(Updated January 10th, 2013)

Don Corleone: Tell me, do you spend time with your family?
Johnny Fontane: Sure I do.
Don Corleone: Good. Because a man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.

–The Godfather (1972), screenplay by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola

The same thing that makes The Godfather and its sequels compelling also made The Sopranos so popular, and it’s not the Mafia. These stories have more in common with Downton Abbey or even the Little House books than they do with mob dramas like GoodFellas: at their heart, they’re about family and the relationships between generations. In November, we asked Red Roomers to blog about their favorite stories of this sort, and tag your post favorite intergenerational story blog. 

A few posts stood out:

• Author Cheryl Norman cited Chiefs, a novel by Stuart Woods about several generations of policemen and the serial killer they pursue. Her ringing endorsement is entitled "Chiefs is a giant among intergenerational novels."
• Author J M Cornwell focuses on the great fantasy and science fiction sagas that involve mutliple generations. She settles on one for special appreciation in "At the Heart of Every Story."

These bloggers will win a books by a Red Room author:

See Ya by Cheryl Kerr is a story that crosses generations and histories. Lives are often stories not yet written down. Not always ended, either, which can fuse the living and telling into a path not always clear. Some tales take a long time to tell, especially when they start in 1944 and flow into 1996, and the characters weave in and out across those years without knowing one another.

I hope you'll read all the intergenerational story posts, and leave comments on your favorites. All of Red Room's past blog challenge topics are here. Thanks as always for blogging!

–Huntington W. Sharp, Senior Editor, Red Room