One live book group organizer I’ve discovered recently that offers fabulous events is Bookaccino. You can sign up to get their newsletters to learn about their author talks and other webinars here.
I was blessed to attend the talk with Kathryn Stockett, author of The Calamity Club, on Wednesday night. Having just finished the book in the past week, I was thrilled that at the time of the discussion, the story was still fresh on my mind, and the characters unforgettable. As is so often the case, the ending of a great book never really coincides with the turning of its last page, but I was blessed that it did this time.
Three top things I took from this discussion:
- Kathryn Stockett does extensive research on the time frame setting of her novels, and she likes to use characters’ voices to call attention to the social issues and the BS that needs to be called out.
- She will not be writing a sequel to this book, preferring to leave the characters as they are for the reader to determine what happens to them next. There will be a screenplay.
- She reads extensively, and was inspired tremendously by Eudora Welty, particularly the short stories “Why I live at the P.O.,” “The Petrified Man,” and the novel Delta Wedding. She also is a fan of the memoirist Mary Carr.
I’m rereading some excerpts of Gladys Taber’s books and also Road Trip by Mary Kay Andrews. There will be Eudora Welty’s works appearing in my TBR Pile.
