Some Authors Just Never Get Old

/ still a dreamer

Sometimes it seems like it will take forever to finish a book. No comment on the book itself, just a million distractions, some good, some bad. But how wonderful is it when you are reading an author you love to read and can finally come back to and re-immerse yourself in the story.

I am always amazed when people tell me they don’t like to read. I can’t figure out how that happens. I was most fortunate to be reading at a very early age, perhaps because I was being read to at a very early age. Whether my mother, grandmother or father – or actually even my grandfather sometimes reading us the Sunday comics! – it does seem that there was always someone engaging us in the magic of reading. For this, I am deeply grateful.

I am also deeply grateful that there are so many wonderful authors writing. One whom I’ve loved to read, though I have admittedly only read 3 of her novels thus far, is Barbara Kingsolver. When I first read The Poisonwood Bible, I was blown away. The storyline, the characters, the premise, the setting, but most of all, just how she wrote. So recently, I read The Bean Trees and reread Pigs in Heaven, more wonderful than I remember it.

I am sad to end one of Kingsolver’s books, though I have another one from that annual book sale awaiting me on the shelf, but I got the chance to peruse the many novels I’d chosen from the sale, and am starting The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. Having shelves of books awaiting to be read is, indeed, an embarrassment of riches.

The Delaware River – Post Hurricane Irene

/ still a dreamer

There’s not much I could possibly say about Hurricane Irene that hasn’t been said 50 ways from Sunday, but I can post a couple photos of what the Delaware River looks like post-Hurricane. I went out this morning to take a look – fast-moving, brown, and carrying all manner of tree and other debris. This is already post-crest stage, but the Delaware is so high as to have inundated trees, docks and some buildings across the way in PA. I had taken some photos awhile back, thinking it was high then – which it was – but what could be seen on the PA side in March 2008  – not even visible.

The Delaware in March 2008

The Delaware August 29, 2011

And a different view taken from the nearby bridge to PA, looking northwest, taken in February 2009

And although in a different season, it can be seen that after Hurricane Irene, the bases of all trees are totally submerged. Those of us who live so close to the Delaware River continue to be thankful that the lay of the land is such that she has never, since 1955, approached our homes.

Reading Feeds Writing (still)

/ still a dreamer

One of the things I love talking about with friends is what books we are reading and what we are writing. The two topics are often in the same conversation.

One friend is working very hard on her middle grade novel. I am generally working on picture books; however, a middle grade novel is slowly writing itself in my head. I’m asked if I’m not writing this down. I am not. But little by little I am getting to know my characters and I have a fair idea of where they’ve come from, what is shaping their dilemmas and where they are going. When the time is right, and when I know them better, I will begin the writing process.

Meanwhile, I read.  In talking with my friend, we discussed the 3 books I have just finished. She had not read two, but was interested in doing so for the reasons I’ll describe. She was reading, but lost interest in and abandoned, the third.

The first is The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares. I had seen the movie – it was light, probably a “chick flick” – but I liked it.
Advantage to Writer? Observing and understanding realistic  dialogue and relationships between teenage girls.

The second is The Divide by Nicholas Evans, probably best known as the author of The Horse Whisperer. I also read The Loop by him. What a way Evans has of engaging you in a story, building up suspense, then taking a sharp turn away to another character, leaving you wanting more. I only hope, whenever I write my novel, that I can hold a reader’s interest like he does.
Advantage to Writer? Learning how to pace a novel for maximum effect.

The third, (and unfinished by my friend), is The Lovely Bones by Alice Siebold. This was a daring first novel, told from the first person POV of a 12 year old girl who is raped and murdered, and is now in heaven. This could have been really strange, quirky or sappy. It was none of these, and it had my attention through to the end.
Advantage to Writer? Learning to trust in your own unique story ideas, that writing from the deepest and most real place within is where the best stories will always come from.

I trust that all I’m learning is soaking into my unconscious and always making me a better writer. And so the enjoyment of wonderful books continues. What is your reading bringing to you?

Re-Finding Ourselves

/ still a dreamer

I woke up this morning not feeling fully awake – I remember waking at 12:40, then 1 something, then 5:40 with a jolt – a disturbing noise that may have only been in my dream. When I finally got up at 6:30, I hardly felt rested.

In the kitchen, I found that one of my cats, who has recently returned to dragging food out of the bowl with his paw, had dragged the entire bowl to the center of the kitchen floor which was now littered with many small pieces of half-eaten food. Are they trying to attract mice?

With coffee in me, I was thinking of work, how much I had to do right now, and how much time I was spending in my office. The open doors and windows brought in a breeze and drew me out to the porch, where I sat down and realized what an absolutely gorgeous morning it was.

I watched a little spider on one of the yews valiantly mending her web as fast as the breeze would blow a bit of it away. Sunlight glistened on web strands of larger spiders, and as the breeze would move them, it seemed as a scintilla of light traveled a diagonal from the porch rail to the roof.

I heard birds I didn’t recognize – I heard what sounded like the high pitch of a seagull, but I’ve never once seen a seagull in this area. Perhaps it was a late-summer baby clamoring for food, or maybe one of the numerous catbirds had mastered a new voice.

Sitting there, peaceful at last, I wanted to stay … to delay the inevitable, and just enjoy a cool summer morning and do nothing. I am always amazed at the healing power of even a few moments spent appreciating nature, if only from my porch. We can usually re-find ourselves by taking a little time away from our many demands and just being with the simple wonders of the natural world.

And then I saw him. It was a seagull, indeed, circling in the sky. I wondered if he had lost his flock and was calling out to be found. His cry had such a desperate air to it, and he flew in wider and wider circles, but still in view. I hoped someone would come looking for this seemingly lost soul. I returned inside, having found myself, and hoping that he, too, would soon find himself where he needed to be.

A Wedding in December – Anita Shreve

/ still a dreamer

I have read a number of Anita Shreve’s novels – some I have liked quite a bit, and a couple, really not so much. But I found this one, A Wedding in December, to be one of the most enjoyable. I honestly cannot tell if it’s because it’s so very fresh in my mind, or has just grabbed me with its very 3-dimensional characters and a slowly unwinding mystery, but it’s been a fast, entertaining, and absorbing read.

The characters are truly well drawn, but it is the way Shreve has ever-so-subtly introduced a secret, an event, that will weave throughout the book almost revealing itself in a shadow here, a whisper there, until it becomes a riveting focus towards the end of the book that also engaged me. Our characters, Harrison, Nora, Bill, Bridget, Jerry, Rob and Agnes all come with some regrets, their nature revealed gradually at what is both a reunion of friends from a school attended long ago and the wedding of two high-school sweethearts, Bill and Bridget.  She, who is also now fighting cancer,  and Bill met again, having once loved each other and been apart 27 years.

Agnes comes with a long-held secret of her own; Harrison, with regrets and longings. Nora, married to a brilliant poet, created her new life – the conversion of their home in the Berkshires to an inn – after his death, but she, too, has memories of the past and what never was. As the guests arrive and interact, their tales are slowly and quite skillfully told, at the same time dancing around the edge of the subject of their mutual friend – Stephen’s – death so many years ago. When they all become snowbound over the wedding weekend, and with some having too much to drink, many revelations come about.

Within the story of the characters at this event is a second story that Agnes is writing about the Halifax Harbor blast in 1917, killing 2,000 people during WW I. At times, jumping into the life of Innes Finch was disconcerting, and I found myself wanting to get back to the reunion/wedding. At other times, I was more involved with the secondary storyline, with Innes, his feelings for Hazel, and her sister, Louise. Agnes writing this story is also a vehicle for her to help resolve some of her own emotional issues.

A Wedding in December may not be the book that examines the deepest souls of its characters, but it does look quite clearly into how people deal with – or choose not to deal with – regrets and the longings for what might have been. What I liked about this book is that Shreve created characters that I really cared about as well as how things resolved for them. So important in a novel.