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READING SPOTS: BEYOND THE ARMCHAIR

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Reading in the clouds
Reading in the clouds

Last month I asked readers about the most unusual or challenging places they’ve ever tried reading. They came through with fantastic answers, confirming my hunch that diehard readers will read anywhere and everywhere.

Forget the Armchair

The “weird” reading spots I mentioned ranged from bathrooms to beaches, commuter buses to cliffs. Many people agreed–there are many more places to read in this world than armchairs and libraries. Beds and trains are among the top picks.

My friend Wheatleigh, for example, says his most unusual reading spot was probably the Shinkasen (Japan’s bullet train) while travelling at 200 mph. He did that a lot while living and working in Japan.

“Each station in Japan has a distinctive ‘eki ben‘ or station bento (lunch box),” he recalls.

WHAT’S YOUR WEIRDEST READING SPOT?

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Reading in the clouds
Reading in the clouds

The other day a blizzard blasted my husband’s daily walk in the woods. “Why not swim laps with me?,” I asked. (I was heading to the indoor pool across the street). He looked at me like I was insane. Didn’t I know that he cannot exercise without “reading,” i.e., listening to a book? And didn’t I know how hard it was to follow narrative while swimming laps?

I didn’t, though he may be right. I do enjoy audio accompaniment to exercise, but I have never tried stroking through a story. As a devoted and daily swimmer, I listen instead to music on my beloved swiMP3 (when it chooses to work). Some people might be able to synchronize swimming with reading—I’m just not one of them.

THE YOUNG AND THE HEADSTRONG

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Mrs. Piggle Wiggle

Last month I asked people to share their favorite headstrong women of literature. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of responses–though many responses were not exactly women, and, in at least one case, perhaps not even human.

Among the top answers were the kinds I was expecting. They included authors like Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, and Gertrude Stein who had written about strong, independent female characters and/or were notably strong and independent themselves. Some new names showed up on this list as well, including Jodi Picoult, Nora Ephron, Isabel Allende, Barbara Kingsolver, and even HIldegard of Bingen.

Other responses were female characters who clearly knew their own minds and felt empowered to live accordingly.

HEADSTRONG WOMEN OF LITERATURE

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Marjorie Morningstar--Cover

Recently I got an ad from The New York Review of Books featuring “headstrong women” paraphernalia in their Readers Catalog (pillow covers, tea sets, necklaces, that kind of thing). They meant “headstrong women” of literature such as Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, Gertrude Stein—women who took their lives into their own hands, I suppose.

Because I had just finished Herman Wouk’s novel Marjorie Morningstar, that email got me thinking about “headstrong” female protagonists. I can’t really say that Marjorie is headstrong. In the end she turns out to be quite conventional, at least externally, ultimately the poignant and ephemeral embodiment of a young man’s fantasy.

What on earth does headstrong mean anyway?

Still, Marjorie is in many ways a woman with a mind of her own, or at least a mind we got to see in depth in the novel.

FREEFALL: THE MAGIC OF AUTHOR LILY IONA MACKENZIE

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Author Lily Iona Mackenzie
Author Lily Iona Mackenzie

Lily Iona Mackenzie’s new novel Freefall: A Divine Comedy is a “coming-of-age” novel about four women turning sixty. As a woman of “a certain age,” this concept naturally caught my attention. The story of “wacky installation artist” Tillie Bloom and three friends from her teenage years follows the women’s lives over four decades in three countries, centered in the San Francisco Bay area, Whistler, BC, and Venice, Italy. The result is an imaginative, sometimes “hilarious,” romp with a touch of magical realism that also turns out to be a serious meditation on the relationship between art and mortality.

Besides Freefall, Mackenzie has published reviews, interviews, short fiction, poetry, travel pieces, essays, and memoir in over 160 American and Canadian venues.

SUMMER HAZE: AN INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL J. TUCKER

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I had the opportunity to interview writer Michael J. Tucker this month about his new novel, Summer Haze. Mike is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, Aquarius Falling and Capricorn’s Collapse, the poetry collection Your Voice Spoke To My Ear, and the memoir A Disrupted Life. His short stories include the Amazon best-selling short story series, Katie Savage.

Tucker’s newest work, Summer Haze, is a coming-of-age novel about three gifted musicians who all overcome childhoods of verbal, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse but eventually bond as a band of singer songwriters . They play in dive bars throughout the South and casinos along the Gulf Coast, navigating the challenges of friendship, rivalry, success, and, eventually, loss.

THE ART OF WRITING

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NOTE: As part of an occasional “Writers on Writing” series I will be featuring occasional guest bloggers. Kicking off this effort is this piece by novelist Bill Woods. — Terra

GUEST BLOG BY BILL WOODS, AUTHOR OF THE NOVEL ORIENT BEACH AND NOVELLA AND SHORT STORIES THE MUSE OF WALLACE ROSE

Bill Woods

A few days ago, a Facebook friend sent me Van Gogh’s Starry Night, a surreal picture a 3rd grader might idly do with crayon. And yet it creates pure emotion in me. Neither I, nor intellectual art critics, can explain how an artist captures emotion on canvas—or how my brain a century later can extract that same emotion. I doubt Van Gogh had a clue either. The process seems to be: ‘Emotion > canvas > emotion,’ no thought required.

CALL FOR WRITERS (AGAIN)

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Writers Wanted
Writing something? Let me know!

Do you have a new book? Are you working on one? If so, please let me know.

I’m offering this call to help publicize new writers and writing projects here on Late Last Night Books. I’ll even help with a not-so-newly published book.

There’s no gimmick. I’m looking for writers to interview in future blog posts. Whatever your write or wrote or are writing, you almost certainly qualify.

Any kind of writing is fair game: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, translations, and anything else involving putting words together. I’d love to know more about what you’re doing.

I’m offering up this space to writers in need of publicity once again because, frankly, the well has run dry.

CATCHING UP WITH WRITER NANCY BURKE

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Headshot of Author Nancy Burke
Author Nancy Burke. Photo by Martha Abelson Photograph

Nancy Burke is a writer, musician, and psychoanalyst who recently published her first novel, Undergrowth. In my mind, though, she remains a young girl who I saw annually at a mutual friend’s childhood birthday parties–so clearly I have a lot of catching up to do. In this interview, I had a chance to get the process started, at least it terms of Nancy’s writing life

That writing life has been prolific and diverse. In the years since those birthday parties, Nancy has received numerous writing awards and grants, and, as a psychoanalyst, has published non-fiction articles and edited the nonfiction book Gender and Envy. Also a songwriter, she has recorded two albums of her original songs: American Goodbye and a second scheduled for release later this year.

FEW REGRETS: AN INTERVIEW WITH BILL WOODS

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Bill Woods

Bill Woods, author of the new novel Orient Beach, has been a published writer 57 years–sort of. He first published a story at age 15 in the Sunday Edition of The Memphis Commercial Appeal after winning a short story contest.

But then life got in the way.

“I had a little business meeting with myself when I finished high school,” Bill recalls. “On the one hand, I really, really wanted to be a writer. However, I grew up poor. Becoming a starving artist did not seem romantic to me. So now, a retired engineer, I’m back where I started. I still want to be the writer I wanted to be at 15. “

A lifetime later, Woods has become that writer.

JUST PUBLISHED A BOOK? THIS MIGHT HELP

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Writing these things is pretty much like sending out a message in a bottle. If I’m lucky–and often I’m not–a handful of family and friends might glance at my blogs. I often feel like giving up.

Why should anyone read what I have to say here? Everyone’s busy. I get that. Heck, I don’t read most of what my friends write, so why should they read my stuff?

And why should they read my book review of a book that has already been reviewed countless times?

Honestly, the last thing the world needs is another blog by an obscure writer. But obscure writers with newly published books need blogs about them desperately.

That’s why this month–instead of my usual solipsistic musings on reading, writing, and literature–I’m going to make an offer.

AN ARRANGED MARRIAGE: MERGING BOOK COLLECTIONS (PART 2)

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Popular science books in a home library

Can merging two personal book collections break up a marriage? I asked this question last month and got some excellent tips on how to deal with domestic disputes that arise when “marrying” two systems of organization (or lack thereof).

Merging and Arranging Book Collections

Some people grappled directly with the issue at hand. Others responded with ways they organized their personal book collections. Some simply said, or implied, that the best system is to donate books once you’re done with them.

Beth Dietricks’ first response to my question was that she doesn’t have many books anymore because she’s “tired of accumulating things” and tries to “pass them on to get rid of them.” After trying to organize her remaining books by size, though, she discovered that she still had books in every room of her house.

AN ARRANGED MARRIAGE: LOVE, BOOKS, AND SHELVING

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Money. Religion. Fidelity. Those are supposedly the top issues that destroy relationships. But for some bibliophilic couples, a more challenging issue is how to arrange the books.

MORE

My husband and I share most values, or so we’ve always believed. We have a common religious and educational background. Our lifestyles and life goals are compatible. We even survived a 3-week bicycle trip through 1980’s China before we decided we could spend a life together What we failed to realize, however, was that combining our two book collections would be harder than combining our finances.

It turns out many of our friends, usually academics and/or writers, share this problem. People who love or use or need books turn out to care quite a bit about how to shelve them.

FOR A COUNTRY THAT READS, TRY ESTONIA

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My husband’s dream vacation is in Estonia. I kid you not. He loves Estonia for its visionary e-democracy, Why e-democracy would make Estonia a great place for a vacation eludes me, but I understand that for a political scientist like my husband, the country deserves respect.

Now, though, I may have to give Estonia some respect of my own. It turns out that Estonia tops the list of European countries that read the most.

World Book Day Statistics

I learned this intriguing fact about Estonia from new statistics released by Eurostat last spring for World Book Day. The chart above shows the fascinating numbers, gleaned from a survey conducted between 2008 and 2014 on people from aged 20-74 in 15 European Union countries.

ON COINCIDENCE

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I once wrote a novel inspired by coincidences. It was great fun–though hardly original. Metafiction, fantasy, fairy tales, and any number of other genres often require coincidence. Some even delight in riffing on it. 

Often, though, we have to limit coincidence in fiction, particularly realistic fiction. Inexplicable interconnections and concurrences may seem contrived. Genre novelists—and Charles Dickens, for that matter—are routinely pecked apart for stories that are too perfect too be true, filled with dei ex machina and separated-at-birth twins reuniting on the altar or mothers rediscovering offspring on the other side of the world.

Even so, fiction often aims to tell the story of real life. And, real life is filled with coincidence, or at least what seems to be coincidence to unbelievers.

THE POWER OF AN HOUR: WRITING ROUTINES

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For decades I’ve been preaching it to myself and others: writing routines don’t have to be long. Devote just an hour every day to writing, even if you cannot get beyond a few words, or you’re writing nonsense. If you can’t write a word, at least read or think about your writing.

Don’t underestimate the power of an hour.

Just do it.  It works. I wish I practiced what I preached more regularly. But I fully believe it nonetheless.

THE ATLANTIC JOINS THE INTERNET ERA

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The Atlantic's New Special Section on BooksIn the movie The Wife, a jaded middle-aged female novelist takes aside a talented young writer at a Smith College reading and says to her: “Don’t do it.” The aspiring student writer stands her ground, insisting that “a writer needs to write.” The older woman sighs. “A writer needs to be read,” she says.

I understand both sentiments. A writer does need to write. But, oh, how often it feels pointless, when publishing is so hard, when all-too-soon even the published book feels as impactful as a rock settling to the bottom of the sea!

What’s On Your Bucket List of Books?

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What book is top on your bucket list of books? What book have you always wanted to read but somehow never have? And what book would you feel incomplete without reading?

Bucket List

ASPIRATIONAL READING: MAKING A BUCKET LIST

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I’ve been hearing the term “aspirational” a lot lately. Aspirational recycling, aspirational eating, aspirational shopping, and so forth. “Aspirational” is a term applied to anything you do more out of hope than effectiveness. The other day when I confronted the stacks of books on my nightstand and environs, I realized that aspirational reading was also a thing.

And I was most definitely an aspirational reader.

Bucket List

TURNING TO FICTION: AN INTERVIEW WITH ANNA MARSH

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I met Anna Marsh at a Yale alumni event where her name tag told me she had received a PhD in psychology there in 1985. I expected to hear stories of a career in academia, musings on current psychological research, and perhaps tales of her illustrious classmates (one of whom currently serves as Yale’s president). We did, in fact, do some reminiscing. But our conversation took an unexpected turn when Anna mentioned being a fiction writer.

I soon learned that Anna had completed a master’s in writing at Johns Hopkins after leaving her career in government.  I wanted to know more, especially about the value of formal writing education in a person with a wealth of learning and life experience.