Blog Posts for Julia Flynn Siler

Book Group Expo: Shakespeare … or Sex?

Julia Flynn Siler — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 11:52:26 -0800

There are conventions for everyone: dog lovers, tattoo artists, people who trade sports memorabilia, barristas, and hairdressers. They all have their annual gatherings to swap tales, make friends, and do business. So why shouldn’t book groups have theirs? For the third year, an estimated 1,700 people gathered over a weekend in October for Book Group Expo at the San Jose Convention Center in ...

Mo' Bob Mon ...

Julia Flynn Siler — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:14:34 -0700

Anyone driving east from San Francisco on Highway 80, the 10-lane transcontinental highway to Nevada and points east, can’t miss the name Mondavi. In California’s Central Valley, where the Mondavi family first made its name in the grape wholesaling business in the 1920s and then became America’s foremost wine dynasty, Robert and Margrit Mondavi have passed into legend – so much so that ...

Copia chairman asks: "Can it survive?"

Julia Flynn Siler — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:13:33 -0700

Despite my intention to take a summer sabbatical, an investigative story that appeared on the front page of last Sunday’s Sacramento Bee brought me back to my keyboard. The story raises some new questions about Robert Mondavi’s philanthropic legacy, a subject I explored in The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty. Sparse crowds at Copia have contributed to its ...

Hex, the Corpse Flower, and Berkeley’s Tree-Sitters: A Summer Sabbatical

Julia Flynn Siler — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:02:56 -0700

This spring, I mailed off applications for our boys to attend an academically challenging summer school run by the University of California at Berkeley. When the letters arrived in the mail telling us whether they’d been admitted, I opened them with mixed emotions – perhaps even a certain amount of dread. Both boys were admitted, which made me proud. But that also meant we’d be setting ...

Book Reviews ... and a Literary Reality Show?

Julia Flynn Siler — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:24:16 -0700

In the fall of 2007, the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) ran a lengthy essay by Steve Wasserman, a former editor of The Los Angeles Times Book Review, titled “Goodbye to All That.” It offers a fascinating glimpse into the dire state of newspaper book review sections and Steve began by tallying the vanishing coverage at major newspapers. To darken the picture even further, he then went on to ...

The Wednesday Sisters and the Writing Life

Julia Flynn Siler — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:44:32 -0700

For anyone who has ever dreamed of becoming an author, Meg Waite Clayton’s website is a delightful and inspiring place to visit. Meg is the author of the bestselling novel, The Wednesday Sisters, a book about a group of women friends. They meet at a park in Palo Alto, California, in the late 1960s and form a writers’ circle. Along the way, as the war in Vietnam rages, American astronauts ...

King Lear and The House of Mondavi

Julia Flynn Siler — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:12:06 -0700

What can Shakespeare teach us about a troubled family business? That’s a question I’ll try to answer at a discussion hosted by a long-lasting and large book group in Burlingame, Calif., this fall. Over the summer, the group has decided to read Shakespeare’s tragedy, King Lear, alongside my book, The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty. Two kings: Ian Holm ...

Literary Salons and Book Groups

Julia Flynn Siler — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 07:58:51 -0700

If there is a modern American equivalent to the French salons of the 17th and 18th centuries, it may be found in the thousands of book groups that gather regularly across the nation in living rooms, public libraries, and local coffee houses to discuss literature and ideas – often passionately, and with a great deal of wine and laughter involved. Book lover Liz Epstein guides groups ...

The Gerald Loeb Awards – Bellinis and Cipriani 42nd Street

Julia Flynn Siler — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:45:28 -0700

The Gerald Loeb Awards are the Oscars of the financial and business journalism world. And this year’s award ceremony took place in the suitably glamorous setting of Cipriani 42nd Street – the former Bowery Savings Bank built in 1921, just a few years before the market crash of 1929. Above, the Cipriani 42nd Street was the elegant venue for the Loeb awards; below left, the author and ...

Edible Portland

Julia Flynn Siler — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:00:50 -0700

The last stop on my paperback tour for The House of Mondavi was Portland, Oregon, where I can truthfully, if somewhat reluctantly, report that I found what seems to be a city even more obsessed with good food than my own San Francisco Bay Area. David Schargel, in blue, offers "epicurean excursion" participants a sampling of Portland's culinary prowess; below, a sampling of the ...