The original co-creator of the Berenstain Bears picture book series, Jan Berenstain, died on Friday at the age of 88.

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the first book in the series, The Big Honey Hunt. Three hundred books later, the series has been translated into 23 languages and is a staple in many libraries around the world.  These books were ahead of their time, and continue to be an invaluable resource for parents, teachers, librarians and kids in helping them deal with some of the difficult issues we face, such as moving, bullying, and sibling rivalry.

Many of us can remember a moment with this childhood series.

I think of The New Baby or Goes to School, because these books were probably one of the first books that I read on my own.

I asked some of my colleagues what their favourite Berenstain Bears book was, or what they remembered about them from childhood. This is what they said:

Rachel - In the Dark: "I remember the pictures from this book more than anything else.  I always wanted to take scary stories out of the library like Brother Bear and would end up scaring myself as a kid.  I also remember the cartoon version of this story."

Kate F. - The Berenstain Bears And The Spooky Old Tree: "We must’ve had 20 of the Berenstain Bears books growing up, and even though I loved the one where they get the Gimmies, and the one where they eat too much junk food - this one sticks out in my mind because we had the board game that went along with it, so that made it extra fun."

Martin -  Green Eyed Monster, The Funny Valentine, Too Much Vacation, Baby Makes Five: "My children enjoy them, they can relate to Green Eyed Monster and Baby Makes Five and my oldest had me read the The Funny Valentine, five straight days over Valentines week. Too Much Vacation is my favourite because Papa bear tries so hard to have a good trip and it does not go well. I can relate to that."

Jenn - The Berenstain’s B Book: "Visually and Verbally addictive – still know off by heart."

Jenny-  There Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room:  "I didn’t have a favorite Berenstain Bears book, per se, but this title was the FIRST Berenstain Bears book I owned (paid for with my own allowance money) so it was special to me that way."

Natalie -  The Bike Lesson and The Picnic:  "I have them at my desk - read them from the library as a kid and LOVED them!  They’re hilarious and rhyme."

Leanne -  Trick or Treat:  "It was spooky. It captured the whole feeling about Halloween while teaching a lesson about don’t judge by appearance."

Jason: "I read the Berenstain Bears when I was really little, I think by the time I ended kindergarten I had ploughed through all the books that were in the house, and the majority of those in the library.  As soon as I finished reading one there was another one ready to go, one of the few perks of having older siblings was that my house was filled with kid’s books.  The books were such a big part of being a kid, that the only books I can specifically remember reading were Dr. Seuss and The Berenstain Bears."

Josh - “I was a HUGE Berentain Bears fan as a kid. I used my allowance every week to go to the local Coles and buy whichever title was next on my list. I read them over and over, and took time to study the illustrations and allow my mind to really get lost in that world. I learned countless lessons from Stan and Jan in my early years, and I thank them for this. Choosing a favourite is near impossible, but one of the first that comes to mind is The Berenstain Bears Blaze a Trail. I loved the sense of adventure in that particular story.”  

As you can see, Jan and Stan Berenstain have left their imprint on many of us, and will continue to do so for generations to come. Their legacy will be carried on by their sons, Mike and Leo Berenstain.

Lisa McMann is the author of The Wake Trilogy and Cryer's Cross. Her most recent novel, Dead to You, is about a boy named Ethan who returns to his family after having been abducted nine years previously. The happy occasion is marred by the fact that Ethan can't remember anything about his family.

This tightly written novel pulls you through its story with sparse, yet elegant prose. It's also a wonderful example of how riveting contemporary YA can be.

Lisa was kind enough to answer a few questions for us about Dead to You.

Indigo Teen Blog: Did you know the ending of Dead to You before you wrote it or did you discover it as you wrote?
Lisa McMann: I knew the ending before I started, but early on I wasn’t sure how much Ethan knew or was able to admit to himself until I started writing, and then it became painfully clear.

ITB: Is there a difference for you in writing a first person female or a first person male voice?
LM: I was just about to type this answer when I paused and thought, “Have I ever written a first person female voice?” The answer is no, I haven’t – my previous books are third person. Isn’t that weird? (But you’ll see my attempt at 1st person from a female perspective next spring with my next teen paranormal, CRASH.)

ITB: Dead to You is your first novel with no fantasy elements, correct? Are there challenges to writing contemporary fiction that are different from fantasy fiction?
LM: Correct! I think there are challenges in all genres and styles of writing. In my paranormal and fantasy stuff, I try really hard not to use the fantasy elements as a crutch to make something happen. In realistic fiction there is no fantasy element to lean on, and I find that really satisfying as a writer not to have that temptation there. It does sometimes make things harder, but I love the challenge of that.

ITB: Will you tell us more about your involvement in The Dear Bully anthology?
LM: I was thrilled to be a participant in the Dear Bully anthology. I originally wanted to use a story from my past, but there was one story told to me by a fan at an event that wouldn’t leave me alone – a boy who was struggling with his sexuality told me that Cleverbot.com was his friend. I changed some of his story to protect him, but the gist of it is there. I couldn’t get his story out of my mind. I think offers a glimpse of current-day bullying.

ITB: Can you tell us about your next YA novel (set to come out in 2013)?
LM: It’s called CRASH. I really can’t wait for this book. It’s a paranormal, first in a new series about a girl named Jules who starts seeing a recurring vision of a truck crashing into a building, and she feels like she has to do something about it. Additionally there are two awesome siblings, a meatball food truck, hoarding, a boy, and nine body bags in the snow.

ITB: Sounds like one to watch for. Any update on the Wake movie?
LM: I wish I had news to share, but as far as I know, nothing is happening. They are still in the script-writing stages.

ITB: Last question. We've been talking about Book Boyfriends on the blog. Who is your current favourite?
LM: I really like the main character, Jazz, in Barry Lyga’s upcoming novel (first in a series!), I HUNT KILLERS – that character has a lot of layers. Watch for it! Pre-order it! Add it to your goodreads list!

ITB: Completely agree with you; Jazz is very layered. I read I HUNT KILLERS shortly after Dead to You, and if readers like one then they'll like the other. (Although I HUNT KILLERS is quite a bit more gruesome.)

*******************************************************************************************

Dead to You is now available. Thanks to Lisa for answering our questions and Simon & Schuster Canada for arranging the interview.

Lone Wolf is Jodi Picoult's nineteenth novel, which examines where medical science and moral choices intersect. We are pleased to share a behind the scenes look at the making of the Lone Wolf audiobook:

Edward Warren, 23, has been living in Thailand for five years, a prodigal son who left his family after an irreparable fight with his father, Luke. But he gets a frantic phone call: His dad lies comatose in a NH hospital, gravely injured in the same accident that has also injured his younger sister Cara.

Cara, 17, stll holds a grudge against her brother, since his departure led to her parents’ divorce. In the aftermath, she’s lived with her father – an animal conservationist who became famous after living with a wild wolf pack in the Canadian wild. It is impossible for her to reconcile the still, broken man in the hospital bed with her vibrant, dynamic father.

With Luke’s chances for recovery dwindling, Cara wants to wait for a miracle. But Edward wants to terminate life support and donate his father’s organs. Is he motivated by altruism, or revenge? And to what lengths will his sister go to stop him from making an irrevocable decision?

LONE WOLF looks at the intersection between medical science and moral choices. If we can keep people who have no hope for recovery alive artificially, should they also be allowed to die artificially? Does the potential to save someone else’s life with a donated organ balance the act of hastening another’s death? And finally, when a father’s life hangs in the balance, which sibling should get to decide his fate?

Jodi Picoult Goes in Search of Wolves by Kerry Hood

"I have 56 questions for him," Jodi said. "Can we get more time on Thursday evening?"

So, in a car rustling with sandwiches, crisps, biscuits, chocolate and jet lag, Jodi, her son Jake and I were off to Devon to meet Shawn Ellis, who has brought up a pack of wolves down there and is acknowledged to be our expert on these amazing animals and their behaviour.

We arrived at his office at 4:00 pm and over a cup of tea, goggle-eyed and as if bolted to our chairs, we listened to him talk about living with wolves in the wild in America and what he learned from them. At 7:00 Jodi turned off the tape recorder and sat back.

This is research that she is doing for her 2012 novel, and one that I am so looking forward to. We had arranged in May of this year to meet up with Shaun and the excitement had been building over the summer.

He has a cast on his right hand and forearm – no, not bitten, as everyone immediately thinks! He had pushed it between a young wolf, playing, and a glass door. The pane broke behind his hand, severing a tendon ... the wolf wasn't scratched. The arm, however, had been in a cast for 5 weeks and it was driving him crazy. Not only that but it had thrown the natural balance of Shaun's pack out of kilter. Because he can't interact with them, he is facing the possibility that another wolf will be auditioning for his role within their ranks. He can't go into the enclosure with them because they would strip the cast off and try to lick the wound clean.

"A&E wouldn't approve," he remarked casually.

This injury had another impact, because without him in with them, Jodi can't mingle with the wolves. This is a big disappointment and it will have to wait for another time - but 'it will be what it will be' says Jodi (a rather wolf-like philosophy, if you ask me). But Shaun and his partner, Dr Isla Fishburn, make up for it by getting us as close to the big animals as possible – eye to eye through chain link fence on several occasions.

We said goodbye for the evening, reluctantly peeling ourselves away and headed off for the hotel in Saunton Sands, a bit further round the lovely north Devon coast, but we are back at his office at 10am the next morning. From there, off to the wildlife park where the wolves are. They have two wolf-cross puppies, 8 weeks old, and soft, fuzzy packages they are too. A little alpha girl and a big-boned, uncoordinated, solid dog-pup who will grow to be huge and is already a 'numbers' boy ... one of the pack, but not a key player. They are adorable but we all fell in love with this clumsy, innocent little boy. We suggested he be called Seattle, because he badly needs to believe he can be a great Chief one day -- although everyone knows he won't be.

Towards the middle of the day an air raid siren goes off; then another, ending finally with a series of echoing whoops. The park is in a narrow, wooded valley and we are looking down at it from one side - above two wolf enclosures. The siren and whoops die away, but almost immediately, the wolves themselves set up a howl. It is suddenly a glorious cacophony of sounds that must be carried on the otherwise calm Devon morning all the way to the sea, which we can see between the shoulder blades of the valley.

"It's the gibbons," Isla explains. "The lemurs get out of their enclosures and climb on their fence. The gibbons pull their tails and a general ruckus starts up." Gibbons sound like air raid sirens ... who knew?

At lunchtime, Shaun gave an assembled crowd a short talk while the wolves snacked. The people were pretty unresponsive, but maybe that was because there were times when Shaun was drowned out by the crescendo of yelps, snarls, snapping teeth, crunches and ripping sounds going on behind him. This was not a moment for vegetarians.

Shaun, Isla and Jude (in whose home Jodi was doing the interview) were patience personified. The remainder of the 56 questions were asked and answered throughout the day – by which time we had watched the wolves fed, howled (more on that below), met other wolves and the sun was on the way down.

There were two memorable snatches of conversation during this day that might not be commonplace elsewhere ... "shall I help with the carcass?" (me, talking about the wolves' lunch) and "step back, Jake, I might whack you with my rabbit" (Jodi, as she prepared to lob a bunny - dead - over the fence to another pack). Worth reporting, perhaps!

They are big, these wolves, spindly-legged, slightly scrawny behind, but with the most beautiful wide faces and golden eyes. Jumping up at the fence between us, their paws are high over our heads, and their faces are startlingly eye-level. And they float.

We walked past another pen - on the way to get the rabbits from the meat-safe - and there were quite suddenly three large wolves standing 5 feet away. They appeared, silently, like long-legged ghosts.

Once the Park had cleared of visitors, we got to howl ... we chose our roles (or were given them!). Jodi, the alpha, has a simple, but leading howl that rises and falls a couple of times before Jake (the beta) comes in with a longer, stronger voice and finally, there was me (the numbers wolf on this occasion), who has the complicated, schizophrenic, multiple-personality song that should sound as though I am legion. Obviously we sounded like a top class wolf choir, because as we stopped, our counterparts, from four different directions are singing a delicious medley back at us. How satisfying was that? Jodi says we must howl at every given moment thereafter ... and indeed we do - at the hotel, at dinner, in the car, back in London ...

Returned to the hotel at the end of the day a spirited discussion was re-ignited over a meal. The cleaning staff had efficiently strapped paper signs around the loos, announcing they have been sanified for our safety. "No such word," says Jodi. "That's a rubbish word," says I. Jake looks it up on the internet and finds a vague reference to cleanliness ... but it is not in Webster's Dictionary. The mood around the dinner table rises to the occasion and friendly competitiveness breaks out, Jodi and Jake vying for the alpha position. Sniggers turn to chuckles, then snorts and then it is full blown laughter with tears and sudden eruptions. Jet lag, a most wonderful day and exhuberance muddle together ... I make a comment, tripping up on Dr Heckle and Mr Jyde and we are off again in weeping mirth. At that moment, a girl crosses the dining room and asks for Jodi's autograph.

There was no saving us - we were weak, dewey-eyed and helpless. Not at all wolf-like ... at least the other two could blame jet lag.

**************************************************************************************************************************************

Kerry Hood's post was originally featured on the Hodder & Stoughton website. It has been reposted here with permission from the publisher. Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for faciliating this post.

Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult will be available from Simon & Schuster Canada on February 28, 2012.

ISBN associated with this book:
1439102740
9781439102749

When Hurricane Hazel tore through Toronto on October 15, 1954, it left its mark on both the city and its inhabitants. In the aftermath, a young cop named Ray Townes emerges as a hero numerous accounts detail the way he battled the raging Humber River to save those trapped in their homes and his story is featured prominently in the newspapers, thrusting him into the spotlight as a local celebrity.

Meanwhile, his wife Mary is wrestling with doubts about her husband's heroism. While performing her own miracles the night of the storm as a nurse at a mud-filled, overcrowded emergency room, Mary met a woman disoriented and near death with a disturbingly peculiar recollection of events. While Mary tries to shake her suspicions about Ray as they rebuild their life in the shell-shocked city, she can’t help but wonder about her husband and that fateful night. When a reporter comes knocking 50 years later to revisit that horrendous night, the truth begins to surface and threatens to destroy them.

Cleverly constructed with meticulous research, this work of historical fiction includes a new section filled with author interviews, new insights in the work, and bonus work from the author.

The Indigo Fiction Blog is pleased to present this guest piece from Mark Sinnett, author of The Carnivore, winner of the 2010 Toronto Book Award.

***

I don’t suppose I’m very different from most other writers in that, at idle moments, moments when I should really be writing, or plotting, or fixing something in the house, I’ll laze around trying to imagine what sort of film my books would make. And in the case of The Carnivore, the short answer, of course, is that it would make a damn good one, and so I move on quickly to casting decisions and budget considerations. And then, inevitably, I work on the soundtrack.

I long ago decided that I wasn’t going to use much period music, not even for the scenes set in 1954. Mostly that’s because I just don’t know what the music scene was like then. I mean, I can look up the charts of the period and then populate the film with that music, but I’m not sure I want my characters to be that easily swayed by current fad and fashion. My house sure doesn’t pulse with Bieber and Gaga, so why should Ray and Mary have moved to “Mr. Sandman”? And I just don’t know whether Ray’s a Sinatra guy, or a Miles Davis fan. Would he and Mary, or he and Alice, have sung along with Rosemary Clooney? I think that if I tried to make these decisions, with my limited knowledge, I’d have been unfair and untrue to the characters. I would have been guessing, and also would have saddled them with too much mid-century baggage.

And so I decided to use music that I love, timeless music that means the world to me, and music that, if I were in Ray’s shoes, or Mary’s, I’d want in the background, salting down from the leaden clouds.

I hear Gillian Welch singing “Time (The Revelator)” over the titles. “I’m not what I’m supposed to be / But who could know if I’m a traitor?” At least that’s what I hear. And that about sums it up.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy will sing “Cold & Wet,” and he could do it just about anywhere, but I hear it as Ray drags his sorry self home after that long night of the storm, like a rat through the bedraggled streets. A nearly comic effect would be achieved, I think. And I do think there is a dark dark humour at work for long moments in this book. I seem to be the only one to think that, mind you.

And when Alice slips into the water and is carried away, it’s “The Drowning Man” by The Cure. Google those lyrics and you’ll see why. But it’s also about the heavy dark drift of the music, which is so purely evocative of the river the way I imagined it while writing those chapters.

Damien Jurado has a hundred sad and haunted songs that I hear coming out of the wooden cabinets in Alice’s seedy digs above the furniture shop. But if I’m going to pick one for the scene in which she and Ray cast off their clothes it would be “What Were the Chances,” from his And Now That I’m in Your Shadow album.

The great Toronto singer/songwriter Hayden has a great song called “Starting Over,” which is hushed and melancholy, ill and wan somehow, and yet also quite fierce, and full of longing. I see Ray wrapped in his blankets, gnawing on his dinner, or sipping at his booze, lifting a knee softly to this.

Nouvelle Vague cover the old Visage new-wave thriller, “Fade to Grey” in a cool way. And I think of this song whenever I think of Mary, newly pregnant and walking Yonge Street, or on a streetcar along Queen. I don’t know why, really, and I’ve edited this paragraph out three times now, but it’s a persistent association so finally I’m going to leave it alone. Mark Kozelek has written some truly miserable songs, and I’m fond of them all. His “All Mixed Up” (with Red House Painters) is a must in the aftermath of the storm. And works for Ray and for Mary, I think.

Jessica Lea Mayfield is very young but sings as if she’s borne witness to every one of the awful moments in the fifty years Ray and Mary endure in this book. “I’ll Be the One You Want Someday” should play over the credits, in my humble opinion.

And that’s about it for now. By the time they make the film (got to think positively) I’ll have a whole new list. But let me quickly just add this. For all the incidental music, for the general atmospherics, I chose the work of two composers. First, there’s Max Richter, a German-born U.K. artist. He writes mostly for the piano, but he also incorporates found sound and prose fragments, burbling fluid electronica and hissing (and somehow consoling) drifts of static. His latest, Infra, is one of the two perfect albums for this story. The second is by an Icelandic woman, Hildur Guðnadóttir, who mines some of the same ground as Richter, but works with a cello (among many other instruments) and creates much bleaker music, but also very beautiful. And it’s these wild drones of hers that would fill the film if Edward Burtynsky filmed the book and took the river as its main character, rather than Ray and Mary. Without Sinking is the name of the album that tears me apart.

****

Mark Sinnett is the author of The Landing (Carleton University Press, 1997), poetry, winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award; Bull (Insomniac Press, 1998), short stories; Some Late Adventure of the Feelings (ECW Press, 2000), poetry; and The Border Guards (Harper Collins, 2004), a novel/thriller, shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis award. He lives in Kingston, Ontario.

Special thanks to ECW press for facilitating this guest blog, & to Mark Sinnett himself for composing it.  
 

Many people have asked me how I came to write The Story of Beautiful Girl. My answer starts with the simple fact that book ideas can come from everywhere but, at least for me, they never arrive fully baked. They are only the ingredients, and they cannot blend together without the actual process of writing.  That is what happened with The Story of Beautiful Girl.

My sister Beth, who is eleven months younger than I, has an intellectual disability. When she was born in 1960, it wasn’t uncommon for doctors to recommend to parents that they place children like my sister in institutions, but my parents never considered that option. So my sister was raised at home, and I learned next to nothing about these institutions. I didn’t know, for instance, they were an entirely different system from psychiatric institutions. I didn’t know that they housed hundreds of thousands of people with developmental disabilities, autism, cerebral palsy, and epilepsy. Nor did I know that they were in every state in America, had been in existence since the mid-1800s, and were places where the residents could easily fall prey to abuse and neglect. You could say that I, like most Americans, had little idea that such places even existed.

In my forties, I wrote a memoir about my relationship with Beth, Riding The Bus With My Sister, and I started getting asked to do public speaking around the country at disability-related conferences. There I met people whose personal or professional experience involved these very institutions that I hadn’t known about, and who were eager, sometimes tearfully so, to share their stories with me.  

Over and over, I returned home, reeling. The reality of institutions had obviously affected untold numbers of residents, family members, professionals, and friends—yet no one outside of these conferences spoke about such things.  I began wondering if I could write something.  I also started collecting books and documentaries about the history and reality of these places.  At the time, I wasn’t planning to use them for research so I could write a book; I was simply curious about the material, though I was also sad about how little material I could find, and just how abysmal the conditions turned out to be.  Indeed, one of the details that kept sticking in my mind was the connection between low funding from the state and the quality of life, leading to, in one book I read, a situation where the forty residents in each cottage had to share the same toothbrush every morning. It was details like this that made me keep thinking I should do something with this material—but something that would also be about justice and hope and freedom and love.

Yet the subject seemed so massive, I put the idea to the side.

The material, however, didn’t stop coming my way.  One day, as I was wrapping up a talk, I came across a book at a vendor’s table, God Knows His Name: The True Story of John Doe No. 24, by Dave Bakke.  In 1945, I learned, a deaf, African American teenager was found wandering the streets in Illinois.  No one understood his sign language so no one knew who he was.  A judge declared him “feebleminded” and he was put away in one of these institutions.  There he remained, despite the suspicion of many staff that he had no intellectual disability at all, until he died fifty years later.  
I bought the book for my growing collection of material about these institutions.  But because this story was about one man whose life ended in tragedy, it hit me harder than the material already on my shelves. Indeed, I read God Knows His Name immediately, and the plight of John Doe No. 24 began to haunt me.

Yet I still couldn’t figure out how I might present such an emotionally fraught topic.

Then in 2007, the creative writing department where I’d taught for over a decade decided to restructure the department and I was let go. Grieving the loss of a job and students I had loved, I set about trying to figure out what to do with my life.  I was sure of only one thing: I wanted to keep writing.  Though what I wanted to write about, I didn’t know.

In this vulnerable state, I sat down with a blank pad of paper, waiting to see what would emerge.  Instantly, there it was.  The novel I’d been vaguely thinking about all this time.

It is 1968.  Night.  A rain storm.  An elderly widow is reading a book.  Who is she, I asked myself, and without hesitation, I knew: she was a retired schoolteacher, in a state of grief.  Unlike me, her grief was for a child and a bad marriage; like me, she had stayed in touch with her former students.  A knock comes to her door.  Who is it, I asked myself.  Again, I knew.  Standing before her is someone who has my sister’s disability—and someone who is like John Doe No. 24.  She is the love of his life.  Although I don’t know it for another fifty pages, he calls her Beautiful Girl.  They have just escaped from an institution—and Beautiful Girl has just borne a baby girl.  I continued writing, and the whole first chapter spilled out.  When I reached its ending, I was as shocked as my readers have been.  I had no idea she would say to the widow: “Hide her.”  

That’s where The Story of Beautiful Girl came from: a tablespoon of sisterly experience, a heaping cup of historical books and documentaries, many ounces of conversations and interviews, a dash of one man’s true and tragic story, and a special bowl made of my own sense of loss and grief.  Mixed together, these ingredients still wouldn’t have created this novel, but I then wrote and rewrote for four years. Thus, everything had the time to blend together, and to come out to be the book you now know.

What books are you looking forward to reading this summer?
I am going on a road trip through the southern US this summer, and really looking forward to reading some literature from the region: Carson McCullers's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, as well as a couple of Faulkner novels that I haven't got to yet: The Unvanquished, and Go Down, Moses.

What's been your most memorable summer read and why?
One of my most memorable summer reads was reading The Waves, by Virginia Woolf. I read it in one sitting during a day off from a particularly stressful job one summer. It really did feel like waves washing over me—I've never had such an immersive reading experience.  That book changed the way I thought about literature forever.

********************************************************************

Johanna Skibsrud's new book, This Will Be Difficult To Explain, is set for release on September 20 (it's available for preorder now on indigo.ca).

We created a list of Top 50 Summer Reads and asked some of the authors featured on that list to pick their own favourites. David Nicholls, bestselling co-author of One Day (soon to be released as a major motion picture starring Anne Hathaway), answers our questions below:

What books are you looking forward to reading this summer?
The new novel by Alan Hollinghurst. It's been a long time since The Line of Beauty, and I do think he's one of the finest prose stylists writing at present.

Are there any titles on this list that you have read and loved?
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a wonderful novel—epic, moving, effortlessly entertaining.

What's been your most memorable summer read and why?
Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald, one of my favourite novels. I remember a long journey through Italy one summer, re-reading the book in many of it's locations. It's such a beautiful, lyrical, moving novel, a much better book than Gatsby I think.

We created a list of Top 50 Summer Reads and asked some of the authors featured on that list to pick their own favourites. Anne Barrows, bestselling co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, answers our questions below:

What books are you looking forward to reading this summer?
My big treat for the summer is going to be The Thousand Autums of Jacob De Zoet.  I've been looking forward to it for ages, because I loved Cloud Atlas, but I've been forcing myself to stick to Victorians for the last six months in preparation for a book I'm planning. I'm currently in the throes of studying Victorian lunatics, but as soon as I've finished with them—or they've finished with me—I'm going to reward myself with Jacob De Zoet.

Are there any titles on this list that you have read and loved?
Like everyone else in the world, I adored Eat Pray Love. Particularly the Eat part, which shows you where my heart lies. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay fills me with wondering admiration, both for the crafting of the story and for the research at its foundation.

What's been your most memorable summer read and why?
On July 16, 2005, I bought my eager daughter a hot-off-the-press copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince—and then stole it from her after she went to bed and read like a fiend through the night. Of course, I kept telling myself to cut it out and go to sleep, but I was too excited to sleep, and besides, I knew I couldn't bear to relinquish it to my daughter the next morning if I hadn't finished it. So I read through the night and finished it at 7 in the morning—and I was still too excited to sleep until later in the afternoon.  I used to read like that—for hours at a stretch—when I was a kid, and the night of Harry Potter seems like time-travel to me when I remember it, a childhood night in the middle of adulthood, a vacation from being a grownup.

I recently had the somewhat upsetting and unsettling experience of having one of my book titles usurped by another author. This isn't the first time this has happened to me, but it was the first time it's happened while my book is still very much in the stores. The book in question is Now You See Her , the story of a woman who goes on a trip to Ireland and sees the daughter she believed died in a boating mishap several years earlier. At least that's what my Now You See Her is about. James Patterson's novel of the same name—which he wrote with Michael Ledwidge—is about a woman who years ago changed her identity to save her life and is now forced to confront her past and the killer she thought she'd escaped. Two different, intriguing ideas, two completely different styles, two identical titles. Ouch!

While there is no copyright on titles, most authors—and their publishers—are at great pains not to duplicate an active title. Obviously, mistakes are made from time to time. I was guilty of this myself several years ago when I titled a book of mine Still Life, not realizing that fellow-Canadian writer Louise Penny had released a book with that very same title several years earlier. I felt terrible, especially after I met Louise, and I apologized repeatedly and profusely. I never would have willingly used another author's title unless the book had been out of print or the public eye for years. Fairly early in my career, I called a novel THE OTHER WOMAN, and learned shortly thereafter that Rona Jaffe had published a book with the same title about a decade earlier. My publishers saw no conflict because of the time lapse. There have since been a number of OTHER WOMEN, both on bookshelves and in movies. When my OTHER WOMAN was recently made into a TV movie—directed by Jason Priestly—the producers decided to distinguish it from all the other OTHER WOMEN out there by calling it "Joy Fielding's THE OTHER WOMAN." I thought that was pretty neat.

This sort of thing happens all the time. In 1981, I published KISS MOMMY GOODBYE. Several months later, another book appeared titled KISS DADDY GOODBYE. Coincidence? Who knows? In 1997, I wrote MISSING PIECES. Years later, this became the title of a TV movie starring James Coburn. In 2003, I wrote a book called LOST. Soon after, a very popular TV series appeared with that same exact title. I have no knowledge if the producers did this deliberately, or if they were even aware of my books, and in any event, there was nothing I could do except shake my head and hope that someone might be persuaded—or fooled—into thinking these projects were in some way connected to my books, and run out to buy a copy.

But it's still upsetting, especially when one spends days, weeks, or even months trying to come up with the perfect title to describe one's book. I do think there should be some sort of amendment to the copyright rule, perhaps a delay of two years before a published title can be used again. In this day and age, when computers can so easily ferret out this type of information, there's really no excuse for this sort of duplication. Surely there are enough original titles to go around. It's undeniably true that any number of writers can come up with the same idea, and also true that if you give a hundred authors the exact same idea, you will still get a hundred very different stories. They just shouldn't all be called the same thing.

Thanks very much to Joy for the guest piece, and our friends at Random House Canada for facilitating this blog.  Interested readers can find a sample chapter here, on Joy Fielding's website.

We created a list of Top 50 Summer Reads and asked some of the authors featured on that list to pick their own favourites. Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, answers our questions below:

What books are you looking forward to reading this summer?
Elizabeth Gilbert: I'm savoring the idea of taking Tina Fey's Bossypants to the beach with me. I think summertime beaches were invented for the reading of a book by Tina Fey. Beyond that, I will spend May and June, as usual, reading gardening books, and save July and August to begin research on my new novel.

Are there any titles on this list that you have read and loved?
EG: I first read The Hobbit when I was eleven years old and visiting my grandmother in Upstate New York for the summer. In my mind, I still conflate the landscapes of Middle Earth with the river, farm and woods around my grandparent's house.

What's been your most memorable summer read and why?
EG: The summer before I went to Italy, when I was still trying to get my head around Italian, I spent most of my hours reading books in Italian with the English translation held in the other hand. I remember the awkwardness of trying to do that -- manage to hold two books -- while reclining in a hammock with an ice tea. There were many memorable spills, but it was worth it...