What are you reading?
You can tell a lot about a person by the answer to this question. One summer, I went to two conferences. The first was for Advanced Placement English teachers, the second was Squaw Valley Community of Writers. If I feel like I am in a group with others who share my booklove, I'll ask new friends what they are reading as a way of being totally nosy. If you invite me to your house and give me a tour, I will be fully eyeballing what books you have on your nightstand too. Just so you know.
At the AP conference, no one had an answer to my reading question. Finally one lady looked at me funny and said, "Why would you ask that? I don't have time to read."
Don't have time to read?!
A couple of weeks later I arrived at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers conference. I knew I was amongst my people right away. I wasn't the only one asking the reading question, first of all. It came up in the get-to-know-you moments right after what is your name. There were teachers at this conference too. Teachers, lawyers, judges, naturalists, artists, scientists. . . all had something they were reading.
The writing conference people were also more interesting than the teacher conference people. I think the correlation between being interesting and being a reader is not a coincidence.
Right now I am reading Shanghai Girls by Lisa See. I loved Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, and I am looking forward to her new Dreams of Joy. I like going to see Lisa See at author signings. She is nice and always writes a personal note on the postcards she sends to announce that she is coming soon to a bookstore near me.
Shanghai Girls is about two sisters who are Beautiful Girls, or models for advertisements in Shanghai in the thirties. War and their father's bad debts force them to leave their beloved Shanghai and travel to America. I'm in the middle of it right now and it's evocative and engaging. She has a way of writing characters that feel like real people I know personally. She writes about food beautifully too, which is hard to do but important when establishing character and place. I'm trying to slow down a little so that it won't be over so fast, but as with all books I love I'll be done with it by tonight. It's hard not to read compulsively when an author makes you care so much about the people in her novel.
What are you reading?
Oh Maureen, I love this.
ReplyDeleteEspecially:"I think the correlation between being interesting and being a reader is not a coincidence."
Love that.
OK: recently finished OLIVE KITTERIDGE, which I adored, adored. Also, for the first time, EAST OF EDEN. Oh my. In the middle of THE HELP, which I'm enjoying but not fully engaged in for some reason.
An author I just stumbled across recently is Laurie Colwin - everything she writes is so lovely. She passed away at 48 - in the mid-90's - it was her birthday yesterday, actually. You will love her...