June 29, 2011

Free Advanced Reader’s Copy of Susan Cain’s Quiet

Common Reads is feeling very generous these days, and luckily you all are the ones who benefits! We’re very excited about author Susan Cain’s upcoming book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking and we’re offering free advanced reader’s copies here!

The book isn’t officially on sale until January 2012, but the title has already created quite a lot of buzz. Cain’s incredibly insightful article, “Is Shyness an Evolutionary Tactic?” was featured as one of the most emailed articles in The New York Times Opinion Pages this past weekend.

Cain makes the point that the personality traits of introversion and shyness (two very different things, as she makes clear) are largely undervalued and negatively judged in today’s highly extrovert society.  Yet there are a surprising number of valuable assets that come with these “quieter” traits. Reading Quiet will hopefully bring us all much cause for reflection and leave us with a new outlook on embracing all personality types, quiet or loud.

Susan Cain, a self-proclaimed introvert, is a consultant to major corporations and law firms on negotiation strategies and personal presentation style. Not to shabby. Visit her website at: ThePowerofIntroverts.com.

To get your free advanced reader’s copy of Quiet, either leave a message for us here in the comment section or email us at rhacademic@randomhouse.com with your preferred shipping information.

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June 7, 2011

Free Advanced Reader’s Copy of Word Hero!

Calling all professors! We’re happy to announce that we’re offering free advanced reader’s copy of Word Hero: A Fiendishly Clever Guide to Crafting the Lines that Get Laughs, Go Viral, and Live Forever by Jay Heinrichs.

The book isn’t officially on sale until October 4th, but we wanted to offer you an early release copy to check it out first! If you or anyone you know wants to learn how to use the power of words to get people laughing or talking, you’ll want this book to use as your guide.

Author Jay Heinrichs has spent more than 25 years in publishing as a magazine writer, editor, and executive. He quite the word-mastermind and also the author of Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion. If you’d like an examination copy of Thank You for Arguing, the link is listed below the post.

Leave a message for us here in the comment section if you’d like a free copy! Or email us at rhacademic@randomhouse.com with your preferred shipping information.

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June 2, 2011

Living Half a Life

Darin Strauss, author of the power and unforgettable memoir Half a Life, has written something special for his readers that we’d like to share on Common Reads. In Half a Life, acclaimed novelist Darin Strauss recounts a tragedy and its aftermath. He explores loss and guilt, maturity and accountability, hope and acceptance. The result is a staggering, uplifting tour de force.

We are very excited to have Strauss as one of our featured speakers at next year’s FYE conference. In his following essay, Strauss gives us a powerful picture of why he finally chose, after 18 years, to write this memoir. He also explains what the clarity and healing that has come with this revealing has meant both to himself and to his readers.

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When I was 18, I was in a car accident: a girl swerved in front of my car, I couldn’t avoid her, and she died. I moved soon afterward, and so this crash and its aftermath made up  the secret I carried around for 18 years. Until I wrote HALF A LIFE.

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May 26, 2011

Roger Williams University Selects Sailing Alone Around the Room for 2011 Common Reading

Great news this morning from Roger Williams University in Bristol, Road Island – the Common Reading committee has selected Sailing Alone Around the Room for their Freshmen Read 2011 title!

Sailing Alone Around the Room, by America’s Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, contains both new poems and a generous gathering from his earlier collections The Apple That Astonished Paris, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. These poems show Collins at his best, performing the kinds of distinctive poetic maneuvers that have delighted and fascinated so many readers.

They may begin in curiosity and end in grief; they may start with irony and end with lyric transformation; they may, and often do, begin with the everyday and end in the infinite. Possessed of a unique voice that is at once plain and melodic, Billy Collins has managed to enrich American poetry while greatly widening the circle of its audience.

The previous year’s selections from Roger Williams University’s Freshmen Read program was Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains – cheers to a winning streak of great FYE picks, and many more to come!

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April 29, 2011

Spotlight on: The Other Wes Moore

Two kids named Wes Moore were born blocks apart within a year of each other. Both grew up fatherless in similar Baltimore neighborhoods and had difficult childhoods. How, then, did one grow up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader, while the other ended up a convicted murderer serving a life sentence? Wes Moore, the author of this fascinating book, sets out to answer this profound question. The Other Wes Moore is the story of two young men and the journey of a generation.

Wes Moore was a featured speaker at the Random House, Inc. Author Luncheon during the 2011 First-Year Experience Conference back in February. The video of his heartfelt and educational speech will be posted shortly – be sure not to miss it!

The Other Wes Moore explores issues of identity, race and education through unique juxtaposition. It’s no wonder the book has been adopted by many colleges and universities across the nation.

Selected for Common Reading at:
Colleges & Universities
Bay Path College (Springfield, MA)
Berry College (Mount Berry, GA)
Cabrini College (Radnor, PA)
California State University at Bakersfield (Bakersfield, CA)
Goucher College (Baltimore, MD)
Marian University (Indianapolis, IN)
Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI)
Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, VA)
Washington Adventist University (Takoma Park, MD)

One City/One Book
Everybody Reads (Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR)
One Book, One Bakersfield (Bakersfield, CA)

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April 25, 2011

5 More Colleges Leap on Acts of Faith for Common Reading

Five more schools have chosen Eboo Patel’s Acts of Faith as their common reading book selection this year! These college’s include: Colgate University of Hamilton, NY; Capital University in Columbus, OH; Loras Collage in Dubuque, IA; Amarillo College in Amarillo, TX; and Marywood College of Scranton, PA.

Acts of Faith is Eboo Patel’s remarkable account of coming of age and coming to understand what led him toward religious pluralism rather than hatred. His story is a hopeful and moving testament to the power and passion of young people, and to the notion that we find the fulfillment of our identities in the work we do in the world.

Patel was one of our featured speakers during Random House’s FYE conference in Atlanta and I was lucky enough to hear him speak. His own story is profound but more importantly his message is a call to action for universal tolerance – starting with college students. Have you read Acts of Faith, or heard anything about it? Let others know what you think by leaving a comment here!

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April 6, 2011

Transylvania University Selects The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks as their FYE 2011 Pick!

Transylvania University in Lexington, KY has selected Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for their First Year Reading Program pick in 2011. Dr. Kathleen S. Jagger, Associate Vice-President & Associate Dean of the university says The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks “was the unanimous choice and we look forward to discussions across campus of many of the issues Skloot raises in her book.”

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks chronicles the life of the woman who changed science when her cells (taken without her knowledge) began to be used in medical research. The book has become a sensation across many campuses and has been selected for Common Reading at more than 100 colleges, universities, and “One Book, One City” Reads.  Colleges that have picked the book include: Continue reading →

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March 25, 2011

Louise Steinman’s Thoughts and Connection to Japan

April 15, 1995 in Suibara, Japan

Sixteen years ago, a series of events and discoveries relating to her father’s past led Louise Steinman, author of The Souvenier: A Daughter Discovers Her Father’s War, to the doorsteps of Suibara, Japan. Steinman traveled to Suibara in 1995 to return a Japanese flag she had found among her father’s belongings inscribed to a young man named Yoshio Shimizu, fifty years after his death on a battlefield in Luzon.

In Steinman’s thoughtful and moving blog post entitled Thoughts Towards Japan, she recalls the day in April when she returned the flag to the Shimizu family and “in the middle of that beautiful ceremony in Suibara, the room began to clatter and shake. . . . An earthquake. When it was over, we cautiously smiled at one another. There. We’d been through something together.” No one expected that sixteen years later, the devastation of an enormous earthquake and tsunami would sweep Japan as it has this past month.

Steinman’s book, The Souvenir, recounts her discovery of the story behind her father’s life during his service in the Pacific War after her parents’ death, and her travels to Japan to determine the identity of Yoshio Shimizu and the origins of the flag. Read Steinman’s blog: crookedmirror.wordpress.com to discover her unlikely connection to Japan and how that has effected her thoughts on the country’s current devastation.

Steinman was a featured speaker at the 2009 First Year Experience Random House Luncheon. Click here to watch Part 1 and Part 2 of her speech on the inspiration and motivation behind her book. The Souvenir was selected as the 2006 Silicon Valley Readings for over 15 cities and also chosen by Penn State for its 2003 Freshman Year Reading Program.

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March 8, 2011

Montana State U. Students Use The Last Town on Earth to Reach Out to Women in Prison

Author Thomas Mullen’s book, The Last Town on Earth, was adopted last year as common reading for all incoming freshmen at Montana State University – Billings. Mullen had hoped that his book, which deals with important topics such as morality, making difficult choices, overcoming fear of the unknown, and hope for a better future, would relate fittingly to the lives of undergraduate students who face similar challenges – what he hadn’t imagined was that his story would find even more common-ground with the women incarcerated at Passages, a correctional institution just one mile from the MSUB campus.

Two instructors from MSUB offered a course in 2010 that included a Service Learning Project – students of the course would examine The Last Town on Earth in a joint book club with Passages residents. The main theme of “community” within both the novel as well as the book club begged the question from each woman, “what is community?”.

The learning and friendship that developed between the students and the residents of Passages, all stemming from discussion of Mullen’s The Last Town on Earth, was largely captured on camera by a small film crew that was making a documentary for an MSUB communications class – and it’s one that’s worth checking out: http://www.spotlightads.com/Demos/msub_passages.html

The project also included a visit to Passages by Mullen himself, where he met and spoke with the women of the correctional institution back in December of last year. To hear Mullen’s own account of his experience discussing The Last Town on Earth with Passages residents, check out his blog post on “My First Prison Book Club.”

So much chance and inspiration sprung out of what first started as a First Year Experience reading choice in snowy Billings, Montana, and grew into an entirely different and unforeseen community experience in a women’s prison. Just goes to show that the message of one book can cross borders in the most unexpected and terrific ways.

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February 18, 2011

Cornell University selects Homer & Langley as next FYE Fall 2011 Pick!

We’re excited to share with you that Cornell University has revealed their Fall 2011 common reading selection and it’s… wait for it… Homer & Langley by author E.L. Doctorow!

The story tells of two brothers, Homer and Langley Collyer—the one blind and deeply intuitive, the other damaged into madness, or perhaps greatness, by mustard gas in the Great War. Homer & Langley generates a range of engaging topics for discussion and exploration, including the major events of twentieth-century U.S. history from prohibition to flower children, the modern media phenomenon of “reality,” the significance of community, the creation of “trash,” and the claims of family, as well as sustainability, news, rebellion, the psychology of hoarding, and autarky.

E. L. Doctorow is a winner of the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howell Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Humanities Medal. He is one of the most visible and influential American novelists of the last forty years, and perhaps the leading figure, in the U.S. and internationally, in the development of the post-modernist historical novel.

We salute Cornell University for its bold choice of this unique fiction!

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