The Pulpwood Queens
The Pulpwood Queens Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing, Guide To Life
Publisher Grand Central, January 2008
When licensed cosmetologist turned publisher’s rep Kathy Patrick lost her job due to industry cutbacks, she wasn’t deterred. One year later, she opened Beauty and the Book, the world’s only combination beauty salon/bookstore. Soon after, she founded The Pulpwood Queens of East Texas — a reading group that dared to ask the question, “Does a book club have to be snobby to be serious?” The idea spread like wildfire. Now there are about 70 chapters nationwide. The overriding rule — aside from wearing the club’s official tiara, hot pink, and leopard print outfits — is that the groups must have fun.
The club’s mission: To get America reading.THE PULPWOOD QUEENS’ TIARA-WEARING, BOOK- SHARING GUIDE TO LIFE celebrates female friendship, sisterhood, and the transformative power of reading. It includes life principles and motivational anecdotes, hilarious and heart-warming stories of friendships among the Queens, and stories from Kathy about the books that have inspired her throughout her life, complete with personalized suggested book lists.
“Reading this book is like sitting down with a best girlfriend who loves books but also loves telling a good yarn. This is a book you’ll want to share!”
— Cassandra King, author of The Sunday Wife and The Same Sweet Girls
“Kathy Patrick is an American original-a renegade housewife, mother, beautician, and bibliophile, who has made books as much a part of her life as hair curlers and car pools. She has a voice as unique and memorable as many of those she has championed.”
— Linda Bloodworth Thomason, author of Liberating Paris
“This warm, wise book will make you laugh and cry and long to be talking books with Kathy and the hundreds of amazing women who proudly call themselves Pulpwood Queens.”
— Lisa Tucker, author of The Song Reader and Once Upon a Day
“Kathy Patrick is a natural born story-teller and the best friend a writer and reader could have.”
— Pat Conroy author of The Prince of Tides and Beach Music
“A riotously funny portrait of southern womanhood, which is to say it’s about hair, leopard-print tights, fake furs, book clubs, family crises, and food. Mainly though, this book is hilarious, warm and insightful. I loved it.”
— John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
“Kathy Patrick may just have saved the world of readers and authors by injecting it with the one crucial ingredient without which it cannot survive: FUN! Great, heaping whipped cream sugar and butter enhanced dollops of fun”
— Sarah Bird, author of The Flamingo Academy
“The Pulpwood Queen’s Tiara-Wearing, Book- Sharing Guide to Life is really funny and it’s really wise.”
— James Patterson, coauthor of Step on a Crack
