I know, but they’re the closest fit to the quote that I have here on the farm. Watch ’em at supper time and tell me what you think.
It’s February, that time of the year when winter and spring take turns tormenting us with Seasonal Bi-Polar Weather Mood Disorder. It involves shedding, itching, and wearing layered shirts over sunburned skin. The Corgi-men are totally immune.
One more week has passed in Submission Limbo and I continue to hold that somewhere, someone is being wowed with my manuscript–unable to put it down, missing meals, and lost in our story.
In the meantime, I’m on a snow day, too distracted to read, but hungry for that good kind of literary meat just the same. What’s on your plate that you can’t put down?
Reading In-Between Writing.
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Posted in annablake.com
Jim Butcher’s Alerea Codex–a series of 6 books. Third time through, and they still get me every time.
Yay, going to check them out. Thanks.
Just finished Koch’s “The Dinner”. Engaging, well-written but dark. And darker than you think it is.
Thanks, Susan. I appreciate it.
Ruth Reichl’s autobiography, “Tender at the Bone”, 1998.
This book looks great, thanks.
I must have gone upstairs to find the book and then forgotten what I went up for! happens on a daily basis these days. Just finished “Best to Laugh” by Lorna Landvik, and I did – all the way through. (But that wasn’t the one I went up for last week.)
Love when we get what we need, when we look for something else–especially where books are concerned. It’s hard to write funny, I’ll check it out.
The Girls of Kabul: In Search Of A Hidden Resistance In Afghanistan. By Jenny Nordberg. Couldn’t put it down. Took me through a range of emotions, mostly thankful for so many things we take for granted. Also recently read Alan Cumming’s memoir, Not My Father’s Son. Gritty. Currently reading: Without You There Is No Us by Suki Kim (memoir) and about 5 other books. It’s a curse … 😉
Great list, thank you. I’ve been interested in the Cumming’s memoir, but reading about women in that part of the world should be required for all of us. Thanks.
The Cummings memoir was not an easy read. He based his story on an ancestral quest that corresponded with a TV program about genealogy. I think I would have found his memoir a bit more interesting if he’d just stuck to his own search instead of following the lead of the show. The buildup was great, but the climax left me a bit wanting. I guess after all was said and done I wanted more for Alan than just finding out the “truth.” Even though he seemed satisfied, I thought he deserved more.
And the list grows, thank you! And we should all read out of our genre, so I love these answers.
While writing my memoir, I have been reading nothing but… and in the past I read only random memoirs. I was a fiction fan. But this process has changed how I see memoirs and I have read some spectacular stories. Damn, I love books.
Hound Music by Rosalind Belben. Set in 1904-05 in England and Africa, family with pack of fox hounds, hunting, told from various characters’ perspectives in elleptical yet hauntingly direct way. You don’t have to be a fan of fox hunting to be intensely moved. It’s not an easy read but it will certainly transport you from your here and now suspense.Cumming’s memoir was a good read and i’m a confirmed fiction reader. Started a comfort read I haven’t re-read in years and years last night, Dodie Smith’s I Conquer the Castle (1948). If you’re up for long reads, Tana French’s The Secret Place and Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch will both keep you absorbed. Both masters of dark plotting, setting and characters — detail is so telling with them. For a current, lighter, horsey read, try Natalie Keller Reinert’s eventing based Ambition — or her Thoroughbred racing world based earlier novels, in order, The Head and Not the Heart and then Other People’s Horses.
I’ve got that part down, but sometimes my eyes are bigger than my stomach and I check out more from the library than I can possibly read before they’re due. Also I find the access to my smartphone a distraction from my real meals, like a squirrel taunting me in a tree.
And to answer your question, I was recently captivated by an identical twin’s research-heavy memoir, One and the Same (by Abigail Progrebin).
This sounds like a quirky memoir, it’s on the list.
heheheh….
Anna, our bookclub just read two books by a western writer,. Laura Pritchett: Hell’s Bottom Colorado and Stars Go Blue. She is a beautiful writer who tackles difficult subjects. They were both wonderful and difficult.
Wonderful and difficult… perfect. Thanks.
Something very different, but a great story….the Martian by Andy Weir. You might be particularly interested in how this book was first published. It was originally put up on a personal website one chapter at a time. By popular demand, the auther eventually made it available as a $.99 kindle book that was self published through Amazon. It is now a best seller and about to become a movie. I think you have quite a few followers who would be very happy to see your book available for download.
Thanks, I will give it a read… and I googled popular self-published books and in the top 10, Still Alice and 50 Shades of Grey. Self-publishing works. I’d like some help, but I doubt I’ll wait forever. We might have to do it ourselves… Thank you. Scratch some ears over there for me.