Never Enough Books!

I’m in the midst of preparation for Malice Domestic and the Festival of Mystery right afterwards. Just before this, I was giving book talks and driving to signings, mailing bookplates and books readers had won in giveaways. I’m fried.

Then I updated my website with this picture:


I felt a bit silly when it was taken—it seemed so “posed.” But when I look at it, I realize that this encapsules the goal I started reaching for in 2005. I’m at a bookstore about to sign my books.

That’s what this is all about, really—books. I almost lost sight of it what with everything that needs doing. So I went upstairs and stared at my bookshelves. There are five of them, they’re all packed to bursting like this, and I’ve read every single book on every shelf; some more than once. Some several times.

Then I took off the shelves this selection of books:

Every one of them is written by a writer friend of mine. It makes me proud to bursting when I see them. We’ve all been on very long roads to achieve this. JD Salinger, in Seymour; An Introduction, put into words what my friends and I wanted to do: “Ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world [you] would most want to read…. [Then] sit down shamelessly and write it yourself.”
So we did. Because we love books.

Writers, please share if you would: What was your lightbulb moment? Was it a quote from a book? Was it staring at your own bookshelves? Something else?

Readers, please share if you would: What book do you most want to read? Do you already own it? Are you waiting for someone to write it? You never know—it might be the WIP on an Inker’s laptop.

I'm not crying--my eyes are tired. Really.

What a perfect Christmas card photo this would be: Rudolph-themed stuffed animals, ornaments from several generations decorating the tree, adorable cat nestled in the tree skirt… wait. The cat definitely has a look which says: “Back away from me now and I won’t sharpen my claws on your camera.” That look is why I’ve never tried to dress up my cats in adorable holiday-themed sweaters and hats. I prefer to keep my skin intact.

It will surprise no one that I’m not a “fluffy bunny sweetness and light” person. Yet at Christmas this strange hidden side of me appears, causing me to watch cute holiday cartoons. I have been known get all sniffly at certain holiday movies. I even sport a pair of reindeer antlers complete with lights.

Since I still have to function as a normal human, I’ll cut myself off before the sentiment incapacitates me. For instance, I haven’t watched It’s a Wonderful Life in about ten years, because I blubber like an idiot at the same scene every time. Every time! You know the one: Where George Bailey runs back onto the bridge after seeing how Mary’s life turned out. He starts praying “I want to live again” and it starts to snow, signaling us that everything’s back to normal. I could keep the Kleenex company in business on that movie alone.

I even used to cry at the end of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. We haven’t yet watched it this year, so I can’t say for sure I’ve become a hardened character regarding the moment the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes.

So—tell me I’m not alone here! What holiday screenwriting is so brilliant that it makes you cry every time? What favorite book is so well written that you love it but won’t reread it unless you’re alone in the house and have a stack of tissues ready? I’ve listed my major two, and I’ll add the movie Scrooged. Guess which places. Yep. The scene where the adult Bill Murray sees his mother and the scene at the end where he asks Karen Allen to come back to him.

As for books: One of my “needs Kleenex” reads is Patricia Wentworth’s Nothing Venture. The other one is The Brother’s Keeper by Tracy Groot, at whose keyboard I grovel. I've memorized whole passages from these books without even trying. The former pushes all my "romantic gal" buttons. Trust me on the latter: My groveling is well deserved.

Okay, it’s your turn. I’ve got plenty of boxes of tissues ready. Let the blubbering begin!

Books, Books, Books

Last week was the annual used book sale run by the American Association of University Women. Wait—let me rephrase that: Last week was the “There’s THOUSANDS of Books In There—Lemme At ’Em” sale. I picture Betty and Wilma from the Flintstones TV show waving their stone credit cards in the air and giving the call to arms: “Charge it!” Barney and Fred used to cringe, but my husband knew I’d spend about $50 and come home with about 50 books.

I was close. Two days, $56, 57 books.

I’ve heard some writers complain about used book sales because they don’t get royalties on those sales. Yet I’ve picked up books by at least a dozen authors that were unknown to me, and because of that one used book I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of money at Barnes & Noble on the rest of that author’s works. I’m also a lifelong library user, which is a reader’s lifesaver when funds are short, or you’re laid off. The same holds true: I’ve read a new author there and headed to B&N for the complete set later.

I took an informal poll of fellow published and unpublished writers when discussing this sale. With a handful of exceptions, they all were in favor of buying used books. Partially because most writers aren’t rolling in dough, but also for the reasons above. We all look forward to the day when a total stranger picks up our first book for a dollar and then sends fan mail through our website. And then (of course) rushes to their bookstore of choice to buy everything else we’ve written.

Have you haunted the used bookstores in your budget-crunching past (or present)? What memorable old and new gems did you find?

For me, the first was Lin Carter’s The Man Who Loved Mars. I’m not usually a SF reader, but I was looking for schlock horror to read on vacation. Something about this book caught my eye and I discovered one of the best wounded heroes ever. My modern discovery was Laurie R. King’s The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. Say no more.

The “Potboiler” List

Lately I've seen a rash of book lists cropping up, apparently inspired by the BBC Big Read list of 100 best-loved books. Here are the top ten from that list:

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

The Sun-Sentinel's Off the Page blogger weighed in recently with her 50 favorites to counter those of the Miami Herald's book blogger.

I have to confess I am nowhere near close to having read most of these books from any of these lists. My excuse that’s no excuse: I'm a very s-l-o-w reader.

I may as well face it--there are books I should read that I will just never get around to.

This got me to thinking, though, about the books I did mange to speed my way through, day into night, sometimes skipping meals because the story was more engrossing than food. The literal page-turners. The books (and this is the real test) that made me want to call in sick, because I was either exhausted from lack of sleep (a form of illness, it could be argued), or still reading and unable to tear myself away.

Some of these books might be considered "potboilers" - books of low quality. I would disagree. Any book that makes us forget ourselves and our troubles for a bit is a good thing, as Keith blogged about yesterday. Here are some of the page-turning, make-me-late-for-work books I remember, then, in no particular order:

Salem's Lot – Stephen King

The Stand – Stephen King

The Exorcist – William Blatty

And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie

Bridget Jones' Diary – Helen Fielding

Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

Little Women – Louisa May Alcott

Double Indemnity - James M. Cain

Mildred Pierce – James M. Cain

The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
– Mark Twain

Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

Rosemary’s Baby – Ira Levin

The Stepford Wives – Ira Levin

On the Road – Jack Kerouac

I'm forgetting some good ones, I know. What would you add?

OC Hobbit

All right, true confession time. I'm one of those people who emailed Peter Jackson to explain to him in fine detail all the many ways he got it WRONG! You know what I'm talking about here, and if you don't, you are banished! Actually, you're not banished. But come on, Peter Jackson? Lord of the Rings, the amazing three part spectacle of visual pyrotechnics that got it WRONG? You know what I'm talking about here.

Actually, he got a lot right. With the exception of Liv Tyler, whose probably fine in other things, the casting was superb. At times unexpected, but all the more delightful for the surprise. And I give Jackson credit for putting together a striking visual treat. I don't regret the missing Tom Bombadil or certain other liberties with the story. But, and I'm just being brutally honest here, he did kinda miss the major point of the book, as displayed most keenly in the first movie when Aerosmith's daughter zapped Frodo. See? She zapped Frodo, but when she did it, she wasn't Arwen, but rather Liv Tyler with a cheesy accent. How did that happen in a movie where everyone else was so spot on? That's what I want to know. And, yes, I was okay with raising the pulse rate of the Aragorn/Arwen love story, but she didn't zap Frodo. It didn't happen, it didn't happen, it didn't happen! And it rooooined it. It made trivial everything sacrifice Frodo made from thence forward. (Note the use of "thence" in an actual sentence in the 21st century).

Obviously I'm taking this too seriously. But I'm not, really. I have an out. You see, the movie, while delightful to look at, especially if you fast-forward through the Aerosmith parts, doesn't actually exist. The only movie less existent is the previous Ralph Bakshi variant, described at the Internet Movie Database as "Not As Bad AS I Thought It Would Be." Which is a charming sentiment, but also wrong. It was worse.

The thing is, I've read The Lord of the Rings about a hundred million times. Of course I've multi-read The Hobbit too. Hell, I've even read The Silmarillion — more than once. Why? you might ask. And even if you don't ask, I'm telling you. The Lord of the Rings is my comfort food. Anytime something bad is about to happen to me that I know about in advance (for example, gall bladder surgery or volunteering for the Army) I read The Lord of the Rings. I can probably recite whole sections of it from memory, though trust me, you don't want to get me started.

I'm thinking about this because I read this article today online about the travails of mixing literary tastes and dating, about the benefits and perils of judging a significant other by the books they claim. Not just the books they read, but the books they claim. Their significant books. The books that somehow touched them or shaped them (or, okay, sure, maybe didn't shape them at all). Got me to thinking about whether I would be married right now if I'd admitted to this Lord of the Rings thing while my wife and I were dating. I mean, seriously. Have you read what I said above? Am I out of my mind? Emails to Peter Jackson?

And here's what's worse. I didn't actually SEND the emails, I just fantasized about sending them. I let other people do the actually sending, and just applauded them from the safety of my basement lair. How pathetic is that?


Here's another book that is really important to me: The Mystery of the Witches' Bridge by Barbee Oliver Carleton. I first read it in fourth grade, and then proceeded to re-read it approximately as often as I've reread The Lord of the Rings. It's been a bit of a problem though, because it's always been published in a cheap paperback format which tends to disintegrate by the time I've gotten through it four or five times, which means I have to go back to the Amazon Marketplace well again and again for yet another battered used copy. Tragic, really. But then, the average price these days is 39¢, or nine dollars with shipping and handling.

Anyway. You should read it. Brilliant YA noir, if you can believe such a beast actually exists. It does. It's in this book, in fact. The Mystery of the Witches' Bridge. Remember that title. Tattoo in your arm, just in case. Well worth it. Great characters, taut plot, sleep-interrupting suspense, and unexpected redemption yet with a note of ambivalence and ambiguity. This is a book that deserves much more attention than it's gotten. It's a book I wouldn't mind being judged for one bit. Hell, I even tell my wife when I'm reading it again. And she rolls her eyes and pats me on the head — or maybe she's taking my temperature. I'll let you be the judge of that.

So now, I've confessed. Your turn. What's yours, the book or books for which you're okay about being judged?

Is that a gun in your pocket . . .

by Joe Moore

. . . or are you just happy to see me? Mae West got our attention with one of the most famous opening lines in history. So how important is a first line? In life, some people call them icebreakers, and they can mean the difference between getting a date with that just-right person or nailing that dream job. It can set the tone for a relationship with your new end-laws or neighbors. The more important an event, the more importance we place on it.

In a novel, the first line can be a killer or a clunker. It can lay there like an overcooked piece of fish or fire up the imagination and demand that the second line be read and the third . . . It can produce a ho-hum yawn or cause a gasp. And it is probably the most overworked, over written string of words in a writer’s life.

Some first lines drift away like smoke on an autumn breeze. Others laser themselves in our gray matter to be remembered and recalled until the grave. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of time . . .” from Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities comes to mind. The problem with that one is, back in school I was told it was a great first line. Admittedly it is, but what I’m talking about here are the ones that we discover on our own. The treasures in the attic or the gems buried in the bottom of the old dresser bought at a flea market.

When I was in high school, I picked up a novel and read the first line, and knew in an instant that I would never forget it. That I would be able to recite it anytime, anywhere for the rest of my life. And because of that line, I devoured the rest of the book and every other novel the author wrote. That first line was a black hole that sucked me in. It was an 11-word mixture of mystery, suspense, intrigue, darkness, and magic. As a writer, I aspire to someday writing a first line as good. For now that’s only a distant dream, but one I never stop working toward. Here’s that first line:

“The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm.” Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.

What’s your favorite first line?