Tuesday Night Book Talk.

Tuesday night was a good one! My friend Ann found out in December that Jojo Moyes was coming to speak in Kansas City, and we had to go. Ann originally recommended her book, The Last Letter from Your Lover, which turned out to be the book I recommended more times in 2012 with more rave reviews than anything else. Her new book, Me Before You, was recently released in the United States. I knew I had to hear her speak!

It was a pretty small crowd at Unity Temple on the Plaza, but an enthusiastic one. Jojo Moyes has had more books published in the UK than the two we've had stateside. The woman in front of us had found many of her other books on the internet, imported them and was a diehard fan.

Here are some of my favorite Jojo facts I wanted to share with you...

• National Velvet is one of her favorite books because she loves that the main character is a strong young female and lamented that is hard to find today in teen lit. (Besides Katniss obviously.)

• "Last Letter" was born from a conversation in a coffee shop. Jojo listened to a group of women analyze a text message that said "Later X" for twenty minutes. That was all it said. It made her long for the long ago times of love letters. 

• Her seven-year-old son only wanted her to bring home "drawing pencils" from America. Even though drawing pencils are also available in the UK.

• If she doesn't cry while she's writing it, she doesn't expect anyone will cry when they read it. So she cries a lot.  

• Her family lives on a six acre farm near Cambridge. This fact made me instantly envious.

• She says "posh" and "daft" in real life. Probably because she is British. 

• Vivian Jennings of Rainy Day Books has a book club with mothers and daughters that has been together twenty years. She said the new book "Me Before You" was one of only two books over the years that everyone loved. WHOA.

The review in the NY Times was extremely positive, and I'm super glad to report we're reading it for book club in February. Go ahead and read it with us or check back for the full report. 

And more book related news, Susan Cain is coming to town! She wrote Quiet, the book I'm always telling people about because I am not an introvert. She'll be here February 12th. We're totally going so let me know if you want to go too! We could grab dinner first, go to Paper Source and do extroverted things together.

As soon as I found out, I started calling/texting/emailing all the people that I've talked to about this book. Most of them are introverts and were overwhelmed by my enthusiasm. I can understand this because I've read the book. You should too.