You may not have heard of the 2006 title Plum Wine, but many people in North Carolina have, because of one enthusiastic bookseller.  The book might have been lucky to sell out its 1,000 copy print run, says the author Angela Davis-Gardner. Instead, it went through seven printings, selling a total of 57,000, thanks to the efforts of Nancy Olson, owner of Quail Ridge Book in Raleigh, N.C., as reported in a story in the Charlotte News & Observer.

This is the kind of story that makes my day (one of the many reasons to read Shelf Awareness, which features it today). To make it even better, an anonymous librarian also plays a role in the story. When author Davis-Gardner was unsuccessfully trying to sell the book, she left part of the manuscript on an airplane. The librarian found it and wrote to Davis-Gardner to tell her how much she liked it. This ray of hope gave the author the needed inspiration to renew her efforts to get it published.

As a result of this success, Plum Wine, originally published by the U. of Wisconsin Press, was picked up for publication in trade paperback by the Dial Press (a division of Random House). Davis-Gardner now has a contract for her next book and can finally take the time off to write it.

The book, as described by the Charlotte News & Observer, sounds like a perfect book club selection (in fact, Cuyahoga County has included it in its collection of bookable discussion sets);

[the book] focuses on an American woman, Barbara Jefferson, living in Tokyo in the 1960s. Jefferson’s surrogate mother Michi dies, leaving her a collection of plum wine bottles wrapped in rice paper covered with calligraphy that details Michi’s life from the early 20th century through World War II. Barbara works with a translator to unravel the plum wine writings, and so reveal a story of human relationships and the horrors of war.

It was starred in PW and reviewed in the Baltimore Sun and the Charlotte Observer (of course).

Plum Wine

Angela Davis-Gardner

• Paperback: $13.00; 352 pages
• Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback (March 27, 2007)
• ISBN-10: 0385340834
• ISBN-13: 978-0385340830

The ever-popular readers club title, Memory Keeper’s Daughter, premieres as a Lifetime movie on Sunday, April 12th, 9 pm EST, with repeats on April 13th at 8pm and April 14 at 9pm. The movie stars Dermot Mulroney (My Best Friend’s Wedding), Gretchen Mol (The Notorious Bettie Page) and Emily Watson (Angela’s Ashes).

Lifetime’s Web site includes an interview with the book’s author, Kim Edwards. Penguin has also created a special site, with a podcast from Edwards.

“The Other Boleyn Girl’s a ripping yarn: not real history,” writes historian Antonia Fraser in The Guardian, commenting on the movie that opens on Friday. In addition to pointing out the movie’s historical inaccuracies, she notes some howlers from earlier films (apparently, Genevieve Bujold playing Anne in Anne of a Thousand Days exclaims, “Oh Henry, you great big royal booby!”) and talks about what makes a film rise “to the heights of the Great Historical Movie.”

As to source material for the film, she says “Obviously you can’t expect a film taken from an historical novel [Philippa Gregory's book of the same title] to be accurate since historical novelists, by definition, are using their imagination. ” And, indeed, the book itself has been challenged for inaccuracies (Wikipedia’s entry outlines the variations from historical fact).

She also mentions George MacDonald Fraser’s (author of the Flashman series) 1988 book (now out of print), The Hollywood History of the World, in which he contrasts history as shown in films with what actually happened.

The Hollywood History of the World:

From One Million Years B.C. to Apocalypse Now

• Paperback Reprint
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (September 2, 1989)
• ISBN-10: 0449904385
• ISBN-13: 978-0449904381

All of this is good fodder for book clubs and RA discussions.

Sony Pictures and Simon and Schuster are running a book club contest. The ultimate prize is a trip to London and an event with The Other Boleyn Girl author, Philippa Gregory.

Today’s “Inside Buzz” column in USA Today hails the newly released trade paperback edition of The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs, now #20 on their list (up from #110 last week) as “one of the first hits of the new year.” They attribute the popularity to book clubs and a movie version, starring Julia Roberts, scheduled to release in June.

USA Today likens Knitting Club to other books that have had much greater success in trade paper than in hardcover — like Eat, Pray, Love and Memory Keeper’s Daughter. You may want to consider adding more before the deluge.

The book is not yet on the NYT list.

Fans of The Book Reporter Network (which includes ReadingGroupGuides.com as well as several other useful books sites) and its founder Carol Fitzgerald (some of you probably feel you already know her from her chatty and personable blog) can catch her in person at MidWinter as she moderates a program on Reading Groups (see below).

The program also features “Harper’s own Book Club Girl, Jennifer Hart.” The Book Club Girl blog was profiled in the Sept. 21st issue of the e-newsletter for booksellers, Shelf Awareness. Launched in April,  it was created primarily to promote HarperCollins titles, but also features books from other publishers. As Hart tells Shelf Awareness, “we knew if that was all the site had it wouldn’t gain the trust of consumers.”

Below is the copy from ALA, slightly amended (a few items have changed since the program was originally published):

Books Build Friendships
Monday, January 14, 8:00-9:00 am
Pennsylvania Convention Center 201 B/C

A conversation about books, reading groups, and relationships that are formed and strengthened through the experience of reading, moderated by Carol Fitzgerald (pictured) and featuring:

Harper’s own Book Club Girl, Jennifer Hart (VP/Associate Publisher at Perennial, Ecco),

Shireen Dodson is Special Assistant to the Director, Office of Civil Rights attaché U.S. Department of State. Her second book, One Hundred Books for Girls to Grow On, offers a selection of both new and classic titles.

Victoria Lustbader is a former editor for both Harper & Row and Berkley/Putnam, who became an author herself with her first novel, Hidden, published in June of 2006 by Forge Books.

Elizabeth Noble is the author of the bestsellers The Reading Group, published in the UK in 2004 where it went straight to the number-one position in The Sunday Times’s Fiction Bestseller list, and 2005’s The Friendship Test.

Carol Fitgerald spent 17 years at Mademoiselle magazine in Promotion and Marketing, and is founder of BookReporter.com, a book review and information site.