Literate Girls

Recently my sweet and lovely niece Eva sent me a blog post from Thought Catalogue by Charles Warnke with the (hopefully) ironic title, "You Should Date an Illiterate Girl." It reads like a prose poem and it's been making the internet rounds among the young. Here is one of my favorite passages:

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

As a girl who reads, I recognize the woman Warnke describes. The year I turned 19, my then-and-now boyfriend (reader, I married him) bought me a box of poetry books for my birthday. It was a giant gift box filled with Nikki Giovanni, Alan Ginsburg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, e.e. cummings, Anne Sexton--a 70s hipster girl's dream roster--with some good old-fashioned Yeats for good measure. That gift made me the envy of every literate girl in my dorm. In the years since, I have gotten some other boxes of books, usually when I least expect them. One year, in my pre-Kindle days,  it was 38 Penguin pocket books, scaled down to fit in a purse or a back pocket. "So you'll always have something to read," was the inscription on the card. The last such gift was two shopping bags that I could barely lift, as they were filled with a hardcover set of Barnes and Noble classics, from Alcott and Austen right through Wharton and Wilde. It occurs to me that it is a brave man who's willing to date--or marry--a literate girl. Near the end of Warnke's post is this warning:

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. . . .The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold.

So here's to all the literate girls, the storytellers, the crafters of narratives. The girls who read.  (And the men who love them.)

♥ ♥ ♥

Kindling Interest

I should start by saying that holding an open book--whether in bed, on the beach, at the kitchen table while I eat a solitary breakfast, or with my legs slung over the side of an arm chair--provides me one of my greatest pleasures in life. When I bought my son a Kindle two years ago, I perceived it as one of those new-fangled gadgets I could certainly do without. Until American Express, God bless 'em, offered me a free one  if I signed up for their gold card.

It didn't take long to hook me. Between being able to get just about every classic piece of literature for free and the instant gratification (I still watch the book appear magically on my home page each time I order one, and never fail to get a kick out of it) I was a very happy Kindle customer. And despite what many people may think, the Kindle did not become a replacement for books. If anything, owning a Kindle has broadened my reading in ways I did not expect, and would not have happened otherwise. I tend to reach for the same kinds of books: literary fiction, mysteries, and women's fiction.

But because the Kindle affords so many opportunities for free or inexpensive downloads, I have begun to read more romance, YA, and even fantasy--books I would never have picked up otherwise. And in genres I read regularly, I am discovering new authors all the time. When Death of a Cozy Writer was available for free on Amazon, I grabbed it, and G. M. Malliet now has a new fan.

I read lots of Regencies when I was younger, but hadn't opened one for years until Candice Hern offered her backlist for download. That great cover grabbed me! (Not to mention the cover price of $0.00.) I'm generally not a fan of YA and don't know a thing about steampunk, but a free download of Kady Cross' The Strange Case of Finley Jayne opened my mind to genres I ordinarily ignore. The same goes for Julie Kagawa's Summer's Crossing, a YA novella set in the fairy world.

Now I'm curious: are you a Kindle reader? If so, how has it changed your reading habits? If not, why are you a holdout?

Romance Meets Mystery, or There's Nothing Like the Dame

  When I am deep in a project, I generally don’t read too much women’s fiction. I worry about the unconscious influences of voice or tone, and I dread coming across a plotline that may be similar to mine. So last summer while I worked on the first draft of my current novel, I tended to curl up in my big chair with mysteries, specifically Agatha Christie's works—there is nothing like the Dame on a rainy summer night.

 But as I worked on my story, it occurred to me that Christie’s formidable skills are a model for all writers, even those of us writing romantic fiction. Herewith are the lessons I have gleaned from Dame Agatha:  --Mystery. No, I’m not writing one, but I’m planting small ones in my story, including a few red herrings. There are no bodies littering my tale, but there are characters whose motivations are not clear, a couple who may or may not come together (perhaps not so mysterious after all, but I will keep ‘em guessing for a bit) and a hero with a secret.  --History. Just about every one of Christie’s murders has its roots in what happened before the action of the novel begins. It’s the characters’ histories that move them “towards zero,” or the defining moment that kicks the story into gear. My heroine has some baggage from her first marriage, and lots of residual anger. She’s got sibling issues with her younger sister that always threaten to bubble to the surface, and longstanding attachments to her grandpa and her beloved dog that get in the way of relationships with men (though her bad temper has something to do with that as well.) As I flesh out characters, I ask myself what has brought them to this particular place, so that I can move them “towards zero” in believable ways.  --Economy. Can Christie describe a London alleyway with the poetry of P. D. James? No. Does she have the literary brilliance of Dorothy Sayers? Probably not. But she is an unqualified master of pacing; few writers move a story the way she does, and the reader is helplessly carried along on the swift and twisty currents of her plot. Characters are sketched quickly but skillfully, and back story is woven seamlessly into the action without slowing it down. For writers of commercial fiction, particularly in this market, it’s all about page turning. And who knows? Maybe I'll even try my hand at a real mystery one of these days.

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The Duchess of Dork

I established my dorkdom at a young age. The summer I was ten, I spent every day reading. Every day. While my sister and best friend whizzed by on their bikes to find adventure, I sat in a lawn chair out in front of my house with my nose buried in my latest book. Carolyn Keene provided enough adventure for me, thank you very much. One day a neighbor walked over and in hushed tones asked my mother if I was sick. "No," my mom said, "that's just Rosemary."

I found out the hard way that not everyone embraced dorkitude with quite the same fervor as I, guys in particular. I distinctly remember sitting around one day in high school with a group of girls and guys, one of whom was my crush at the time. We were sharing our future dreams, and I started rhapsodizing about living on a windswept coast in New England, in a big white house just like the one in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. I described a quaint little town with a big library full of dusty old books. When I stopped for breath, I noticed my crush looking at me with a blank face. "That's your idea of fun?" he said. Clearly, there was no future for us. As a brand new teacher, one of the first things I did when I got my paycheck was to become a member of my local PBS station, and proudly sported my Channel Thirteen totebag each morning as I walked in the door. One day a male co-worker pointed to it, saying, "You know what that bag says? That bag says I don't want to get laid any time soon. " Ouch.

Further evidence of Dork-O-Rama:

 On a trip to London back in the 80s, I made my husband rent a car so he could drive me to Chawton so I could tour Jane Austen's house. Before it was cool, I might add. Did I mention it was our honeymoon? One of a multitde of reasons I know I married the Right Guy.

I have a collection of Great Women in Literature magnets. The Masterpiece Theatre music gives me goosebumps. I read Middlemarch every year. I have a Will Shakespeare action figure. (Complete with First Folio!) A Room of One's Own makes me cry. And there can never be enough costume dramas for me. If it's got corsets and great coats, I'm there.

 Those of you who rule dorkdoms of your own know what exactly what I'm talking about. Sadly, there are those who never will. But I don't have time to think about them right now--there's a lawn chair outside with my name on it.

♥ ♥ ♥

Comfort Food

                                                                                                 In my first novel, my main character Bea is "between men" as she puts it, happily single, and finds solace in cooking--maybe too much. Her cousin and a friend imply that perhaps food has become a substitute for other sorts of fulfillment:

"Bea's hopeless." Marie gestured to me in the manner of a lazy hitchhiker. "She takes cookbooks to bed, you know." "I do not!" My volume rose in direct proportion to the lie. I did take cookbooks to bed. They didn't hog the covers, snore, or leave their underwear on the floor. And in the end, they afforded me lots more pleasure.

Though my heroine and I have little in common (she's younger and has better legs) we do share this one little habit. I just love curling up with a good cookbook. I browse library sales in search of them, and the older the volume the better. My pride and joy is my sixty year old Betty Crocker, followed closely by my 1964 Joy of Cooking. I also have a 1959 Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off collection whose flyleaf features lots of ladies in black cat's-eye glasses standing in front of appliances the color of Easter eggs. My modern favorites include the seminal Silver Palate Cookbook and Queen Julia's The French Chef. I also have more Italian cookbooks than anyone would ever need, including two in Italian. The language, that is.  And the voices in these cookbooks, like those of my favorite authors, are familiar and comforting. Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins make me feel as though I can throw the coolest party ever. Marion Rombauer's scholarly references and scientific formality help me believe in the power of culinary chemistry, and the possibility of perfection. And where would any of us be without Julia, full of warm encouragement and quick laughter, who let us drop the chicken and add the butter? But the real secret to my pleasure in cookbooks is no secret at all: in the pages of cookbooks, everything turns out right in the end. The cake rises. The flavors meld. The meat is tender and the risotto creamy. The reality, of course, is quite different. (Witness my epic Christmas Eve 2010 Lasagna Fail.) But cookbooks, just like my favorite comfort reads, always give me the happy ending I crave--even if life doesn't.

♥ ♥ ♥