Good reads

I used to read voraciously. I was never happier than when I had a whole pile of books on the coffee table, waiting to be read. Then suddenly I stopped, and in the past couple of years I've read magazines, I've read what I call "popcorn" mysteries (easy, involves very little brainpower, and you  keep consuming them like popcorn), I've written stories, and I've started 4 or 5 "real" books and put them down after a chapter or two. It's not that the books weren't interesting or well-written. It's just that I couldn't get into them, I couldn't sit still that long.

Now, suddenly again, that seems to be over. This summer I've read a book I got from Rosanne, my girlfriend in England, and I've picked up most of those books I put down mid-chapter and finished them. I'm so glad to be back!

Here are the books I've read recently - maybe you'd like them too:

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson (who also wrote Devil in the White City).

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President (President Garfield) by Candice Millard

The Language of Flowers: A Novel by Vanessa Diffenbaugh (this is the one I got from Rosanne)

La Lacuna: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver (love Barbara Kingsolver, she also wrote Prodigal Summer and Poisonwood Bible)

Happy reading!

Writing your own life into story

Book cover from Amazon.com

Today I did something I should do much more often - I took a class. It was called Writing Your Life Into Story given by Barbara Abercrombie, a writing teacher at UCLA who has written and published a gazillion books. Well, quite a few anyway; I think fourteen. She has written a new book called A Year of Writing Dangerously, and I bought it, of course. That was the price of the workshop.

It was well worth the time (3 hours) and the price ($16.95) and the effort (a drive from Oakland across the San Rafael Bridge to Corte Madera on a gorgeous sunny morning with the Bay all sparkling and blue). I've been writing pieces of my life for several years, partly for therapy and partly so the things I remember don't disappear with me, so I was especially interested in the subject. At the same time, Barbara reminded me of the joy of writing, and how it doesn't need to be a tiresome over-wrought thing. One of her mantras is: Just get out of your own way and write. Amen.

The class was held at Book Passages in Corte Madera, in Marin County. What a gorgeous bookstore! What a pleasure to be there! Of course I wanted to buy all the books, but I'm on a bit of an austerity tear at the moment, what with income and property taxes coming up, plus a bit of expensive dental surgery. Nevertheless, I feasted my eyes and perked my brain, and now I have Barbara's book to enjoy.

Barbara Abercrombie's blog site is: http://writingtime.typepad.com/.  I expect to come across more pearls of wisdom there too. She was just delightful.