“Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.” – Angela Carter
Reading for Writers: Reading sustains us. Doesn’t it? It inspires us. Sometimes, as BWW member Leslie Rodd wrote about so eloquently, it makes us jealous. But ultimately, I’d argue that it keeps us going.
That’s why we’ve started the BWW Writers’ Book Club. Our first meeting will take place on Thursday, Oct. 1o at 5:15 p.m. PDT/ 8:15 p.m. EDT via WebEx. Sign up here for all the information: https://bookwritingworld.com/nina-schuyler-event/
You know that it’s our love of reading that lured us into this whole writing business in the first place, right? So besides Nina’s book, what are you reading these days? What is the last book you read that inspired you as a writer? Recommendations as we prepare to tuck in for the autumn and read, read, read?
Me? I just finished Lit by Mary Karr followed by 36 Arguments for the Existence of God by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. Wow! These are quite a set of books to put into dialog with each other simply by reading them one after the next.
In Lit, a memoir, Karr spirals into alcoholism and then drags herself up with the help of an at-first reluctant but eventually Catholic (in the capitalized sense of the word) relationship with a Higher Power. She’s funny and complicated and she’s got some great stories. I loved her language, too. She’s a poet, and poets who turn to prose often bring a richness and precision that is greatly pleasurable.
Goldstein, who was one of my beloved professors at Columbia where I earned my M.F.A., has written a masterpiece with 36 Arguments for the Existence of God. I really did think–she’s one we’ll remember, although she hasn’t quite gotten her due yet. The book was critically acclaimed and who knows what else, but . . . still, it did not get the attention it deserves. Pulitzer, say. Anyway, it’s wonderful. So witty and wise and absorbing, from its tale of love and quotidian redemption to it’s appendix of, in fact, 36 arguments for the existence of God and their step-by-step dismantling. As I read, I thought–has she gotten to be an even better writer or have I gotten to be a better reader?
Okay, your turn:
I recently finished reading The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout, author of award-winning Olive Kitteridge and Isabel and Amy. As in her other novels, or linked short stories, Strout is a master of the telling detail that defines her characters and their strained family relationships. In this book there are huge helpings of estrangement and redemption and writing that is very close to the bone. It inspires me because, though the subject isn’t war, or imminent life and death, Strout’s novel feels big and important because of what she portrays about the human condition as played out in family, and how she does it with details and action.
Leslie–Well put. I have read Olive Kitteridge and another of Strout’s novels, about a minister and his daughter. Both were exquisite and absorbing. I agree–it’s how she attends to human beings and the fact that the stakes are high to the actors that make these “big books.” Looking forward to The Burgess Boys . . . Thanks.