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Padma Venkatraman is our guest blogger during the week of June 2nd. If you have any questions for her add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some brief information about Climbing The Stairs:

A remarkable debut novel set in India that shows one girl’s struggle for independence.

During World War II and the last days of British occupation in India, fifteen-year-old Vidya dreams of attending college. But when her forward-thinking father is beaten senseless by the British police, she is forced to live with her grandfather’s large traditional family, where the women live apart from the men and are meant to be married off as soon as possible.

Vidya’s only refuge becomes her grandfather’s upstairs library, which is forbidden to women. There she meets Raman, a young man also living in the house who relishes her intellectual curiosity. But when Vidya’s brother decides to fight with the hated British against the Nazis, and when Raman proposes marriage too soon, Vidya must question all she has believed in.

Padma Venkatraman’s debut novel poignantly shows a girl struggling to find her place in a mixedup world. Climbing the Stairs is a powerful story about love and loss set against a fascinating historical backdrop.

The fourth book and nothing to wear.

One of the major controversies around here is how I should dress on the book tour. My wife, my agent, and my publisher are under the mistaken view that I should look like an author-whereas I feel most comfortable as a saddle tramp. I am forbidden to wear my favorite hat in public. As a matter of fact, I once presented it for a refurbishing to Mike at H-Bar Hats in Billings, MT, and he offered to bury it for me. He said he'd sing a eulogy for an extra five bucks.

My favorite shirts are threadbare at the elbows, collar, and cuffs-and after ten years of wear, are just about right. My favorite jeans all have unidentified stains and holes in strategic places (look for the hole in the cuff of my dress jeans where they got punched by the hardware wire in the hay shed). My favorite boots are mud-stained and battered, with heels that have kind of dropped off-I'm kind of like Walt in that respect. They do need a bit of attention... This all points to a dread disease of character-I am sentimental. I refuse to throw old clothes away simply because they're properly broken-in. I guess I feel a connection of spirit, especially since nobody's thrown me out... Yet.

Out of thirty-four cities and towns, you never can tell, I might be near you. So, if you want to witness my sartorial splendor in person-check out the Tour of Duty section of the website at http://www.craigallenjohnson.com/. See you soon.

All the best,

Craig

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Craig Johnson, Kindness Goes Unpunished, Sherriff Walt Longmire, western, parades, New York City, St. Patrick's Day, Penguin Books, books

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Penguin Group (USA) Authors Headline Events and Command the Spotlight at This Year's BEA in Los Angeles

BookExpo America 2008, which takes place next weekend (May 29 - June 1) in Los Angeles, once again features a number of Penguin Group (USA) authors and executives in major events and headline performances.

Lewis Black, author of Me of Little Faith (Riverhead), will headline the BEA Saturday Night benefit event in front of an audience of 2,000 book expo attendees at the Orpheum Theatre. John Hodgman, author of More Information Than You Require (Dutton) will serve as the Master of Ceremonies of the Sunday morning Book & Author Breakfast. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, author of Taking on the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era (Celebra) will speak at the Saturday Book & Author Luncheon, which focuses on political and social issues. And Riverhead's Khaled Hosseini will be honored at the Book Sense Celebration of Bookselling Reception, as he accepts the award for A Thousand Splendid Suns winning Book Sense Book of the Year. In addition, Hosseini will participate at the Book Sense Author Luncheon, which will also be attended by young readers authors Anna Dewdney, winner of the "Book Sense Honor" selection for Llama Llama Mad at Mama, Steve Kluger and Michael Reisman. Nami Mun will participate in the popular "Emerging Voices" panel, where she will read from her upcoming Riverhead title Miles from Nowhere. And Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen will host a private event for booksellers, in celebration of their upcoming Razorbill book, Influence.

 

 

» Gloria Copeland discusses her book, God's Master Plan for Your Life.

» Listen to other Penguin Podcasts.

Gloria Copeland, God's Master Plan for Your Life, Kenneth Copeland, God, religion, spirituality, Jesus, Christianity, ministry, televised ministry, television ministry, television evangelist, evangelist, Putnam, Penguin Podcast, podcast, books, Penguin Books

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For the past few days I have been reading articles about the relief operation in response to Cyclone Nargis in the New Light of Myanmar, the Burmese regime's state newspaper. Photographs show cyclone refugees sitting in neat tents, surrounded by supplies and cooking pots. Soldiers are depicted loading boxes of dried noodles onto helicopters. Generals are seen handing out donations to orderly rows of survivors. In the pages of the New Light of Myanmar, at least, the
situation is under control.

Yet, when I talk to Burmese people in Rangoon, the images I see and hear couldn't be more different. A businessman, who has just returned from delivering personal donations by boat in the worst-hit reaches of the Delta south of Laputta, showed me film footage he had taken in one village over ten days after the cyclone hit. Half of the village population had been killed by the storm and there was nothing left of the wooden houses or concrete monastery but shattered planks, rubble, and debris. The images showed blank-faced and ragged survivors, who said they had not yet received aid of any kind. Bloated corpses floated in the flooded paddy fields around their makeshift shelter. Another man, trying to help survivors around Bogalay, talked about canals choked with dead bodies and survivors with horrific injuries succumbing to gangrene. Even around Kungyangon, a more accessible Delta area closer to Rangoon, private individuals driving down to deliver donations of rice and clothes report that the road is lined for 20 miles with thousands of desperate and homeless people begging for food.

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I tend to write about characters who are younger than me. In the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books, the characters started out being sixteen and by the end were nearly twenty. In The Last Summer (of You and Me) the three main characters are in their early and mid-twenties. At readings and in interviews people often ask me why this is so. I’m not sure exactly why. But it’s a pretty fascinating stretch of life. Many if not most of the great novels of the last couple centuries are about teenagers or characters in their early twenties: Jane Austen’s novels, the Bronte novels, much of Dickens, Thackeray and so on. It’s the time in our lives when we are making critical decisions (and mistakes) about who we are going to be and whom to love. We get to take longer to figure it out this century, but it’s still a pretty dramatic period of life.

Besides being asked why I write about young characters, I am often asked how I write about young characters. How do I throw myself across the chasm of full adulthood to relive that period? I guess I don’t, really. Age is not so much a feature of your character, as the spot where you stand for a pretty fleeting time on the arc of your life. When I write about a character who is eighteen or twenty, I try to include her as she was when she was four and eleven and also as she’ll be when she’s thirty-five and seventy. When I think of my own self twenty years ago, I don’t feel like I was a different person. The circumstances in my life have changed a lot, but I don’t feel like there is any chasm to cross between me now and me then. My interior life feels very much the same.

The other explanation is that I have a deep emotional attachment to that juncture of life and haven’t quite moved on from it. I guess that’s possible too.

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» Melissa Murphy, author of The Sweet Melissa Baking Book: Recipes from the Beloved Bakery for Everyone's Favorite Treats, discusses her debut cookbook and dishes about customer favorites from her very own shop.

» Listen to other Penguin Podcasts.

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I'm going to keep this one nice and short because the old saw that a picture is worth a thousand words has never been more apropos.

I came home from book tour for Hold Tight (only one more stop and that's near my house) and it has been a wonderful couple of weeks. That's a first for me. Simultaneously, thanks again to many of you, it debuts at one in the UK. Such a thrill.

But this picture taken at Camp Eggers in Kabul... I mean, doesn't it say it all? Is there any greater accolade? I love getting emails from happy readers at harlancoben.com. They all mean something special to me. But I hold an extra special place in my heart—and I'm sure you get that—for the soldiers who are serving overseas and take the time to write.

So stay safe, guys. Thanks for the pic. You are our heroes.

Harlan Coben, Hold Tight, New York Times, best seller, mystery, Penguin Books, books , Afghanistan, Kābul, Camp Eggers, U.S. military, war

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My husband, Jacob Collins is a painter. He works downstairs and I work upstairs and we live and raise our family in between. Our work is obviously quite different, but it has been fascinating, over the years, to figure out the many things we have in common. One of them is this thing I'll call creative euphoria. It usually occurs after you've worked for many hours in a row, most often in the wee hours of the morning when there are none of the daytime rigors to check your mood, when you haven't talked to anyone other than yourself in a long while.

So in my case, my mood elevates, my heart starts beating faster, and the ideas start pouring in from every direction. I can't type fast enough to get them all down. I have so many ideas, so much intention for every word I write, that the words seem to heat up and glow. It's like I am a glassblower--as long as the glass is liquid and searing hot, the colors are intense.

The trouble is, the colors change and dim when the glass cools and hardens. I find that when I get up the next day and reread what I've written with a cool mind, the words don't glow anymore. They don't seem to contain the intensity I thought I had put into them. They just kind of sit there.

My husband describes this phenomenon as "the gremlins." He says that when he goes to sleep after a euphoric night of work, the gremlins creep into his studio and paint over all of his brilliant work and by the morning they make it just regular.

There is a feeling of frustration when the euphoria ebbs. You feel like your great work was stolen from you. But then, of course, you have to wonder whether it was ever so great, or whether you were just tired and manic enough to think so. It's like when you drink too much and you think the things you say are extremely clever, but they probably aren't.

Sometimes I think I'd like to sell my books with a blowtorch or maybe a bottle of vodka. But the torch would incinerate the book and the vodka would just give you a hangover. These are not lasting pleasures.

When you work with a sense of calm and keep your critical faculties with you, it's not as much fun at the time, but it feels a lot better in the morning.

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 Ann Brashares, The Last Summer (of You and Me), sisterhood, love, loss, friendship, Fire Island, growing up, Penguin Books, books

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Eight New Penguin Group (USA) Books Debut on The New York Time Bestseller List, and Four #1 Positions Simultaneously Owned by Penguin Group (USA) Paperback Titles for the Second Straight Week

Penguin Group (USA) achieves eight debuts on The New York Times bestseller list for the week of May 25th. On the hardcover fiction list, Phantom Prey by John Sandford (G. P. Putnam's Sons) hits at #3, while From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris (Ace) appears at #6; and The Chris Farley Show by Tom Farley Jr. and Tanner Colby (Viking) is at #16 on the hardcover nonfiction list. The Last Summer (Of You and Me) by Ann Brashares (Riverhead) is #20 on the trade fiction list; The Hollow by Nora Roberts (Jove) debuts at #1 on the mass-market list, while Shoot Him if He Runs by Stuart Woods (Signet) and Playing with Fire by Katie MacAlister (Signet) hit at #7 and #10 respectively on that same list. And finally, Such a Pretty Fat by Jen Lancaster (NAL) appears at #20 on the nonfiction bestseller list.

Penguin Group (USA) also owns four of the seven adult #1 slots once again - the eighth time this year that four or more Penguin Group (USA) titles have held #1 positions simultaneously on a single week's list. In addition to The Hollow, The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs (Berkley) holds at #1 on the trade fiction list for a second week (nineteen weeks overall), which marks the second consecutive week that the Berkley Group has owned both the #1 trade and mass-market fiction paperback books. And, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (Penguin) returns to the #1 slot on the nonfiction paperback list in its 68th week; while A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle (Plume) maintains its #1 position on the paperback advice, how-to and miscellaneous list for 15 consecutive weeks.