Blackstone Launches Whoopi Goldberg Imprint, Beach Read Movie, Obit for Barbara Gordon, The Book Club For Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick, The Story Collector by Evie Woods, Tea, Tomes and Dragons by Maggie O'Connor, and A Town With Half the Lights on by Page Getz

Hello fellow readers! Here we are almost at the end of April, going into a nice and hopefully warm-ish May. I've been busy with so many health insurance and other issues its a miracle that I've read 4 books in 5 days. Anyway, here are some tidbits and reviews for you to read and enjoy.

 

I love Whoopi Goldberg, and I'm so excited that she's launched her own imprint. With her at the helm, I am sure they will publish a number of inclusive books in many different genres. 

Blackstone Launches Whoopi Goldberg's WhoopInk Imprint

Whoopi Goldberg, the award-winning actor, co-host of the View, and author of more than two dozen books, is expanding her partnership with Blackstone Publishing by launching her own book imprint: WhoopInk.

Goldberg "will curate the WhoopInk imprint focused on bringing fresh, diverse new talent to the marketplace, revisiting the works of beloved authors, and releasing eagerly awaited new influential memoirs," the publisher said.

Blackstone will initially acquire a selection of genre-spanning titles reflecting Goldberg's interest in "literature that is inclusive, heartfelt, richly crafted, generationally relatable, often comedic, and insightful." She will be "intimately involved in the publishing process, including selection, acquisition, cover design, and promotion," the publisher noted.

Goldberg's own future works will also be included under the imprint, including a follow-up to Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me and a nonfiction title coauthored by her longtime Whoop, Inc. business partner Tom Leonardis. Blackstone is releasing the revised and updated paperback edition of Bits and Pieces on April 14.

"I'm personally looking forward to finding new authors, working with established authors, and bringing influential voices into a curated imprint," Goldberg said. "I'm looking forward to working with Blackstone, who have been a powerhouse in the audio space and have been flourishing in print over the past years. WhoopInk will cater to audiobook lovers, like me, and get important stories into more hands and ears across the globe."

Blackstone president Anthony Goff noted that Goldberg "is well-read with exquisite taste of what defines a great book. I look forward to curating an important list of works with Whoopi, Tom, and her team as we look to impact the future of this great industry together."

 This sounds like a wonderful movie...I will have to keep an eye out for it.

Movies: Beach Read

Patrick Schwarzenegger (White Lotus) will star opposite Phoebe Dynevor in Beach Read, 20th Century Studios' adaptation of the 2020 bestselling novel by Emily Henry, Deadline reported. Yulin Kuang, co-writer of Netflix's People We Meet on Vacation, is directing from her own script, with Neal H. Moritz producing via his Original Films. Karina Rahardja will exec produce. Sarah Shepard and Catherine Hughes are overseeing for 20th.

Beach Read follows January Andrews, "a successful romance novelist who struggles with grief and writer's block after her father's death and the discovery of secrets he's long kept hidden," Deadline wrote. "While spending the summer in his Michigan beach house to prepare it for sale, she unexpectedly reconnects with Gus Everett, an author who was once her rival in college. Both creatively stuck, they agree to a writing challenge over the summer, swapping literary genres while promising that there will be no romance between them."

I remember reading this back when I was in my late teens, and being moved by all that Gordon went through with addiction. That she lived to be 90 is amazing.

Obituary Note: Barbara Gordon

Barbara Gordon, whose bestselling 1979 memoir of prescription pill abuse and a mental breakdown, I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can, was adapted into a movie starring Jill Clayburgh, died April 7. She was 90. The New York Times reported that the book "found a wide audience in an era when prescription drug abuse was far less well known than it is today, when checking into 'rehab' to kick an addiction was not nearly so commonplace, and when mental illness carried a far greater stigma in work and social life."

In 1975, when she was 40, Gordon was an Emmy Award-winning documentary writer and director at WCBS in New York, with an addiction to 30 milligrams a day of Valium, which a psychiatrist had prescribed for her anxiety. "When she told her doctor that she wanted to stop the pills, he assured her they were not addictive and instructed her to quit 'absolutely cold.' Instead of easing off the medication, Ms. Gordon spiraled quickly downward to the edge of psychosis. Unable to work, she spent months in two mental hospitals," the Times wrote.

Gordon began writing her memoir in 1977, after leaving the second hospital and discovering she couldn't find work in media. "Maybe it was stigma, maybe it was timing," she observed, "but I couldn't find a job in the business I had worked in for 20 years."

Her memoir, an indictment of American psychiatry, sold more than two million copies. She described herself as "a victim of the individual and collective ignorance of a profession that, because it is essentially unmonitored, attracts into its ranks a brand of charlatan that wouldn't dare practice in other branches of the medical establishment."

Harper & Row paid a modest $7,500 hardcover advance, but I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can was a big bestseller. Paramount paid $200,000 for the film rights and Bantam bought paperback rights for close to $500,000.

Gordon wrote two other books, the novel Defects of the Heart (1983) and Jennifer Fever (1988), a work of pop sociology about older men in relationships with younger women. Although most of her therapists had been men, Gordon also wrote in detail in her memoir about her sessions at the second hospital with a female therapist she called "Julie."

"I have a haunting, almost obsessive picture in my head, Julie," she recalled saying in one session. "Thousands of women all across the country being given pills by male doctors. Men sedating women, tranquilizing them, helping to rob them of themselves. It's obscene."

The Book Club For Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick is historical feminist literature that was by turns poignant and profound. Here's the blurb: 

By 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan is living the American woman's dream. She has a husband, three children, a station wagon, and a home in Concordia--one of Northern Virginia's most exclusive and picturesque suburbs. She has a standing invitation to the neighborhood coffee klatch, and now, thanks to her husband, a new subscription to A Woman's Place--a magazine that tells housewives like Margaret exactly who to be and what to buy. On paper, she has it all. So why doesn't that feel like enough?

Margaret is thrown for a loop when she first meets Charlotte Gustafson, Concordia's newest and most intriguing resident. As an excuse to be in the mysterious Charlotte's orbit, Margaret concocts a book club get-together and invites two other neighborhood women--Bitsy and Viv--to the inaugural meeting. As the women share secrets, cocktails, and their honest reactions to the controversial bestseller The Feminine Mystique, they begin to discover that the American dream they'd been sold isn't all roses and sunshine--and that their secret longing for more is something they share. Nicknaming themselves the Bettys, after Betty Friedan, these four friends have no idea their impromptu club and the books they read together will become the glue that helps them hold fast through tears, triumphs, angst, and arguments--and what will prove to be the most consequential and freeing year of their lives.

The Book Club for Troublesome Women is a humorous, thought provoking, and nostalgic romp through one pivotal and tumultuous American year--as well as an ode to self-discovery, persistence, and the power of sisterhood.

 I hate that the blurb writer here tries to "tone down" the feminism by calling it "sisterhood" and the book a "nostalgic romp" when there's very little "romping" or playfulness going on at all. This book provides a window into the lives of these women who are discovering themselves during turbulent societal change in 1963, the year that JFK was shot and killed in Dallas.  I loved that once they read Betty Friedan's masterpiece, that they moved on to Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Sylvia Plath and Virginia Wolfe...each woman took these messages of standing up to the patriarchy and misogyny in different ways, but each changed their lives in significant ways due to realizing that their power was theirs for the taking. The prose was spirited and the plot full of evocative characters that kept things moving rapidly. I couldn't put it down. I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Lessons in Chemistry or any other recent historical feminist fiction.

The Story Collector by Evie Woods is historical romantic fantasy that takes place in Ireland during two different eras, and is fascinating and gripping right from the first chapter. Here's the blurb: 

In a quiet village in Ireland, a mysterious local myth is about to change everything…

One hundred years ago, Anna, a young farm girl, volunteers to help an intriguing American visitor translate fairy stories from Irish to English. But all is not as it seems and Anna soon finds herself at the heart of a mystery that threatens her very way of life.

In New York in the present day, Sarah Harper boards a plane bound for the West Coast of Ireland. But once there, she finds she has unearthed dark secrets – secrets that tread the line between the everyday and the otherworldly, the seen and the unseen.

With a taste for the magical in everyday life, Evie Woods's latest novel is full of ordinary characters with extraordinary tales to tell.

'An engaging story about unsettled grief…the possibility that magic and the fairies are real is dangled tantalisingly before the reader, but not in a way that might make a sceptic roll their eyes' Historical Novel Society

Having visited Ireland 26 years ago, I can honestly say that I felt the same as the female main characters about Ireland's magical beauty. I also felt that the people were amazing, just as Anna and Sarah do, and I loved the storytelling and musical heritage that the Irish were so willing to share with Yankee tourists like me. This book is beautifully created, with gold embossing on the splendid cover, and the prose, though taut and simple, helps the fantastic plot move along at a rapid pace that never flags or gets caught in an infodump. I'd give it a B+ and recommend it to anyone who has ever been, or wants to go, to the Emerald Isle.

 

Tea, Tomes and Dragons by Maggie O'Connor is a delightful cozy fantasy mystery that, though its quite a hefty tome, will keep you on the edge of your seat. Here's the blurb: Fire-breathing librarian seeks quiet life… and cookies.

Every retirement plan has flaws. Beatrice's involves spontaneous combustion. After a small incident involving her dragonfire and a very flammable library, sixty-three-year-old Beatrice Ashcroft retreats to Emberville to run her family’s bookshop. She wants peace, pastries, and absolutely no incidents that require a fire extinguisher.

Unfortunately for her, the Ashcroft Bookshop has other plans.

Warmth hums through the floorboards. Runes shimmer across the walls. A ghostly founder sends unsolicited mail. And the town council cheerfully informs her that unless business drastically improves, the shop will be reassigned to a “more suitable custodian” by week’s end.

Her only hope? Partnering with the one person she hoped to avoid for the rest of her natural life: Celeste Moonshadow, an impeccably dressed high-school rival turned werewolf councilwoman.

Between a talking pig who insists on acting like the world’s grumpiest housecat, a teenage assistant with unpredictable moonlit magic, and a powerful ex-boyfriend who still thinks the quickest way to a dragon’s heart is through her two stomachs, Beatrice begins to suspect a truth she’s avoided for decades: maybe not all problems can be solved with dragonfire.

This cozy fantasy blends magical bookshop charm, lighthearted adventure, and found family warmth. Tea, Tomes, and Dragons offers a feel‑good mix of midlife magic, gentle mystery, and whimsical worldbuilding. 

The trade paperback copy that I bought was printed in larger type, which I appreciated, as an older reader, but it was the delicious and humorous prose and the lickety-split plot that kept me reading into the wee hours. Also, who knew that Dragons were big on pastries and sweets, like cookies? It makes sense, if you think about it, that they would have a fast metabolism that burns calories quickly, and therefore dragons, even in human form, need to snack throughout the day. But that and the smug and arrogant teacup pig (who believes he's really a cat) made the whole plot seamless and easy to read and understand. I loved it, and I loved the treasures that they uncovered, and the way that the town embraced Bea and her wee piggie. I'd give it an A- and recommend it to anyone who loves bookstore cozy mysteries and fun characters.

A Town With Half The Lights On by Page Getz  is a small-town epistolary novel that is so well written you'll be halfway through the book before you realize it. Here's the blurb: 

For readers comes a quirky and refreshing epistolary novel about a family of culture-shocked Brooklynites transplanted to Goodnight, Kansas and their fight for their unexpected lifeline: the legendary May Day Diner.

Welcome to Goodnight, Kansas.

Population: Many Kansans, three New Yorkers, and one chance to save the place they love most

With more wind chimes than residents, folks don't move to Goodnight when their lives are going well. That's why all eyes are on chef Sid Solvang and his family from the moment they turn down Emporia Road to the dilapidated Victorian they inherited.

While Sid searches for work and a way back to Brooklyn, his daughter searches for answers to the cryptic messages her grandfather left behind to save both her family and the town. But then Sid makes an impulsive purchase: the fledgling May Day Diner, an iconic eatery under the threat of the wrecking ball.

As the Solvangs search for their ticket out, they discover the truth of Goodnight: one of heart and tradition, of exploitation and greed, and neighbors you would do anything to save. And the Solvangs must navigate all of it—plus a wayward girl named Disco, a host of rambunctious alpacas, and the corrupt factory sustaining the town—in order to find their way back home...wherever that may be.

Told through diary entries, emails, school notes, and an anonymous town paper of the Lady Whistledown variety, A Town with Half the Lights On is a tender testament to the notions that home isn't just the place you live, family isn't just your relatives, and it's almost never easy to find the courage to do what's right.

 This "found family" novel had me at hello. Though I've lived in large cities (Boston) I grew up in small towns in Iowa, and I know how the two differ in terms of living a good life. People care about one another and the town in small communities, while big cities tend to be anonymous and cold, full of people who do not engage with one another unless absolutely necessary. There's a cynicism that is lacking in small towns, and none more so than this dying town of Goodnight. It falls upon the newcomers to save the local diner, and then to save another business, and finally help the town buy the big tire factory and set up a co-op, so they're all owners and all are paid fairly. There's something so satisfying about triumph against corporate greed, that I found myself cheering them on several times in the book. The prose was light and airy, and the plot swift and meaningful. I'm a big fan of epistolary books (told through letters and emails) so this one went down a treat. I'd give it a B+ and recommend it to fans of Fannie Flagg and the Mitford books.