I’ve been absent from the blog while I finished a novella. The book is a second-chance romance called Romeo & Juliet…and Jane, and I hope to have more details soon. Meanwhile, I’ve already dug into the next women’s fiction book on my plate, which will be out (fingers crossed) in 2013.
My reading so far this year has been sporadic. The carrot I used to finish the novella was Val McDermid’s new book, The Retribution, which I’m gobbling up this week.
Today marks the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens. He’s been all over the internet for weeks, but I didn’t think much about the occasion until this morning when I saw a video in The Guardian of Simon Callow touring Dickens sites in London. Just that brief autobiographical sketch made me remember how interesting the man was, and how much his books affected me.
Unlike most book lovers I know, I wasn’t a kid who read obsessively. My first favorites were books with animals in them–all of the E.B. White books, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, The Velveteen Rabbit, just to name a few. My tiny school’s library back then was also the last repository for musty fifties gems by Rosamond du Jardin and authors like her, so occasionally I would inhale a book about an earnest teen named Midge or Penny in the throes of a dating crisis.
(I still crave Rosamond du Jardin books sometimes.)
But one rainy winter weekend when I was twelve and stuck with nothing to read, I pulled a copy of David Copperfield off my parents’ bookshelves. I’d watched a show about Dickens on Masterpiece Theater, so I knew a little about him. As I sat down with the book, its tiny typeface, few illustrations by Phiz and doorstop size made me wonder if I would finish by the time I finished high school. But I don’t think it lasted the weekend. From the moment I read the words “I am born,” I don’t remember moving off my twin bed. Up to that time I’d never 
understood how my sister Julia could get so involved in a book she’d have to be pried out of her room. I’m sure an awful lot of what was going on in the story passed completely over my head, but I remember being so completely involved that by the end I was emotionally wrung out. And more than that, I was already looking forward to another book fix–that incredible state where your mind is so transported to another time and place that you actually forget who you are and that you really should be doing your math homework. I know some people first felt that reading trance while reading Nancy Drew, or Agatha Christie books, or Gone with the Wind. For me, it was Charles Dickens. After David Copperfield, I quickly raced through Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and Nicholas Nickleby before fizzling out in the middle of Martin Chuzzlewit.
I’ve still only read a handful of Dickens books. Lately, my literary affections have wandered to some of his contemporaries. But there’s usually a book of his lurking in my TBR pile somewhere. Next up, Our Mutual Friend.
I had applesauce. I had leftover sweet potatoes. A Google search led me to this recipe, which I made this morning. Yum! I used part whole wheat flour and half the butter, and I skipped the topping (just mixed the cinnamon in the dough). They came out very tasty.
Sweet Potato and Applesauce Biscuits:
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup applesauce
½ cup sweet potato roasted and mashed
1/3 cup + ¼ cup half and half
2 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
12 Tbs. butter, cold
1 Tbs. + 1 tsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/3 cup pumpkin seeds, chopped
¼ cup oats
1 tsp. salt
¼ tsp. black pepper
Preheat oven to 450ºF.
In a bowl mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, black pepper and 1 tsp of sugar. Add butter and with your hands work into flour mixture. Dough should be crumbly. Stir in sweet potato and applesauce. Add 1/3 cup of half and half, a little at a time until dough becomes softer. Place dough on a lightly floured work surface. Lightly dust dough. Gently press dough down until it is about ½ inch thick. Using a biscuit cutter, cut biscuits and placed on a sheet pan lined with parchment. In a bowl combine 1 Tbs. sugar, cinnamon, oats and pumpkin seeds. Using the ¼ cup half and half, lightly brush biscuits. Sprinkle pumpkin mixture on top. Bake until golden, about 12-15 minutes.
I’m afraid to say “bring it on” to a year, because I know years can be more fierce than I’m able to imagine while sitting in my recliner in January, drawing up resolutions. But the welcome mat is out for 2012. From what I’ve been reading online, 2011 didn’t get much love from people. I didn’t like it much either, so I was glad to see it go!
I’ve been welcoming in the brand spankin’ new year by finishing a novella, getting back into the groove of work, and reading two really good books, The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt and a mystery called The Hollow House by Janis Patterson. Both have been perfect companions this snowy January week.
Yes, I’m a nerd. Each December I savor drawing up an official reading list for the coming year. I started doing this a few years ago when I noticed that, left to my own devices, I end up re-reading the same twenty novels and not discovering new authors. So this is the time of year when I scour “Best of 2011” lists, searching for titles that will keep me from cycling through Jane Austen or Barbara Pym again. I don’t always stick to my list. This year, I only read 1/3 of my list books, many of which are going right back onto the 2012 list. The Odd Women by George Gissing has been on my list for a few years now, and it’s going to be there on Jan 1, like the chunk of rare steak that Joan Crawford refused to throw away, putting it on little Christina’s plate day after day. Sometimes I have to be my own Mommie Dearest.
Alongside my reading list, I keep a list of the books I actually finished. This list doesn’t include books I abandon halfway through, or read for work, or skim. (And frankly, there are some books that I’m just too ashamed to memorialize on the list—although it would probably be useful to have a reminder that I wasted a morning of my life reading Cybil Disobedience. Warning: free downloads can be dangerous!)
This year I read about fifty books. My favorite by a long shot? Pride and Prejudice. List fail! But I was sick and there it was on my eReader, and…well, I’m weak-willed. And Pride and Prejudice is the best book of any year.
But I did discover new authors this year, ones who I’ll be returning to. The first book I loved was one of the first I read last year, The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. Set during post-World War II England in a crumbling manor house, it’s a great gothic tale, complete with ghosts, insanity, and doomed love.
A few years ago, my friend Berit told me I should read Game of Thrones by George RR Martin. She might as well have handed me a crack pipe. I was skeptical of the book because I’m not a big fantasy reader—I abandoned The Lord of the Rings after The Two Towers (hope Frodo’s okay!) and Harry Potter midway through the second book. And I was ready to give up on Game of Thrones too, until about fifty pages in, when the plot took a crazy turn and I could not stop turning pages. Thereafter I was another George RR Martin slave and gobbled up the whole series. I love a writer who brings out both the good and terrible in all his characters and makes a reader care about them anyway. Anthony Trollope does this, and so does Martin.
Empire of the Summer Moon by S C Gwynne was my favorite nonfiction book of the year. It’s a page-turner about the clash of civilizations between the Comanches and the Texas settlers. Not for the faint of heart.
In mysteries, I loved Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin and Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. Fever of the Bone by Val McDermid has me hopped up to read the next Carol Jordan/Tony Hill book, The Retribution, which comes out in North America in January.
And there were many more authors I read and enjoyed this year, including many from Carina Press, the digital-first publisher I freelance edit for. I’m always so grateful to people who recommend titles to me, and it’s interesting that many of my favorites this year were suggested to me by people I attended high school with. Maybe my youth wasn’t as misspent as I thought.
I love it when the stars align and something I needed but wasn’t aware of falls into my lap. It’s December, and I’m trying to finish reading books that I’ve let fall by the wayside during the year. I always read several books at a time, and inevitably one or two get abandoned for the new, shiny book that’s just come out, or forgotten when I go on a zombie jag, or just put aside for later because I’m too busy writing/editing/doin’ other stuff. One forgotten book this year is Lancaster Against York by Trevor Royle. I started reading it last spring, loved it, then set it aside to read in one big gulp later. But later didn’t come (till now), and I’ve forgotten where I was or what Richard or Henry was in the ascendant. Oh dear. And now that I remember, it’s a dense, detailed book, and I almost need a better primer to get me going, or to follow up the book I’m reading so it won’t all just spill through the sieve that is my brain. The reason I started reading the book was because all I know of this period is from Shakespeare and The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. Great works…but my history is still shaky.
So I opened up one of my favorite book review blogs this morning, S. Krishna’s Books, and discovered Swapna’s review of The Wars of the Roses by Alison Weir. Book kismet! I’ve looked at that title before and was a little turned off by the comments about the writer being anti-Richard III. (I have a Yorkist bias myself…not that I really know what I’m talking about.) But the review was enough to sway me to put it on my reading list for next year.
Is it mid November already? I’ve been a blog slug so far this fall. Why? I’ve been busy–editing, writing, and actually taking a vacation to visit my sister in Virginia. Which was so much fun! We went all over–to Washington DC, to Monticello, to Harper’s Ferry. It’s a beautiful part of the country and I thought October was the perfect time to see it, just as the leaves were changing color. And I got to see the freakish pre-Halloween snowstorm!
I do have great news. First, I’m going to be writing two more women’s fiction novels for Kensington Books. Can’t tell you how happy I am about this. I love Kensington, and especially my wonderful editor there, John Scognamiglio. The other good news? The Christmas anthology I’m a part of, Making Spirits Bright, is a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. That’s been making my spirits very bright!
Not that long ago, Twitter lured me to a new-to-me blog that featured an interview with author Lisa Jewell. Lisa is one was the early British chicklit authors I first read in the way-back-when. (That’s how I think of the 1990s now. The 1980s are the way-way-back.). When I got to the blog, I fell in love with it–the content, the look of it, and the name, Throwing Books. I sent the blog’s mastermind, Idris, a copy of Wherever Grace Is Needed in hopes that she would like it. And she did!
Looking over my list of what I’ve been read so far this year, I couldn’t help noticing that half the books I didn’t actually read. I listened to them. I’ve loved listening to books since way back when my grandmother read to me from the Tasha Tudor Book of Fairy Tales.
After I outgrew the fairy tales–or after my grandmother got fed up reading me the same stories over and over– I spent a few dreary years on my own, picking my way through a lot of books with animals in them. Most writers I know have always been voracious readers. Not me. I read slowly (still do), I was choosy (no talking animal protagonist=no interest), and most of the time I would rather have been outside.
Then, in third grade, I got a new teacher, Mrs. Sides, who read aloud to us every afternoon right after milk break. This was heaven. She had a great reading voice—clear, not overly emotive—and the books she picked I can’t think of to this day without hearing her voice: The Yearling, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Little Prince, Caddie Woodlawn. I remember sitting in the back row of the class and not even caring that I couldn’t see the illustrations she was holding up. Mrs. Sides (and the authors, I suppose) painted better pictures with her voice than even N.C. Wyeth. I also remember the irritation (sometimes bordering on mutiny) that rippled through the class when she had to stop for the day. For the next twenty-three hours I’d carry the unfinished story in my head, reviewing it on the long bus ride home, impatient to find out what would happen next.
I’ve loved listening to books ever since. I was addicted to listening to The Radio Reader on NPR and was early fan of books on tape. I discovered Anthony Trollope by listening to The Eustace Diamonds, which I lugged home from the library in a suitcase-sized container of cassettes. I was seduced into The Game of Thrones books by listening to the incredible Roy Dotrice. I’ve always loved Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, but never so much as when I listened to Anna Massey reading it.
This year I suffered a couple of mini health breakdowns that required me to stay in the hospital—first for three weeks, then another stay of a week and a half. Lucky for me, my MP3 player was loaded up with books from Audible.com. I’ve listened to twenty books this year, many while trapped in the Jewish General hospital or at home recuperating. Among the books I’ve enjoyed were Empire of the Summer Moon, In the Woods by Tana French, The Spoils of Poynton, Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy (which I confess I picked simply because the wonderful Michael Kitchen was the narrator), and Dead I May Well Be by Adrian McGinty. More than ever, these books and more have been lifesavers to me this year.
I’m blogging on the subject of horror this weekend at the Carina Press website:
In the past years, horror has become a favorite genre of mine for when I want something escapist and different. I see many comments from people on the internet, especially women, who say that horror isn’t their thing. I always thought that, too, until I stopped reading suspense/thrillers for a few years because they were getting too creepy, too centered on the many gruesome ways serial killers could torture and kill women. I believe the book that pushed me over the edge was Birdman by Mo Hayder. A well-written page turner, but very gory. Werewolves, evil ghosts, and mutant bug invasions began to seem like a nice alternative.
Elizabeth Bass 