My dreams seemed dashed.

But alas all is not lost! Along comes the AbeBooks Avid Reader Book Club! There is absolutely no pressure! I (you) can read as much or as little as you’d like and you can choose if and when to join in the discussion on the Community Forums!  How fantastic is that? There’s a chance I can come across as slightly sophisticated after all!

The vote for what will be read in March is currently open. But if you’d like to have a say, please vote soon as the poll closes tomorrow night (Wednesday, February 11 – Western Hemisphere).

Ok, this is a little bit of shameless self-promotion as I’ll be hosting the Book Club during March and April while my colleague and regular host, Heather is away. But I would love to have new people join and I know Heather would too.

Joining is really easy and there is no cost to be a member. Just sign up for the newsletter to ensure you get the messages letting you know about upcoming books and when it’s time to vote and then create an account on our Community Forums so that you can join in on the discussion or read what others have to say. (The vote also takes place on the Forums so you’ll need an account for that too.)

The books we’re voting on for March’s read are:

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

Summaries of each of these books are available on our Avid Reader Book Club page.

I hope to “meet” some of you “at” the Book Club! And don’t forget to vote on which book you’d like to read!

Paltrow says, ” I always like knowing the literary preferences of people. I think it gives a better understanding of their inner life.”

Friends who’ve shared their top book picks include Madonna, who Paltrow states, “rules the world, is a loyal friend and a terrific mother” and super model Christy Turlington, “an amazing friend, mother, and an activist who is pursuing her masters in Public Health at Columbia University”.

Gwyneth’s picks:

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

Madonna’s Choices:

• The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa
• Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Christy Turlington’s Selections:

• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Don’t forget that Madonna has several books of her own published. Gwyneth Paltrow co-authored Spain…A Culinary Road Trip the companion book to the prime-time public television series Spain…On The Road Again while Christy Turlington published Living Yoga: Creating a Life Practice in 2002.

(In the pictures Paltrow is seen carrying children’s book Thank You Bear by Greg Foley and Maddonna is holding Armistead Maupin’s The Night Listener.)

In October, the New York Times asked Obama to provide a list of books and writers that were significant to him. Here goes – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, James Baldwin, W. E. B. DuBois’ Souls of Black Folk, Martin Luther King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American, Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward, John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, Robert Caro’s Power Broker, Studs Terkel’s Working, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments, and also Robert Penn’s All the King’s Men – a novel about a corrupt Southern governor (Rod Blagojevich anyone?). And then there were his theology and philosophy influences – Friedrich Nietzsche, Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich.

I am not a fan of George Bush but I do feel a little sorry for him. Obama’s love of reading has earned him massive positive publicity over the past 12 months yet Bush is probably just as much of an avid reader. Karl Rove, Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004 until 2007, said his boss read 95 books in 2006 and another 51 in 2007. Bush is even married to a librarian but all these literary facts are not going to help change his legacy.

Two of ten novels chosen by  Richard and Judy for their 2009 reading list are written by Canadian authors.Richard and Judy, the popular talk-show duo and one of the greatest  influences on Briton’s reading habits, have selected Andrew Davidson’s The Gargoyle and Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo as part of their book club reads in 2009.

Books featured by Richard and Judy ofter become bestsellers in the UK as exemplified by Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth which after being chosen for the book club in 2006, became Britain’s fastest-selling paperback  of all time.

Richard & Judy’s 2009 Book List

• When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
• The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite by Beatrice Colin
• The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
• The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
• The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
• The Brutal Art by Jesse Kellerman
• Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
• The Bolter by Frances Osborne
• The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale
• December by Elizabeth H. Winthrop