The omnivorous reader

In order to pursue my Goodreads challenge this year (a target of 20 books, with a self-imposed limit of books written by women), I neglected to read anything not within the confines of a book cover. Magazines piled up, one story issues remained unopened, newspapers were recycled before I unfolded them.

I love books but I am an omnivorous reader--I like to read anything, especially magazines. I wish there was something like Goodreads that would let me also note significant stories/articles*--not to get credit for it by way of a challenge, but to just remember what and who I have read.

I suppose that's what Facebook or Google+ are for--to link to articles you've read or proclaim the talents of writers you like, but I would prefer something more private and individual. There's the possibility of jotting down notes and names on index cards or even keeping a spreadsheet of everything significant I've read, but it seems like too much work--and I probably would lose track of them. There's also the Pocket app--but it lets you keep track of online articles only.

Perhaps this begs the question: must everything be noted? For me, it's not about tooting my own horn but my need for a vehicle that lets me remember who I've read and liked so that I can find other works by them, given my poor memory for names.

By the way, I didn't reach my goal of 20 books, mostly because I chose really long books this year. I read more than 6,000 words in 16.5 books. Fortunately, Goodreads allowed me to edit my goal, even on the last day of the challenge, in nearly the last hour, so that 16 suddenly became my goal and my accomplishment.

[The illustration above shows what I read. I tried to choose a mix of popular and more literary books, in addition to one on technique. It was really about the enjoyment of reading versus reading things to boast about.]


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* After I finished writing this, I looked around Goodreads and found that a few issues of one story have been listed there (including the Jim Shepard story I noted in a 2012 post). I'm not sure if the Goodreads staff has added them or if readers can add them. I'll look around and update this post accordingly...

Let's hear it for Hugh Grant movies

Hugh Grant movies are a visual Prozac for me. With the exception of Cloud Atlas (which I liked, but for other reasons), they offer a couple of hours of bumbling safety and warmth, and the surety of a happy ending.

They are good movies to watch in the winter, when darkness comes on quickly and gray mornings offer little respite from the gloom.

In the past I wouldn't have publicly confessed this. I aimed to watch only the best movies--Citizen Kane, of course, and the most highly acclaimed foreign movies. But in the depths of December, I am not going to watch The Godfather trilogy, or Pulp Fiction, or any other film with graphic violence. I need escapism, something that doesn't require my hibernating brain to work too much.

The same applies to the books I have read--or admitted to have read. I once aimed to only read the best literary fiction. This pretense began in college, when I hung out with people who smoked Gauloises and drank too much espresso. No one I knew then would have admitted to reading popular fiction. (This pretense began to fall when I worked in a bookstore in Idaho and, on slow afternoons, binged on Judy Bloom books that I didn't get to read as a child.) Still, even then, with the excuse of being able to recommend popular books to customers, I worried that life was too short to waste on fluff. 

But isn't there room for both The Seven Samurai and Notting Hill? 

I say this also as someone who is finally admitting that nothing I write is ever going to be on a Great Books list. I'm increasingly comfortable with the idea of aiming, at best, for something easy to write and read. I am physically not able to sit down and write eight hours a day (45 minutes writing this post at the computer and now my neck is aching). A great novel takes a lot of BIC ("Butt in Chair, as Jane Yolen describes it in her book, Take Joy) commitment that I don't have the energy for right now, given that I'm still recovering from all the yucky cancer treatments from the last year and a half.

This past week, mostly while washing dishes*, I watched the surprisingly charming "Music and Lyrics." It was like eating a well-crafted chocolate--not a heavy, nourishing meal. Maybe by the spring, I can watch Unforgiven or Le Grande Illusion--and be able to write more words every day.

*The only time I watch TV most of the time, on a small TV in my kitchen--another reason to watch easy films that can be watched in segments, without losing track of the plot.

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PS: As I was looking for a pic of Hugh Grant, I discovered the not-so-charming fact that he recently fathered three children by two women at the same time, with another on the way. I'm not sure this will affect my enjoyment of his movies since they never seemed all that close to reality anyway...

Stuck somewhere between childhood and "Twilight"

Recently E-girl wanted to cash in her Barnes and Noble gift cards and buy a copy of The Hobbit since none of the local libraries have a copy of it on their shelves. (We'd already listened to it on CD in the car last year, read by the excellent voice actor, Rob Ingles).

BN.com has lots of ways of finding books for recommended ages and reading levels. First she looked at the lists of books recommended for ages 9-12, but found that she/we had either read them already  (the Percy Jackson series, Wonderstruck, A Wrinkle in Time, etc.) or they seemed too easy. So I suggested she plug in her Lexile score, using their Lexile Reading Level Wizard, to see what books match it. The results were not promising: Ethan Frome, Hiroshima, Animal Farm, The Jungle, A Farewell to Arms, To Kill a Mockingbird. All great books but not a good fit for a kid who still likes happy endings. (The Lexile score obviously represents mere vocabulary comprehension rather than level of emotional connection or life experience).

So we looked at books recommended for 12 and up. And here is the depressing part. Once you leave childhood (and Wimpy Kid, The Magic Thief, Percy Jackson, etc.) behind, according to BN.com's helpful recommendations, you're in the land of Pretty Little Liars and Hunger Games and Twilight—a place of malice and implied (or not) sexuality, where the good girl/guy doesn't always win.

My kid, so far, has not been eager to rush into young adulthood. She has resisted any interest in The Hunger Games, despite the urging of several classmates, because she knows she wouldn't enjoy it, at least not yet. But where does that leave her? Winnie the Pooh is a distant country already and even Beverly Cleary is slipping behind her.

Frustrated, she was about to give up the search for another book (and the $25 minimum for free shipping) when she happily discovered that BN.com carries DVDs. So now a copy of The Hobbit and the first season of "I Love Lucy" (which is one of her favorite TV shows) is on its way to our home.

Classic TV can be a refuge, particularly for those destined for unknown, and unfolding, lands. So, too, at least for a time, I think we'll turn back to the classic books of adolescence, written in a less cynical time, where characters didn't shop for expensive brand-name clothes or try to kill each other. Better start looking for my copy of My Side of the Mountain...

In which I suddenly express a small amount of desire for an e-reader

I admit that I've been pretty disdainful of eBooks in most past posts on this blog. But last weekend, I felt a glimmer of desire for one of the dang things.

I was trying to squeeze all the new books that E-girl received for Christmas and her birthday into already packed shelves. They...wouldn't...fit.

She is very sentimental. Suggestions that we give away some of the books she doesn't read anymore have been met with tears. She won't get rid of even the books that don't deserve a second reading like those from the Dear Dumb Diary series. Being surrounded by books is a comfort to her, even the stack of Dr. Suesses on the top shelf that she hasn't read in seven years.

"What if," a little voice in my head whispered, "all those throw-away tween novels had been on an e-reader? She could still have access to them, but they wouldn't be crowding all these shelves."

(In the past, we could get such books from the library. But our public library is struggling and its book budget has been slashed. If they buy new books at all it's sometimes one copy for 19+ branches. When we went to look for books on planning children's parties last week, we found the same books that were there 10 years ago. So if we want something new, we now have to buy it ourselves. Or, possibly, wait a long time in an online queue.)

And when she struggles to put on her backpack in the morning, filled with books, I sometimes wish I could load up textbooks and novels on a small e-Reader for her.

Of course, there's still the problem of misplacing or losing such an expensive tool. If not lost out of a backpack, I imagine it could be easily buried under a pile of books in her room.

So I won't be ordering a Kindle anytime soon. But it's starting to appear, sometimes, on a Wish List in my mind.

Try doing this with an e-book

Fun, whimsical video of what goes on in a bookstore in the after-hours.

The Flaubert option

I am in the midst of my third bad cold/respiratory virus in less than 12 months. Is it karma? (I bragged "I never get colds anymore!" a year ago). Whatever the cause, this is my particular immune weakness right now and no matter how many vegetables I eat or how much zinc, vitamin C, or Chinese herbs I take, the colds stick around for several days. And make me tired—after I typed this first paragraph, I wanted to lie down again.

There are only two good things about being sick: it increases empathy for the sick, and offers time to daydream. Of course I can daydream in good health, but not without some degree of guilt. Trapped in bed, the mind can wander.

I thought of Gustave Flaubert this morning when I went back to bed after breakfast. Flaubert's family wanted him to be a lawyer but he wanted to write. After what was described as a bout of nervous fits (perhaps undiagnosed epilepsy?) he declared he was too ill for the law. And he wrote. Of course, this is an oversimplification of his life—he traveled, had liaisons with prostitutes and engaged in love affairs in places beyond his own bedroom. But I have this image of him retreating from the world and giving himself completely to words.

Last night, I went to bed early and, cozy under blankets, read 50 pages of The Night Circus, which I received for Christmas. I did not think about dirty floors, laundry or dishes—I didn't have the energy to do anything else.  The only other time these days that I can "read" books so guiltlessly is when I am driving in the car, listening to books on tape. I always have to be doing something, going somewhere.

In my regular, healthier life, the reading of a book is no longer a goal or worthy activity in and of itself. How have I gotten so far away from one of the things that is most important to me?

A mission of salvation in a dark basement room

Yesterday I scavenged through a dead woman's bookshelves. Although I don't know her name, or anything about her except that she was a former school teacher and a survivor of the Holocaust, I came to admire and like her in the couple of hours that I was there in her dark, empty house.

The books we found there gave evidence of an intelligent person with eclectic tastes: hardcover, first-edition novels (from Lolita to Star Trek), a collection of Samuel Beckett's work (in English and French), travel books, cookbooks and issues of Bon Appetit, humor, biography, and trendy psychology—written in English, French, German, Spanish and even Russian. She had been a voracious reader—there were stacks of books in other rooms of the house,  and they obviously had been read because almost every one contained scribbled comments on the inside front page that summed up her reactions, e.g., "...highly amusing" and "...a suspenseful read."

My companion and I were there to take out what we could for the local high school's annual book sale because no one else wanted her books. She had been single, childless and elderly, and after she died in that house, no one came to claim her books. In fact, the realtor who bought it was just going to throw them away. We were there on a mission of salvation.

Looking through her collection, I was reminded of the autistic knitter. This woman's book collection also represented a kind of art form or life's work. And all of it, including her tiny commentaries, had been destined for a garbage can. Perhaps there was other evidence remaining of her life beyond that quiet house—art works or crafts or letters she had written, still preserved by companions or the sons and daughters of her companions—but I doubted it. With a sinking feeling, I felt like I was deciding what part of her would go on, even if only to strangers that won't know her name.

But what struck me more was the sudden realization that if everything she had read had been on an e-reader, my friend and I wouldn't have been there in her house in the first place, and I never would have spent those few moments in her lingering presence. All those titles, the odd juxtapositions of Art Buchwald and Ferlingetti and science fiction paperbacks, gone in a blip.

Writer Profile: Amy Bonaccorso

If it hadn’t been for The Sun magazine, I probably would never have met Amy Bonaccorso—Amy and I joined the same Sun discussion group a couple of months ago. When the conversation turned to e-books that first day, I made my usual “E-books, yuk!” refrain. But Amy didn’t agree with me because, she said, e-books can offer higher royalties for authors. She knew, because her book, How to Get to 'I Do': A Dating Guide for Catholic Women, is available in both Kindle and hard copy editions. When I told her that I wanted to know more about her publishing experiences, and how she has been marketing her book, she graciously consented to this email interview.

Amy is a senior communications specialist within the federal government, where she manages an internal newsletter, arranges big events, and works to improve communication. For more information on Amy and her book, see her web site.


How did you get the idea to write your book?

When I dated in my twenties, a lot of the guidance I got was unrealistic and not very helpful. Much of it was written by unmarried people or concerned parents. After I became engaged, I could see what I did wrong, what I did right, what advice was worth taking, and which words should have been ignored. It was something I wanted to capture in writing. I am sure lots of people have great moments of hindsight like I did...they just don't write anything down. I thought I should publish my lessons learned for others, though.

I had a diverse dating portfolio by the time I met my husband on Match.com. And that’s the point I try to get across in my book. Women, even very traditional Catholic women, need to put themselves out there in a variety of ways. A man can’t find you if you aren’t anywhere to be found. I also think some Catholic women need to relax a bit and not be so hyper-pious.


The Amazon.com blurb for your book says, “…plenty of good men are waiting for a woman like you to throw away the checklist of idealized mate material.” What was on your original "list"? What did you find instead?

Here is the list:
- Catholic, like me
- Devout
- Chaste
- Building a good career
- College educated
- Marriage minded
- Physically attractive
- Willing to support a full-time mom/housewife role for me

My husband was not incredibly devout, and although he had a good career plan, he made less than me when I met him... so I couldn't expect a quick 1950s lifestyle. He is a lot more secular and "modern" than the man I thought I was looking for. I couldn't see it then, but I have a rather bohemian background and a sometimes contradictory set of interests, personality traits, goals, and beliefs. I could probably drive a cookie cutter Catholic man crazy. One ex, for example, wanted me to quit going to acupuncture because it weirded him out. I got to talk to an old Andy Warhol protégé in New York City a few months ago, and it was one of the thrills of my life. Discerning religious life at a Carmelite convent was also one of my most memorable life experiences. Not everyone can accept that kind of dichotomy. (We’ve been married nearly three years now.)


Since you work full-time, when/where did you write the book?

I wrote during my lunch breaks, in the evenings, and on weekends. I'd sometimes write on the backs of receipts or little pieces of scrap paper when I was out at lunch. Or, I would eat at my desk and write my thoughts in an email message. The book came very quickly. It only took about six months. I credit my muses for that.


How did you find your publisher?

I didn't have an agent. I looked at books that I was reacting against and saw who published them. They were small Catholic publishers. Since I could easily refer to other books on their list when pitching mine, I targeted them with a book proposal. Within weeks, I had an offer.


Why did you decide to do a Kindle edition?

My husband recommended that I suggest a Kindle edition to the publisher. I also had people around me who were into their Kindles and weren't buying paperbacks anymore. I had a feeling that some women would want the book quickly too if they were having a dating crisis. It's the first e-book for Servant Books.

High school time machine

People from my past are popping up with more rapidity lately, due mostly to Facebook’s cheerful but insistent suggestions that I friend people with whom I have or have had the slightest bit of connection.

Like thousands of other people are also, surely, doing, I’ve pulled down my high school yearbook to search for clues as to who these now-gray-headed people are.

Last night I opened my high school yearbook from my sophomore year to find a name I no longer recognized and it was like an instant time machine. I was once again in the classrooms of Wilkes Central High School, pushing my long, straight hair behind one ear, hoping to be noticed and somehow, and in some way, acclaimed, though most of my actions then didn’t warrant any attention whatsoever. I was pulled back into my adolescent angst and unassuredness, feelings I didn’t especially want to revisit.

I know there are people who remember their high school years with fondness, but my hunch is that not many of them are writers, or at least fiction writers. I began to write in those years out of a loneliness that could not be appeased, no matter how many people I sat with at lunchtime, no matter how long I talked to friends on the phone at night. There was still something I needed to say, some part of myself that needed to be explored and recognized and voiced.

I looked at these teenagers and was amazed at how they all evolved, in different ways, into adults with solidified identities, careers, and beliefs, predictable and surprising. (Who would have guessed that my friend, Rhonda, the only girl on the debate team, would end up a cross-country truck driver?)

There was so much social stratification in my high school that it amazes me now, flipping through the yearbook’s pages, how we were able to tell the difference between the townies and the people, like me, who were bused to the town school—we’re all dressed pretty much the same shabby way, in cheap blue jeans or short-shorts. There were no Abercrombie t-shirts to helpfully mark the rich, no $200 sneakers. One clue was that the popular kids appeared on the pages for the Greek service clubs, the homecoming courts, the teams of country club sports like golf—more frequently on the very pages of the yearbook itself.

Everyone tried so hard in my high school to fit in, to not be on the perimeter or, worse, the fringes of the perimeter. Maybe it’s always been like that in high school, in all times and all places, but the urgency of at my high school was constant and intense. I once forgot to put my belt through one of the loops on my pants and was stopped and chastised throughout the day, even by people I didn’t know. From then on, I tried to wear mismatched socks, my belts half-looped, rebelling in my own quiet way.

All this seemed so important then, and so suffocating, yet I hadn’t thought much about it for years. So it was with relief and gladness that I closed the book, took a deep breath, and reentered my present, unfettered life. But the feeling of teenage angst remained with me for hours. That’s pretty powerful—time machine, mood changer, museum, and history book all in one.

(The picture above is photo of an actual page from my sophomore yearbook—the staff of the Talon, our student newspaper, sitting in the portable classroom where we put it together. I am in the top left.)

Huck Finn and the N-word

Much has already been said recently about the new version of Huckleberry Finn that replaces the N-word (which appears more than 100 times in the book) with “slave.” I’m not sure I have much to add to the debate, but I’d like to say something about people who condemn a work with which they have little real familiarity.

When I was a reporter for the Winston-Salem Journal, I lived in Boone and, therefore, covered any major event or speaker engagement that took place at Appalachian State University. One night, Ralph Abernathy was the speaker and when he took questions from the audience after his talk, someone asked him if he thought that Huckleberry Finn should be banned from schools.

“Yes, I strongly think it should be banned,” Abernathy answered. Having just re-read Huck Finn myself, I couldn’t understand his adamancy. So when it came time for the press to meet briefly with him afterwards, I stood next to him asked him outright, “Have you ever actually read Huckleberry Finn?” Abernathy shook his head and said he hadn’t but he didn’t want to read it.

“But,” I persisted, “it’s a beautiful book that speaks against slavery. Huck embraces Jim’s humanity in the end.” And then, before he could get away from me, I asked him for his address. “I will mail you my copy of the book if you promise me you’ll read it,” I said. Abernathy shrugged and gave me his address. I mailed my paperback copy and never heard back from him. He died a few years later.

I searched in vain on Google just now to see if Abernathy ever publicly retracted his advocacy for banning Huck Finn, but found nothing, not even evidence of Abernathy ever having publicly said it should be banned (perhaps because his statement was made in the pre-Internet ‘80s). I’m not sure if my package ever got to his home or, if it did, if he opened it.

Most people are uncomfortable with the N-word, as they should be—I won’t even say it aloud. I can understand the discomfort teachers might have in introducing a work in which it is used repeatedly. But I also think it has a place and a context in that book. Jim and other black people are referred to with this derogatory label, without any thought by the white people in the book except, finally, Huck Finn himself. He rises above the debasedness of his society and embraces Jim as his friend, willing even to go to hell for his friendship.

We owe it to Twain to preserve the book as he has written it. Surely a good teacher can impress upon his or her students that it is the white people who are in error here, for using such a word, and that every time it is repeated in the book, it is another example of their complacent hatred and stupidity, that with it, they demean themselves.

Suggested gifts for writers, or those who love good writing

Anyone who really knows me understands that I am not the biggest fan of the Christmas season. I dislike the annual frenzied, consumer-driven ritual it has become, and the constant, media-inflicted we-must-save-the-American-economy guilt.

However, if you love Christmas and/or feel the need to buy gifts, you might as well support good writing, and publications that deserve to continue. [Note: These are not paid promotions...]  Here are a few of the things I am giving to others and to myself:

I Just Lately Started Buying Wings is by Writing Home friend, Kim Dana Kupperman.
    "In this collection of essays, Kupperman looks at major life events—divorce, death, falling in love—with a candor and wisdom that gently places the reader into scenes from her life. We experience her mother's crazed neglect, her father's distance, a new lover's exquisite beauty. ...Kupperman proves that she has found her own wings, and is soaring." [from my Amazon.com review]
     For more on this book, see the NYT book review and NYT Paper Cuts interview with Kim.

A wonderful surprise arrives in my mailbox every three weeks in the form of one story magazine, which provides just what it says—one short story—in a pocketbook-sized issue. While other short story markets continue to dry up, OS keeps plugging away, publishing more than 140 short stories since 2002. I have to admit that it's the size that prompted me to subscribe to it—it's just a little bigger than the early issues of my own (defunct) a very small magazine. But it's the stories that keep me reading and wanting more.

Amazingly, The Sun magazine has been continuously publishing intelligent writing since the mid-1970s and, in recent years, without the support of advertisements. What began for publisher Sy Syfransky as a venture put together in a friend's garage and hawked from his backpack on the streets of Chapel Hill, N.C., is now a respected prize-generating enterprise; stories and essays from The Sun are regularly picked for Pushcart, Best American..., and other publishing awards.
      The long interview, at the front of the magazine, is almost always provocative and interesting; "Readers Write," at the back of the magazine, offers lyrical glimpses into readers' lives; and the fiction and essays in the center of the magazine showcase some of the best writing around. My only criticism of The Sun is that is can veer toward the dark and depressing a little too often. But not to read it is to miss out on things that feel important and necessary.
    The Sun is currently struggling, it seems, to stay afloat, requesting contributions and suggesting that subscribers give friends gift subscriptions. So, if you subscribe to The Sun (as a present to yourself), consider also giving gift subscriptions to people you know who cherish good writing.

Yes I did!

Grab the time and do it—that's what I learned from NaNoWriMo 2010. Because of that contest, I wrote a 50,011 word novel in 30 days, a book that otherwise would never have been written.

I'm not sure that anyone can write a deeply nuanced and eloquent novel in a month—mine certainly isn't. But I didn't expect it to be. And that lack of expectation really gave me a wonderful freedom to write.

The other great thing about NaNoWriMo is that I could actually talk about it with people. I charted my progress on my profile page there (see chart from it, above), and put occasional updates on my Facebook page. It made my fiction writing visible, for once; I felt a part of a (temporary) community. And it made me write, no excuses. Dirty dishes, unmade bed, work deadlines—so what? I had 1,665 words to write each day and until they were done, I put other things aside. But, as you can see from the chart, I struggled to always find the time to write. Sometimes regular life was unavoidable.

In my novel, I wrote from the perspective of a 12-year-old girl, something I probably never would have otherwise attempted. It was the first thing that popped into my head on November 1st and I had to see it through, no time for redos or rewrites or more than minimal editing. I couldn't lose time to rethinking the plot or the characters. They were mine for 30 days.

Writing for the YA audience also required a more resolved and happier ending than the usual melancholy ending I fall into when writing for adults. I found the happy ending wasn't that difficult when it was inherent or organic to the story, so I hope I can write happier endings in the future even when I'm not writing for children.

Writer Profile: Nan K. Chase

I met Nan Chase more than two decades ago, shortly after I’d moved to Boone, N.C., to run one of the Winston-Salem Journal’s Northwest bureaus. Nan, who worked for the local Watauga Democrat, invited me over to her house for lunch, a short walk from my downtown office. I was amazed that she could converse freely with me while she ate and ground food in a hand-cranked gizmo and fed it to her baby, propped contentedly on one knee. She had a big, old house with a garden, and a husband and three kids—comforts I sorely lacked in my tiny rented apartment.  That hour gave me a vision of what my life could be, and perhaps initiated my eventual departure from my lonely life as a solo reporter. We kept in touch over the years, a main point of connection being a very small magazine (which I edited and Nan, for some reason, admired). Nan wrote a short piece about AVSM for the Washington Post Magazine and later started appearing on its pages under the pseudonym “Anita Menendez.”

I’ve always enjoyed reading Nan’s journalistic work, from her opinion pieces in N.C. dailies to travel pieces in the Washington Post and the New York Times, and the ease with which she has tackled a variety of subjects, from furniture to football, gardening to the Jewish Sabbath. Nan has authored two books in recent years: Asheville: A History, and Eat Your Yard! and co-authored another, Bark House Style: Sustainable Designs from Nature. For more on Nan, see her web site for Eat Your Yard! 

We spoke recently at a Chinese restaurant in Maryland, a conversation that continued via email.

Why did you decide to study journalism and/or what led you to be a writer? Did you write as a kid?

It turns out that my father's side of the family has had many writers or storytellers through the years. For instance, I have a second cousin (never met him) who is an entertainment writer at the Orange County Register, and there are several other reporters in the family. My father is a wonderful writer; he provided the "big picture" perspective for my writing, while my mother was the grammarian. Together they provided me a perfect writer's education.

I got a lot of encouragement in high school from teachers who said I was a good writer. They said, “Don't stop writing.” So I didn't. I was very shy in high school and college, but did write for the high school paper. In college I pursued a double major: economics and journalism. I was terrified of the thought of conducting an interview, and somehow got through college without doing that. Then, when I had a newspaper job in Boone, N.C., all that reticence disappeared. I am a voracious reader, and ultimately that is necessary for a writer.

Would you say you’ve experienced a creative Renaissance since your kids left your house? You have published three books since they left!

No. That’s because I really feel I did my most honest and important work very early on, when they were quite young and I was still in my 20s and 30s, with “nothing to lose” in a small Southern town yet. I’m sure it’s true for many writers that their most powerful work comes right out at the beginning (and the rest of the career is workmanship). At the same time, once my children, and my husband and I, were established in the community, I had a natural tendency to pull back into less threatening, ”lighter” topics.

Now, it is true that I have written three books (co-author of one of them) in short order. I had never, ever thought of doing a book, before about 2005. It happened that my youngest child was 20 years old and didn’t need me in any way for transportation, etc. And so I did have the long stretches of time necessary for book research and writing. I did have the time not to cook or do many household chores. Early on, while I was writing essays and articles, and the children were young, I managed to create great quality time a few minutes or hours at a time.

Now time is a pressure in another way: one can only count on so many years of productive work capacity, and it just doesn’t last forever. So I suddenly have a brain full of book ideas and have to decide where to turn next.

Why did Asheville intrigue you as a subject?

My husband, Saul, and I found that we were spending all our weekends in Asheville, having fun, enjoying the architecture, the music and theater, the restaurants, even the shopping. So we bought a small condo as a weekend home (one benefit of cutting one’s children loose economically upon college graduation). After taking a walk in the beautiful Riverside Cemetery we stopped at Malaprops bookstore, where I asked for a book that would tell me why Asheville looks so distinctive, and why the downtown was enjoying a commercial and cultural renaissance after so many years of decay. The clerk said, “There isn’t one.” Shazzam! Instant topic.

The future of books

• NPR's "On the Media" devoted a full hour to the future of books and publishing in its July 2nd show, Book It. (This is an updated re-broadcast of a previous show.) The broadcast includes an interview with Neil Gaiman on what authors in the future will have to do to make money. According to this show, formats like the iPad or the iPhone will be how books will be delivered in the future. Drat!

• On the Media's information page for this show includes a link to a 2008 New York magazine article, The End, which is on the end and/or the transformation of the publishing business.

• Realizing this was becoming one of my Links posts, I googled "future of the book" and found:

• The Institute for the Future of the Book (IFB seeks to chronicle the shift from print to screen, and "impact its development in a positive direction.")
• The Future of the Book - A Wired magazine article (from 1996!)
  
• Since links have a tendency to die, you can see other articles and web sites for yourself via my Google search for "future of the book"
• Finally, ironically, my Google search brought up the page, The Googlization of Everything, a page created by writer Siva Vaidhyanathan, who is working in collaboration with IFB.
  

Know your audience

I loved A Wrinkle in Time when I read it in elementary school—I still list it among my favorite books of all time. To read about an awkward, adolescent heroine with braces and low self-esteem who saves her brother, and possibly the fate of the entire universe, was deeply gratifying. It's one of the things that got me through early adolescence.

I shared it this winter with E-girl, my tween-aged daughter, reading aloud a chapter a night and she, too, loved it (though she said "Eww-www!" whenever Calvin touched Meg or complimented such things as her "dreamboat eyes.")

So we finished the book and, she being intent on reading book series in an unbroken stream once started, went on to the next book in the quartet, A Wind in the Door, which we read with less enthusiasm, plowing through all the tedious discussions of (what turned out to be fictitious) farandolae, hoping that Meg would re-emerge as the spunky heroine.

And she did, at least enough for us to go on to the third book, A Swiftly Tilting Planet. But here's where we stopped, only a few pages in—something my series-insistent child hardly ever allows. The book begins back in the family kitchen (a nice homey setting that children crave hearing about). But this time, Meg is grown-up, pregnant and married to Calvin, who has gone off to an important conference in England, leaving Meg to arrange flowers and contemplate her pregnancy. Worse, everyone else in the family seems to have a job or task of high importance while Meg - is - just - pregnant.

Maybe, later in the book, Meg will once again be heroic and important on a universal scale, but we just couldn't keep reading. The pages felt like lead in my hand. Meg had become boring.

What was Madeline L'Engle thinking? Maybe she just wanted Meg to be happy, or to show awkward girl readers that they might also become pretty and loved. Or maybe she wanted girl readers to know that the simple acts of life are important, too, and get them used to the idea that being a housewife was more like their real fate than the possibility of conquering wide-scale evil or saving the earth from destruction.

But I can't imagine many girl readers (or any boy readers) who had thrilled at Meg's adventures on other planets and within nano-universes equally thrilled at Meg's domesticity. We wanted her wrinkling through space and time ready to battle evil for those she loved—not for her to grow up and be ordinary.

Catching up on a little reading...

In the early 90s, when I was working at the U.S. General Accounting Office, I sometimes brought a bag lunch from home and took it down to the dungeon-like lunchroom that had been set up for library staff. Usually there would be a woman sitting there, intently reading the Washington Post, too busy to talk to anyone else.

I admired her dedication. She started with the front section and worked her way through every page, in page order, section by section. I seem to remember her running her index finger under the type, making sure she caught everything. Then one day I realized that K. wasn't reading that day's Washington Post, but one from three months previous.

When I asked her about this, she said, "I didn't get to read it then, so I'm reading it now." Oh, I thought, she must bring papers to work that she missed reading at home. That's a good idea. No fear of losing a fresh paper in the shuffle to and from work. But the next time I saw her, she was reading another Post from almost exactly three months before from that day's date.

"I'm three months behind," she said, when I asked her why. "So I'm reading them in order." She then explained that she wouldn't read any current issue until she had finished all the previous issues. K. was still doing this when I left a couple of years later. Her news was always three months old—the weather forecast was for the wrong season, the movie listings were useless, the people in the obituaries long buried.

If I had more time or imagination, I would make K. a character in a short story. But I don't, so I'm leaving her here (though I imagine that Joyce Carol Oates, if she had read this far, would already know K.'s fictional destiny).

What brings me to write about her is that I have a similar relationship with the New Yorker. I subscribed to the New Yorker full of hope and excitement a couple of years ago (taking advantage of the unbelievable offer of $25/year). The best magazine in the United States would soon be coming to my mailbox. I eagerly started reading the first issue that arrived, but too soon the next arrived, and then the next.

I tucked a couple of issues here and there—in my beach bag, in a reading basket in the bathroom, in the car. But it was no use. It felt like I was waging a losing battle, each new arrival a fresh defeat.

I let the subscription run out. Now a pile of two-year-old New Yorkers hovers above me on a tall shelf. I can't throw them out because they're too full of good writing to just toss them into the recycling bin.

Another bargain offer to the New Yorker arrived in the mail last week; I was so tempted to check "yes" and mail it back, but that pile of unread NYers taunted me. I tell myself that I don't want to turn into K., so I let them gather dust. Yet perhaps such neglect is a fate worse than hers, for at least she tried to continue the task, no matter how desperate or impossible it grew to be.

The problem with reading two books at once

As mentioned in a previous post (The writer, reading/listening), almost since our kids were old enough to understand one sentence following another, we've listened to books on tape during family car trips.

At first, we reserved them only for long journeys—I often remember past trips by the stories we heard along the way (our drive to Canada and back took as long as Fellowship of the Rings; now, when I think of traveling Montreal, I also sometimes think of Frodo traveling to Rivendell). But then we found it was nice to have a story to look forward to whenever we got into the car, even when we were just going to the grocery store.

We were able to keep the narrative going somehow, perhaps because it was such a defined space and we were a truly captive audience. The seatbelts click and the story starts again. Only occasionally did we need to back up a bit to catch up.

We've also always read to our kids aloud at night, from toddler to almost-teenage. This has never been a conflict before, listening to one story in the car, another at night. Until recently, when E-girl and I listened to City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau and read When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. Both are mysteries written for children, presenting puzzles for the reader to figure out.

One night, about a week into both narratives, E-girl said, "I keep getting them confused." It was hard to remember sometimes which story had the man under the mailbox, which had the confused grandma. So we stopped listening to Ember until we finished the other book. Perhaps what made it even more difficult is that When You Reach Me keeps referencing A Wrinkle in Time, so we were having to keep three books separate in our minds, reminding ourselves that Linah and Doone couldn't time travel.

Today I went to the library and checked out two books on CD: Treasure Island and The People of Sparks (the sequel to Ember). I also checked out The People of Sparks on paper; we have a paper copy of Treasure Island already. I guess this is the way it will have to be for awhile, as long as we're listening to suspenseful or exciting books. The only problem for me, now, is that I will be competing with professional voice/actors when I read aloud at night.

The lady in the bunny suit, a cream pie, Gary Larson and me

The day I met Gary Larson, I ended up wiping cream pie off his face.

Larson had come for a book-signing at the Bookseller in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where I worked as the assistant manager. It was 1984, when local, independent bookshops were still thriving and authors would visit even small towns if the bookstore was big enough. (The Bookseller went out of business years ago.)

Not long after Larson had been set up at a table piled with his books in the store's lower-level, a woman sauntered in dressed in a bunny costume and carrying a cream pie. I was at the cash register and laughed as she walked by, thinking she was here to make some kind of absurd offering to the visiting celebrity. But, without saying a word, she smushed the pie in Larson's face. "Hey, what are you doing?" he said (or something to that effect).

I grabbed paper towels and rushed down. The woman was standing there, looking perplexed and about to cry. It turns out she had called Larson's best friend, who was a reptile specialist at the Seattle Zoo and who occasionally appeared in his "Far Side" comics. "What can I do that would make Gary Larson feel welcome here?" she'd asked, and the friend had replied, as a joke, "If I were you, I'd dress up in a bunny costume and throw a pie in his face." I still can't believe she took the guy seriously.

I was reminded of this incident last week when I helped out at the PTSA used book sale. I miss that kind of tactile interaction with books. It was energizing to be surrounded by all those words, all those possibilities—I never feel that when I do a search and order on Amazon.com.

But what really brought it to mind again is that my son (I-guy) wrote Larson in early February, not expecting a reply because Larson has taken himself out of the public eye and offers no direct contact info on the Far Side web site. So, to get his attention, after the usual adoring fan paragraph, I-guy said, "More to the point of this letter, my mother swears she met you once in a very odd way." He went on to describe the incident just as I had described it to him, closing with: "Anyway, I guess I'm wondering if you remember this, or if my mother is full of it."

And he got back a reply! Not from Larson, but from one of his assistants. She said: "I checked with Mr. Larson and he confirmed that your mother remembers the episode quite accurately.... I'm happy to report that your mother did not in fact make it up!"

To offer further proof, she told him that the episode is mentioned in The Complete Far Side, Vol. 2 (p. 450). I have also since discovered that it is mentioned in the children's reference series, Something About the Author (v. 57, p. 124). In an interview in that volume, Larson says "celebrity has its price," and goes on to mention the woman who threw the cream pie: "I felt bad for her—the crowd was ugly about it." That moment and another, when he was led into a hive of too-eager fans, turned him off to public life, he says. "It used to be so simple," he laments, now "it's too showbiz."

Of course I wonder now if I had prevented the woman from throwing the banana cream pie in his face if Gary Larson would still be in the public eye—or, more importantly, if he would he still be publishing cartoons.

The Smiley Book Club

A few days after I wrote my post on children's books, my eight-year-old daughter cleaned out her desk at school and brought home a collection of little books she has been writing whenever she finishes a test or task early. She calls them the "Smiley Book Club" and checks them out to her friends if they sign a take-out slip or promise to write a review on the back page, e.g., "This is a good book!"

Except for the fact that she is lending them out for free, her book club is reminiscent of Andrew Clements' Lunch Money, which we listened to in the car this summer. In the book, Greg Kenton creates the Chunky Comics book club and sells the comics to all his friends. His initial desire is to make money, not to be an author, but he discovers his creativity along the way.

She said her inspiration for "Chuckie Cheader" came from a combination of Chuckie Cheese and The Tale of Despereaux, which her dad was reading to her at night. I asked her why the mouse in the picture on the second page of her book repeats the text and she said, "Mom, that's a caption." I didn't know she knew what a caption was.

The inspiration for another book, "The Kings Wonderful Singing Dumplings," came from her love of Chinese dumplings and a fairy tale book that's in her classroom. "I tried to follow the fairy tale style," she says. In the book, the king finds his favorite dumplings sitting on the counter singing:

He picked one up and put it to his ear. Laaaaaaa!! He droped it with surprise. La La La La Laaa. The king was astoded. The dumplings were singing the most beautiful sound. He picked up the bowl and ran to the prime minister. "Listen to this!"...

How cool that is, to be inspired and then just go and draw or write something without worrying whether it is good or where it will be seen or what its purpose is. Children have a natural license to be creative. How do we lose it when we grow up? The only adults I know who have that capability are artists and writers—and maybe bloggers. I think that is why I choose to blog these days rather than writing pieces for publication. I'm inspired, I write, I put it on the computer and walk away. It is the process of getting something down, transforming a thought into words that matters. It is a form of elation.

(Note: The books were drawn with pencil on notebook paper and are hard to see unless you click on the picture and see them enlarged.)

The writer, reading (listening)

“Read a lot” or “read widely,” writers are often advised. But most of my reading these days takes place in the car, with books on tape, and most of the books I listen to are children’s books. My daughter does not want to hear fiction written for adults—or any of the Teaching Company lectures (on Mark Twain, on great books, on the history of music, etc.) I was able to listen to when she was a baby and couldn’t complain about it.

She also likes to read one author at a time, everything they've written in order of publication, or all books in a series in exact numeric order. And so, over the course of a year, we listened to every Little House book. We listened to all the Beverly Cleary books that were available on tape, and I read the rest to her (first the Henry Huggins books then the Ramona series), a chapter at night before bed. She has been on an Andrew Clements kick lately and I sometimes find myself just as eager as she is to get in the car and see how the child protaganist(s) will figure out how to right things before the end of the book.

The thing about listening to books on tape instead of reading them is that, in my mind, the voice of the narrator often becomes the voice of the actor performing the book. When I think of the Little House books I now hear the raspy, slightly twangy voice of Cherry Jones (she of "24" fame). Ramona's story comes to me in the matter-of-fact delivery of Stockard Channing now. I'm not sure this would be a good thing for most people, but for me it has extended my repertoire of interior voices I hear when I read--I used to hear Dan Rather's voice when I read the newspaper, or the voice of a generic professor when I read anything philosophical. Now I am inspired to hear fictional characters in more than one voice when I read in silence, and I try to give them more individuality when I read aloud to her.

I've come to appreciate the complex simplicity of children's books (though my appreciation hasn't yet compelled me to attempt writing one). The plots may be simple, but the best writers really capture what it is like to be a child and/or present what it is that children want to hear. I am amazed that Beverly Cleary, already a responsible adult, was able to sit down and write about being seven years old. That Clements could take his experiences as a teacher and turn them around so that the children are at the center of his stories—the teachers are just there for occasional guidance and reaction. And, that the Little House books continue to present a world, as a teacher of mine in library school said, that children can relate to because it is one where children matter.

And so we ride along the streets, immersed in stories. Who knows what the other people sitting at the traffic light are listening to—talk radio? shock jocks? light rock? We are rehearsing for a holiday concert, struggling to survive in a prairie cabin, or walking to school in our new rain boots. And, sometimes, when we delve into fantastic tales like the Spiderwick Chronicles, we can almost see the fairies flying by.