Summertime and the reading is easy. Yes, it is that time of the year to pull out the chaise lounge and get busy. I recently sat through a 400 class of graduates at Georgetown with book in hand. Did not get to read it, but I was ready just in case.
If you are traveling this summer, I ran into some great advice through a listserv on reading. Linda Johns, a librarian at the Seattle Public Library and author of the Hannah West mysteries for children, shared her secret to traveling with books learned from a bookseller.
Carry three books with the thought of bringing only one home. Her secret: One book for the plane ride. Make it a quick plot-driven read you can leave in the seat pocket as you depart the plane. One book you have been meaning to read whether a beach sizzler or a smarty-pants classic and plan to leave it in the hotel lobby, or at a library where you can swap the book for another. Lastly, bring one book for the flight home. This book is the keeper. The one book you want lingering in your head if you happen to nap.
Following Johns’ vacation reads, I suggest new plot driven reads such as James Patterson’s Private, James Rollins’ The Devil Colony, and Dead in the Family, by Charlaine Harris.
Books to read on the beach might consist of the latest Janet Evanovich laugh-out-loud, Sizzling Sixteen, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Danielle Steel’s Family Ties, and The Search by Nora Roberts.
I realize keeper books are a matter of taste. One man’s keeper is another man’s hurler but some of these titles might appeal such as new books by Daniel Silva’s The Rembrandt Affair, Jennifer Weiner’s Fly Away Home, Nelson DeMille’s Lion, and Justin Cronin’s The Passage.
These are all hardbacks. Statistics show the majority of travelers prefer paperbacks which brings me to a new trend in publishing. Remember all those chick-lit books of past summers. “The new trend is away from ‘fashionista’ fiction and towards ‘recessionista’ fiction,” states Lexi Henshel on the same listserv. She suggests The Penny Pincher's Club by Sarah Strohmeyer, Small Change by Sheila Roberts and The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund by Jill Kargman.
Happy summer reading!
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Travel Reading (copy)
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
The Wettest County in the World (copy)
While reading this week’s book, I keep thinking men of manly stature would really enjoy this. Specifically, I think the kind of man that does not mind taking a blow to the face as long as he can return the lick. Okay, close your eyes and think author Harry Crews’ style of writing mixed with the hardships of Frazier’s Cold Mountain, and then add the uncertainty of bootlegging stump whiskey on a wintry night.
New book, The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant, is a male book clubs’ dream. I can see the members, with aged bourbon in hand, having a lively discussion over this one.
Based on a true story that was passed down—piece meal—through the family until Bondurant took notice, it tells the story of great-grandfather’s bootlegging days. I say piece meal because Bondurant’s own father did not know his dad had a bullet would until a little before his death. “Oh yeah, shot me through here, and raised his shirt to show my father the entry wound under his arm. Not much more was said about it after that, which is the way my father’s family communicated about such things.”
The story opens in 1918 when the Bondurant family is whole. The youngest member eight-year-old Jack has a .22 rifle aimed at a sow slated for slaughter while his father and one older brother are tamping down the tobacco pit. The first attempt and the sow wakes up, the second attempt and the sow is a little miffed, the third attempt and the sow is dazed. At this point older brother Forrest jumps into the pen and finishes the job with a knife.
The following year, older brother Howard waits on an army troop ship anchored off the Norfolk harbor. The ship is quarantined since most the men have the Spanish Lady Flu. When he finally arrives home to Franklin County, Virginia, his family notices he is weak with a caved in chest. The family is back together, but Howard is a changed man. The next month brings the epidemic home where mother and two sisters die.
Time jumps as the first chapter opens in 1934 and reporter Sherwood Anderson is sent to Franklin County to cover the mutilation of two suspected bootleggers. A county, through 1935 records, that shows “99 people out of 100 are making, or have some connection with, illicit liquor.”
Forewarning to the story is a quote by Mr. Anderson that opens part one. “Cruelty, like breadfruit and pineapples, is a product, I believe, of the South.”
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Writing and Publishing (copy)
I read a book this week that I could not put down. Bet you are thinking suspense or romance novel. Ha! I hate to shock you, but it is a young adult, nonfiction book in the It Happened to Me series. I kid you not. The writing is engaging and the topic is of great interest to me.
Writing and Publishing by Tina P. Schwartz promises teens a bright future if they like to write. Her first chapter, “Reading,” sent tingles through my spine. If you want to write you need to read. Read various things in various formats and read often. If you have trouble writing in a certain genre style read all you can in that genre. If you like a movie read the book. It is always better with the characters’ thoughts and motivations. Find an author you like and read everything they have written. Read poetry. Read short stories. Read. Read. Read.
Careers are a major discussion in chapter two. It is understandable with a preteen or teenage audience. Schwartz focuses on more than writing books, too. She includes writing poetry, greeting cards, song lyrics, scripts, and grants. I like that she points out jobs for which a high school diploma is all one needs.
Now, I realize this book might not appeal to the ordinary non-writing fellow. But, like any book worth its weight in gold, this one suggests more book 
titles; specifically, Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is mentioned numerous times. The funny thing, last nonfiction book I read also suggested this same book.
Stephen King, the author of over 60 novels, began writing as a preteen, too. In On Writing, he explains how his first short story took shape. It was based on his mother’s desire to exchange her green stamps for a lamp she would later give to her sister for Christmas. Her tongue was green from all the licking and pasting in just a few short minutes of filling in the reward booklets. King thought that would make a great story by adding an impossible reward like a house that took, “eleven million, six hundred thousand books of Happy Stamps.”
He titled his short story “Happy Stamps” and sent it off to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Three weeks later and King was looking at his first rejection letter. With Fats Domino playing in the background, he placed a nail on the wall and punched the letter through it. At age 14 the nail was full of rejection letters and he installed a spike where as he satisfyingly impaled future letters.
This week readers have two choices: an engaging book on the “how-to” or a funny book on the “why” write.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
The Education of Mr. Mayfield (copy)
“All M. B. Mayfield could do for the longest time following his breakdown was open his eyes, close his eyes, and breathe.” Thus begins the third chapter of David Magee’s new biography titled, The Education of Mr. Mayfield: An Unusual Story of Social Change at Ole Miss.
M.B. Mayfield and his twin brother L.D. were born in 1923 amongst ten other children in a small shack outside of Ecru, Mississippi. The family sharecropped and all the children were free labor to an unloving stepfather. M.B. was a delicate, soft spoken young man unlike his boisterous twin brother. This caused a rift in the brothers where stepfather favored L.D. with chores around the house and forced M.B. to work in the fields.
One day M. B. woke to tremors in his hands. As he walked out to the fields he was a little shaky in his knees. He told no one as he took up the mule and began to plow. It was apparent after two rows something was horribly wrong. His legs locked up and he could not move an inch.
The doctor found a small lump on one of his lungs and he was placed on a week of bed rest. M.B. had tuberculosis, a common element in the family, and he was unable to do heavy labor ever again. It was during this time he lost interest in drawing his favorite comic strip characters or making up stories from the newspapers he could read insulating his home.
M. B. was depressed. The third chapter continues, “Time dissolved the way an unpicked melon seeps on an aging vine in the late-summer sun.”
It took the Holy Bible to get M.B. out of his funk. Upon reading a passage in Isaiah he took up a mantra, “They shall walk, and not faint.” Still too weak to work, he took up pen and pencil and began to draw. The more he drew, the more he wanted color and began to mix plants and flowers to make dyes for his art. M.B. was budding into a bona fide Mississippi folk artist.
Stuart Purser and his wife were touring the back roads of Mississippi when they came across a magnificent sight. Purser, new chair of an even newer art department at the University of Mississippi, sat staring at two concrete busts large enough to see from the road. On one side of the porch stairs sat Joe Lewis and on the other George Washington Carver.
The year was 1949 and Purser felt he had found a gold mine. It dawned on him the odd coincidence of finding an unknown artist in a town named after his favorite color, Ecru.
