Reds Confess!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: The fabulous Shelf Awareness asked me to do their wonderful "Reading With...." feature (hurray, such an honor) and you can read it here! It's fun.
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=2897#m34768  

But one of the questions they asked me was "What book have you faked reading?"

This is a serious and fraught question, and requires one to confess any number of literary lapses. My answer:

"MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT by Charles Dickens. My high school class was assigned to read it in April of the year we graduated. It was 500 pages and we rebelled. We all got together and divvied up the book, each read part of it and then compared notes. Then we all wrote essays on Sairey Gamp. Sorry, Miss Godfrey. We loved your English class, and Dickens, but we were done with high school."

I also, in high school, fake-read ETHAN FROME. I thought it was ridiculous. (Sorry, Mr. Thornburg. I loved your English class, too. And sorry I said I read it. None of us did.) Now, of course, I love Edith Wharton, beyond all love, and  so it all worked out very nicely.)

Okay, Reds, confess!

LUCY BURDETTE: this is so embarrassing that I'm only admitting to one. It's bad for a psychologist to say this, but mine my fake (poorly done, since this was a small seminar and it was completely obvious who wasn't participating) was THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS by Sigmund Freud. I was working full-time and this class was an extra, so time was an issue. But more important was the fact that the book was a mass market paperback about a foot thick. (Ok, an exaggeration, but still almost 500 pages.) Though I admire the man and found his theories fascinating, this book was impenetrable. (We weren't smart enough to divvy it up like you did Hank!) I was relieved to find this chunk of prose in an Amazon review:

"Freud successfully makes his point within the first 75 pages of the book - the remaining 400 pages are a dry, archaic, tiresome, and in my opinion are not worth the time to read. Much of the book is dedicated to analysis of the dreams of either Freud or Freud's patients. Since Freud lived in early twentieth century Germany, the dreams described are anachronisms and for the most part are irrelevant. Also, I think a lot of meaning is lost in the translation from German to English."

HALLIE EPHRON: This is why I did not even consider majoring in English. I'm a slow, very undisciplined, sloppy reader. I'd say MOST of my assigned reading in high school and even college I, ahem, skimmed. I got pretty good at going to the library and looking up criticism of whatever the assigned book was and rewriting it in my own words. Of course that was in the days before the Internet; it would be so much easier now. I remember it wasn't until I was out of college that I actually read a book for pleasure and remembered what fun it is.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I didn't major in English either, Hallie. What is REALLY embarrassing for

me is all the books I just plain haven't read, and I mean the books that literate people are supposed to have read. My list is scary. On the other hand, I read things that I liked obsessively, so am pretty well versed in a lot of odd things. But as for not having read things I said I'd read, hmm. JULIUS CAESAR in 10th grade English. I did not like that play. And I have no idea how I passed that class...

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Okay, here's mine, and it's a doozy for a self-proclaimed nerd: I've never read THE LORD OF THE RINGS. I loved THE HOBBIT as a young person, but the Rings just seemed so long and boring at the time. Then years passed, and the movies came out, and well - why bother wading through the endless descriptions of too-good-to-be true elves when you can look at Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortensen?

In the just-never-got-to-it category, I am still innocent of all the great Russian writers. Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Pasternak - I've ignored all the greats. This is even more embarrassing since one of my best friends love them so much she keeps Russian novels in the bathroom to read.

And my biggest miss in my own genre... I've never read any of the Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane books. (Ducks against incoming fire.)

HANK: Oh, Julia, you are in for a treat!  And I never read any Little House on the Prairie books, OR Anne of Green Gables. But I never  pretended to.  Debs, they should NOT start with Julius Caesar. It is so great, but 10th grade is not the time. And I did major in English! For which I am endlessly grateful. (Except I missed out on out physics, which I would have loved except for the math part. But that's another blog.)

Okay readers: Your turn! What books have you FAKE read?

CHOOSE JUST ONE BOOK!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Macmillan Audio asked me a terrific and thought-provoking question.  They were doing a survey of authors, asking:  "In and around your college years, and especially at graduation time, what was the book that most prepared you for real life?"

I think that's fascinating--because a book you loved might not have been the one that later you realized changed your life.

And I had never thought about it that way.  Shakespeare's plays, of course, I adore, but did that prepare me for the real world? Maybe. All the thrillers like FAILSAFE, yeah, I suppose. And Advise and Consent, I remember, being so intriguing. Maybe--The Great Gatsby? But how? Or  Look Homeward Angel? Yeah, but why? Custom of the Country? Sort of.

And then I got it.  And I sent Macmillan my  "about 100-words-only" reason:

"Character's names? Can’t remember. Plot? Vaguely. But the philosophy Robert Pirsig taught in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is never far from my consciousness. I still think about that book. Every day. Yes, it’s cool, and a road trip story, with adventures, chance meetings, obstacles, and triumphs. But what I profoundly remember are the reminders to be present. To do the best you can. To pay attention. To seek quality. (Is that what you meant, Mr. Pirsig? That’s what I decided forty-five years ago.) In one scene, the rider tries to ignore an obviously broken motorcycle. Why live with that? the main character asks. Face your problems, fix them, then go forward with knowledge, serenity, and power. What better lesson could there be?"

So how about you?  What book would you give a graduating senior? As it turned out, was there a book that prepared you for reality?

HALLIE EPHRON: A book that PREPARED me for reality? Through the Looking Glass? Catch-22? Portnoy's Complaint??? Seriously, the books I remember reading and thinking a lot about when I was graduating were novels by Anne Tyler and Barbara Kingsolver. and Toni Morrison. Pick one? Aaaagh. I'll go for "The Bean Trees" which, according to Kingsolver, addresses the question: "What are the many ways, sometimes hidden and underground ways, that people help themselves and each other survive hard times."

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  Hank, not fair to make us think so hard on a Monday! This was really tough. Most of the books that I think of as having had a big impact on my world view were read earlier.  Real life? I'm not sure I've ever been prepared for real life. But I'll throw in two, although I can't swear I read them in college. Anne Morrow Lindberg's Gift from the Sea, and Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen. Both those books made me very aware of the beauty in small, everyday things, and of the fact that people do manage to cope with loss if they can still see that beauty.

LUCY BURDETTE: This is a very hard question Hank! Because I don't really remember reading much fun stuff in college. I was majoring in French literature and art history and reading about poet Paul Eluard and artist Max Ernst and most of that I couldn't begin to remember or explain now...

However, my best friend was a poet and he sent me poems to read, and I still have a lovely book of poems by Denise Levertov called LIFE IN THE FOREST. I was buried deep in late teenage angst and trying to figure out who I'd be and who would travel along with me. I remember being deeply touched by this poem by Sappho:

 Tonight I've watched

the moon and then

the Pleiades

go down

The night is now

half-gone; youth

goes; I am

in bed alone

Sappho

It's beautiful isn't it? But so sad. Still speaks to me about how fast time goes and how important the people in your life are--like you Reds!

HANK: I love this! See? A THEME!  All of these choices are about COPING. Right? ! Amazingly so. And so very personal, and so very revealing. Oh. Fabulous.

 If you are interested in what the other authors in the survey chose--it's fascinating! Click here. But first tell us what you think--As a college age person what book did you realize later best prepared you for real life?

********************

And don't forget Lucy Burdette's  FATAL RESERVATIONS is now ON SALE! Come visit tomorrow, hear all about it, and you could win a prize. (But it will not be her book! So you know what to do....)

Books I Think I've Read--but I haven't.

RHYS BOWEN: Earlier this week I wrote about de-cluttering. That included mercilessly weeding out books from my many bookshelves.  In doing this I came across books I'd stare at and ask myself "Did I read this or not?"
In some cases the story was so unmemorable, but other books were classics that I've kept because one should have sufficient classics on the shelf to prove that one is a cultured person--right?
So I'm looking at Moby Dick. Of course I know the beginning--Call me Ishmael. Of course I know that Captain Ahab fought the great white whale and succumbed to it in the end. But as I turn the pages now I find myself asking "Did I actually ever read this?"

Then I started considering other classics and wondering "Have I been faking it all these years when I have joined in discussions on Dickens or George Eliot? So which books do I know that I've read?  Every term at school we had one Shakespeare play, on classic novel, one group of poems and sometimes one more modern work. So I really can claim to have studied much of Shakespeare, some Dickens, Eliot, Thomas Hardy etc. Also some George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde (those counted for modern at my school).

But when I think about it I've never read Tom Brown's Schooldays. I've never read The Last of the Mohicans or the Legend of Sleepy Hollow or the Pickwick Papers or even Bleak House (although I've seen the latter on Masterpiece). I know the story line of each of them but as I turn the pages I know I've never read them.  When I was a student I had to read so much in German and French that I had no time for pleasure reading. And pleasure reading would never, never NEVER have included a long, meaty, boring classic.

it was only when I matured that I chose to read all of Jane Austen and loved them so much that I've read them over and over. I chose to revisit Middlemarch that had bored me to tears in school and actually enjoyed it.  So now I'm thinking I should make a list of books I need to read before I die.

The only problem is that my friends in the mystery community keep turning out such good books that there never seems to be time to tackle old ones. Maybe when I retire (which my husband tells me is never)!

So, fellow Reds--which books do you think you've read, (but you haven't)? Which books do you still want to read?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  That happened to me with Edith Wharton. In high school, I was about to stab myself in the throat, I thought her books were so boring. Now she's my idol. But what do I think I've read that I haven't? The Fountainhead (But do I need to read that?). Maybe...what's the one in the Spanish Civil War?...For Whom the Bell Tolls. Again, because of the movie, I think I know it.  Oh--I bet I've never actually read Gone With The Wind. Huh, funny! Gosh, I'm sitting here, surrounded by books I haven't read. (LIke The Goldfinch. I know, I know.)  I can;t even think about the ones out of sight, out of mind.

HALLIE EPHRON: Oh, Hank, I haven't read "The Goldfinch" or "Secret History," either, though I have read "Gone with The Wind." My eighth-grade teacher Mrs. Diebold took it away from me as inappropriate reading.

I have not read anything by Edith Wharton, I'm ashamed to admit. And I think I started "Moby Dick." I have however read virtually all of the Greek tragedies and comedies and most of Shakespeare. And of course all of Austen (several times) and most of Alcott. And, I'm proud to say, I got all the way through 600+ pages of Günter Grass's "The Tin Drum."

The author I wish I could say I've read is Virginia Woolf. I've listened to "A Room of One's Own" on tape and read "Mrs. Dalloway" right after reading Michael Cunningham's "The Hours." To paraphrase what Salieri supposedly said (in the movie Amadeus) about Mozart, there are simply too many words in her sentences. But I know I'm missing out. Maybe I should alternate reading a novel by Woolf with a novel by Hemingway... as a palate cleanser?

RHYS: So which books do you think you've read, but haven't?
Which books are on your "to be read before I die" list?

And a message from Cindy Brown : her favorite comment from her guest blog on Wednesday was by Pat D.  So Pat D please contact Cindy at info@cindybrownwriter.com and Cindy will send you a copy of her new book, MacDeath.

House of...worth?

She's not exactly one of us, if one of us means mystery writer in the traditional sense, but Edith Wharton was a woman who wrote when it wasn't easy for a woman to write, with a husband who wasn't always supportive, (can you say aggressively unsupportive?) A woman who kept at it whatever the feedback was. In that sense she was one of us. And now her house is under seige, in danger of being foreclosed on by a bank. It happens. The bank is not the enemy, but that's not the point.

The Mount, in Lenox Massachusetts is a wonderful place. I feel particularly sad about this, not just because I'm an Edith Wharton fan, but because the garden in Pushing Up Daisies was loosely based on Wharton's garden at The Mount. I had an inspirational visit there a few years back and thought that Edith or Beatrix Farrand, who designed her gardens, were long past minding a similar layout in my book.

If this were Ernest Hemingway's house in Key West I wouldn't to be writing this. I wouldn't need to. Some professor or university or movie star would pick up the gauntlet and raise the money needed to prevent his home from being turned into condos or a spa or whatever the heck new owners might want to do with the property.

Any other Edith Wharton fans out there? The place where she created masterpieces of American literature should be preserved and you can help. Check out

http://www.edithwharton.org/

HANK: She's one of my favorites. In fact, when I still was in a book club (pre-Charlie) and we all got to choose a book for the group, I picked Custom of the Country--which if you haven't read, do. It's astonishingly modern and incredibly well-written. A wonderful story--compelling and irresistible, with a complicated and unique main character, and no punches pulled.
And then, half of my book group just hated it. Which has always baffled me. I thought it was staggering. And House of Mirth. Sometimes I just can't get it out of my mind.
But anyway--we go to Lenox every summer, to hear the symphony at Tanglewood and walk through the sculpture garden at Chesterwood and go to the Book Store on Housatonic Street and have espresso slushes at Soco and martinis at Bistro Zinc. And we never miss The Mount. We've seen it through the highs and lows, and watched Wharton's one-act plays performed in her parlor, had lemonade on the balcony.
Now its kind of weirdly re-made into a decorators show house kind of place, where they've designed rooms that aren't even the way "Edith's" were, which frankly drives me crazy. Because--what's the point? Plus, she was the expert and icon in architecture and decorating before she went on to literature, and the idea that they...oh, well.

Anyway. Ro is so right. The idea that it's going to be foreclosed on seems bizarrely anachronistic. Or something like that. To take such a 21st century phenomenon, and slap it across an historic site. Seems, what? Crass? Absurd? Short-sighted? And do what with it? Make the Mount a furniture store?

HALLIE: "Custom of the Country." Check--now it's on my TBR list. Still, can you imagine how bizarre it would be to look back from your grave, 70-plus years post mortem, and see the world trying to make the place where you wrote into a monument?? And how heavenly(!) it would be if anyone would be blogging (will they still blog?) about your writing.

HANK: Who owns it, anyway?

RO: It´s the Edith Wharton Foundation, and try as I might I wasn´t able to find the suggestion any mishandling of funds..it seems they just got caught up in some unfavorable loans and bad refinancing deals. I have to say...I´m writing this from El Salvador..where I´m finishing up a blitz build with Habitat for Humanity. Fifty four houses are going up (pix on my website in a week or so) for less than it would cost to...I don´t know... replace Edith´s azaleas. It´s strange to have these two situations side by side in my brain, but I do.

ROBERTA: Now I've got Custom of the Country on my TBR list too. Have never been to Edith Wharton's home, but I did tour Hemingway's house in Key West this winter--twice. The place is constantly mobbed with tourists who want to hear the story of his life--he had four or five wives, I can't remember, and was a hard-drinking, adventurous and tragic figure in the end. You would absolutely salivate over the room where he wrote. It would be very sad to see Wharton's--or Hemingway's--home disappear. This is the kind of "museum" where ordinary people can go to appreciate the mastery and humanness of writers.

RO: Does anybody else think Hank has the coolest life? Espresso slushes..? Martinis? Tanglewood..every time I go, it rains.

LORI On Aging

In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.
****Edith Wharton

HANK: So Edith had it right--about so many things. Still, you've got to admit, the aging thing has its downside. But if anyone can make the downside have an upside, it's the always hilarious Lori Avocato. You know her from her series of mystery novels, and from mystery and romance conventions--she's the one in the middle of group where everyone is laughing.

And she's now the Chief Commanding Officer of the Mystery Chix and Private Dix, a fab and funny group of mystery/romantic suspense authors making its debut at the upcoming Romantic Times Convention. (Some of us Chix and Dix are going to wear costumes. Not me. I'm going to dress up like someone who knows what they're doing at such a convention. That'll fool 'em.)

Anyway, besides her very funny mysteries about nurse Pauline Sokol (the newest is Dead On Arrival), Lori's branching out into other writing. Essays on whatever strikes her fancy! And we convinced her to try one out on anything-can-happen-Friday on JungleRed.

Ah, aging gracefully.

Who the heck came up with that one? I mean, as far as clichés go, this one has to be right up there with good things come in small packages--leaving out: cars, houses, boats, planes etcetera.

Here’s how graceful aging can be. Your eyesight starts to blur so you can’t even read the newspaper without glasses you rarely can find, and soon the food on your plate blends into a fog of color. Thank goodness the sense of smell doesn’t go as quickly or we might starve.

“What?” becomes a frequent flyer off of your tongue. Of course if you have teenagers, who tend to mumble, your hearing may not be as bad as you think or at least as bad as they claim it is. But before you go spending a gazillion dollars on a hearing aid, have your ears checked. My doctor told me to tell my kids to speak up, and I’d save a gazillion dollars.

Skin is the body’s first defense against infection. When it gets cut, the chance of getting germs inside your body highly increases. So why with the “aging” process does the skin insist on increasing? Are we more prone to infection mid-life that the skin over our eyes droops down to nearly impede our vision? Does the skin below our jaw line really need to stretch out and fold itself over and over and over? And, really, does the skin of our upper arms have to...you get my point.

Aging gracefully? Puleeze.

Those creaking sounds you hear in this graceful process are your joints. Joints that have “matured” so that bone clicks against bone, causing you to “ooh,” “ah,” “aye,” and all together writhe in pain as you merely stand up from your seat, making it difficult to appear poised.

One would think that we’d want to spend less time sleeping as we hit the middle age mark of our years. I mean, if this is halfway shouldn’t we be going gangbusters the next half so as not to waste any time?

Let me put it this way: I call my daily naps “power siestas.” Somehow this legitimizes them and certainly lets others think that I am aging gracefully. After all, a power siesta implies, well, that I am powerful and following a tradition practiced by many countries for years. Surely it has to be good for us along with a proper diet.

Ah, diet and exercise. They really should go hand in hand. I’m not saying part of aging is dieting. Far from it. I think if you hit your eighties, you should imbibe in whatever strikes your fancy. In your seventies you should imbibe in half of whatever strikes your fancy and so on. Who cares if you enjoy a daily Martini, a cupcake or two, or a handful of salty potato chips? Age smage.

When I say diet I do not mean eating only grapefruits, all carbs, no carbs, carbs disguised as food (don’t get me started on “Tofurky”) or any other “diet.” I mean our daily intake of food--balanced from all the food groups (which I understand has recently been overhauled. However, I refuse to do any research on the new group structure unless chocolate has been added as the tip of the pyramid.) Against our wishes, we are what we eat seems to be proven on a daily basis.

To age gracefully, we really do need to keep moving. Our joints will attest to the fact that the longer we remain immobile our bodies will assume this should be our position for all eternity and give out...you get my point.
So, motion seems to be a very good idea. Daily walking, swimming, playing tennis, or doing mild aerobics is all part of the process. However when we hit middle age, the word exercise receives an honorary degree into the four-letter words hall of fame. A necessary evil. Oh we can try doing it in tandem with a friend, a group, or to jazzy music, but the thought of that power siesta always teases our bodies as we age gracefully.

I chuckle when a relative or friend now says they just can’t seem to wake up as early in the morning or they now take their own version of my power siesta every afternoon.

The irony of life and this thing called “aging gracefully” slaps us in our faces once again.

Age gracefully, one and all, and do not under any circumstances remain stationary for more then thirty-three minutes at a time.
If this is a slice of life...I’m way too old to lift my fork.

The Inspirational Surround

HALLIE: For Christmas, one of my daughters gave me fingerless gloves. My other daughter gave me flannel slippers with buckwheat/beanbag soles that can be heated in the microwave. My husband gave me a lovely soft, pale gray wool shawl. As I type this, I'm wearing all of them (the things, not the family) and sipping a cup of hot tea in my office, a little room that hangs off the side of our house. In realtor speak: a solarium. Actually it's a winterized sun porch, barely eight by fourteen, with 7 windows all around. I love this light-filled space, and it has the great virtue of smallness,\ so I can't indulge my inner packrat. But when the temperature outside is seven degrees, which it was the other morning, it's COLD in here, and it feels even colder because I like my computer right up agains the window so I can watch the sparrows shivering the bushes as they peer longingly at the frozen birdbath.

Very glamorous, my writing life. So, how glamorous is yours--because it's one of the truths of life that misery loves company.

JAN: How glamorous is my office? Think painted paneling and bulletin boards. Not one bulletin board, mind you, but two because I'm the kind of person who needs visual stimuli pinned up in front of her so not to lose or forget anything. There's also an enormous office-sized printer with mental issues (its paranoid that its paper drawer is open -- sort of like that bad dream that you've gone to work without your shirt on). Lots of wires and storage drives I don't quite understand (my husband comes home with computer periferal extras) a guitar stand with the guitar missing, and a dog bed with my dog, Amber, currently snoring -- or maybe its more like doggie groaning.

The color scheme is beige and brown. Need I say more?

RO: It's a room we added on top of the house so there's a rather skinny set of steps to get up there. High ceilings, skylights, floor to ceiling windows and a slider to a small deck with a platform and pergola. Right now I'm watching a woodpecker nibble on a branch outside my window and I have to stop whatever I'm doing if I hear one of the owls.

My desk is a long slab of wood on top of two iron sewing machine bases. I have a bunch of mix-matched vintage furniture including a china cabinet filled with shells, a rattan sofa covered in barkcloth and a birds eye maple chest. There are books everywhere, a tree in the corner with a pink wrought iron flamingo stuck in the pot, and a telescope for when I need to check out the nighttime sky. One wall is floor to ceiling bookcases - just mysteries and gardening books. Like Jan I have two bulletin boards, filled with everything from my agent's first wonderful email to me (I Love It!) to pix of Bettie Page, Edith Wharton, the Virgin of Guadalupe..the list goes on.

It's a wonder I ever get any work done.

ROBERTA: I have a small nook off the bedroom with an astonishing view. But the part I like best is the slanted wall over my computer and printer--slathered with photos, poems, cartoons, an NYT bestseller list to give me inspiration. Here are a few samples:

1. a cartoon from Byline, one guy is handing another guy a book
and saying "We've started with a small print run. Here's your copy
and I'll keep the other one."
2. a photo of my stepson Andrew with our old dog Poco. The dog
has a sign around his neck saying "Andy is my valentine."
My son has a sign around his neck saying "Poco is my valentine."
I think he was a freshman in high school and we'd gone out to
dinner leaving him home without a date!
3. a list my husband passed on:
free your heart from hatred, free your mind from worries, live
simply, give more, expect less...

HANK: Sometimes my study is so sunny I have to wear my Evita baseball cap (Where the heck did I get that? Don't remember) to be able to see the computer screen. I'm sure I'm quite a sight: ponytail sticking out of the cap, no makeup, a big sweatshirt from the Gap that says Ti(RED) on the back. Sweatpants and those cozy clogs that I can't remember the name of that have tyrolean braid around the edges. Very very glam. Very.

I can see trees and sky out the bay window in front of me, squirrels fighting with the blue jays. A whole wall of books. A wonderful photo on an easel beside--but I can't see the photo anymore because I've covered it with so many signing posters and memorabilia(me at B and N, Borders, other bookstores. The best seller list with my books on it. My special fave is a cash register receipt from the Borders cafe that has "come meet Hank Phillippi Ryan" printed on the bottom).

I'm surrounded by books I might need. Hallie's in case I get stumped. Stephen King On Writing. Strunk and White. Baskets of file folders with notes in them. Again, via Hallie, my "compost" file of newspaper stories. I dig into them when my brian needs fuel, maybe for just a word. My word count chart. My scene and character and timing notebook. A sign that says: Hook. Stakes. Beautiful Writing.

On my desk, behind the monitor,the glittering beribboned bags that people used when they gave me book-deal champagne. In front of the monitor, two engraved little rocks. One says: Patience. The other says: Imagine.

HALLIE: I wonder if that's a universal among writers--that we surround ourselves with words. Our talismans. One of mine is a quote from an all-time favorite children's story from Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories:

And a secret ambition is a little creeper that creeps and creeps
in your heart
night and day, singing a little song, "Come and find me, come and
find me."

Read the story of "Three Boys With Jugs of Molasses and Secret Ambitions" and have a lovely, inspired day with your very own freckles and secret ambitions.

So, with what talismans do you surround yourself?

ON FAVORITES

One’s favorite book is as elusive as one’s favorite pudding.
***E. M. Forster “In My Library” pt. II (1949)

HANK:
There's a discussion going on elsewhere--what's your favorite book? it's asking. And interestingly, although mystery writers/readers could all talk for hours about books we adore, and are thankful to have read, my favorite of all favorites was a winner by a mile. So I typed it in, and said, anyone else love this? I'd love to know. Days went by, and I didn't hear a 'Me, too' from anyone.


There were Jane Eyres (of course) and a lot of To Kill a Mockingbirds (who doesn't love that?) and a Shogun or two. And many more, of course. But I started wondering, if my favorite book is no one else's favorite book, why is that? And then, days later, a reply came in...Carol Shmurak of Connecticut says, she was just about to type in the same book. And I felt--let's have dinner! I just know I'll like her. The book is Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin. And if any of you have read it....


HALLIE:
And doesn't it feel like a betrayal when a best friend hates a book you loved-loved-loved and recommended? I recommended one of my favorite books from last year, Joseph Wambaugh's Hollywood Station to several good friends and their response was tepid.


HANK:
Well, you gave it to my darling husband for his birthday, and he's loving loving living it, I must say. So there's at least one soulmate. But yes, you offer a wonderful book, like a treasure you've discovered and want to share, and part of the fun is sharing the experience, right? Like in a book club. But then they look at you like, thanks but no thanks.


When it was my turn for book group, I chose Custom of the Country, my favorite of my favorite Edith Wharton. I went to the meeting, eager to share in a true reading delight. Instead I was hooted and booed. (Not really, but some of the group thought it was boruing and stilted.) The other half thought--as I do--it was innovative and thought-provoking and revealing and marvelous.


RO:
I've been in a reading group for over a year and a few months ago, I finally got to choose a book. I chose The Egyptologist, which I thought was clever, fun, smart, engaging, and original. Not my favorite book of all time, but a good read, as they say. People didn't get it, some hated it. I sat there and felt like I was from Mars. One of my favorite writers is Robert Hellenga (Sixteen Pleasures, Fall of a Sparrow.) And no one's ever heard of him. I keep waiting to mention his name and have someone say "Omigod, you like him,too!"


JAN:
Everybody brings their own life to a book. Also the mood of the moment. When I was in my late teens I went on an F. Scott Fitzgerald rampage, reading and adoring every single one of his books.

Now I'm reading The Great Gatsby for a second time. Clearly the revered author's most highly regarded book, and a story that intrigued me the first time around. You know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking, geez Scott, this sentence construction is a little pretentious. And man, you could never get away with this melodrama today. In short, now that I've gone through my jazz-age fascination, I have less patience. But other favorites -- and less revered works -- that I've reread have only gotten better as a repeat. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry for one. I could read that book once a year and still enjoy it. And yet one of my very best friends, a writing buddy, couldn't stand it. It's all just all so personal...



HANK:
Yes, going back is always interesting. Maybe it means there's a favoirte for each time of your life. (I read Look Homeward Angel about 6 times.) It means something to you then, lasting, sometimes, but sometimes ephemeral. I had a lavender hot pants suit once, I loved it. It was my favorite. (I will pause now, for the general hilarity.) And when I think about it in that time--I still love it. (I will join in, now, with the general hilarity.)



BREAKING NEWS. (Hank couldn't resist.) Just to remind you all that the pub date for my first novel, PRIME TIME is Tuesday June 12! Reviewers say "it's a perfect comimbination of mystery and romance." Here's a fun photo of some of the (very wonderful) people who came to Book Expo America last week and actually stood in line to get a copy. (That's me in the black and white checks. The chic woman in the ice green jacket is the charming and indefatigible Anita Sultmanis from Harlequin, who kept everything working perfectly.)
And it makes me wonder--might PT someday be someone's favorite book? At least for as long as they loved their hot pants?
Anyway. I hope you like it.
And looking back at our opening quote--does anyone actually have a favorite pudding?