The World's Fastest Man - by Michael Kranish

WORCESTER — Even a century later, Marshall “Major” Taylor’s legend lingers in Worcester — his home and, in many ways, his touchstone over the turn of the 20th century. Taylor’s extraordinary and challenging life in a racially charged nation is the focus of Michael Kranish’s “The World’s Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America’s First Black Sports Hero,” published by Scribner.
The book, recording Taylor’s courage in the face of fierce competitive racism, is being released during Kranish’s appearance at 7 p.m. May 7 in the Worcester JCC, 633 Salisbury St. A multistate book tour will follow his appearance in Worcester, where Major Taylor’s career took off and where he felt most comfortable living and working.
Major Taylor Boulevard and a statue of Taylor outside the Worcester Public Library honor his memory. A bicycling association named for him commemorates his contributions with racing events. Taylor was the world’s first black champion, an outstanding competitive bicycle racer during the sport’s hottest era, from about 1890 to 1910.
“How did this obscure black man, at the height of the Jim Crow era, become a world champion? He left Indianapolis in his midteens to come to Worcester because in Indianapolis, he couldn’t join the local YMCA, which he needed to become a stronger bicyclist,” Kranish said. “That was his first taste of racial prejudice - when he realized the monster he faced.”
Told by his mentor that things were better in Worcester, he moved. Louis “Birdie” Munger, a record-breaking white bicyclist who entered into bicycle manufacturing after retirement, recognized Taylor’s competitive potential and did much to further his career. In Worcester, Taylor was able to join the YMCA.
“Worcester had been a stop in the Underground Railroad, and a lot of blacks had settled there, so it had a thriving black community when he arrived,” Kranish said. “His life provides a wonderful lens to see history at the time, how the country grew and changed. It was a period of time (1890s) at which there were practically no automobiles and horses were on the way out; people bought millions of bicycles. The transportation industry grew up around them.”
Without weighing the book down in facts or repetitious data, Kranish has written a swiftly paced journalistic narrative, rich in historical detail. “My style of writing is more of a cinematic view,” he said. “It’s not a compilation of facts but a constantly moving story that lets you see and feel the times.”
He presents some previously unknown historical materials about Taylor, using dozens of scrapbooks, letters, news articles and family memories he collected to first write a feature for The Boston Globe magazine in 2001. He later served as the Globe’s White House correspondent until 2015. At the time, he covered Sen. John Kerry’s political presidential campaign extensively. With fellow Globe reporter Scott Helman, he wrote “The Real Romney,” published in 2012. Kranish’s writing for the Globe’s 2015 series on inequality, “Divided Nation,” earned him several national awards. Because he now covers Washington, D.C., politics, he more recently wrote “Trump Revealed” (with Marc Fisher).
Kranish spent years collecting letters, interviews and documents to assemble a book that brings Taylor’s life into the forefront, beginning with the Globe article. “I interviewed his then-96-year-old daughter in Indianapolis,” he said. There, he accessed Taylor’s collected personal papers, “a lot of firsthand material. I had a lot left over after the story was published. I was very interested in his life and I began to think, maybe there’s a book here about Major Taylor.
“There was no other athlete like him. He came before Jack Johnson, Jackie Robinson and other black athletes. He was lionized in the American press and in Europe. Racism was crushing, but in the end, it just made him more determined. He felt, if he could have a fair race, he could beat anybody.”
Working on the book, Kranish traveled to Paris, where Taylor was widely known and celebrated. “Bicycle racing was huge in France. They saw him as an African American challenging the French champions, so he became a sensation. A black man in Paris.” At times, discrimination occurred there, but for the most part he was a star, and treated as such.
He pored through records about Taylor in the Worcester Telegram and The Evening Gazette. “I had to look through scrapbooks, study microfilm at libraries by searching around key dates to find things. The Worcester Spy (an abolitionist newspaper of the 19th century) was digitized and had covered him very intently. They were very pro-Major Taylor, wise about how they viewed civil rights at an important time in his career. They followed him around.” Since Taylor was widely covered across the country, Kranish found many digital records about him.
Taylor’s path was difficult, even if he made it look easy. He was a tremendous, one-of-a-kind athlete capable of beating all the opposition, all of the time. Because of his color, however, he was banned from many races and poorly treated by white competitors in the races he entered, who grouped together to force him out of first place or off the track. He sustained many injuries through the course of his career.
Despite that, Taylor had broken speed records across the bicycling industry by his mid-20s. He became a sports idol in France and later in Australia, where he was considered a monumental athlete.
While it lasted, racing made him rich, took him around the world and gained him recognition for a physical talent surpassing many. Were it not for Jim Crow, in fact, his name likely would have earned greater recognition in this country. Even white competitors had to acknowledge the champion among them, whom they strove to keep out of competition.
“At the end of the day, his story in one of inspiration and hope,” Kranish said. “He wanted his career to be remembered by young people especially, so that they would know they could overcome adversity.”
His appearance in Worcester is free. RSVP to Nancy Greenberg at ngreenberg@worcesterjcc.org or (508) 756-7109, ext. 232.
After Worcester, Kranish appears on May 8 at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, May 9 at Boston Public Library and then travels to Chicago (where Taylor lived his last couple of years and where he is buried), his birthplace of Indianapolis, New York City and Washington, D.C.

Meet Rivers Solomon, author, mother and cyborg

 In this world of changing genders and shifting genres, Rivers Solomon stands out. The author shirks simple identification by using “they” as a pronoun, instead of “he” or “she,” and writing about life in the margins, “where ‘they’ are firmly at home.” (See tweets at @cyborgndroid)
Solomon’s debut novel may intrigue book groups seeking new forms of expression and ways of looking at age-old problems, but it’s not for the faint of spirit.
Technically science fiction, “An Unkindness of Ghosts” explores in literary fashion what happens when a rocket ship transporting the people of a dying planet to another, ostensibly, becomes the center of questions about identity, race and slavery, set within the parameter of a woman’s search into her mother’s disappearance aboard the ship many years before.
Aboard the ship, dark-skinned passengers are kept on lower decks, far from the better-lodged white-skinned passengers.
“Solomon’s evocation of this society is so sharply detailed and viscerally realized, the characters so closely observed, the individual scenes so tightly structured, that the novel achieves surprising power and occasional brilliance,” writes reviewer Gary K. Wolfe in Locus magazine.
Solomon grew up around the U.S. and is living in Cambridge, England, with degrees in race and ethnicity from Stanford University and a master’s degree in fiction writing from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Austin. Variously self-described as a mother, Afrofuturist, feminist and cyborg, Solomon cites literary influences that include Ursula K. Le Guin, Alice Walker, Octavia Butler, Ray Bradbury, Zora Neale Hurston and Doris Lessing.
‘Doctor Who,’ anyone?
While we’re on science fiction, there’s a Doctor Who monthly discussion night at Annie’s Book Stop, 65 James St., Worcester, with the next meeting at 7 p.m. March 15. Owner Patty Cryan is a longtime fan of the series, the world’s longest-running science fiction serial. This month’s topic: Classic and Modern Who Antagonists — The Cybermen! Written for BBC TV by various writers, the series was conceived as an educational project.
From 1 to 3 p.m. March 17, blogger, instructor, writer, and photographer Derek Strahan will be at Annie’s Book Stop to depict Worcester of a century ago through photographs and historical descriptions. He’ll have copies of his newest book, “New England Then and Now,” which includes Worcester County locations, to sign at the event. Strahan is the author of the blog “Lost New England” as well as the book “Lost Springfield.” He teaches English at the Master’s School in Simsbury, Connecticut, and lives in Springfield. In his book, vintage photos from 100 years ago are paired with the same viewpoint photographed today.

Tribute to Cather’s writing
The annual “One Book, One Boylston” community read commemorates the 100th anniversary of Willa Cather’s “My Antonia.” Boylston Public Library is giving away copies of the book and will hold a book discussion at 6:30 p.m. March 15, with a related panel discussion of the immigrant experience at 6:30 p.m. March 21 featuring Beth Singley from Ascentria Care Alliance and Jolene Jennings from Literacy Volunteers of Worcester. At 6:30 p.m. March 29, the pioneer experience will be further illustrated with a program on frontier cooking with Ryan Beckman, historic foods associate from Sturbridge Village.

Tess Gerritsen: 'I know a secret' has a secret

"I Know a Secret" may just be the last in the popular series of Rizzoli and Isles mysteries. That's a little secret revealed during an interview in the Worcester, Mass., Telegram & Gazette Oct. 15 with author Tess Gerritsen. The author has been writing about the duo—a Boston detective and a medical examiner—across twelve novels. Their stories have been dramatized in a popular television series as well, starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander.

Released in August by Ballantine /Random House, "I Know a Secret" is another suspenseful, beautifully structured addition to the series, in which the pair confront a serial killer while Medical Examiner Maura Isles' very own family serial killer—her mother—is dying of cancer, still mean to her end. Then, there's Isles' long-term love relationship with a priest, the lingering blows of a long-ago childcare abuse scandal, and Boston Detective Jane Rizzoli's desperate attempt to save her feuding parents' marriage.

Nothing is as it seems, and Gerritsen skillfully keeps the reader guessing until the end, a prerequisite to a good suspense novel.

Yet, Gerritsen said in a recent interview, she sits down with pen and paper to write first drafts, and doesn't plan them out ahead of time. Gerritsen is 64, lives in Camden, Maine, but knows the Boston life well. She keeps it in the background as Isles and Rizzoli struggle to figure out all the puzzling aspects of their lives.

"I never plot things out ahead of time. This is my 27th book (12 in the R&I series). I start writing and see where the story goes. Sometimes it takes an abrupt left-hand turn, and that gets fixed in the third or fourth rewrite. I don't show it to anyone until it's ready. I write the first draft by hand, let the story find itself. By the end, I finally know what the book is really about. About two-thirds or three-quarters of the way, I find out who the bad guy is. I have a simple premise when it starts. As I write, new things start to pop up, just as happens with a normal (criminal) investigation. By the time I'm finished, it's there."

After working about a year on "I Have a Secret," Garritsen, a resident of Maine, has been touring with its release. She recently wrapped up a tour in the United Kingdom and is flying from city to city across the U.S. But this may be her last such tour for the series.

"I feel like I've tied up a lot of loose emotional threads that have been going on for several stories," she said. "Right now, I'm working on something completely different. After awhile, a series comes to an end. I wanted to find out whether they become happy, how Jane and Maura's lives go. The series has always been about these two women, and once they're both happy, the series will be over." She thinks that time may have come, and she anticipates returning to her new book.

She began writing mysteries because she loved them as a child (any other Nancy Drew fans out there?) and has based Rizzoli and Isles on her own experiences ("because I'm a doctor, that's fairly easy for me to research"). At the beginning, she interviewed people at Boston's homicide unit. "But not since then; I pretty much focus on the pathologist end, and my husband is a part-time medical examiner in our county in Maine."

She began writing while on maternity leave, and her first novel, "Call After Midnight," came out in 1987. Eight more followed as she dug full-time into writing. She also wrote the screenplay, "Adrift," which became a 1993 TV movie with Kate Jackson.  Her first medical thriller, "Harvest," came out in 1996.

In "I Know a Secret," the duo are again played against a conscienceless personality. "Sociopaths are out there," she said; "there's nothing you can do about that. Sociopaths have no empathy, do not care about human begins, and think of how they can use them as tools. Some people are born sociopaths; that's the way their brain works. They're just some kind of creature—like predators in the animal kingdom." She considers Warren Hoyt, whom readers and viewers will remember, one of the most evil characters she's created, because Warren is smart, and a psychopath—the extreme entity of sociopathy. "He thrives on the pain of other people; he's formidable because he's so incredibly intelligent. Evil, stupid people are not such an antagonist to worry about, but he looked at everybody else as prey."

Holly, the antagonist in Gerritsen's latest book, knows herself well. "For now, I must walk the straight and narrow," she tells readers at one point. "I must pretend to be the good girl who neither steals nor cheats … (but) I am what I am, and no one can watch me forever." Gerritsen calls Holly "a sociopath who gets by. She doesn't go out of her way to be evil, it's just that the things she does, she just goes about them without thinking."

Growing up in San Diego, the author finished undergraduate work in anthropology at Stanford before completing medical degrees at the University of California, San Francisco. "I practiced medicine for about 10 years, a lot of it part-time, because I became a mom pretty quickly. I always wanted to be a writer, even when I was seven years old, but my father encouraged me to go into medicine instead. He kept telling me there's no way to make a living as a writer, but when you're a writer you're going to keep at it." He did not live to see her success, a disappointment to Gerritsen, who said, "I wish he'd been alive long enough."

He would have seen that all the preparation formed steps to an end: pieces in a literary puzzle.

"You never know which experience is going to fit into your future," she said. "I didn't know my interest in anthropology would come up again and again in my books, or that medicine would add all the details that it has. Being a writer, you must be curious about many topics, and always be reading."

Gerritsen has always been interested in the collision of truth and nonsense. "That crazy satanic movement that went around the country … A lot of people ended up in jail based on children's strange memories of adults flying on brooms, riding tigers, etc. It spread to the U.S. and other places in the world. There was this strange idea that devil worshippers were everywhere." Elements of the scandal form a subplot in the book. "I'm fascinated by how people turn away from science and look at superstition—and all these things become the foundation of their lives," she said. "It's surprising how easy it is to let go of facts and accept fantasy."

As a writer, she gets more satisfaction out of less formulaic books.

"I had a novel, 'Gravity,' about the international space station." The novel was published in 1999, and the concept allegedly became the framework of a later movie by the same name—leading to a complicated breach of contract lawsuit, which she urges writers to check out on her web page, as a warning to all writers who sign rights away to a company.

 "I also really loved writing 'The Bone Garden.' The books I love the most, put my heart and soul into, are the ones that did not find an audience. Somehow the popular audience doesn’t seem to like them." Does this discourage her? "All the time," she said. "Every time you write a book you want it to be the very best it can be, and very often the acceptance isn't there. We just keep plugging away because we tell the stories we want to tell."

When her tour ends, Gerritsen will return to writing. She dubs her latest book a "sexy" thriller with a ghost. It's nearly done.

She is also working on a film with her son, 35, a documentary film maker. "We're making a feature documentary about the age-old relationship between humans and pigs," she said. "We're interested in why some people refuse to eat them, why some people have such negative feelings while others love their pigs. We're going to explore the strong emotions, track archeological reasons Jews don't eat pork, for instance." The reason may not be Biblical at all, she said. "There was climate change at the time. The Holy Land became a desert fairly quickly, and pigs need water."

Their first project together was a horror film, "Island Zero." She loved working with her son. "We had such a good time making a movie together, we thought we'd follow it up."

Today's creative climate lends itself to all kinds of project ideas. "It's a funny time because you don't need a publisher to be published anymore," she said; "in some ways it's harder to get attention, but in other ways it's easier. With (self-publishing) it's a lot harder to get people to pay attention to what you've just written."

Her favorite authors, by the way, share the same first name: "I'm going to plug the three Lisas," she said: "Lisa Unger, Lisa Scott and Lisa Gardner." She loves the suspense of a good mystery, rather than the heavy-action sequences of modern thrillers (She's a fan of classic horror films like "The Birds," "The Mummy" and "Them." In a good mystery, she said, "You're left worrying about what's going to happen."

Apparently, the world agrees. Her novels are award winners, published around the world and continually on the best-seller lists.

Authors, book talks dominate Fall '17

Worcester's top annual literary event will be held Oct. 26, with five guest authors at a dinner benefiting the Worcester Public Library.

A Celebration of Authors 2017's moderator Joe Cox, president of the EcoTarium, will present speakers at the 5:30- 9 p.m. event in the White Room at Crompton Collective, 138 Green St.

Guests will be celebrated authors Andre Dubus III, John Dufresne, Margot Livesey, Elizabeth Searle and Annie Weatherwax.

Dubus, author of "House of Sand and Fog," "The Garden of Last Days," "Dirty Love" and the memoir, "Townie," teaches fiction at UMass Lowell. His New York Times best sellers have won numerous literary awards. "House of Sand and Fog" became an Academy Award-nominated film starring Ben Kingsley. Dubus grew up in mill towns along the Merrimack; his books are published in more than 25 languages.

Dufresne has written two short story collections, "The Way that Water Enters Stone" and "Johnny Too Bad," and the novels "Louisiana Power & Light" and "Love Warps the Mind a Little," both New York Times Notable Books, along with "Deep in the Shade of Paradise," "Requiem, Mass.," "No Regrets, Coyote" and "I Don't Like Where This is Going." He has written two books on writing fiction. His stories have twice been named Best American Mystery Stories.

Margot Livesey wrote a collection of stories and eight novels, including "Eva Moves the Furniture" and "The Flight of Gemma Hardy." A native of Scotland, she lives in Cambridge and is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. A novel, "Mercury," was published in September 2016. This past summer, Tin House published her "The Hidden Machinery: Essays on Writing."
Elizabeth Searle has written five novels, most recently, "We Got Him," involving the Boston Marathon bombing manhunt. Previous books include "Girl Held in Home," "A Four-Sided Bed" (being developed as a feature film), "Celebrities in Disgrace," which became a short film, and "My Body to You." A stage work, "Tonya & Nancy: The Rock Opera," has been produced in Boston and other major cities. Her writing has been published in over a dozen anthologies.

Annie Weatherwax, winner of the Robert Olen Butler Prize for Fiction, has published stories in The Sun Magazine, The Southern Review and elsewhere. A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, she previously sculpted superheroes and cartoon characters for Nickelodeon, DC Comics and Pixar. She has written about the link between visual art and language for publications such as Publishers Weekly, The New York Times and Ploughshares. Her debut novel, "All We Had" (later a motion picture), was published by Scribner and was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award.

Cost of the benefit event is $100. Register on the library website, www.mywpi.org.

***

Book festivals in Concord and Boston:

The Boston book Festival is Oct. 28 at sites surrounding Copley Square; most events are free. Dozens of authors and literary personalities appear in panels, talks and workshops (there's also a daylong event for teen readers featuring Lemony Snicket and Jennifer De Leon). Participants include Claire Messud, Celeste Ng, Ha Jin, Dennis Lehane, Brunonia Barry, Geraldine Brooks, Garnette Cadogan, Tom Ashbrook, Maureen Dowd, Chris Van Dusen, Regie Gibson, Daniel Jose Older and dozens more. Details are at https://bostonbookfest.org.

Concord's Festival of Authors takes place over 17 days, mid-October into November, with talks, readings and discussions featuring Ann Hood, Gish Jen and Margot Livesey, and topics including a "Lecture for Young Readers," "Master Class for Writers," "The Story of the NFL," Memoirists on Writing the Hard Stories," a Mystery Night, and "Breakfast with the Authors." For times and details, check online at www.concordfestivalofauthors.com.

Area book groups:

Worcester Public Library has launched a new book club—the Popular Reads Café—for readers fond of popular books. Anyone is welcome to drop by at 3 p.m., Oct. 10 and Nov. 14, in the Banx Room, for discussion of popular nonfiction and fiction. Local authors are being invited in, and discussion includes news of the latest books from favorite authors. It's free, and Friends of the Library provides refreshments.

Merriam-Gilbert Public Library in W. Brookfield will hold a book group discussion of Michael Ondaatje's "The Cat's Tale," at 7 p.m., Oct. 10.

The Intrepid Readers Book Group at Douglas Library will discuss Michael Tougias’ "The Blizzard of ‘78" on Tuesday, Oct. 10, at 6:30 p.m. New England was knocked to its knees by the February storm—often referred to regionally as the worst storm of the century. Tougias' history includes photographs and chronicles the storm's progression from Cape Cod to Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts. It explains how people survived the storm by spending more than 48 hours in their cars, and how coastal homes were torn from their foundations and smashed to smithereens by the vicious surf. Call the Library 508-476-2695 for a copy of the book. New members welcome.

Contemporary book Club will meet at Barnes & Noble, Lincoln Street, Worcester, at 6 p.m. Oct. 18, to discuss David McCullough's historical account of aviation pioneers, "The Wright Brothers."

O'Connor's Books, Brews & Banter will meet at 6:30 p.m., Oct 25, to discuss "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End" by Atul Gawande. Meeting is at the restaurant, 1160 West Boylston St., Worcester.

Lancaster's Thayer Public Library Adult Book Group will meet at 6:30 p.m., Oct. 31, to discuss "His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the case of Roderick Macrae," a novel.

In Grafton, the Daytimers Book Club will meet at 1:30, Oct. 17, to discuss "The Seventh Plague" by James Rollins. The Mystery Book Club meets at 7:30, Oct. 17, to discuss "Ghost Times Two" by Carolyn Hart.

Correction: The Silent Book Club chapter in Portland, Maine, mentioned in March, is not affiliated with Longfellow Books.

Send club selections and other comments to ann.frantz@gmail.com.

Book clubs choose Fall '17 recommendations

         The fall-to-summer book season has started (yes we know some of you go all year round!), and suggestions for clubs to read during the next year are coming in.

"There was a very good book we read last year in the Leominster UU Church book group called "The Rent Collector," said one reader. "It's about a young couple struggling to survive, with a very sick child, in Cambodia, based on a true story by Camron Wright."

At Bannister Library in Brookfield, members suggest "The Invisible Thread" by Yoshika Uchida.  In Yoshiko Uchida biography, she describes growing up in Berkeley, Calif., as a Nisei, second-generation Japanese-American, and her family's internment in a Nevada concentration camp during World War II.

Ann Young, at Heywood Library in Gardner, recommends "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematorium" by Caitlin Doughty, and "A Hope More Powerful than the Sea" by Doaa Al Zamel, a nonfiction account of her escape from Syria. Club member Pat Darby recommends "Pay It Forward" by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

Off-Track Bookies in Lancaster recommends Trevor Noah's "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood."  Noah's book is by turns inspiring and amusing, told with the wit he employs as host of "The Daily News" show on Comedy Central. Born to white and African parentage, he was ostracized by people of both races at a time when apartheid still clung to the nation. He describes it this way: "You separate people into groups and make them hate one another so you can run them all."

Individual readers suggest several books: a World War II novel, "The Lilac Girls," "Waking Up White," a nonfictional exploration of racism by Debbie Irving, and Tess Garritsen's "The Bone Collector" among them. Also mentioned, Kate Moore's "The Radium Girls," about the women who were employed inside radium dial factories during the early stages of radium's introduction to the nation, and the dire impacts of radium on these "shining" women.

"The Underground Railroad," imagined as an actual railway used to transport slaves to freedom, is another novel making the rounds. Ann Young at Gardner's Heywood Library says they'll read it this year. Author Colson Whitehead (he also wrote "The Intuitionist") is now the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and several other prestigious awards for the book.

In 2017-18, Holden readers will meet frequently, says Betsy Johnson. This season, she said, "We'll tackle 'Daniel Deronda' (Eliot), 'Angle of Repose' (Stegner), 'Everybody's Fool' (Russo), and 'State of Wonder' (Patchett), as well as a few short Trollope stories.  We meet weekly, with a few breaks, so we digress, but always in pertinent ways."

FSU, Leominster visit 'Girls of Atomic City'

On Tuesday, Sept. 26, Leominster Public Library readers participated in the Fitchburg State University discussion of "The Girls of Atomic City," a selection that is popping up in book club suggestions and is sure to stimulate conversation.
This program will also be offered at Fitchburg Public Library on at 6:30 p.m., Oct. 17.

 Professor Rob Carr, of the FSU Department of Communications Media, will moderate a discussion as part of the university's 2017/18 community read. Deborah Kiernan wrote the book, a true story of the top-secret World War II town of Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the young women brought there unknowingly to help build the atomic bomb. Registration is required. Free copies of the book are available to registrants and can be picked up at the Information Desk at Leominster Public Library. For more information call 978-534- 7522, ext. 3.

Self-published books a mixed bag, but don't count them out!

Books by self-published authors are a mixed bag, and members will have to sort out their thinking as to what kind of books they want to read, and how perfectly edited they are. You could find a diamond in the rough … or not. Writers at every level are self-producing books.

As e-publishing gains strength—and I think it has—editors and formatters are joining the mix, offering their services to individuals who really want what they write to be at its best. I welcome that from the bottom of my iddy biddy pinch-y editor's heart.

A caution: There's a big difference between an individual self-publishing, and books produced by small, independent publishers or groups that self-publish their members' work. "Indies" are usually professional, well executed and edited.

No, we're talking lone rangers here. And here's the rub: I generally find them under-edited and over-written. Too little fix-finding and too much detail, repetition, confusing points of view and wandering prose. Poorly laid out too, which gives off a stench of amateur publishing.

But if you find a book you believe your group might like, or even if you'd just love to have a local self-published author show up at your book club meeting and talk about what he or she is doing and how, consider these points:

* Is the story good? Does it keep your interest, feed you ideas, leave you feeling changed or enlightened? Is it unique, such as an account of something only that particular writer could tell? More importantly, is it something the group would enjoy discussing?

* Does the writer or the lead character have a strong, interesting voice?

* Is it a satisfying read? Can you get through it without distracting errors that make you wish for a red pencil? Does it flow? Does it stick to the main characters and not veer off in different directions?

* Is it supported by any organization or institution that adds legitimacy to the author's effort? Read the copyright page carefully. Is there an editor on board? Check the author's website, if there is one, to see what else the author has written.

* Google the book title to see if you can find reviews. There are customer reviews for many books at goodreads.com and amazon.com. It's a good idea to read these.

* Typos—a moniker for print errors—are annoying. Outright errors of fact or knowledge make me doubt an author. Regardless, I look for a quality story peeking from beneath the clouds of confusion. If it's there, I might finish the book.

There's a world of possibilities. After all, Mark Twain did it on his own, though he was an accomplished newspaper columnist. Consider—not everyone gets the editing treatment a star writer might receive. I've read quite a few independent authors, and some are pretty good. Moreover, most of them—after paying an editor and finding a publisher—struggle to get their book out there, so your club's interest would be a boost to them.

Dave Eggers, whose McSweeney's magazine/publishing house has created beautiful new ways to publish, chose self-publishing recently. After his awarded traditionally published books, "Zeitoun" and "A Heart-Breaking Work of Staggering Genius," he chose to self-publish "A Hologram for the King." Others are realizing there's more money to be made if they can get the public to buy their book without having to go through the traditional agent-editor-publisher grind. But Eggers is in a class of his own: award-winning, himself an editor/writer, he already has a readership audience.

It's a busy world, and few have the desire to read a book that's not ready for prime time and never will be. So do your homework, and hope to find a winning book.

***

Oprah's newest book choice:

Oprah Winfrey, maven of perhaps the nation's most famous book club, has picked a new one for summer: "Behold the Dreamers" by Imbolo Mbue.

Oprah's description: "It's got everything that's grabbing the headlines in America right now. It's about race and class, the economy, culture, immigration and the danger of the us-versus-them mentality." All of that wraps around a story of family love and the pursuit of happiness.

I like Oprah's instincts. She seeks out quality writing and themes, plus a good story. Even better, "Behold the Dreamers" is available in paperback and as an e-book.