After I read A Little Friendly Advice by Siobhan Vivian, I passed the book to Alexia. Shortly thereafter, it made its way to Angela. Judging from their initial reactions to and subsequent conversations about the story, I think it's safe to say they loved it as much as I did. In fact, we just kept talking about it. A week after they'd read it. A month after. And so on.

Now that the book is officially out in stores, I asked if they'd care to create a collaborative post about it and they said sure, like Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors. (Well, not exactly. They didn't say it with Audrey's accent. Only I did.)

Welcome to our roundtable. Well, we're sitting at a desk, talking and typing, so it's really more of a line. Well, Alexia calls it a point graph, and I call it my desk, but you'd never know that since she's the one sitting in the chair. The point is we're all talking about the book at once together here. Via email, blogs, and in-person conversations, we've pieced together one comfy, crazy ALFA quilt.

Because we love the book so much, we didn't want to spoil anything for those of you who haven't read it yet. Our goal is to encourage you to go read the book and to share our randomness, so you'll see that we employed fairly basic questions and steered clear from spoilers. However, if you leave a comment or question below, one, two, or all three of us will be more than happy to respond.

( Read the roundtable! )

Little Willow: I don't want to wrap this up. I want to keep talking about the book and keep giving Siobhan Vivian kudos for creating such realistic characters.

We will stop for now, though, ONLY because Angela has to go study for her Biology test and Alexia for her Physics test. If you want to discuss this book more in-depth with us, please feel free to leave a comment or question below!

Postscript, side note, pssst: We're thinking of doing a roundtable discussion about John Green's Looking for Alaska next. All three of us have read it and loved it.

Related Posts:
Read Little Willow's review of A Little Friendly Advice.
Read Little Willow's interview with Siobhan Vivian.
Read Angela's ALFA review.
Angela loves the ALFA pins. (As do we all.)
From 2007: Kiba Rika, Little Willow, and Colleen discuss Innocence by Jane Mendelsohn.
Check out other roundtable discussions posted at Bildungsroman.

From the desk of author Jamie Ponti:

In one twenty-four hour period, I submitted the manuscript for Sea of Love, which will come out from Simon Pulse this December, my new book Prama was released in bookstores, and I got my first interview with Little Willow. That's pretty heady stuff for a guy who only got a 3 on the AP English test. I have dubbed it the YA Triple Play.

. . . and now, the interview, filled with references to Sea World, Shelby Woo, and serendipity.

The title of Prama makes me smile because I enjoy witty wordplay. Did you attend your high school prom?

I too enjoy witty wordplay and wish that I had come up with the title. I got it from my editor and I think she got it from her husband. I went to prom my junior and senior years. Both times I went with a friend and ended up having a good but not particularly memorable night. The main storyline in Prama was inspired by a formal I attended in college. It was the 80's and the theme was Moonlighting. I was set up on a blind date with a girl named Denise who had just broken up with her boyfriend. I agreed to go, but then considered backing out when I found out how much the tux rental was. It was college and $75 was a whole lot of money. My friend Eric was with me at the time and said, "But what if she's the one?" That, of course, made it impossible for me to back out.

Eric turned out to be something of an oracle, because I went, had a great time, and, this November, Denise and I will be celebrating our 19th wedding anniversary. It also created good karma for Eric who subsequently met his wife on a blind date. His wife is the actress Ming Na, so that's really good karma.

( Read more... )

Visit Jamie's website.