Mothers & Daughters

I just ran a giveaway on my Facebook page -- Win two books, one for your mom & one for you. (Please click on my Facebook badge if you like --there will be more giveaways.) And at the last book club gathering I visited at the beautiful new Towne Book Center in Collegeville, PA, there were 3 sets of mothers & daughters in attendance. The idea of mothers and daughters reading the same book and discussing it makes me inordinately happy. My middle daughter and I are in a mother/daughter book club and it gives us something to talk about every month, which is especially helpful during the years in which talking is difficult. (High school sometimes seems longer than four years. Sigh.) The last book we read was Swamplandia, in case you are wondering, and we both felt the same way about it. Miraculous! She is my child!

Maybe because my mother didn't read and I did, voraciously, I miss that connection. My mom and I could yak for days about any movie or any TV show but never a book. So many novels appeal to female readers from 17 to 70 -- the longings and the fears are universal. Nothing makes me happier than a teenager coming up to me at a book signing and telling me her mom thought she'd like one of my books, and she did. She really did. I like to think about the two of them talking about it, maybe opening their relationship a tiny bit more. Cracking the door a bit and letting them have the chance to talk about other things, too.

Happy Mother's Day, everyone. I have a special Mother's Day essay running on Book Reporter.com, but it won't appear until later in the week. So let's call it Mother's Day Month.