Jane Austen Week!

I'm so excited for this week! In honor of the 200th Anniversary of Jane Austen's passing, this week is going to be five straight days of Austen-y goodness, celebrating her work and it's centuries-long impact. 

On Monday, I'll kick things off with a delicious scone recipe (as I do) and information about how to enter to win the Jane of Austin prize package, offered by WaterBrook Multnomah.

Un Jour de Pluie

The rain, it comes.

You know you live in the desert when it rains and you're confused about what, exactly, is going on.  This is after 25 years in the Willamette Valley, where it rains 10 months out of the year.

Still. Brain trying to recollect what one does when it rains.

Tesla is completely befuddled by the moisture from the sky, because she spent her Spring rainy season in our corporate apartment as a young pup, only experiencing the rain that blew/dripped in past the patio covering.

(I apologize for the crick in your neck. I'm not techy enough to figure out if the orientation can be changed. But cute, no?)

Right now, Tesla will ring her bells to go outside; I'll open the door, she'll take in the scenery and decide - no, actually, not worth it.

Just kidding.

I've been reading The Paris Wife, FINALLY - I've wanted to read it for some time, but the Kindle edition is on the pricier side, and the wait list at the library took a long time...

...anyway, reading it now, and oh. My. Goodness.  Poor Hadley! An excellent read so far, The Paris Wife tells the story of the first Mrs. Hemmingway from her perspective, from meeting Ernest in Chicago to marrying him at the age of 28 (he was 21). They moved shortly after the wedding to Paris - and not the nice part of Paris, either - and make a home for them while he struggled to find himself as a writer.

Writers are difficult people in the best of times; Hemingway had hemochromatosis, the inability to metabolize iron, as well as (most likely) bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

He also drank like a fish.

Easy man to be married to? Not so much.


Another book that makes for terrific rainy-day reading?

Jenny B. Jones' There You'll Find Me  is perfect for a day with precipitation.  I should have realized it was also perfect for an airplane ride...I slogged through a truly terrible book (actually, two of them) on the flight back from St. Louis, which was painful because Danny's book was absolutely brilliant.

He'd giggle at his book and I'd role my eyes at the pages (and pages) of limp characterization.

I came home and pulled out There You'll Find Me.  I loved it for all of the reasons that I loved Anna and the French Kiss - a very real, very likeable heroine, a gorgeous setting, and a crush-worthy boy.

(Speaking of, Stephanie Perkins has a new novel out.  I'll get back to you on that...)

There You'll Find Me treads perfectly across themes of loss and hope, romance and change, friendship and grief.  Did I mention it's funny? That the protagonist refers to Pride and Prejudice as the single girl's Magna Carta?

Really, it's grand. Trust me.

So if it's rainy where you are - these are the books! Grab a mug of tea (carefully) and tuck yourself into bed with a book.

Or, if you're Tesla, you can go catch a raindrop.

The things we read

I haven't written about books since the June before I got married. You can read it here - I lifted it from its myspace blog purgatory and stuck it into my 2008 lineup (small aside - I had to wade through my old myspace blogs - many of which weren't bad - to find the one I'm referring to. At the top of the page was a banner add for Trojan, reminding me again why myspace is not my preferred method of social networking.)

Anyway. I know I write about my books, but I also avoid talking about the stuff I read.

Thing is, I've suffered from literature peer pressure. Or maybe that's not the right phrase. Let me put it this way - the book everyone's talking about, the beautifully written, potentially tragic character drama? I'm generally uninterested. The beautifully written, moving/heartbreaking story about something that happened, in a third-world country? Completely uninterested.

And I'm sorry. I know that my overall disinterest in Three Cups of Tea is a character flaw. It's not personal; it's just not my thing. I checked out The Book Thief, and don't think I ever cracked the cover. I think I got through a page of John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things. I don't know that I'll ever touch The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society with a ten-foot pole.

Oh well.

In my defense, some of the things I've avoided are because of WWII content. I'm sick to death of WWII. Seriously. The Nazis have been done, and unless they're showing up in Argentina years later (a la Notorious, you know, with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant), I'm really done with them. I did the research. I've seen the concentration camp. I wrote a report that so sickened me in college that I found myself watching American Idol to recover (never watched it since).

This is not to say that I don't read the occasional impressive book. Loved Timothy Keller's The Reason for God, Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. I read Blue Like Jazz before it was a cliche. I'm trying to think of impressive fiction that I've read without a gun or a grade held to my head, but drawing a blank.
Thing is, I think I got it into my my head as a child that reading was fun. I'm fairly certain that's what the posters in my elementary school's library said.
Because of that, I read fun books. I read YA fiction, Meg Cabot's Princess Diaries and more recently her Airhead books. Michael Buckley's Sisters Grimm: Fairytale Detectives books are delightful. For all of their faults, I read the Twilight books with incredible speed. Susannah also got me onto the Luxe books.
I feel slightly better about myself if the fun books are British. Hester Browne's Little Lady Agency books make me appreciate my own flatmate. Sophie Kinsella's heroine of the Shopoholic series had me at her packing list. Seriously. Kinsella managed to write a character who packed more for a weekend trip than I dreamed (then found a way for the luggage to go elsewhere, but never mind).
I love books with food in the story. Garden Spells, The Sugar Queen, The Matchmaker of Perigord, Chateau of Echoes, The Last Chinese Chef, Sweet Love, Sandra Byrd's French Twist books, Tender at the Bone, most everything by Ruth Reichl, really, Kissing Adrian, Serving Crazy with Curry, and Kate Jacobs' Comfort Food.
I love books about books (this doesn't count if the books are being read during WWII) - Geraldine Brooks' The People of the Book, Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale (which has the best medical prescription ever written into book), Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story and The Bronte Project.
Haven't even mentioned The Princess Bride or Gilbert Morris' All That Glitters, but at this point I think you're getting a decent portrait of my habits.
I know some people read to challenge themselves. I am not that self-actualized. Why should I be challenged by my reading when my writing, my home, my laundry, grocery shopping, traffic, empty gas tanks, bills, carpet stains, clutter, publishing, photo editing, marriage, all the forces of the earth move to challenge me. Why would I willingly add something else to that list? I'd rather have a good laugh. Go somewhere exotic. Get recipe ideas. Be swept up in a romance. Maybe learn about another culture or time period, think about an intriguing concept.
What do you think? What are some books you love but, possibly wouldn't advertise your affection for?
P.S. With any luck, I should be able to post the final cover for Plain Jayne shortly!

A Book of the Terrifying Kind

There's something scary about the beginning of a good book. It all starts out so innocently - you laugh at the first couple pages, agree with some of the narrative and if you're me, read it to the person sitting next to you.

Words progress, and you become emotionally involved with the character, admiring the witty dialogue, and find yourself reading more than you planned.

Then forty-four pages in, this terrifying realization sinks in: you really like this book. You'd recommend it to other people, but you can't - because you don't know how it ends.

That's the kicker - the better the beginning, the greater the disappointment if the writer screw up. Some examples -

Avoiding Prison, and Other Noble Vacation Goals - flat out hilarious, depressing (sorry, "disquieting") at the end.

Hypocrite in a Poufy White Dress - again, the beginning deserved to be framed. Then I wanted to clap my hands over my eyes during the middle, while the end was pretty good. But can you recommend a book when the entire second act inspires a gag reflex?

There was another book I can't remember the title of, but it was a modern take-off of Jane Austen's Persuasion. Loved it, until the author slipped in a scene that I'd rather like out of my head.

I'm also finding the ones with the most disappointment potential are the ones with the best title. The book inspiring this riff is Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story. And it's really, really good so far. As in, I want my own copy. And I'm petrified that author's going to get in the way of my transcendental experience.

Moral of the story: writing a book is hard. One scene can make the difference. The lack of a scene can make the difference. Writing is putting something down, then calling everyone who read it to make sure it's okay and you still qualify as a writer. It's ensuring that you're not cheating your readers. When someone's placed their faith in your prose to read your book instead of mowing the lawn, watching Desperate Housewives on DVD or staring at the ceiling, it's your responsibility to make it worth their time.

Scary stuff.