The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

I'm sure most of you have heard of this wonderful new book. THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY is an epistolary novel (one of my favorite devices) written by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows and it easily makes my top 10 for 2008. It may well get the #1 spot on my list of reads for this year. This is such a lovely book that I feel will become a favorite for book clubs everywhere. I'm not sure why a book told in letters is so appealing to me, but I have always loved this format. I even love books that are told in emails, text messages, notes on the refrigerator, phone messages, or any other scraps of paper that you could dream up.

I know nothing about the Channel Islands and I'm not even sure that I knew that the Germans occupied this area during World War II. Well, I may have known it at some point, but I have definitely forgotten it. What an interesting area and what hardships these brave people endured during their German occupation. My husband and I recently watched the final episode of FOYLE'S WAR on PBS and we were saddened to know that this fascinating series was at an end. I quite enjoyed learning some of the little-known issues and stories of regular British people during wartime. THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY was appealing for the same reasons. The characters absolutely come alive in these pages and you want to hop on the first plane you can find and visit.

I plan to suggest that my afternoon book group read this book as a selection for 2009 and think it might pair well with 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD, another wonderful epistolary novel. I've read several great reviews on other blogs:

Lesley's Book Nook

Lesa's Book Critiques

Read Warbler

My favorite quote pretty much describes how I feel about books, bookstores, and also working in a library. You can substitute librarian for bookseller and library for bookstore:

I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers—booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no proprietor in his right mind would want to own one—the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it—along with first dibs on the new books.

Pick up this wonderful book. You won't be sorry that you did. I can almost guarantee it.

From the publisher:

January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she'd never met, a native of Guernsey, the British island once occupied by the Nazis. He'd come across her name on the flyleaf of a secondhand volume by Charles Lamb. Perhaps she could tell him where he might find more books by this author.

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, she is drawn into the world of this man and his friends, all members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a unique book club formed in a unique, spur-of-the-moment way: as an alibi to protect its members from arrest by the Germans.

Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society's charming, deeply human members, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. Through their letters she learns about their island, their taste in books, and the powerful, transformative impact the recent German occupations has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds there will change her forever.