Column for Thursday, Mar. 28th - Spring Cleaning & Book Sharing

For a peak at today’s newspaper column, “Spring cleaning means sharing books,” go here. Anybody else have a book problem? Or dreams of a fantasy library? Or, for that matter, a spouse who makes you give away your books? * Photo by Paula Player Photography.

Books for Your Reading List

Saturday night I had the pleasure of hearing Ann Hite and Karen Spears Zacharias read from and talk about their new novels at wonderful Malaprop's Bookstore & Café in Asheville, North Carolina. Ann--whom I met at a literary festival last year and who has become a lovely writer-friend--and Karen have been traveling all over the South lately on a book tour. They've spent time recently at several places I traveled on my own book tour for Keowee Valley, last Fall, so it was fun to compare notes.

Ann Hite reading from The Storycatcher at Malaprop's Bookstore ~ Asheville, NC

 

It was wonderful to get to see Ann, especially. She's one of those people who emanates warmth, she's funny, and she's got this creative spark you can literally see shine in her eyes. Her newest novel, The Storycatcher, takes place in two gorgeous places: Black Mountain, North Carolina, and the sea islands of Georgia. This is definitely one to put on your Fall/Winter reading list!

Asheville--crazy, wonderfully nutty Asheville--was a wild scene on Saturday night. I'd tried to convince friends to come with me to the reading, but most were doing the single-parent thing that night with spouses out of town. Others had run in Asheville's half-marathon that morning, and were just plumb tired. So I went alone, and ended up having to park in a parking garage because of an Icelandic punk rock band playing at the Asheville Civic Center that night. No kidding: there was a line of hipster-punk rockers stretched five people deep around the block. I know because I circled the Civic Center three times looking for a space.

Asheville, NC

 

I always roll down my windows when I drive through downtown Asheville. I don't want to miss the drum circle, the singing, the catcalls. People watching here is PRIME. On my way in Saturday night I passed a gospel choir standing out on a side street belting it out for all they were worth, several street performers and their dogs, folk singers at the drum circle, and more than a few Town and Country types wearing skinny jeans and knee-high leather boots that cost more than my car. Followed by an inordinate amount of white people in full dreadlocks.

I love Asheville! It's hard not to love a city on a big river in the Blue Ridge, where all are unabashedly welcome.

Anyway. It was a great night, Ann and Karen were wonderful, and I'm excited to have new books to read. Ann also introduced me to Amy Allen, author of Summoning the Mountains, her unique story of hiking the Appalachian Trail as a divorced, single mother of two teenaged boys. Another for the reading list.

Happy sunny Monday to you all!

Book Heroin & Writer Lust

I've got a book problem.

I've always had it, but lately it's gotten worse. I am drowning in books.

Over the years--as recently as the Fall--I have made attempts to seek a cure. I've culled my books, my haphazard library. I've donated books to friends, to the county library, to women's and childrens' groups. I became a volunteer for Operation Paperback, and each month I send countless paperbacks overseas to soldiers who desperately need a good story.

None of this has helped my disease. Let me offer proof.

Exhibit A, one of the four bookshelves in my livingroom/kitchen:



This bookshelf just squeaked, "Save me!"

Do not believe my husband when he tells you that I haven't given away enough books. I have. But this is as far as I can go. I won't show you the other seven bookshelves in my house. They're not fit for company.

Some girls dream of shopping sprees at Sephora and Manolo Blahniks. I dream of built-in bookshelves.

Now that I've begun my MFA in Writing, my book problem has gotten worse. Short story collections and essay collections--slim volumes, true--have been added to the stacks. Aimee Bender, Katherine Mansfield, and Jim Harrison have now joined the ranks of William Shakespeare, Diana Gabaldon, Lauren Groff and William Bartram. The books on my shelves speak Cherokee, Gullah, Cockney English, Gaelic and vampire. Yet they get along. I think.

Yesterday, I continued work on a new novel, which opens up a realm of possibilities for research. Okay, fine. A new reason to feed my book problem. Still, the sky has brightened and the seas have parted on a whole new world of topics like the Antebellum women's movement, the cotton industry, and pirates. Ooh, and also horse racing and 19th century politics and riding boots.

I might as well just go ahead and open a vein.

As a result of my book problem, I recently purchased one of the most enjoyable novels I've read in years: A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness. This book, which I gobbled down in about two days last weekend, satisfied all my cravings. It's centered around a
young American historian in Oxford (a hereditary witch determined to ignore her witchy DNA); a gorgeous, bookish vampire-scientist, and an ancient text. This is no teenager's vampire story: The pace of the novel is lightening-fast, the settings gorgeous, the mystery fun, and since Harkness herself is a PhD in history and a research hound, it totally satisfies the egghead in me. I can't wait for the sequel.

Since I read it, I've been suffering from writer lust. Another of my unfortunate "problems." I'm not necessarily jealous of Harkness's success (okay, maybe a smidge). What I lust after is her skill, her power to meld intellect with imagination. This is the sort of story I always long to tell: one that fuses history and research and books and adventure, and, when necessary (and some could argue this is always necessary), love.

And on top of all that, to create a story readers enjoy--full-throttle enjoy, like I did. On a beach, at the lake, on their couches, on a plane. Heads bent over gripped pages or Ipads or Kindles, completely immersed. Reading into the wee hours, though they have jobs and kids and life to take care of the next day.

It also doesn't hurt that as a full-time professor and author, Harkness is engaged in almost exactly the dual career I've been working toward since I was 24. And she's only in her mid-40s.

Did I mention that A Discovery of Witches is her fiction debut? Debut. First novel. And already a bestseller.

Okay, maybe more than a smidge jealous. But it's good-natured jealousy, non-threatening writer lust. Because for all her success and writerly genius, I get to read what she writes. And that's a gift.

So now it's back to my own projects and the story I'm currently trying to tell. In two minutes, it'll be time to wake my daughter, whom I've already let chatter and sing in her crib for far too long. Then my day really begins.

It's a wild, complicated, frustrating, wonderful, exhausting, exhilirating life, choosing to be a writer. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I also wouldn't trade this for anything:

My daughter, 2 1/2, head in her own book.



Happy Thursday, all!