Happy New Year!

To sum up the end of 2010 in my “Sneak Peek at Next Year’s Bestsellers” class…

After Blindness of the Heart (discussed below), we read three more books. The second book we read was Nicole Krauss’s latest book, Great House. I am a huge fan of Krauss and think her writing is beautiful and profound. My favorite book of hers is The History of Love, and if you haven’t read it, please do. Everyone to whom I’ve recommended it has loved it. Yup, everyone.

Great House, like The History of Love, is a very intelligent and compelling book, and I recommend it as well. As one reviewer said, Krauss is “incapable of writing a bad sentence.” I can refer you for more info to the front page NYTBR review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/books/review/Goldstein-t.html

I also liked this Huffington Post review (it’s the one I quote above):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-byrne/nicole-krausss-great-house_b_747489.html

I have had the chance meet Krauss twice now. The first time was when we invited her to speak at my synagogue in suburban Philadelphia, and I was the one to pick her up at her hotel and bring her to the reading, giving us a nice long time to chat. We had a great conversation, in which I recall her talking about the challenges of being out on the road to promote a book, when, as an author, what she really wanted to do was be home and, well, write, of course. Our second meeting was a few months ago when she came back to Philly to give a talk at the Free Library of Philadelphia and we chatted a bit after the reading while she was signing books. She’s lovely and gracious, and always a very interesting and thoughtful speaker. Am I a fan, d’ya think?

You can listen to the podcast of her Free Library talk here:
http://libwww.library.phila.gov/podcast/?podcastID=604

And read more about it at my friend Susan Barr-Toman’s blog:
http://phillywordofmouth.blogspot.com/2010/10/local-event-nicole-krauss-great-house.html