Actually, in addition to writing my own things, I have been reading a lot. At the WIWA conference, I was in a chat house with Jamie Ford, author of The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. I had read it a few weeks before and really liked it. It's set in Seattle , in both present day and WWII, and is a wonderfully descriptive look at the 1940's & the internment camps.
I just read Sharyn McCrumb's latest ballad novel, The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, which, thought it wasn't her best, was certainly worth reading. I like the feeling in these books, the sense of place and the otherworldly aspects.
The Empire of the Summer Moon is an excellent nonfiction book, about the Commanche war chief, Quanah Parker. I've decided I have to have a copy of it, so I can reread it. Not only is it as exciting as a novel, and very well written, part of it contains information about my own family. My father was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma, and Quanah Parker was his godfather. A great uncle married a Caddo woman, and is featured in the part about Quanah's coming into the reservation. Quanah's mother was a kidnapped white girl, who was taken away from the Commanches by whites after she gave birth to two boys and a girl. She went unwillingly and died not long after that.
Right now I'm reading one of Kate Atkinson's early books, Emotionally Weird. I found her first book, Behind the Scenes at the Museum when I had left the book I was reading in my hotel room and faced a long flight from London to Seattle without anything to read. Any bibliomaniac knows that's one of the circles of Hell. I went into a bookstore at Heathrow, went to the sale books and found Behind the Scenes, bought it and was gifted with one of the shortest flights of my life, thanks to Kate Atkinson.
My own writing is going well-at least I'll be sending chapters to an agent and an editor I met at the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference. I was a finalist in the Historical Novel Division but didn't place. Meeting competitors in the same genre was fun-from very nice to downright sharky!
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Catching Up
I haven't stopped reading-just blogging. I'm reading manuscripts for an agent friend too. Anyway, let's see:
Alison Weir's new book, The Lady in the Tower is brilliant, but a slow read. You get a lot of background, then the events leading up to the imprisoning of Anne Bolyn. If you read the novel, Wolf Hall, about Thomas Cromwell, this is another look at the man-in nonfiction. He comes across as a master power broker, and the court of Henry VIII as a place crawling with factions planning and lying to riise in the king's favor. The phrase, "How the mighty have fallen!" rings through out the book. You might want to keep a chart of the characters. I'm fond of Alison Weir. Her fiction is so readable, and her biographies are excellent.
On a lighter note, Barbara Cleverly's Joe Sandilands mysteries are ones I always look forward to. The new one, Strange Images of Death, is worth waiting for. The books are set between the world wars. Sandilands is a Scotland Yard detective, wounded in WWI. IN this, he takes a young girl to Provence where her father is staying in a chateau with other artists. When he arrives, he is told that someone has destroyed the 600 year old tomb of the wife of a crusader. Hmmm. I've just started the book, and can't wait to get back to it, sooo......
Alison Weir's new book, The Lady in the Tower is brilliant, but a slow read. You get a lot of background, then the events leading up to the imprisoning of Anne Bolyn. If you read the novel, Wolf Hall, about Thomas Cromwell, this is another look at the man-in nonfiction. He comes across as a master power broker, and the court of Henry VIII as a place crawling with factions planning and lying to riise in the king's favor. The phrase, "How the mighty have fallen!" rings through out the book. You might want to keep a chart of the characters. I'm fond of Alison Weir. Her fiction is so readable, and her biographies are excellent.
On a lighter note, Barbara Cleverly's Joe Sandilands mysteries are ones I always look forward to. The new one, Strange Images of Death, is worth waiting for. The books are set between the world wars. Sandilands is a Scotland Yard detective, wounded in WWI. IN this, he takes a young girl to Provence where her father is staying in a chateau with other artists. When he arrives, he is told that someone has destroyed the 600 year old tomb of the wife of a crusader. Hmmm. I've just started the book, and can't wait to get back to it, sooo......
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Roots
Ron RashOn both sides of my family, my roots are in Appalachia. On my mother's side, things are a bit hazy, though there's a Zachariah Russell in Kentucky, and his daughter Blanche Delaware(!) who was my mother's grandmother. On my father's side, it's Tennessee, North Carolina And West Virginia, and before that, Virginia. There are names like Cabin Run and Scotch Creek, Kingsport, Blountville. There are words and phrases that belong to that heritage. When I read Sharyn McCrumb and Margaret Maron, they resonate. Now I've found another writer who takes me there: Ron Rash. His novels are The World Made Straight, Saints at the River and Serena. In addition he has books of poetry and short stories. His three books all cover some sort of environmental theme as part of the back story: a valley flooded by a power company, the search for a drowned girl's body leading to the destruction of a wild and scenic river, clearcutting of the southern mountains. Rash's poetry shows through in each of the novels, as does his love of the land he knows well. But it is the people who stayed in my mind long after I finished reading the books: an environmentalist who has claimed a river as his own; a farmer and his wife whose love for each other leads to murder; a woman whose greed destroys forests.
Some of the words used in the characters' conversations take me back to my childhood in Texas, words that traveled with my family from Appalachia.
"Don't sull up," my mother used to say, when I pouted. I read that in one of Rash's books. Even the rhythm of his words reminds me of aunts and uncles repeating stories and songs they had heard from their parents and grandparents.
Sometimes I think the best writers are also poets, and regional writers carry their past with them.
Some of the words used in the characters' conversations take me back to my childhood in Texas, words that traveled with my family from Appalachia.
"Don't sull up," my mother used to say, when I pouted. I read that in one of Rash's books. Even the rhythm of his words reminds me of aunts and uncles repeating stories and songs they had heard from their parents and grandparents.
Sometimes I think the best writers are also poets, and regional writers carry their past with them.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
All Nighter
When a book is so good I can't put it down, stay up till all hours reading it, I know I've found a treasure. At 2am I finished Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves and still couldn't sleep. The ending pages were so gripping that I lay awake thinking about it.
It starts with a man in the National Museum in Washinton trying to attack a painting with a pocket knife. Come to find out, he's a famous artist in his own right. When he's institutionalized a psychiatrist who is also an artist tries to find out why the man attacked the specific painting. The man refuses to talk, except for an occasional cryptic statement.
When the psychiatrist finds letters in the artist's room written in France in the late 19th Century he becomes obsessed with the case. The story is told from several parts of view as the psychiatrist finds clues about the woman the artist paints over and over again. His wife ? His mistress?
The clues are throughout the book, and I kept thinking, "Aha! THAT'S the mystery!" But I found there was always more to discover. This is a brilliant book from a woman whose first book, The Historian, was a best seller.
Let me know what you think
It starts with a man in the National Museum in Washinton trying to attack a painting with a pocket knife. Come to find out, he's a famous artist in his own right. When he's institutionalized a psychiatrist who is also an artist tries to find out why the man attacked the specific painting. The man refuses to talk, except for an occasional cryptic statement.
When the psychiatrist finds letters in the artist's room written in France in the late 19th Century he becomes obsessed with the case. The story is told from several parts of view as the psychiatrist finds clues about the woman the artist paints over and over again. His wife ? His mistress?
The clues are throughout the book, and I kept thinking, "Aha! THAT'S the mystery!" But I found there was always more to discover. This is a brilliant book from a woman whose first book, The Historian, was a best seller.
Let me know what you think
Saturday, March 27, 2010
New Books! Oh, Joy!
After stumbling over weighty tomes, I struck gold recently-not once but three books in a row.
After reading The Highest Tide, Jim Lynch's first book, and enjoying the setting, the characters and the story arc, I knew that I would want to read his next one. First: I bought Border Songs, set in the dairy country around Lynden and Sumas, Washington, where there is very little indication about which country-Canada or the US- you happen to be standing in. The hero (of sorts) is a six foot eight dyslexic bird watching Border Patrol newbie who is supposed to be the barrier to stop narcotics and aliens out of the country. As a writer, I want to read about fullblown, rounded characters who drive a story. You get that in Jim Lynch's novels.
Next, I read Jane Hardam's Old Filth, about a retired judge looking back on his life. This is a really shallow description, though. Have you ever heard of the orphans of the Raj? The most famous, I suppose, was Rudyard Kipling. They were children whose parents lived in the farflung British Empire. They were sent "home", that is back to England to be raised by relatives or people who were paid to look after them.The judge is a product of the sort of brutality that many of these children endured. He comes home with his wife and bit by bit we're told about his past.
I'm on the waiting list for the next book, told from his wife's poiny of view.
The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver's latest, tells of another man's life, the son of a man who wants nothing to do with him (shades of the poor judge in Old Filth!) and a mother who is always looking for the next rich man to support her. Harrison Shepherd, mostly raised in Mexico, becomes part of the ent ourage of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and at the ppoint I'm reading now, works of Trotsky. I plan to spend as good part of my Sunday finishing it, because....
Waiting in the Wings:
Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves and Alison Weir's new book about Ann Bolyn.
Book Club
Next Friday we discuss Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. I've read it once, a couple of years ago. There was an awful movie made from the book, but it left out a lot. The book is a great look at the role of women in the late 18th Century, and a well written biography.
After reading The Highest Tide, Jim Lynch's first book, and enjoying the setting, the characters and the story arc, I knew that I would want to read his next one. First: I bought Border Songs, set in the dairy country around Lynden and Sumas, Washington, where there is very little indication about which country-Canada or the US- you happen to be standing in. The hero (of sorts) is a six foot eight dyslexic bird watching Border Patrol newbie who is supposed to be the barrier to stop narcotics and aliens out of the country. As a writer, I want to read about fullblown, rounded characters who drive a story. You get that in Jim Lynch's novels.
Next, I read Jane Hardam's Old Filth, about a retired judge looking back on his life. This is a really shallow description, though. Have you ever heard of the orphans of the Raj? The most famous, I suppose, was Rudyard Kipling. They were children whose parents lived in the farflung British Empire. They were sent "home", that is back to England to be raised by relatives or people who were paid to look after them.The judge is a product of the sort of brutality that many of these children endured. He comes home with his wife and bit by bit we're told about his past.
I'm on the waiting list for the next book, told from his wife's poiny of view.
The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver's latest, tells of another man's life, the son of a man who wants nothing to do with him (shades of the poor judge in Old Filth!) and a mother who is always looking for the next rich man to support her. Harrison Shepherd, mostly raised in Mexico, becomes part of the ent ourage of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and at the ppoint I'm reading now, works of Trotsky. I plan to spend as good part of my Sunday finishing it, because....
Waiting in the Wings:
Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves and Alison Weir's new book about Ann Bolyn.
Book Club
Next Friday we discuss Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. I've read it once, a couple of years ago. There was an awful movie made from the book, but it left out a lot. The book is a great look at the role of women in the late 18th Century, and a well written biography.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
I Love a History
Doesn't matter whether it's fiction or non fiction. Pat Barker's trilogy about WW1absorbed me from beginning to end, and I wished I could talk about it to my father, who had fought in France.
My love affair with historical novels stretches over decades, and looking back, they began with what we call bodice rippers now. I remember on called The Border Lord. Of course it wasn't nearly as graphic as most are now, but it did have a studly guy & a bosomy gal in costume on the front.
When I discovered Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond series, I found a whole other kind of historical novel, full of richly described characters, real and fictional, and so much historical detail I was enthralled. When I first went to Edinburgh, I had t o go to St Giles Cathedral, just to see where Lymond and bad guy Gabriel fought their duel. Gabriel was indeed a villain unsurpassed.Her stand alone novel, about the real MacBeth, was an eye opener. Much as I love Shakespeare, he did a real hatchet job on a king who served Scotland well and is buried among the kings of Scotland in the Iona graveyard.
Cecelia Holland, Phillipa Gregory, Edith Pargeter are historical writers par excellence. Right now I'm waiting for William Dietrich's newest about Ethan Gage. Dietrich also wrote a fine book about Roman Britain : Hadrian's Wall. Bernard Cornwell has several series. I don't know how he does it.
History: the real thing: the list
Anything by Antonia Fraser, Carolly Erickson or Alison Weir
Simon Winchester's Krakatoa the Day the World Exploded
A Dance Called America by James Hunter
Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire.
and so on...
My love affair with historical novels stretches over decades, and looking back, they began with what we call bodice rippers now. I remember on called The Border Lord. Of course it wasn't nearly as graphic as most are now, but it did have a studly guy & a bosomy gal in costume on the front.
When I discovered Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond series, I found a whole other kind of historical novel, full of richly described characters, real and fictional, and so much historical detail I was enthralled. When I first went to Edinburgh, I had t o go to St Giles Cathedral, just to see where Lymond and bad guy Gabriel fought their duel. Gabriel was indeed a villain unsurpassed.Her stand alone novel, about the real MacBeth, was an eye opener. Much as I love Shakespeare, he did a real hatchet job on a king who served Scotland well and is buried among the kings of Scotland in the Iona graveyard.
Cecelia Holland, Phillipa Gregory, Edith Pargeter are historical writers par excellence. Right now I'm waiting for William Dietrich's newest about Ethan Gage. Dietrich also wrote a fine book about Roman Britain : Hadrian's Wall. Bernard Cornwell has several series. I don't know how he does it.
History: the real thing: the list
Anything by Antonia Fraser, Carolly Erickson or Alison Weir
Simon Winchester's Krakatoa the Day the World Exploded
A Dance Called America by James Hunter
Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire.
and so on...
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
I Love a Mystery Oart One
So this post will be about mysteries. Right now I'm reading Nightlife by Thomas Perry. He has written a lot of books, and The Butcher's Boy was outstanding. Nightlife has an unforgettable villain: a small, beautiful woman. Warning! This is not a cozy. The protagonist is a Portland police officer who finds herself turning in to prey. Perry writes tight, well written books. Nothing improbable happens. (It always bothers me when plots aren't believable.)
Other writers I follow: Dana Stabenow, Kate Wilhelm, Charles Todd, Ian Rankin, Sharyn
MacCrumb, Earl Emerson, Cara Black. I like mysteries with a sense of place. All of the above fit that. Stabenow's Alaska, Emerson's Seattle, Rankin's Edinburgh, Black's Paris are places that are very real. Sharyn McCrumb's east Tennessee gives a great feeling about the beauty of Appalachia, and lays over that an otherworldliness that haunts me.
Lindsay Davis gives us a funny look at early Rome in the character of Marcus Didius Falco. Charles Todd's post WWI mysteries have protagonist Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge haunted by his dead sergeant.
Other writers I follow: Dana Stabenow, Kate Wilhelm, Charles Todd, Ian Rankin, Sharyn
MacCrumb, Earl Emerson, Cara Black. I like mysteries with a sense of place. All of the above fit that. Stabenow's Alaska, Emerson's Seattle, Rankin's Edinburgh, Black's Paris are places that are very real. Sharyn McCrumb's east Tennessee gives a great feeling about the beauty of Appalachia, and lays over that an otherworldliness that haunts me.
Lindsay Davis gives us a funny look at early Rome in the character of Marcus Didius Falco. Charles Todd's post WWI mysteries have protagonist Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge haunted by his dead sergeant.
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