Do you know what a bottle tree is? They figure prominently in Karen White’s On Folly Beach, which I’m in the middle of reading. Before I started OFB, I’m not sure I knew what a one was, but, of course, now I want one for my garden.
Yesterday on my usual morning walk, I got about two steps past a house on the next block when I stopped in my tracks and stared at the sculpture in the front yard that my brain suddenly decoded as a bottle tree. There’s no telling how many times before I had passed the thing, looked and it, and thought, “Huh, that’s kind of neat” without knowing exactly what it was.
my neighbor's bottle tree
Now, there are no pictures of bottle trees in On Folly Beach, but suddenly I knew one when I saw it. Reading Karen White’s book changed how I perceive my own little world. Yep, that’s the power of fiction.
Has something you’ve read ever changed what you see in the world around you or how you see it?
Let’s face it. Most of us dream about writing the big books that shoot to the top of and linger on all the bestseller lists. Then Hollywood snaps them up and makes them into megahits that set new box office records.
But what makes a book big? There are how-to guides out there that propose to tell you what a Big Book is and how to write one. Albert Zuckerman’s Writing the Blockbuster Novel and Donald Maas’s Writing the Breakout Novel spring to mind.
Over at Muderati, Alexandra Sokoloff has a great discussion going on about what makes a book big. What’s your definition?
At the gala 30th anniversary celebration in Orlando Saturday night, Romance Writers of America® announced the winners of the coveted Golden Heart® and RITA® Awards for 2010. Please join me in congratulating this fabulous group of write
And a special shout out to Laura Griffin and Sherry Thomas of Austin RWA for their RITA wins!
Laura Griffin (left) and Sherry Thomas
My friend Joanne told me she wants to venture into reading mysteries and asked for a few recommendations. I tried not to overwhelm her, but it was like opening the flood gates. Here’s what I told her.
I love the Victorian-era-set Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters that starts with Crocodile on the Sandbank.
If you prefer contemporary settings, P.J. Tracy’s Monkeewrench is fantastic, as are the three sequels. A mother-daughter team writes them, and I think they have another book scheduled to come out this year.
For something more thrillerish, check out Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Their fabulous Pendergast novels are all eminently readable, but Preston and Child really step up their game with Pendergast Book 3, The Cabinet of Curiosities. The Diogenes trilogy within the series is flat-out wonderful. It starts with Brimstone, one of the best books I’ve ever read.
My favorite mystery writer from Britain’s Golden Age is Dorothy Sayers. Love her Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey. I think her first novel was Whose Body?. Gaudy Night is probably the one most people remember.
Josephine Tey is another Golden Age great. Miss Pym Disposes may be her best-known today and possibly her best work.
Contemporary British crime writers I especially like are Mo Hayder, Reginald Hill, and P.D. James. Hill’s On Beulah Height is another of my favorite books.
Named for Sayers but covering every kind of mystery you can think of is discussion list DorothyL. There are tons of posts, and they can be overwhelming, but you could always simply delete the ones that don’t interest you: http://www.dorothyl.com/
Yep, I am a total book geek.
Yesterday, Robert Parker–he of Spenser fame–died at his desk, at work on a book. Isn’t that the way a writer should go?
Spenser is the kind of guy I’d like to know. Smart, tough, accomplished. It seems that’s the kind of guy Robert B. Parker was, too. We’re lucky we get to know him a little through his books.
Parker was 77 and the author of more than 60 books. The New York Times obituary reports the cause of death as a heart attack. I hope it was quick and clean and that Parker, absorbed in that novel in front of him, never knew what hit him.
RIP.
The lovely and talented Emily McKay, who is up for a 2010 Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times, has a Silhouette Desire Online Read up now, and it’s free. Her Boss’s Private Affair is just the thing if you want to add a little spice to your holidays.
Did I mention that it’s free?
Emily McKay
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are as gods to me. I worship them. The brilliant Brimstone–the first in the Diogenes Trilogy within their eerie, compelling thrillers that feature FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast–enthralled me from page one. Preston and Child are erudite without being stuffy. They scare the hell out of a girl without resorting to the cheap or lurid. And their prose is to die for.
I’m in mad love with the eccentric, intellectual, deliciously Southern Pendergast. For two years, I’ve been on tenterhooks since Preston and Child stranded him and his protégée Constance Green in a remote Tibetan monastery at the end of The Wheel of Darkness. Imagine my joy when the latest installment in Pendergast’s adventures, Cemetery Dance, arrived last week.
This isn’t the best of Preston and Child. Never ones to balk at risks, they kill off one of my favorite recurring characters up front. I forgave them for that. Reluctantly, but I did forgive them. His demise drives the story that centers around a secretive cult, animal sacrifice, and zombiis. Their plots are always beautifully planned and their pacing is taut, but something’s a little off here. I didn’t feel the suspense as much. Maybe they were tired after each wrote a bestselling book of his own between the last Pendergast novel and this one.
Special Agent Pendergast is in New York City to investigate. But what’s happening to Constance back in Tibet? There’s only one reference to her here. These guys must love torturing their readers as much as they do their characters. I hope they’re not going to make me wait another two years to find out.
Cemetery Dance may not be Preston and Child at the top of their game, but it’s still a ripping good yarn. And I do love them so.
The brilliiant, gifted, all-around fabulous Sherry Thomas is blogging at Dear Author about how books get to your library shelves. Check out what she has to say about why the library is the perfect place to try out new authors.
And if you haven’t read Sherry’s wonderful historical romances yet, run, don’t walk to your local bookstore–or library–and find her. Sherry’s latest, Not Quite a Husband, releases today.
The Sunday Atlanta Journal Constitution reviewed my buddy Karen White’s latest, The Lost Hours. Check it out.
Isn’t this a gorgeous cover?
What an inspiration! P.D. James will be 89 in August, and her latest Adam Dalgleish novel, The Private Patient, came out in the fall. She published the first Dalgliesh book in 1962. The Globe and Mail invited readers to email questions for Dame Phyllis and ran her responses in its “Globe Books” section.
I had the great good fortune of hearing P.D. James speak 10 or 15 years ago, and she was charming. She looked more like a sweet little English grandmother, which I suppose she is, than a crime novelist. But, then, what’s a crime novelist supposed to look like?
P.D. James in 2006
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