For his interview with Reading Group Choices, Adrien Goetz talks about the lure of mysteries, what inspires him at the Louvre, why the past is present (and future), and why useless pursuits are the best ones to follow…

Reading Group Choices: In Villa of Delirium, Achilles returns to Kérylos decades after he left it, in search of a hidden treasure. You’ve also written a series of novels that revolve around art-inspired mysteries. To discover the past, it seems, is to engage in a mystery. Can you speak about that connection?

Adrien Goetz: I love mysteries, to find the missing piece, to solve puzzles. Villa of Delirium is not a crime novel, of course, but this villa is a setting which lends itself to this type of investigation.

RGC: Achilles remarks on the childlike energy and excitement with which the Reinach brothers (and Gustave Eiffel) launched their grand projects. Do you feel that way about novel writing?

AG: In all modesty, yes, you’ve got it right. Constructing a novel is like building a house just as you want to, where you alone reign, with the need to invite everyone there once it will be finished.

RGC: One recurring notion in the novel is the pleasure of the useless. Learning ancient Greek, for example, is all the better for not being practical. Theodore Reinach tells Achilles that “it is precisely with what serves no purpose that one achieves great things”. Has that idea been a guiding principle in your own pursuits?

AG: But you intuit all! I’m trying to teach this idea to my students right now at the Sorbonne: to always privilege the useless, to interest oneself in what isn’t “on the syllabus”, to read for pleasure and forget the lists of books that are hard to digest… They think I’m joking!

RGC: Given your knowledge of the Louvre, in particular as editor of its quarterly magazine, Grande Galerie, what spirit or frame of mind would you advise someone to assume as they visit? Where would we find you among its galleries?

AG: Right now there is a gallery that I like very much and which is one of the least visited in the museum. It’s the gallery of Baouît, where an Egyptian church from the paleo-Christian era has been constructed, a very poetic and very beautiful place. It’s there that the action of my new novel begins, an historical crime story this time, Intrigue in Egypt, which has just been published by Grasset. At the Louvre, let yourself be guided by your inspiration and have confidence in chance, and above all come back. Each time, I discover something!

RGC: Can you talk about the interplay of fact and imagination, and what the fictional character of Achilles helps us learn about the historical figures of the Reinach brothers? Did you feel particular pressure when writing about the Reinachs, Gustave Eiffel, or any of the other real-life artists and cultural icons who appear in the novel?

AG: I wanted to place them at a bit of distance. I had to be an external observer which watches, not understanding everything, and makes hypotheses. I didn’t want to lend to the Reinachs feelings which wouldn’t be correct. Thanks to Achilles, I put myself in the skin of a young man a little naive who is fascinated by what he discovers…

RGC: Given your life’s work and extensive scholarship in the field of art history, do you feel more at home in the past than in the present (or future)?

AG: The past is always here, with us, and hopefully for the future. A novel of Victor Hugo is not a book of the past, it is present in our library. The Villa Kérylos is not a place of the past, it exists today, since we visit it, we enter it, we go there with friends, and where maybe we even make plans… I feel myself at ease there, in our time.

RGC: Villa of Delirium will introduce Anglophone readers to your work as a novelist. Do you anticipate any particular ways in which these readers will respond to the novel? Do you have thoughts about the relationship between a young country like the United States and antiquity?

AG: In the U.S., there are extraordinary homes everywhere that have beautiful stories. I think that the Americans have this sensibility. I trembled when visiting Monticello or the beautiful villas of Newport. Renaissance homes, Trianons, Roman villas have been built in the U.S. The most celebrated and most beautiful are those of J. Paul Getty at Malibu, a Villa Kérylos from the 1970s.

RGC: Forgery versus authenticity is a recurring subject in the novel, most notably in the controversy surrounding the Oblia tiara, which threatens the Reinachs’ reputation. What can the shifting definitions of “real” and “fake” in relation to objects of the past teach us about the current era of fake news and mistrust in information?

AG: It’s one of the subjects of this book, indeed. It’s the question that I would like for visiters to ask themselves when they visit an historic monument: when was what we see really built? In another of my novels, which takes place at Versailles, this theme was already central. The tiara is an evil twin of the villa. I had the chance to hold it in my hands, in the storage of the Louvre. It is truly “too beautiful to be true”, an incontestable masterpiece… from the 19th century!

RGC: The novel makes clear how the First World War brought a blunt, modern end to romantic thinking. Is some of that innocence and idealism recoverable?

AG: In books, perhaps, at least, and it is just as beautiful…

RGC: Theodore Reinach tells his wife that his studies and architectural projects will allow him “to enter the minds of the ancients”. Has your work with art given you similar access? And if so, what have you learned?

AG: Theodore builds his house also so that his wife, his children, can enter his mind. He’s a lonely soul, who grew up locked away in a library. It’s not only a metaphor. We have all felt during our studies these moments where it is difficult to open ourselves to others. Maybe because we are too deep in the spirit of another time, in the understanding of a mathematic or philosophical question. I wanted to try to make this felt to my readers. Everyone at one time has stopped themselves to dream at Pompeii, in Rome, before the Temple of Dendur transported to the Metropolitan Museum, or at the summit of the Empire State Building. These places put us in communication with other eras, they permit unique moments of meditation, of admiration, of sharing! One can experience love stories across centuries when entering these places conceived by the minds of the past. It is what the Romantics knew at the time, when the “poetry of ruins” kindled the spirit.

RGC: Could you have predicted you would write a novel based around Kérylos during your first visit to the villa?

AG: As soon as I entered there, I felt good vibes, and I knew that this house had a thousand things to tell…

Thank you for your questions. They are a true reward for an author !

Read more about Adrien’s novel Villa of Delirium.

Take a spellbinding virtual visit of the Villa Kérylos.

Browse all of the great author interviews on our blog, including other French authors such as Antoine Laurain and Timothée de Fombelle!

Photo Villa Kérylos: Christophe Recoura – CC BY-SA 3.0
Photo mosaic: Hélène Grenier – CC BY-SA 3.o

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October Selections

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Out of Line by Barbara Lynch

This Is Happiness by Niall Williams

Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roper

Julian at the Wedding by Jessica Love

Sitting Pretty by Rebekah Taussig

Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting

Evelyn Del Rey Is Moving Away by Meg Medina

The Distance by Ivan Vladislavić

The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland by Nicolai Houm

The Animal Gazer by Edgardo Franzosini

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab

Fing’s War by Benny Lindelauf

Stories I Forgot to Tell You by Dorothy Gallagher

Dark Blue Winter Overcoat by Sjon & Ted Hodgkinson

Why We Can’t Sleep by Ada Calhoun

The Wangs Versus the World by Jade Chang

Diamond Doris by Doris Payne

Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton

You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here by Frances Macken

We’ve got all of our Book a Day picks month-by-month on the blog!

The post Book a Day: October Reading List & Author Chats appeared first on Reading Group Choices.

September Selections

Intimations by Zadie Smith

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam

The Wright Sister by Patty Dann

Just Us by Claudia Rankine

What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez

Somebody Give This Heart a Pen by Sophia Thakur

The Wrong Way to Save Your Life by Megan Stielstra

The Boat Runner by Devin Murphy

Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris

A Girl Is a Body of Water by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

The Paris Secret by Natasha Lester

Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller

The Book of CarolSue by Lynne Hugo

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty

Sadie by Courtney Summers

Swimming Lessons by Lili Reinhart

The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling

Tidal Flats by Cynthia Newberry Martin

The Paris Children by Gloria Goldreich

Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal

We’ve got all of our Book a Day picks month-by-month on the blog!

The post Book a Day: September Reading List & Author Chats appeared first on Reading Group Choices.

August Selections

If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan

Lakewood by Megan Giddings

The Book of Atlantis Black by Betsy Bonner

The Woman in Red by Diana Giovinazzo

The Satapur Moonstone by Sujata Massey
View our Facebook live chat with Sujata

Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls
View our Facebook live chat with David!

Vesper Flights by Helen MacDonald

Austen Years by Rachel Cohen

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

Grand Theft Horse by G. Neri

Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li

Little Wonder by Sasha Abramsky
View our Facebook live chat with Sasha!

Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad

The Son of Good Fortune by Lysley Tenorio

You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson

When We Were Vikings by Andrew David MacDonald

A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cossé

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

No Ashes in the Fire by Darnell L. Moore

With or Without You by Caroline Leavitt
View our Facebook live chat with Tami!

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

Evicted by Matthew Desmond

Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes

We’ve got all of our Book a Day picks month-by-month on the blog!

The post Book a Day: August Reading List & Author Chats appeared first on Reading Group Choices.

March Reading List

View our March selections, including these great titles and more…

April Reading List

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May Reading List

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June Reading List

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July Reading List

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August Reading List

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September Reading List

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October Reading List

View our October selections, including these great titles and more…

The post Welcome to Book a Day! appeared first on Reading Group Choices.

July Selections

The Darwin Affair by Tim Mason
View our Facebook live chat with Tim!

On These Magic Shores by Yamile Saied Méndez

Our Riches by Kaouther Adimi

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

How to Disappear Completely by Ali Standish

Scorpionfish by Natalie Bakopoulos

Members Only by Sameer Pandya

The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs

Rockaway by Diane Cardwell
View our Facebook live chat with Diane!

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Circe by Madeline Miller

In the Neighborhood of True by Susan Kaplan Carlton

Becoming Duchess Goldblatt by Anonymous

Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford

Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur
View our Facebook live chat with Adrienne!

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Citizen by Claudia Rankine

Costalegre by Courtney Maum

American Street by Ibi Zoboi

Upstream by Mary Oliver

The Good Luck Stone by Heather Bell Adams

Like Vanessa by Tami Charles
View our Facebook live chat with Tami!

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Splash! by Howard Means

Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway

The Butterfly Lampshade by Aimee Bender

The Lives of Edie Pritchard by Larry Watson
View our Facebook live chat with Larry!

Big Friendship by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman

If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan

Lakewood by Megan Giddings

We’ve got all of our Book a Day picks month-by-month on the blog!

The post Book a Day: July Reading List & Author Chats appeared first on Reading Group Choices.

For her interview with Reading Group Choices, Tsui talks about lost water arts, equal access to pools, and her dream swimming destination…

Reading Group Choices: There is so much interesting research in this book. What was your research process like?

Bonnie Tsui: Incredibly varied. I dug into historical archives, interviewed paleontologists at their labs, traveled to Japan, Iceland, and elsewhere. I loved every minute of it.

RGC: There are a few central characters and settings: Gudlaugur Fridporsson, Kim Chambers and Jay Taylor, for example. We feel that any of them could have been developed into their own book! How did you choose which would become central? Was there anyone you left out that you wish you could go back and include?

BT: I really enjoyed most every person I spoke with for this book, and so I tried very hard not to be too precious or sentimental when making editorial decisions. In the end, those main characters you mention were so clearly central — especially after I spent more time with them — that it wasn’t too hard to decide whose stories to spotlight and whose to trim for the purpose of narrative cohesion.

RGC: Some of the topics you present, such as the art of Nihon eiho, open vast new worlds for readers who are unfamiliar with them, and are rich enough to inspire their own books, novels, and further study. Were these subjects already known to you before writing the book, or discoveries?

BT: Nihon eiho was such a rich and delightful discovery for me, and I continue to be amazed that more people don’t know about the Japanese swimming martial art — not just internationally, but within Japan itself! The philosophical principles attached to various strokes and techniques continue to inspire me with how much they tilt toward whole personhood in swimming — it’s taught as not just a bodily exercise, but a spiritual and mental one.

RGC: You refer to the book Contested Waters and provide a brief history of public and private swimming pools and clubs. You also include your own experience swimming at a pool that was more racially diverse than your school and other activities. Today there is still a large racial disparity in the sport of swimming, and even its simple enjoyment. Can you talk about steps you’d like to see to increase equal access and greater diversity when it comes to swimming?

BT: I would love to see universal swimming lessons as part of public school education in the United States — I’ve seen that in several other countries, and it would go a long way toward closing that legacy racial gap in swimming ability and access.

RGC: What thoughts do you have about any long-term impacts of COVID and confinement on how we incorporate swimming into our lives? What has been the impact on your own practice and habits? Have you continued to swim in the bay?

BT: I’ve shifted my practice almost entirely from the pool to open water — swimming in San Francisco Bay, surfing in the Pacific. It takes a little more time and effort to stay dedicated, but for me it’s more than worth it for my well-being. I feel for those for whom open water swimming is not an option, and I wish them a speedy return to the pools near them.

RGC: In terms of structure, how did you decide to separate the book into parts? 

BT: Once I decided on the question of Why We Swim being posed in the title, all the stories really did easily sort into five different ways we can answer that question: Survival, Well-Being, Community, Competition, and Flow. I think the structure works because there’s a natural progression from beginning to end, and yet the themes are all related and run together in some way.

RGC: You have had the fortunate opportunity to swim in a number of beautiful locations around the world. What is the number one place you still want to swim?

BT: I would love to swim in Hearst Castle’s Neptune Pool before I die. It is just such a crazy baroque creation, and I think it would be pretty extraordinary to know what it feels like to be in that pool.

We’ve got more great author interviews on our blog, including other nonfiction writers like Megan Stielstra and Robert Kurson!

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For her interview with Reading Group Choices, Graudin talks about the symbolism of wolves, championing the female “Hero’s Quest”, and what history teaches us about racism and injustice…

Reading Group Choices: Did you know from the outset that Wolf by Wolf would have a sequel? If so, why did you know you wanted it to be two books instead of one? And do you have plans to revisit the characters in a third volume?

Ryan Graudin: The books were sold to my publisher as a duology, so yes, I had the sequel in mind from the get go. I didn’t really consider it a sequel when I was plotting the series—more like the second volume of a story that was too big to fit in a single book. As for a third book, I often find myself missing Yael’s voice and while I know where she goes after Blood for Blood, I’m not sure it’s enough of a story to justify another novel. My motto for future projects is never say never though, so… we’ll just say a third installment is unlikely.

RGC: The wolves are an important symbol in both books. How did you decide to use wolves? 

Graudin: In most stories, wolves are painted as one-dimensional creatures: evil predators. And yes, it’s true that wolves hunt and kill, but if you take the time to study their behaviors, you’ll find that they’re affectionate creatures who form strong bonds with their pack members.

This duality resonated with me when I was drafting Wolf by Wolf. World War II has been well-mythologized, and I believe one of the reasons people are so fascinated with this historical conflict is because of how it frames humanity. Both the worst and best sides of our nature emerged during that era. Acts of unspeakable evil were carried out by Hitler and the SS, while others, such as Sophie Scholl, sacrificed their lives to protect people who could not protect themselves.

Wolves were Hitler’s favorite animal, mostly because of their “Big Bad Wolf” mythos. He lauded them as the “purer” warrior form of dog and took great pride in the fact that Adolf meant “noble wolf” in Old High German. Those in his innermost circle frequently called him ‘Wolf’ and one of Hitler’s Eastern front headquarters in Poland was named the Wolfsschanze (or Wolf’s Lair).

My choice to use wolves as a symbol for Yael’s pack—or the people from her past whose stories guide her forward—was an ode to the duality of human nature and free will. During times of conflict and crises, we can choose how we respond. Are we predators or pack members? Do we fight to destroy or do we fight to save? All of us have the capacity for both. It just depends on “which wolf we feed.” (To reference the two wolves inside of you legend.)

RGC: Names seem to hold important meanings and value for each character. How did you choose the characters’ names in the books? 

Graudin: I’m a sucker for allusions. Yael’s name is a nod to Jael from the Book of Judges, a woman who saved the nation of Israel by driving a tent peg through an enemy general’s temple. Miriam and Aaron-Klaus are references to Moses’s siblings in the Book of Exodus.

I’m also a sucker for the meanings behind names. Löwe (Luka’s surname) means lion and Wolfe (Adele and Felix’s surnames) means… well, wolf. Geyer means vulture. The list goes on. I also try to find names that fit a character, sounding exactly the way I envision them in my head.

RGC: The novels present a female undertaking a traditionally male journey. Was this intentional? Have you received responses from female readers who identify with the main character because of this role?

Graudin: I’ve always been drawn to books where the “Hero’s Quest’’ features a heroine, so it never occurred to me to write anything else! As a young girl, I hungered for books that affirmed that I too could go on an adventure and have a story worth telling. I’ve certainly had a lot of feedback from readers who relate to Yael. Many of them are female, but what I find interesting is that Wolf by Wolf has become a book that teachers and librarians offer to “reluctant readers” (who are, more often than not, teenage boys). It’s the motorcycle race—the traditional male journey—that draws these boys in, but as they keep reading, they too find themselves relating to Yael.

Obviously, this thrills me! Female-centric narratives deserve a wide readership—a small, but important step in addressing misogyny and sexism.

RGC: How did you begin to tackle the historical research for the book? Did you already have a pretty robust knowledge about the Axis powers and World War II, or was a lot of the information and detail new to you when you started writing the books? Was there anything in particular that was a surprise or shock for you to learn?

Graudin: Thanks to a father who loves history, years of independent reading, and college courses, I had a good baseline knowledge of World War II. But creating this alternate history took a much deeper dive into how the Nazi party operated. I started by reading William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich from cover to cover. It’s an incredibly thorough account, beginning before Adolf Hitler’s birth and ending with a detailed account of Hitler’s vision for the world, had he won the war. This was a good springboard for the rest of my research, which spanned everything from books and documentaries to shooting WWII pistols at a gun range.

I love writing stories based on history, because the past is, more often than not, stranger than fiction. For example, did you know that the Volkswagen Beetle was the brainchild of Adolf Hitler? Yep. The car we associate with peace and love and hippies was designed by the leader of the Third Reich. He wanted a “people’s car” (which is the literal translation of Volkswagen), and personally helped produce the Beetle.

RGC: Along with your historical research, did you also spend a lot of time researching motorcycles? Is there a specific connection you have with motorcycles? How did you choose the specific motorcycle for the race?

Graudin: One of the inspirations for Wolf by Wolf was Long Way Round, a BBC miniseries documentary that follows Ewan McGregor and his friend Charley Boorman on a motorcycle journey from London to New York via the Road of Bones in Siberia. This trip is vast and beautiful and, at times, harrowing. The road is filled with mud pits, river crossings, navigational issues, and encounters with strangers. There’s so much that could go wrong! Watching it, I thought to myself, this would be a great concept for a YA novel.

Motorcycles also fit into Wolf by Wolf’s historical context. There was an entire branch of Hitler Youth devoted to riding and caring for motorcycles (the Motor-Hitlerjugend or Motor-HJ) and given Joseph Goebbels’s love of propaganda and fanfare, a competition like the Axis Tour isn’t actually that far-fetched.

When I was writing the first draft, my husband and I visited a dirt-biking park in the middle of South Carolina. Having never operated a motorbike before, I went from knowing absolutely nothing to zooming through forests and sand pits in a day! It gave me a taste of what I was putting Yael through…bruises and scrapes and burns and eventual saddle-soreness!

RGC: Many characters in the book take great personal risk to help the main character. Can you talk about what compels people to take such risks? Who have been your own helpers and mentors?

Graudin: I think this question ties back to my thoughts about the duality of human nature, and how—in a time of crises—some people react destructively while others act selflessly. Which way someone goes, I believe, is the result of “which wolf” that person has “fed” throughout their lives. The good or the evil. This is why I seeded in Yael’s backstory the way I did: it helps readers understand why she’s making her present choices.

As for my own mentors—my parents have been a big one. My mother, especially, took great pains to raise me as a critical thinker. She took me to the library every week to instill a love of reading, she worked extra hospital shifts to ensure I had the best possible education, and she kept working these shifts even when she decided to homeschool me for a few years. Her work ethic and compassion made me the writer I am today.

I also have to give teachers their due credit. Throughout my years in school, I had countless educators who went the extra mile to help me think critically and hone my creative voice.

Teachers and parents have some of the hardest, most rewarding jobs in the world. Children are impressionable. They mirror the behavior they see around them. As a new-ish parent myself, I want to help my daughter “feed” the “good wolf.” I want her to grow up to be a compassionate, creative critical thinker.

And so the cycle goes…

RGC: Loss is such a large part of the book, as it is such a large part of growing up. What loss was the hardest for you to write about? Was loss something you struggled to accept growing up?

Graudin: As a child, I hated change: moving houses, switching schools, saying goodbye to friends.

All of this paled by comparison when my mother was diagnosed with Grade 4 Astrocytoma, a brain tumor that had a very low survival rate. I was eighteen when she first got sick, and even though she went into remission after several surgeries, radiation, and chemotherapy, the fallout from these treatments caused almost more damage than the tumor itself. Over the next fourteen years my mom experienced a slow loss of mobility and language, among other things. Walking this path with her and trying to navigate the strange grief of losing your mother without having actually lost her yet, was something from that informed one of the flashbacks in Wolf By Wolf. Yael’s (brief) estrangement from her mother before she dies was told through this lens.

In hindsight, that’s probably what made the scene such a tough one to write.

RGC: What draws you to the idea of “what could have been,” both in writing and in life? 

Graudin: Studying history, traveling the globe, and trying to see hints of magic in everyday life have been my biggest inspirations. The what if question helps me take the ingredients I gather on these ventures and grow them into a book-sized idea. I think it’s also a natural side effect of being a perpetual day dreamer. I’ve never not thought this way, and I feel incredibly grateful that I’ve found a job where I can capitalize on this!

RGC: The skinshifts allow Yael to take on other’s appearances, and highlights ideas of racial identity and superiority. It challenges the reader to think about how we may judge others, and how society judges on the basis of physical appearances and race still today. What do you hope readers take away or understand about racism after they’ve read the books? What action do you wish they would take upon reading?

Graudin: I hope they read more. Wolf by Wolf was always intended to serve as a gateway book, to draw in reluctant readers and transform history for those who’ve found the subject boring. This is a sentiment I hear a lot, unfortunately, and it’s understandable if you’ve only been exposed to lackluster teachers and textbooks.

History is full of lessons. Ones humanity has been slow to learn. Racism has plagued our society for a very long time, and it’s important for us to understand just how pervasive it is—how systems we’ve come to accept as default are actually grown out of intense prejudice and injustice. To begin uprooting them, we have to understand how deep they go. We also need to approach this work with open hearts. Hearts that are willing to listen and learn. Hearts seeded with empathy and cultivated by education.

Obviously, reading is a key component to this. Reading history especially. We need to understand where we’ve been to inform where we’re going. I hope Wolf by Wolf introduces young readers to the true history of World War II and the Holocaust. I hope this, in turn, ignites a love of learning. I hope my readers keep their hearts soft and their minds sharp. I hope they find themselves brave enough to face our broken world and compassionate enough to change it.

RGC: Have you been working on anything recently, and can you tell us about your next project? 

Graudin: My next book is a middle-grade novel called The World Between Blinks, co-authored with Amie Kaufman. It’s slated to hit shelves on January 5^th 2021. Here’s a small teaser:

The World Between Blinks follows two cousins who stumble from our world into a magical place where all lost things end up. Amid ghost ships, lost cities, and keys to vanished doors, Jake and Marisol find themselves responsible for the fate of not just one world—but two.

As for more YA novels, I’ve been hard at work crafting things that involve lots of twisty history, but there’s no official word on anything yet. One of the best ways to stay in the loop about my upcoming releases is to follow me on Twitter or sign up for my newsletter.

Looking for more? Check out all of the great author interviews on our blog, including other YA authors like Avi and Anne Nesbet!

The post Reading Group Choices Interview with Ryan Graudin appeared first on Reading Group Choices.

June Selections

The Dragons, the Giant, the Women by  Wayétu Moore

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
View our Facebook live chat with Ross!

More Miracle Than Bird by Alice Miller

Stamped by Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi

The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal
View our Facebook live chat with J. Ryan!

The Streel by Mary Logue

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim

Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know by Samira Ahmed
View our Facebook live chat with Samira!

I Belong to Vienna by Anna Goldenberg

Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

The Second Home by Christina Clancy
View our Facebook live chat with Christina!

Borderline Citizen by Robin Hemley
View our Facebook live chat with Robin!

Liberation by Imogen Kealey

Orphan Island by Laurel Snyder

We Came Here to Shine by Susie Orman Schnall

Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery by Rosalie Knecht

The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
View our Facebook live chat with Natalie!

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

Lifelines by Heidi Diehl

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
View our Facebook live chat with TJ!

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Last Flight by Julie Clark

The Falling Woman by Richard Farrell
View our Facebook live chat with Richard!

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

I’m Not Dying with You Tonight by Kimberly Jones & Gilly Segal

Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Webber
View our Facebook live chat with Heather!

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender

Wolf by Wolf and Blood for Blood by Ryan Graudin
Read our interview with Ryan!

Explore all of our Book a Day picks month-by-month on the blog!

The post Book a Day: June Reading List & Author Chats appeared first on Reading Group Choices.

For his interview with Reading Group Choices, Antoine talks about writing famous figures into his novels, why technology doesn’t make for a good love story, what a stranger would think about his apartment, and his role as ambassador of French charm…

Reading Group Choices: Your books present a diverse variety of characters in terms of gender, age, occupation, social and economic level. Do certain perspectives come to you more naturally or attract you more than others? And are there challenges when writing about well-known people, such as Patrick Modiano, Edith Piaf, Francois Mitterand, among others?

Antoine Laurain: In fact, I try to give at the same time an originality to the character but also a job and social position that you can perfectly understand — because you have a friend, a brother, a sister, the friend of a friend who does this type of work. You aren’t lost. What I’m describing to you is familiar, but I try to add a small oddity… For example, in my book The Portrait, Pierre-François Chaumont is a lawyer. We all know a lawyer. Only with him, he collects objects of art and his wife detests it. There’s the oddity.

Otherwise, when there are many characters in a book, like Vintage 1954, The President’s Hat or French Rhapsody, there must not be two characters who resemble each other. This is how it works with the cast of a novel. Sometimes I am inspired by people I know or that I have met, at other times I do a lot of research about a job that interests me and don’t know very well. It depends.

To capture characters who exist or have existed in real life, it’s rather amusing. It’s risky. I can’t get it wrong. I always pay attention to make them say what they could have said. To find their voice, by that I mean their diction, the timbre of their voice. Mitterand doesn’t speak like Truffaut who doesn’t speak like Gabin who doesn’t speak like Modiano. It is a very particular exercise. They are only kindly apparitions during the space of a chapter. But the exercise is not so easy.

RGC: What has surprised you most when working on your newest book, The Readers’ Room? What does it share, or not, with your previous novels?

AL: A taste of mystery. An investigation. A search for oneself. With this time an aspect of a whodunnit in the second part. And you will only get the solution in the final pages.

This novel also asks a question that borders on the fantastic or supernatural: Does what we write lead to what ends up happening?

RGC: Much of your stories are centered around French culture, history, politics and the arts. Are you surprised by the resonance they have had with people outside of France? Do you worry that some readers in other parts of the world will miss some of the historical or philosophical importance of these references?

AL: In the beginning, yes, I was surprised. The success of The President’s Hat in the UK and US stunned me because it was a very French book, which made reference to many details from the 1980s in France: songs, TV shows, a radio presenter. I noticed that the readers from abroad were not bothered by this, for two reasons: first, because the story and the narrative are more important than the details. A lucky hat, a woman’s bag found in the street… The readers understand the story. They follow the story above all.

Secondly, all these details are part of the charm and are in the end very relatable. In The President’s Hat, you don’t know who the TV presenter Yves Mourousi is. However you understand he is very famous. If you are an American, you can think of an equivalent in the US, like Larry King. It’s not likely you know the song “Ainsi soit je” by Mylène Farmer in the eighties, but we can say in the US it was like “Sweetest Taboo” by the singer Sade.

A last thought: my novels are occurring in France and mainly in Paris. There is a good reason for this: I am French and was born in Paris! The Duchess of Cornwall honored me by citing my book The Red Notebook in her list of 9 recommended novels.

“A clever, funny novel . . . a masterpiece of Parisian perfection,” she said.

So it’s not intentionally that the charm of my city can be felt in my books, but I think that for many readers, it’s like visiting there for the duration of the novel. I am a sort of ambassador of French charm and culture, as Michael Caine is for British charm and culture!

RGC: Do you have a specific attachment to any one of your books? Perhaps because of the process of writing it, or the enjoyment of reading it, or from a personal connection to it that makes it a bit different to you than the rest?

AL: I like all of my books, some more than others. Let’s say I keep a special affection for the first, The Portrait. Because it is the first to have been published, it was a kind of adventure to move from a text in my computer to a novel in a bookshop, and I wrote it in the store of the antique dealer for whom I was working then. It belongs to a certain period in my life.

RGC: All of the characters in your books seem to be on a search — for a hat, for a painting, for a person, for a new or past life. It’s almost as if the characters are not whole until they find the missing item or person or feeling. Do you believe this search is something all people feel in a way? Is it something you find yourself considering in your own life and so becomes part of your writing?

AL: Your analysis is very good. It is indeed the common point of my novels, but incidentally… maybe we are always writing the same story in different forms? That is also why my novels have been compared to tales. The tale is the quest and the success of this quest by the end, after having overcome trials. My characters are all going after a secret, a secret which is, I think, simply themselves. At the end, they are appeased. They have found the answers to their questions. That’s it… At last, they are in peace.

I think we all feel this desire to be at peace with ourselves. Novels have to be greater than life. They have to in some sense show us the way…

RGC: Can you share something you are reading or writing during this quarantine time?

AL: Reading and looking through all the albums of Jean-Jacques Sempé. Whichever ones. They are all good. Sempé is a genius.

RGC: In The Red Notebook, Laurent explores Laure’s apartment when she is absent, and is left to learn about her solely from what he finds: “The apartment was itself like a sort of giant bag with thousands of nooks and crannies, each one containing a tiny portion of its occupant’s life.” What would a stranger surmise about you from your own apartment, from observing only your possessions and decorations?

AL: I attach much importance to places. I think that they resemble their owners. From my flat, what could you deduce? It is full of beautiful objects from the past, whose uses are unknown to you for the most part… that the man living there could be a former antique dealer, that he has a cat. That this interior is very warm but also a little unnerving. What to think about someone who collects keys that he will never know what doors they open? I am sending you a photo of one of my keys, it comes from England, from the 18th century, they had excellent locksmiths. Look closely at this object and tell yourself that originally it was a rectangular iron block of one kilogram, which has been heated up, forged, sawed, carved, polished to become like this.

RGC: In The Red Notebook, there are references to email and smartphones, but overall technology stays offstage. Is a love story more romantic without technology? More generally, is magic and myth hindered by our digital world?

AL: Good question. I have mixed feelings… I still think it is better to meet somebody, to see each other, talk, have a drink in the sun rather than go through digital filters. These days, you can find poetry also in emails, pictures, texts and even emoticons. But if all this technology can have charm in the reality of our lives, I don’t see how it can be transcribed into a novel. You can reproduce an email exchange for a chapter, but not much more. It’s an abstract material, cold, which doesn’t go along with literature. And then, there is no action: when you read an email, you are seated in front of a screen, the same when you write one. Even if what you read is very interesting, there is no action, the body doesn’t do anything, there is no movement. There is nothing. It is purely cerebral and dematerialised. It is contrary to life. We are leaving two strange months of confinment linked to Covid-19, what did we have other than technology to connect us? But honestly, the limits of these tools have been demonstrated by this occasion. It is not life. Rather a novel is life, done better.

RGC: In Vintage 1954, the allure of the past is tempered by the inequalities that existed for women and minority groups, for example. We’re thinking of the moment in the train when the time travelers inform another passenger about the political and social future. Can you talk about the tension between romanticizing the past and remembering its limitations ? What qualities from the past — habits, customs, rituals — would you most like to welcome back to the present ?

AL: It is the whole question with relation to the past. Often it’s a bit reinvented to be better. Take your childhood vacations, I am sure that the first memories that come to you are happy and there is sun. You have forgotten a little about those long rainy afternoons or how bored you were… I was one of the last to do my military service in France, I can guarantee you that in the moment I found it extremely disagreeable, but you see, after all this time, today I remember instead some picturesque anecdotes and they make me smile. However at that time it didn’t make me laugh at all.

It’s a little similar for history, I think that one idealises certain times. America in the fifties, we prefer to think about a multicolor jukebox and a beautiful pale blue Cadillac rather than the condition of black Americans. Nina Simone was not allowed to have a career as a classical pianist because of the color of her skin. So, my 1950s in Vintage 54 are also a little idealised, but all that I describe as charming and beautiful truly existed: the shopkeepers, people who talked to each other in the bus, the central market (Les Halles)… I sometimes have a bit of nostalgia for this France. I own that. It doesn’t pose a problem to me to be attached to the past of my country.

Photo credit for Antoine Laurain: Pascal Ito © Flammiron

Read more about Antoine’s novels The Red Notebook and Vintage 1954, and browse all the great author interviews on our blog, including other French authors such as Timothée de Fombelle!

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