Friday Finds -- 1/21

This meme is hosted by Should Be Reading.

Happy Friday!! My Friday Find this week is Deep Down True by Juliette Fay. My book club read Fay's Shelter Me and absolutely loved it, so I am really looking forward to reading this book. Here is the Barnes and Noble description:

Newly divorced Dana Stellgarten has always been unfailingly nice- even to telemarketers-but now her temper is wearing thin. Money is tight, her kids are reeling from their dad's departure, and her Goth teenage niece has just landed on her doorstep. As she enters the slipstream of post-divorce romance and is befriended by the town queen bee, Dana finds that the tension between being true to yourself and being liked doesn't end in middle school... and that sometimes it takes a real friend to help you embrace adulthood in all its flawed complexity.

What is your Friday Find?

Booking Through Thursday -- 4/23

Question suggested by Barbara H:
My husband is not an avid reader, and he used to get very frustrated in college when teachers would insist discussing symbolism in a literary work when there didn’t seem to him to be any. He felt that writers often just wrote the story for the story’s sake and other people read symbolism into it.
It does seem like modern fiction just “tells the story” without much symbolism. Is symbolism an older literary device, like excessive description, that is not used much any more? Do you think there was as much symbolism as English teachers seemed to think? What are some examples of symbolism from your reading?

I do think symbolism is an older device. It seems that all the novels I read are either plot or character driven and symbolism is left behind. With that said, I asked author Anita Diamant at our last book club author chat what the symbolism of the dogs were in The Last Days of Dogtown. I really thought this was a great question, that there was some bigger message I was missing in the symbolism. Her answer was that she doesn't use symbolism in her writing. I am still a little embarrassed. So maybe symbolism is something that the reader finds even if it wasn't the intent of the author.

But there are also novels such as Shelter Me by Juliette Fay. I would think that the porch being built is a symbol of the main character trying to rebuild her life after her husband's death. Was that the author's intent or am I just seeing connections where there aren't any?

What do you think? (Want to play along? Go to Booking Through Thursday)

Talking with Juliette Fay

On Monday our book group had the wonderful opportunity to speak to Juliette Fay, author of Shelter Me. Shelter Me is the story of Janie, a recent widow with two small children, and her struggle to move forward with the help of an unlikely group of family and friends. Overall, I really enjoyed this book and so did many of my fellow book clubbers. This is Juliette Fay's first book and she is a native of Massachusetts so we were very interested to talk with her.



There were some very interesting tidbits that came up in conversation. Juliette told us that Shelter Me was not the original title. Instead the original title was En Route, Will Advise and after it was changed she methodically went back throughout the book to add the word shelter to the text to make it more cohesive. The book takes place in Pelham, Massachusetts but it wasn't until after the book was published that she found out there was a real Pelham in Massachusetts.



It was a great conversation and I am very much looking forward to Juliette Fay's next book which she is currently working on. Next month, the book club will read The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant and chat with her as well.