom in being able to dominate and excel in the world of sports, especially if you are a woman. But with this comes a sense of such intense independence that the thought of needing someone else to “complete” you becomes a foreign concept. There is such an exhilaration in being part of a team, excelling at something and winning that can lead to this fearlessness that Patty experiences. I think that sense of freedom is beautiful. But with Patty, it all changes one night in college when she is forced to relinquish her power, freedom and independence and is forced to rely on Walter and the support she had never needed (or wanted) before. This also brings to light Patty’s “freedom” from her family. “One strange thing about Patty, given her strong family orientation, was that she had no discernible connection to her roots.” Patty’s family is non-existent. As far as Franzen is concerned, she has no family worth writing about. She is completely disconnected to them and is 100% free.

If you haven’t picked up the book, I really haven’t given anything away because this isn’t the kind of story where shocking things are revealed left and right. This a methodical, realistic tale about life and love, passion and acceptance, goals and truth. It’s about the beauty and the ugliness found in real moments. As I said, I haven’t finished it yet. I’m about two-thirds of the way through and should be finishing it up this week. I will keep you posted as I read along with Oprah. Let me know if you are joining in on the book club fun?

Last night I appeared on the Oprah Book Club webcast for Uwem Akpan’s SAY YOU’RE ONE OF THEM. This book of stories about life in a war-torn Africa, ironically enough, helped me understand deeper parts of myself. The emotional landscape of these stories are breathtaking and reading the book was like a journey. Having been an Oprah Book Club fan from the beginning (way back in 1996 with The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard), it was thrilling to be a part of this worldwide event. I was able to climb deep inside the book, understand the author’s intentions when creating certain characters and developing specific events and hear about other people’s reaction to the book. This was an amazing experience that I will never forget. I can’t wait to find out what the next Book Club selection will be!

Publishing’s surest hitmaker announced that her latest book club pick is Uwem Akpan’s (YOO’-ehm AK’-panz) debut collection “Say You’re One Of Them.”

Winfrey’s choice practically guarantees hundreds of thousands of sales, numbers generally unthinkable for short stories beyond works by Ernest Hemingway, John Cheever and other giants of the art form.

Akpan is a native of Nigeria and an ordained Jesuit priest who in 2006 received a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Michigan.

His work is set in Nigeria, Rwanda and other African countries and often centers on children in distress.

In 2005, The New Yorker featured him in its debut fiction issue.

-Associated Press

I would LOVE to hear what everyone out there is thinking about Oprah’s pick. Feel free to leave a comment. Will you be reading this selection?

Oprah “tweeted“  Monday that her first new book club pick in a year will be announced Friday, Sept. 18. In her announcement, Winfrey stated that she had “never made a selection like “this.”

The week leading up to her announcement could be a record-breaker for the publishing industry. September 14th is the release of Sen. Ted Kennedy‘s “True Compass,” followed the next day by Dan Brown‘s “The Lost Symbol” and rounded out by Oprah’s choice on Friday. This could bring one of the biggest weeks in publishing history.

The last book club selection Oprah made was The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. If you head over to Oprah’s website and check out the webcast for her book club discussion, you will see yours truly!

Starbucks has chosen Isabel Gillies memoir, Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story as their newest book pick. Television viewers may know Gillies from her role as Detective Stabler’s wife on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Published by Scribner, the memoir about Gillies real-life marriage struggles will be released on March 24, 2000 and sold at more than 7,000 Starbucks around the country.

The New Yorker has kicked off their book club with the much talked about novel by Richard Yates, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. Go here to learn more about the club and possibly participate. Can the New Yorker build up as much attention for book club picks as Oprah? We’ll have to wait and see.

Today Oprah made her 62nd Oprah Book Club Pick with THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE by David Wroblewski. Oprah has selected a book that is already receiving some amazing attention and I think that she picked wisely. She made some very bold statements, even going so far as to say the debut novel was “right up there with the greatest American novels ever written. It’s everything you want a book to be.”

The novel is set on a northern Wisconsin farm in the 1970s and was described as tale of a mute boy named Edgar and the special bond he shares with his dog Almondine, interweaving mystery and family intrigue into a coming-of-age story.

According to Reuters, Oprah’s book club is the biggest in the world with 2 million online members and books chosen for Oprah’s book club invariably skyrocket to the top of U.S. bestseller lists.

The author, who was born in 1959, was raised in rural central Wisconsin, not far from where “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” is set. He now lives in Colorado with his partner, writer Kimberly McClintock.

Wroblewski said he was “proud and excited” that his book had been chosen for Oprah’s Book Club.

“My highest hope is that it does for you the simple work novels were meant for: to create, for days or weeks, that delicious doubled life of the here-and-now folded back upon the there-and-then,” he said in a statement.

“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” was first published this year by Ecco, an imprint of Harper Collins.

SIDENOTE: I noticed that Oprah has changed her Oprah Book Club logo. I will try and grab the image and post it here for everyone to see.

I have my copy of Edgar sitting right next to me and I am eagerly anticipating crawling into bed and beginning my Oprah Book Club challenge. I will post my thoughts about the book and I hope that you all do the same. Here is an excerpt from Edgar Sawtelle straight from Oprah’s website. Let’s get started!

Here are a few more theories from GalleyCat on Oprah’s upcoming pick.

Yesterday, GalleyCat predicted the next Oprah Book Club pick could be All Aunt Hagar’s Children by Edward P. Jones, but reader Martin Schmutterer is placing his chips on the new Wally Lamb novel, The Hour I First Believed, even though it’s not scheduled to come out until November and it’s officially priced four dollars higher than what we’re told Oprah Winfrey‘s selection cost. “The Road proved that these things can be changed for O,” Schmutterer explains; we shall see…

And here’s another possibility—it’s been pointed out that perhaps the reason the Barnes & Noble website only lists a hardcover and large print edition for Oprah’s pick is not that the trade paperback is on the way, but that the book is so new that the paperback isn’t even on the horizon. And that possibility, runs one theory, would put David Wroblewski‘s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle into play… a debut novel that many would say lives up to Oprah’s claim about her upcoming selection: “Once you start it, you won’t want to put it down!”

But, you know, there’s no reason to take the word of some blogger on this—what do you think?