Better World Book Club - Better World Books Blog - Book Reviews, Author Interviews, Community Outreach & more

Funds Raised for Global Literacy:

$10,184,799.20

Books Re-Used or Recycled:

63,271,794

How To: Start Something That Matters

Posted by Erin on 04.13.2012 at 8:21 am

Our March Better World Book Club pick was Start Something That Matters, by the Founder of TOMS, Blake Mycoskie.

We featured the book as the subject of one of our quarterly in-person events – in sync with the TOMS One Day Without Shoes event worldwide on 4/10/12.

Have your say » | Tagged Better World Book Club, Company News, Impact, In the News

She grew up in a homeless, wandering family. Today she is an MSNBC Contributor. And she wrote a bestselling book about it all!

Posted by Erin on 02.29.2012 at 9:36 am

This month’s Better World Book Club pick is actually one of my favorites. (Funny how that happens). I read the book in the few weeks between serving in the Peace Corps in Madagascar and becoming a Video Journalist at CNN in Atlanta. Jeannette (yes I refer to bestselling authors I adore in causal first-person) was the perfect encouragement I needed. Her honesty, authenticity, openness, humbleness and success in the midst of chaos was the exact push of confidence that I needed to succeed on my own as well. Thank you, Jeannette, for so candidly, rawly and wisely sharing your beautiful story with the world.

Fellow The Glass Castle readers, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the book below.

About the book

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn’t stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an “excitement addict.” Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.

6 Comments » | Tagged Better World Book Club

What he learned from an illiterate homeless man who became a NY Times bestselling author

Posted by Erin on 01.19.2012 at 12:56 pm

Last night 45 Better World Books staff, friends, family and fans gathered together at Atlanta’s City of Refuge. We served dinner to the women and children residents and also out on the streets of downtown Atlanta. After an eye-and-heart-opening shared experience, we ate together from the social enterprise kitchen at the shelter and discussed one of my favorite books (and true stories) “Same Kind of Different as Me”. You can view photos from the event on Facebook.

Below is a guest post by Ron Hall, Co-Author of “Same Kind of Different as Me” and “What Difference Do it Make?”

This is the season when most of the world is focused more on giving than receiving, on blessing or helping those who cannot help themselves. In an excerpt from our book What Difference Do It Make, I’d like to share a story that hopefully will bless you, the reader of this blog, about serving without judging.

After Denver and I struck up our unlikely friendship at the mission, we had a bargain. I was going to show him how to get along with the country-club set, and he was going to show me how to get along in the ‘hood. When Deborah first dragged me down to serve at the mission, my biggest worry was catching a disease or some kind of creepy-crawly infestation. But after a while, my heart toward the homeless softened up to the point where I actually started going out into the streets with Denver to reach out to the homeless. Read more…

2 Comments » | Tagged Better World Book Club, book club, From our Friends, Impact

November Book Club & Winter Event

Posted by Erin on 12.01.2011 at 9:18 am

We hope you enjoyed this month’s read! You are cordially invited to discuss the book through the comment thread below. Thank you so much for taking part.

About the Book

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

January 1946: writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a stranger, a founding member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. And so begins a remarkable tale of the island of Guernsey during the German occupation, and of a society as extraordinary as its name.

October Book Club: In the Time of the Butterflies

Posted by Erin on 10.31.2011 at 4:25 pm

This serious and significant historical fiction story is enmeshed with a light and lovely romantic comedy novel feel. It’s a winner for lovers of history, social justice, and stories of undying love and dignity.

Better World Books’ own Catarina Gutierrez recommended the book and has this to share:

“It’s one of my favorite books by my favorite author because the story of sisterly love and devotion to social justice is told so well. I really enjoyed reading from the perspective of each sister and getting a better understanding of their involvement in a historical time during Latin American history. It’s undeniable how strong-willed the sisters were and how much of an inspiration they serve to the Dominican Republic.”

Read more…

Have your say » | Tagged Better World Book Club

September Book Club: A love letter to author of “The Help”

Posted by Erin on 09.30.2011 at 12:00 pm

This is a love letter to Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help by Better World Books employee, Erin Levin.

As a book company that funds and promotes literacy and education at home and all over the world, we love many authors and books. Recently, however, I have been particularly inspired by a series of love letters our fans have written to us, Better World Books, on their blogs. In this spirit, I felt led to write a love letter to one of my favorite authors.
Read more…

1 Comment » | Tagged Better World Book Club, Book & Author News, book club, Books on the Big Screen

A Blue Sweater Changed Her Life… and Her Book Changed Mine

Posted by Erin on 09.02.2011 at 9:15 am

On Facebook, Twitter, at Better World Books events and even on this blog I have asked you if any book has ever completely changed your life. The answers that you’ve sent in have been fascinating and fruitful.

The Blue Sweater changed mine.

Out of Africa

“Like a volcano, Africa can stun you in an instant. It can throw floods and drought and disease at you, sometimes all at the same time. In the next moment, it will tease you with its magnificent beauty, so even if you don’t forget, you can find a way to forgive. Ultimately, it keeps you coming back for more,” I read this sentence 125 pages into the book while still in my first sitting with it.I could not put the stories down.

Read more…

Have your say » | Tagged Better World Book Club, book club, Our Partners, Social Enterprise

July Book Club

Posted by Erin on 07.26.2011 at 3:02 pm

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

About the Book

In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom’s intensely realized characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.

June Book Club

Posted by Erin on 06.29.2011 at 10:04 am

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

About the Book

Still Alice is a compelling debut novel about a 50-year-old woman’s sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer’s disease, written by first-time author Lisa Genova, who holds a Ph. D in neuroscience from Harvard University.

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what’s it’s like to literally lose your mind…

Reminiscent of A Beautiful Mind, Ordinary People and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Still Alice packs a powerful emotional punch and marks the arrival of a strong new voice in fiction.