A New Purpose

I'm at an interesting juncture in my life. I'm taking a year off from teaching, just to take care of my family. I say JUST not because it won't fill my days (and nights, and weekends) or because it's not hard (stay at home parents, I feel ya) but because I'm not ALSO responsible for 70-90 other humans during the average day. My hours are no less full but my brain is just a little more relaxed. And my heart rate.

I'm looking forward to filling this time with many things (mostly things aged 9, 4 and 2), but one of them is reading for the purpose of becoming a better writer. I'm probably not going to read more, because I hope to write more, but I am going to read with a new lens. I find myself thinking about the pacing, the timelines, the character introductions, the continuity, the adverbs, rather than just enjoying the characters and story. And I compare. How is this like my writing, and how should mine be more like this, or is this not at all what I'm aiming for? I know I need to find a writing group to ping with questions like this, but for now, dear book club, I have you. So here goes.

Letters to the Lost
Novel by Iona Grey

Just as I both liked and disliked this book, I gleaned insights about what I do and don't want for my own writing. With a two part story line, set in contemporary and WW II era England, and the converging lives of a 1940's pastor's wife and an abused bar singer on the run from her ex-boyfriend, this seems to be right up my alley. I love that kind of story, for the quickness of the pacing and the variety of settings and different types of characters allowed by switching time periods. I do strive to do this in my own writing and saw some clever ways of making the story arcs cross over each other. I also admired the descriptions of the various spaces in the story: beautiful, sacred, neglected, impoverished, elaborate...the rendering of the settings lent itself well to the story, and I want to work on that. What dissatisfied me, and makes me eager to avoid in my own writing, is the convenience of certain plot conventions and character traits. The characters changed too quickly to reflect real relationships and the way we learn from mistakes, and the coincidences that ironed out kinks in the plot were too easily plopped in the characters' paths. I'm all for a happy ending but it doesn't have to be a Hollywood happy ending, you know? Lesson learned

Language Arts

Novel by Stephanie Kallos

Kallos is a Seattle author and I really enjoyed her first novel, Broken for You. She writes very realistic, rounded characters who are chipped in places but resilient. This one is about an English teacher, divorced and lonely, with an autistic son, who seems sort of in a midlife crisis but is really more asking and answering why his life is what it is. It's a convoluted story line, mostly about one year of the main character's childhood and present time, but with other voices and even some technical writing mixed in. I think because of the journalistic tone of some of the writing, it was off-putting to me. I almost quit this one but I had to have some questions answered. Yes, I skimmed the ending when I was about halfway through, like I often do, but this time it wasn't because I needed reassurance about characters I love. I needed to know it was going someplace. And it was, and it was a good place, so I'm glad I finished it. Is it something I want to write? No. I like Kallos's thoughtfulness and want someday to write more serious, yet still entertaining, literature like her. But it's maybe a bit too staid for me. I found myself drawn to the scenes of real places, though, and want to emulate that sense of place, as well as her obvious writing from what she knows, which is Seattle and teaching and a hint of loneliness.

Vacation Grab Bag

It's that time of year...vacation reads! My family takes an annual trip to a lake house and my favorite part of the week, aside from the eating, drinking, and sunning, is reading. Even better, my sisters and cousin and mama and grandma and I share books. It's like an actual book club, but we never have to go home and we wear our pj's most of the time. Love. Here, in a nutshell, are the books I read just before, during, and after vacation (Because, you know, I was packing and unpacking a family of five for a week at a lake. Who has time to blog amidst such hot chaos?)

Everything I Never Told You

Novel by Celeste Ng

At the end of the school year, one of my (favorite) students asked me why we didn't read more books or articles by women of color. I blinked and said, "Good question." So together we selected some books from a list of recommendations a friend found, and this was one of them. I hope I see this student again (she may be moving) so we can talk about it. It's kind of dark, which is right up her alley and also her chosen hair color. A blended Asian American-Caucasian family loses their teenage daughter to drowning, and, true to the title, eventually spills everything they've been keeping from each other. The secrets are varied and decades old, some small and some shocking. It's how they forgive each other that made the book readable for someone who doesn't love darkness.

The Marriage Game: A Novel of Queen Elizabeth
Historical Fiction by Alison Weir

Researched to a the finest detail (most of the dialogue is quotes from primary sources) but eloquently rendered, this book is true historical fiction (which is kind of a loose term most of the time). The book encompasses Elizabeth's entire adulthood, with hints of her childhood, but focuses mainly on Elizabeth's continual ploys to stay single and rule on her own. I love English history and literature, but I think I may have read too many books about the Tudors, because I was hoping for some revelations or new theories, but if you've read or seen much about Elizabeth, there's nothing new. I was a little bored. In fact, I made myself finish it the day before leaving for the lake so I didn't have to read it there (or lug it along--it's heavy).

Orhan's Inheritance

Sort of historical fiction by Aline Ohanesian

I chose this one at random from the library shelf, and to be honest I thought it was called "Orphan's Inheritance." Adoption and finding one's roots is a theme of the novel I'm writing, so I was intrigued. Those themes are in this book, but in a subtle way. It's actually a beautiful but disturbing book about the genocide of Armenian Christians in Turkey during World War I, including a quest by one man to find out more about his grandfather's life during that time. It was not what I expected and sometimes that's the best kind of book. I also gleaned a few ideas for my own writing. One thing I'm thinking about now is the balance between sorrow and joy in a novel. Sorrow makes the story and joy completes it, but how much to have of each, and where?

800 Grapes
Chick Lit by Laura Dave

See what I mean about playing it loose with genres? Technically this is a novel or women's fiction, but to me, this was the epitome of a vacation read. It was fun, it was fast, it was easy. I could so easily picture the kind of flat characters, and predict the plot, that it seemed like a movie more than a book. The main character (I can't even remember her name) finds out a secret about her fiance, her parents, and their family vineyard all in the same day. Whirlwind week before wedding ensues. I expect to see it in the theaters soon (although I'll only rent it when my sister comes over for a girls night).

The Grace Keepers

Futuristic folktale by Kirsty Logan

The jacket of this mentions Scottish folk tales, and I was in a hurry with two boys tugging on my legs as I chose it at the library, so I was surprised to enter Water World. Remember that weird Kevin Costner movie? Seriously, this is a more thoughtful version of that. Two women's lives both fall apart and collide, and there's also a floating circus. The way that sentence is composed is how this book feels, oddly tangential. During and after reading, I always felt like I was on a boat, literally rocking with the waves, even when I wasn't floating on the lake. All around, a weird experience.

The Lost Concerto
Mystery by Helaine Mario

I finished The Grace Keepers just after arriving home from vacation and was eager to start a new story. Reading is my escape and nothing requires escape quite like a the post-vacation aftermath of laundry, cleaning, and grocery shopping. Fail. I do not do mysteries. There is something off putting to me about the description of a sinister man sitting in a cafe, watching a woman come and go across the street. Maybe this could have improved--there was almost a Dan Brown quality to it--but I didn't stick around to find out. Life is too short to read bad books.


The Girl You Left Behind

Novel by Jojo Moyes

If this was a contest, this book would win. I may have go get everything Jojo Moyes has ever written now. In fact, I thought this was one of her books written prior to Me Before You, but it's brand new, so that means I have some other good reading ahead. This one is starkly different, too. There's a parallel story of a woman during WWI whose husband is a painter, and the woman in current day who owns the painting, connected by a bitter struggle over who should own the painting. Moyes writing is deceptively simple and I think that's what makes it great. I gobbled this one up and I hope to one day write like her. That is all.