Karon, New Dominion help Penguin celebrate 75th

If you’re a John Steinbeck fan who likes to hop off the bookmobile with an armload of literature, clear your calendar for Wednesday afternoon.

That’s when author Jan Karon will help present a collection of 75 Penguin Books titles to the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library Bookmobile. And the Albemarle County author, a Steinbeck fan herself, promises that she’ll resist the temptation to fish out her favorites before handing over the trove.

“I have my own copies,” Karon said with a gentle laugh.

Karon is the hostess for Charlottesville’s 75th-anniversary party for Penguin Books, which will start at 4 p.m. Wednesday at New Dominion Bookshop. Book lovers who turn out for the festivities can glimpse a Mini Cooper decked out in Penguin’s signature shade of orange, learn more about the authors whose names have graced those paperback spines and reflect on the democratizing power of a soft, simple, portable book.

At each of the diamond-anniversary events Penguin has planned across the country, the firm will donate a set of 75 books that includes highlights from decades of publishing. Works by each Penguin author who has won a Nobel, Pulitzer or National Book Award prize will be included in each set. The company also is sending sets to military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan so service members can join the reading party.

In each town on the tour, a Penguin author gets to play host. On Wednesday, it’s Karon’s turn, and she’ll be joined by Carolyn Carlson, her editor, and John Fagan, Penguin’s national marketing director.

“I’m so excited about the paperbacks, because when I was a young mother, always with my nose in a book, I couldn’t afford hardbacks,” Karon said.

She’s also a big supporter of bookmobiles, and when the Penguin folks asked her to participate in the anniversary events and help select who’d receive the set of 75 the publisher was sending to Charlottesville, she voted for the library on wheels.

Karon relishes the size of paperbacks, their portability, their convenience. Not to mention the scent. Most dyed-in-the-vellum bibliophiles can distinguish different scents among types of books and even among their own favorite volumes, and the crisp freshness of a new paperback isn’t lost on an author who’s a lifelong reader.

“You end up buying used hardbacks that smell like pizza or cigarettes,” she said.

She’s quick to point out that the bookmobile’s gift isn’t a crate of remainders or rejects.

“This is not something they couldn’t sell or just found in the back of the warehouse,” Karon said. “They’re cream.”

Penguin founder Allen Lane, who believed that a good book should be as affordable and easy to find as a pack of cigarettes, launched his new line of 10 paperback titles on July 30, 1935.

Some of the inaugural 10 authors still are household names today; some of the others will send many readers straight to Google. See how many of the publisher’s first 10 releases you recognize:

“Ariel, or the Life of Shelley” by Andre Maurois

“A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway

“Poet’s Pub” by Eric Linklater

“Madame Claire” by Susan Ertz

“The Unpleasantness at the Belladonna Club” by Dorothy L. Sayers

“The Mysterious Affair at Styles” by Agatha Christie

“Twenty-Five” by John Beverley Nichols

“William” by E.H. Young

“Gone to Earth” by Mary Webb

“Carnival” by Compton Mackenzie

At Wednesday’s event, Karon will discuss the early selections - and share why she’s happy to be in the fold.

“I’m proud to be a Penguin author,” Karon said, adding that she was glad “to be associated with a very fine company and to find them still carrying forth in the Old World publishing tradition of being ladies and gentlemen.”

Carlson, her editor, “got what I was doing when no one else did,” Karon said. Carlson, the daughter of a Lutheran clergyman, recognized that Karon’s Mitford novels, which had been turned down by 11 other publishers, were unlike anything on the market.

Carlson was right.

Readers couldn’t get enough of Karon’s stories of the fictional town of Mitford and its colorful, thoughtful characters - especially Father Tim Kavanagh, who now has a series of his own. Karon’s Mitford series alone has sold 30 million copies; that’s not counting her children’s books and other works.

Kathryn Court, president and publisher of Penguin Books, said that variety has been important to the firm’s offerings over the past 75 years.

“We scan the gamut from very literary to very popular fiction,” she said.

So what might the next 75 years hold for Penguin? Court said she’d like to see more mysteries, more classic science fiction and more “psychological suspense” novels in the mix.

The advent of the e-book has opened intriguing new possibilities, Court said. In Penguin’s Enriched eBooks Classics, which offer gadget fans an amplified approach to timeless works, “we’ve been able to add new information to existing books,” she said.

That being said, there’s nothing like a paperback in your hand - something tactile to tuck into a beach tote or backpack and offer a literary escape from any location. There’s no reason the future won’t have room for electronic reading and for books one can have and hold.

“You can’t really wrap it up out under the Christmas tree,” Court said of book downloads. “”It’s like getting an e-mail that says, ‘Here is your gift.’ ’’

Court considers herself a “late arrival” on the book scene. “I didn’t become a reading addict until I was in my 20s,” she said.

The publisher’s own favorite genres include nonfiction, history and classics - everything from “Beowulf” to “Paradise Lost” to Jane Austen’s novels. And she won’t play favorites among her Penguin authors, saying that each of them brings an important feature to the literature landscape.

She does point to one recent Penguin release that captures many of her interests - “Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds” by Lyndall Gordon. It combines nonfiction, biography, fresh scholarly insights, history and the tantalizing mysteries of the famed American poet’s secluded life.

“It reads like a novel, and it’s full of juicy, scandalous things,” Court said,

Speaking of new titles, Karon’s fans can look forward to the Oct. 19 release of “In the Company of Others,” the second novel in her Father Tim series.

“I’m proud of it,” she said. “It’s my favorite.”

The new book set in Ireland, where the retired Episcopalian priest is doing some genealogical research. Karon called it “a very difficult book to write.” It took plenty of research and travel, but all the hard work yielded a rewarding novel.

“It’s kind of like raising a rebellious, truculent child,” Karon said. “So you love it unconditionally.”

Penguin Books’ 75th-anniversary event with Jan Karon

4 p.m. Wednesday

New Dominion Bookshop

Free

295-2552