The writers in the Book Writing World are bookworms! Reading a “good book” is how we first got hooked into the wide world of literature and influenced our decisions to become writers. 🙂 Here’s what some of the BWWers are reading right now:
Robert Ward: Just finished a really good novel – By Blood by Ellen Ullman, a San Francisco writer. This was an impulse purchase at my local down-the-hill-in-Montclair bookstore, because from the jacket blurb, it hit a sweet spot trifecta for me: family research, psychology, and a San Francisco setting in 1974.
James Black: A Visit from the Goon Squad. The chapters are loosely connected, gradually creating a world in which many characters are revealed at various points in their lives. It’s interesting, but disorienting. I just finished the (in)famous PowerPoint chapter, which I found underwhelming. But I’ve read the book so gradually, without much momentum, that I plan to take some time after I finish the next, final chapter and consider what I’ve gotten from it and what Egan has accomplished.
Bree LeMaire: I’m on a Jacqueline Winspear kick. The thing about mystery writers is that they write many books with the same characters. So, Jacqueline Winspear has Masie Dobbs a poor girl who loses her mother at a young age and is forced to work as a housemaid in a large mansion. It’s the British upstairs/downstairs scene. However, Masie is quite intelligent and sneaks off to the
library at night to read books. She gets caught and the owners realize her special qualities and they arrange for her to be schooled by their dear friend Maurice Blanche. He prepares her for college and she eventually does go to college. All the while hanging onto her humble beginning. I love her perseverance and her great ability to solve crimes in her own way. So, I’m on book eight of the series with one more to go and then I’ll be caught up with the author. If you love mysteries, Masie Dobbs can’t be beat. Wonderful, escapist, puzzling reading.
Devi Laskar: I’ve just finished Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward and now am re-reading Wintering by Kate Moses. Each book is just stunning – they stun the senses and set the imagination alight. The description each author gives is so rich and wonderful. Salvage the Bones is a novel of Hurricane Katrina, and Wintering is a novel of Sylvia Plath’s life in the short time before her suicide.
So, what are you reading? And how is it inspiring you?