Novels

The Restless Reader

/ still a dreamer / 2 Comments

Have you ever experienced periods of time in which you wanted to read … well, everything in sight? Yet at the same time, you couldn’t find exactly the book you wanted to read? It’s a special and odd kind of frustration.

BooksToBeRead-2

Here is but one bookshelf of books all waiting to be devoured … but I can’t make a choice. These are largely from the library’s annual book sale, but a couple are purchased or from a friend, and I really do want to read every single one, but I can’t choose.

BooksToBeRead2-2But wait – there’s more! Like one of those TV infomercials in which you can get twice as many items for the same price if you’ll just order NOW, there are more books waiting to be read! Some of these are middle grade, some YA and some adult … some from my friends’ book swap … and all are calling to me as well. (And we don’t want to know, there is another small group on top of another bookcase.) Plus I’m still in the middle of another fabulous book, Paradise by Toni Morrison. So what’s with the restlessness? Are you experiencing this, too?

I’m thinking it might be the holidays – schedules are completely off for work, rest, entertainment, visiting … and distractions, wonderful as they are … are at a yearly high. Sometimes we just have too many choices. But if fabulous books that cost me little or nothing are what I have too many of, well … it sure could be worse.

Things are settling back into some semblance of a routine and the evenings have become particularly chilly. Seems like the right time to cozy up with a hot cup of cocoa and open up a good book. That and the sound of so many fabulous authors calling my name is becoming deafening.

Can We Ever Have Too Many?

/ still a dreamer / 4 Comments

Probably the answer to that is `yes,’ but when I think about it being books, my head just seems to automatically move from side to side … no. We can’t.

Of course, I say this in my own defense, as well might you, in the face of Tuesday’s experience. I went to vote. Our town votes in the local library. There are no services for that day, but one can still roam about and  peruse the shelves. Well, the shelves I perused were the ones in front of the check-out desk which are always filled with used/unwanted/donated books for sale. $1.00 for hardcover, $.50 for paperback.

I asked one of the ladies helping out with voting if I could just leave the librarian some money for a few books. Of course I could, just no borrowing from the main shelves. (I bet they’re all in cahoots, I thought, conspiring to entice helpless readers.) I didn’t have change, so left a bigger bill which would cover the books and a small donation to the library along with a note.

I found another book by Amy Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife, her next after her first big success. The Joy Luck Club. That seemed like a good bet. And then I found Toni Morrison’s latest novel, Paradise, a mystery about some evil goings-on in a convent outside a small Oklahoma town. Now that sounded interesting! And then in paperback, The Power of Silence, a later book by Carlos Castaneda, and also The Secret by Rhonda Byrne … the book. (I’ve only read the web site.) What a tasty little gathering of reads for such a pittance.

Now, that fortune cookie … technically, it belonged to my friend as I had already opened and eaten my cookie. Half of it was good advice … the generosity part. The perfection part? Well, sometimes that’s just a way to make ourselves crazy, but hey, it’s only a thought in a cellophane-wrapped, folder-over piece of fried dough, right? I have something more on my mind … I’m stalking through the freshly vacated rooms of the convent with men seeking justice in Paradise.

Catching Up on Books

/ still a dreamer

For those of you who check in on me from time to time, you know I sometimes write up books I’ve been reading, sometimes not. Today I’m starting a biography, something I’m not usually drawn to, but I’m giving it a shot. It was once suggested that I read artists’ biographies, that it would help and inspire me in my art. I’d picked this up at the annual library book sale – the biography of Impressionist Berthe Morisot by Anne Higonnet.

Morisot was the only woman among the six Impressionists whose exhibition scandalized Paris in 1874. The biography tells about what Morisot had to overcome to be recognized as a talented artist at this time in history and her accomplishments. This being my favorite period of art, I look forward to reading about Berthe Morisot’s life.

Prior to this, in addition to Skinny Dip by Carl Hiassen, I’ve read novels by two of my favorite authors who did not disappoint – Seventh Heaven by Alice Hoffman and Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver – and I just finished Witches on the Road Tonight by new-to-me author, Sheri Holman. I never fail to be impressed by the writing of Hoffman and Kingsolver … in plot and character, always, but in the amazing richness of their language, especially so. I was equally impressed by the writing of Sheri Holman, and will most defnitely look for books by her again. I am simply in awe of how some writers can turn a phrase.

“The hearse’s headlights rasp the dark as they speed along an unfamiliar road scattering rabbits and turning the night-grazing deer to statuary. The windows are down, the radio off. They pass empty fields and glassy obsidian ponds that float upon the gauze of reflected clouds, repeating pearls of moon. They ride for miles in this hushed, rolling darkness …”  from Witches on the Road Tonight.

Something that made me scratch my head as I read Witches on the Road Tonight is what are chances that I would read two novels, with only one book between them, that both feature characters “hunting sang”in the Appalachian mountains? The phrase refers to people who are searching the area to find ginseng, (“sang”), which can be quite profitable to sell. It actually featured prominently in parts of both novels … go figure!

So Berthe … here’s hoping your story is as compelling as your magnificent art!

 

I Wanted to Feel What They Felt

/ still a dreamer

Once you become engaged more seriously in writing, you become much more observant of what you’re reading. It’s not that I am judging or critiquing as I read; I just seem to be much more aware of what is and is not grabbing me.

I just finished Kim Edwards’ The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, recommended by a friend. I actually found it hard to finish; it was simply not engaging me sufficiently. And I know why.

It wasn’t the premise. The premise was excellent and intriguing – David is a doctor who delivers his wife Norah’s baby in a snowstorm at his own clinic, unable to get to the hospital, further away. A healthy baby boy, Paul, and an unexpected baby girl, Phoebe, who clearly has Down’s Syndrome, are born. It is 1962 – a time in which it was sadly common to “get rid of” such babies and put them in institutions. The husband, with weighty memories of a sickly sister who died at 12, asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the girl away to such an institution, telling his wife that the infant died at birth. Caroline brings the baby girl to the institution and cannot bear to leave her there; instead, she brings Phoebe home and secretly raises her on her own. And so begin lifetimes of secrecy and deception.

The potential is here for so many feelings – Norah’s juxtaposition of  joy at her son Paul’s birth, and sorrow in her unknown daughter Phoebe’s supposed death; David’s own loss and guilt; Caroline’s joy in becoming a mother, tangled with guilt; the later developing conflictual feelings between Norah, David and Paul as he grows; and the challenges in Caroline and Phoebe’s lives. So why didn’t I feel them?

In my humble estimation, it seemed the author wrote from a distance. There was plenty of description of what these characters went through, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to feel what they felt, and I didn’t. I wanted to spend haunted nights with Norah … I know what she did about her feelings, but I didn’t feel her heart. I wanted to feel Caroline’s conflict in a gut-wrenching way. I did not. And so it wasn’t until near the end of the book that I finally felt suspense and became more involved in possible outcomes, and that’s just too late. Overall, I was disappointed.

Granted, this is one woman’s opinion. True that I just came off reading a very powerful author, Barbara Kingsolver. But as I picked up E. Annie Proulx’ collection of short fiction, Heart Strings, I suddenly reconnected to the power of words and their ability to fully engage me, and I can’t wait to get back to this book.

Such things are always reminders of what a challenge it is to really write well, to really engage and touch a reader. Writing novels sure isn’t for sissies.

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?