The Writer's Library: The Authors You Love on the Books that Changed their Lives by Nancy Pearl & Jeff Schwager

Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager's book The Writer's Library lets readers in on their favorite authors' reading history, what they keep on their bookshelf, and how those books impacted their lives and their craft.

Pearl writes, "Our consciousness is a soaring shelf of thoughts and recollections, facts and fantasies, and of course, the scores of books we've read that have become an almost cellular part of who we are." I found myself thinking about the books that were on my shelves across my lifetime.

I was happy to see books I have read mentioned but there were also many books new to me that I will add to my TBR list.

Certain books were mentioned by more than one writer.

Jonathan Lethem talked of "the poetic, dreamy, surreal stuff like Bradbury" and his favorite TV show The Twilight Zone. He said that Butcher's Crossing by John Williams is better than Stoner, so I have to move it up higher on my TBR shelf.

Susan Choi also mentions Bradbury, as well as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and J. D. Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish."

Michael Chabon also lists Bradbury, and my childhood favorites Homer Price by Robert McCloskey and Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes. He calls The World According to Garp by John Irving a bombshell; I do remember reading it when it came out. He is another fan of Watership Down. Also on his list are Saul Bellow's Herzog.

One more Bradbury fan, Dave Eggers was in the Great Books program in school, just like me. He also loves Herzog. As does Richard Ford.

Amor Towles begins with Bradbury and adds poetry including Prufrock, Whitman and Dickinson, and a long list of classics.

Another Dickinson fan, Louise Erdrich also loves Sylvia Plath and Tommy Orange's There There.

Jennifer Egen loved Salinger's Nine Stories. As a teen loved Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and The Magus by John Fowles. "Then Richard Adams' Watership Down took over me life," and she got a rabbit. Oh, my! My husband and I also loved that book when it came out and WE got a pet rabbit--house trained to a liter box. I share a love for many of her mentions including Anthony Trollope.

Andrew Sean Greer included Rebecca and also loves Muriel Spark.

Madeline Miller also notes Watership Down as one of the "great favorites of my entire life." She is a fan of King Lear, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot, and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. 

Laila Lalami mentioned Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee as a favorite.

I would not have guessed that Luis Alberto Urrea had fallen hard for Becky Thatcher (from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) or that he fell in love with Stephen Crane's poetry.

At college I read The Sot Weed Factor by John Barth; it is  one of T.C. Boyle's favorite historical novels. He calls Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro "one of the greatest books ever." And he brings up John Gardner, whose novels I read as they came out.

Charles Johnson also studied under John Gardner whose book On Moral Fiction appears on his shelf along with Ivan Doig.

Viet Thanh Nguyen was blown away by sci-fi writers like Isaac Asimov and fantasy writers like J. R. R. Tolkien. He liked Michael Ondaatje's Warlight.

Jane Hirshfield was "undone" by Charlotte's Web by E. B. White and loved Water de la Mare's poem "The Listeners" and reads poetry including Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, W. H. Auden, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Philip Levine is a poet on my TBR shelf that she mentions.

Siri Hustvedt read Dickinson and the canonical English poetry early. Flannery O'Connor shows up on her shelf, also found on shelves of T. C. Boyle, Erdrich, Ford, and Tartt.

Vendela Vida is "indebted to Forster," including A Passage to India. Also on her shelf is Coetzee's Disgrace.

Donna Tartt read Bedknobs and Broomsticks by Mary Norton, James Barrie's Peter Pan, and other classic children's literature. Oliver Twist particularly moved her and it also appears on Urrea's shelf.

Russell Banks loved Toby Tyler by James Otis and loves to read the classics.

Laurie Frankl's books are not ones I have read. Along with all the other books on these author's shelves, I can extend my reading list past my natural lifespan!

Readers will enjoy these interviews, comparing book shelves, and learning the books that influenced these writers.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Writer's Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives
by Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager
HarperCollins Publishers/HarperOne
Pub Date September 8, 2020
ISBN: 9780062968500
hardcover $27.99 (USD)

from the publisher:

With a Foreword by Susan Orlean, twenty-three of today's living literary legends, including Donna Tartt, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Andrew Sean Greer, Laila Lalami, and Michael Chabon, reveal the books that made them think, brought them joy, and changed their lives in this intimate, moving, and insightful collection from "American's Librarian" Nancy Pearl and noted playwright Jeff Schwager that celebrates the power of literature and reading to connect us all.

Before Jennifer Egan, Louise Erdrich, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Jonathan Lethem became revered authors, they were readers. In this ebullient book, America’s favorite librarian Nancy Pearl and noted-playwright Jeff Schwager interview a diverse range of America's most notable and influential writers about the books that shaped them and inspired them to leave their own literary mark. 

Illustrated with beautiful line drawings, The Writer’s Library is a revelatory exploration of the studies, libraries, and bookstores of today’s favorite authors—the creative artists whose imagination and sublime talent make America's literary scene the wonderful, dynamic world it is. A love letter to books and a celebration of wordsmiths, The Writer’s Library is a treasure for anyone who has been moved by the written word. 

The authors in The Writer’s Library are:

Russell BanksT.C. BoyleMichael ChabonSusan ChoiJennifer EganDave EggersLouise ErdrichRichard FordLaurie FrankelAndrew Sean GreerJane HirshfieldSiri HustvedtCharles JohnsonLaila LalamiJonathan LethemDonna TarttMadeline MillerViet Thanh NguyenLuis Alberto UrreaVendela VidaAyelet WaldmanMaaza MengisteAmor Towles

Rita Blitt Around and Round

The viewer needs to be as creative in viewing a work of art as the artist was in creating it~Irwin Blitt

I was drawn to this book by the cover art, so joyous and uplifting. I had not encountered Rita Blitt or her art before reading Rita Blitt: Around and Round.

The cover art is a detail of "Celebrating Fall in Aspen", 2003. The landscape is reduced to near abstraction, yet the lines and color combine in a recognizable image of autumnal color against a blue sky.

The accompanying essays gave me insight into Blitt's life, how her art developed over her career, and an understanding of her art.

The book features art donated to the Mulvane Art Museum at Washburn University in Topeka, KS. 

I loved her early work "The Red Barn", the impressionistic style and vivid colors broken by the geometric division of a fence.

The Red Barn, 1958, by Rita Blitt

"Fir Trees in Aspen" recalls a dark forest dappled with sunlight as if highlighting hope in our darkest moment. 

Fir Trees in Aspen

Inspired by music, in the late 1990s Blitt began working with two hands. It allowed Blitt to be more centered. She communicates movement into her work, especially in response to dance and music. 

Hope by Rita Blitt

Celebrating Dorianna, 1996, Rita Blitt

Jamie Metzl writes in the essay Rita's Legacy, "The right way to look at these images is slowly and carefully, taking in the simple complexity of shape and color until you start to feel your heart lightening, an innocent joy bubbling up from inside of you."

As I studied Blitt's art, I knew I had encountered a soul filled with joy, and open to the creative and emotional life. The more I study her art, the more I see.

I was impressed to learn about the Kindness Program, which Blitt organized in 1990. Students write essays to nominate
individuals and groups for the Kindest Kansas Citian Award and Rita Blitt Kindest School Award.

Red, Yellow and Blue sculptures at the Rita Blitt Sculpture Garden, Mulvane Museum, Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas.

I won a free ebook from the publisher through a Publisher's Weekly giveaway. My review is fair and unbiased.

See pages from the book at the publisher's website here and eighteen pages at Amazon.com here. Visit Blitt's Facebook page here.

from the publisher

Rita Blitt: Around and Round is an overview of more than sixty years of work by Rita Blitt (b. 1931), a renowned contemporary American artist. Blitt’s dynamic body of work is distinguished by the sense of joy expressed through her pieces—sculptures, paintings, drawings, video, and more. Her work has been showcased in more than 70 one-person exhibitions and has been acquired by many museums and private collections. Her sculptures, some of them as tall as 60 feet, can be found throughout the U.S. and in Japan, Australia, and Singapore

The book presents a thoughtful selection of Blitt’s artwork, with a particular focus on the paintings and drawings that form the core of her studio practice and that are often studies for her highly acclaimed sculptures. More than 100 color plates and reproductions are included in these pages, along with essays by scholars and colleagues that provide context and interpretations of Blitt’s work and practice

Rita Blitt: Around and Round
Connie Gibbons, Editor
Mulvane Art Museum
$45.00 Trade Edition
Publication Date: September 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7322978-4-5

Covid-19 Life: TBR, Quilting, News

I am knocking off TBR books from my NetGalley shelf, but am still 'last minute' reading books now that come out in a few weeks. 

Two new books on my shelf include

• Dear Miss Kopp by Amy Stewart
• The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken whose Bowlaway I read and reviewed last year
• The Decameron Project, a short story collection by 29 authors, written during the early pandemic

Bookmail included Hieroglyphics by Jill McCorkle, a LibraryThing win last May. I received an ebook to read it for a blog tour, my review here.

I am preparing the side borders for applique on the Water Lily quilt and doing some sewing but nothing new to show yet.

This weekend was to be my high school class 50th reunion. We are disappointed to cancel but expect to have a big party next year.

For years I was disturbed by the replacement globes on a family heirloom student lamp that belonged to my Greenwood Great-Grandparents. Forty or so years ago Mom broke a globe and replaced them with beige floral ones. It always looked wrong to me, grotesque. Looking for photos of my brother for his birthday I noted the lamp in the background in a photo. Then, got online and ordered yellow replacement globes! I feel content, the world restored to order!

A Twitter friend shared a 1970s catalog ad for print polyester pants and asked if anyone wore them. I have the photographic proof!

Last week the late summer garden was attracting butterflies and bees. The basil is wonderful and we are enjoying pesto. The coneflower are gone, the roses enjoying the cool weather, as are the hydrangea. The yard was filled with Flicker and Downy Woodpecker and Blue Jays and flocking sparrows.

I read Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life on the patio reading the late summer section. The weather is already turning cool. Autumn is here.

I had received a jury notice last March but was excused because I am high risk for Covid. I was recalled for duty next week. I panicked, got a doctor's excuse, and worried. 

A high school friend took action and talked to a friend who was a judge in the court I was called to. The message was that there were no court cases scheduled until November. I was relieved when I checked in and saw the message that I was not needed.

Our grandkitty Hazel is in a fight for her life. Her cancer has returned. The kids are working to help her get strong enough for surgery this coming week. She is a sweet Maine Coon Cat. 

My husband took the photo below, seen on his walk around the neighborhood.

I took this photo of the flag against a stormy cloud, the sun breaking through a gap. Seems to sum up 2020 pretty well.

My prayers are for the victims of the western wildfires, the families dealing with illness and death from Covid-19, those who still carry the scars of 9-11 (which is pretty much all of us.) 

Stay safe. Stay hopeful. Find your bliss.

And vote.

The Darkest Evening by Ann Cleeves

Oh, what a perfect read! 

The setting took me into another place, a small English village in winter, as Vera Stanhope investigates the murder of a young mother whose body was found on Vera's father's Northampton family estate.

The tale is filled with endless cups of tea served with digestive biscuits, houses without central heating, freezing winter nights, and even a bacon stottie. I felt like an armchair traveler.

I love a mystery that is more than plot driven, where characters are more than types. And Cleeves delivers. 

My first time reading Cleeves was The Long Call, which introduced a new detective character. The Darkest Evening (the title from a Robert Frost poem) is the ninth Vera Stanhope novel. And as I had not read them, or even seen the television series Vera, I can attest that it is superbly how this novel stands on its own. I want to read the other books in the series, but did not feel the lack of having read them.

The characters professional and personal lives are revealed. Vera's confliction about her family history and relationship to the manor Stanhopes, Joe's family obligations, Holly's desire for recognition bring the reader's attachment.

The village suspects are as well drawn. The deceased Lorna, who struggled with anorexia, has never revealed the name of her baby's father. It may bring a clue to her murderer. The Stanhope family, the imperious matriarch and her daughter who married a man with big plans to turn the estate into a self-supporting money making venture. Newbies lawyer Dorothy and wannabe teacher Karam, city transplants who appear to be happily married and content with their menial jobs. The local farm families, the Helsops with their artist son, and the elderly inhabitants of the county homes fill out the community. 

A second murder, a retired teacher who a special friend to Lorna, is found murdered as well. What did she know?

It winds up to a cabin in the woods and Vera fleeing for her life.

I found the novel oddly calming and cozy, a respite from the world. 

I won a book on Goodreads. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Darkest Evening: A Vera Stanhope Novel (Vera Stanhope 9)
by Ann Cleeves
Minotaur Books
Publication September 8, 2020
ISBN: 125020450X (ISBN13: 9781250204509)

from the publisher

On the first snowy night of winter, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope sets off for her home in the hills. Though the road is familiar, she misses a turning and soon becomes lost and disorientated. A car has skidded off the narrow road in front of her, its door left open, and she stops to help. There is no driver to be seen, so Vera assumes that the owner has gone to find help. But a cry calls her back: a toddler is strapped in the back seat.

Vera takes the child and, driving on, she arrives at a place she knows well. Brockburn is a large, grand house in the wilds of Northumberland, now a little shabby and run down. It’s also where her father, Hector, grew up. Inside, there’s a party in full swing: music, Christmas lights and laughter. Outside, unbeknownst to the revelers, a woman lies dead in the snow.

As the blizzard traps the group deep in the freezing Northumberland countryside, Brockburn begins to give up its secrets, and as Vera digs deeper into her investigation, she also begins to uncover her family’s complicated past.

My Bed: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep Around the World by Rebecca Bond and illustrated by Salley Mavor

I love My Bed!

I mean this new book for children, although I do also love my own bed. I have an extra deep mattress and sleep snuggled under my handmade quilts. But not everyone in the world has a bed like mine. 

Rebecca Bond and Salley Mavor have created a marvelous book about the many ways children across the world go to bed. As a girl I loved learning about costumes and flags of the world. The brilliance of My Bed is how it illustrates material and cultural differences through how children go to sleep.

Mavor has created handmade embellished fiber scenes, exquisite in detail. It took her several years to create the art for this book. You will study each one for a long time. I know my son loved to talk about the details of the art in his children's books. I can imagine the discussions that will arise from My Bed.

"My bed rocks on the water," we are told about the Netherlands where some children live on houseboats. (I am jealous!) "My bed sways in the breeze," we are told about South and Central American children who sleep in hammocks.

We see an Indian child with their nets to protect against mosquitos, the alcove beds of Norway, the open air beds of Ghana, Russian beds on the large stoves. Children sleep in yurts and in courtyards and on rooftops.

The Afghan carpet these children sleep on is amazing. Read about how she created it here.

Children will learn how houses and beds across the world are constructed, and about the flora and animals around them. 

Each child's house is unique to its culture, and shown in context to its environment. The Japanese house shows a flowering cherry tree. See how she made this here.

On her blog Wee Folk Studio, Mavor shares how she made her art for My Bed. I am stunned by her art.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss. My review is fair and unbiased.

Salley Mavor in her studio

from the publisher

Delightful rhymes and charming hand-stitched art celebrate the many ways we sleep across the world. Perfect for a baby shower gift.

My bed rocks on water 

My bed sways in the breeze.

My bed’s beneath a curtain 

My bed’s aloft in trees . . .

In the Netherlands, some beds rock on water. In Brazil they might sway in the breeze. From Canada to Japan, Afghanistan to Norway, sleep has taken many forms and shapes throughout history. Astonishing, hand-stitched illustrations and a delightful narrative tell the story of sleeping traditions across the world.

My Bed
Rebecca Bond, Salley Mavor (Illustrated by)
HMH Books for Young Readers
Ages 4 to 7, Grades P to 3
On Sale Date: September 8, 2020
ISBN 9780544949065, 0544949064
Hardcover $18.99 USD, $26.99 CAD

JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century 1917-1956 by Fredrik Logevall

My first biography of John F. Kennedy was a comic book. One image that has always remained in my memory is of the Kennedy family at the dinner table, father Joe quizzing his children on current events.

My family never talked about current events or politics at the dinner table. When my school friend Christine asked if my family was going to vote for Kennedy I was clueless. I had never heard of him. Then she asked if we were Democrats, but I had never heard of them either. Finally, in exasperation, she asked if we were Catholic or Protestant, because if we were Catholic we were voting for Kennedy, and if we were Protestant we were going to hell.

In great duress, I ran home to ask mom these vital questions. In one moment I learned of our politics, our religion, and eternal damnation.

I was in sixth grade when my teacher took told us the president had been shot and sent us directly home. All those long blocks I fretted, feeling vulnerable, wondering if the Soviets could take over since we had no president to protect us. I remember gathering in my grandparents' living room, watching the black horse and carriage as it passed Carolyn and John and black-veiled Jackie.

souvenir Kennedy scarf

Every home had Kennedy souvenirs, a book, a photograph.

Over the years his image was tarnished. We doubted his authoring of his Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles in Courage (which I unsuccessfully tried to read as an early teen). There was his multitude of affairs before and after marriage. We heard that his daddy bought his political offices. We doubted his leadership, blamed him for Vietnam.

Who was the real John F. Kennedy?

I opened volume one of Fredrik Logevall's biography JFK hoping to understand this man, this icon, this American president.

It is a marvelous study of the man in context of his times and his family, from his childhood to his decision to seek the presidency.

Plagued with health problems, careless about his person, a man of great intelligence and inquisitiveness and charm, a womanizer, a workaholic, a man of unquestionable courage, a family man who did not hesitate to veer from his father's beliefs, the real Jack Kennedy was complicated and everything you thought he was and somehow more than what you thought he was.

Believe the hype about this book. I enjoyed it as a biography and as an exploration of the times and the political process. I look forward to reading the next part.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956
by Fredrik Logevall
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date September 8, 2020
ISBN: 9780812997132
hardcover $40.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A Pulitzer Prize–winning historian takes us as close as we have ever been to the real John F. Kennedy in this revelatory biography of the iconic, yet still elusive, thirty-fifth president.

“An utterly incandescent study of one of the most consequential figures of the twentieth century.”—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States

By the time of his assassination in 1963, John F. Kennedy stood at the helm of the greatest power the world had ever seen, a booming American nation that he had steered through some of the most perilous diplomatic standoffs of the Cold War. Born in 1917 to a striving Irish American family that had become among Boston’s wealthiest, Kennedy knew political ambition from an early age, and his meteoric rise to become the youngest elected president cemented his status as one of the most mythologized figures in American history. And while hagiographic portrayals of his dazzling charisma, reports of his extramarital affairs, and disagreements over his political legacy have come and gone in the decades since his untimely death, these accounts all fail to capture the full person.

Beckoned by this gap in our historical knowledge, Fredrik Logevall has spent much of the last decade searching for the “real” JFK. The result of this prodigious effort is a sweeping two-volume biography that properly contextualizes Kennedy amidst the roiling American Century. This volume spans the first thirty-nine years of JFK’s life—from birth through his decision to run for president—to reveal his early relationships, his formative experiences during World War II, his ideas, his writings, his political aspirations. In examining these pre–White House years, Logevall shows us a more serious, independently minded Kennedy than we’ve previously known, whose distinct international sensibility would prepare him to enter national politics at a critical moment in modern U.S. history.

Along the way, Logevall tells the parallel story of America’s midcentury rise. As Kennedy comes of age, we see the charged debate between isolationists and interventionists in the years before Pearl Harbor; the tumult of the Second World War, through which the United States emerged as a global colossus; the outbreak and spread of the Cold War; the domestic politics of anti-Communism and the attendant scourge of McCarthyism; the growth of television’s influence on politics; and more.

JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917–1956 is a sweeping history of the United States in the middle decades of the twentieth century, as well as the clearest portrait we have of this enigmatic American icon.

The Violence Inside Us: A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy by Chris Murphy

In 1764, my sixth great-grandparents were murdered and scalped by Simon Girty and a group of Native Americans whose reign of terror was waged to scare settlers out of the Shenandoah Valley. The Rev. John Rhodes, a Swiss Brethren and a pacifist, was an early settler in the valley. 

Unable to defend themselves, the community built underground cellars, but eventually they were converted by a visiting Baptist. One advantage of this change in faith was that they were allowed guns for self-protection.

Our immigrant ancestors employed guns for hunting game and to defend themselves against the people whose lands they stole. Guns were safeguards in far-flung lawless frontiers and they were needed by state militias before a centralized government created the first American army. 

American has long embraced gun ownership. In The Violence Inside Us, Senator Chris Murphy notes that the Pilgrims required every man to have a gun.

Murphy's life was changed with the shooting of school children in Newtown. As a newly elected senator, he saw the pain close up. Gun violence became his bailiwick.

Our son was in junior high at the time of the Columbine shooting. A student at his school talked about bringing a gun to school. Our son insisted he stay home the next day. The threat was investigated and the student punished. But our son never again felt safe at school.

Years later, and many school shootings later, we still can't guarantee our children that they will be safe in their classrooms.

This passionate and well-thought out book addresses the central questions behind violence. Is it human nature to be violent? Why is America the most violent nation in the industrialized world? What can we do to alter the violence? Why are our political leaders loathe to pass legislation that protects innocent victims of gun violence? He looks beyond our borders to how America has taken violence abroad through war and weapons sales.

Carefully building an understanding of the use and misuse of guns as rooted in human nature and American society, Murphy argues for reasonable legislation, on which the majority of Americans agrees, and explains the forces that prevent that legislation from passing.

Murphy's personal transformation makes a connection and the stories he shares grabs you by the heart.

Hear an audio excerpt here.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Violence Inside Us: A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy
by Chris Murphy
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date: September 1, 2020
ISBN: 9781984854575
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

In many ways, the United States sets the pace for other nations to follow. Yet on the most important human concern—the need to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe from physical harm—America isn’t a leader. We are disturbingly laggard. Our churches and schools, our movie theaters and dance clubs, our workplaces and neighborhoods, no longer feel safe. To confront this problem, we must first understand it. In this carefully researched and deeply emotional book, Senator Chris Murphy dissects our country’s violence-filled history and the role that our unique obsession with firearms plays in this national epidemic. 

Murphy tells the story of his profound personal transformation in the wake of the mass murder at Newtown, and his subsequent immersion in the complicated web of influences that drive American violence. Murphy comes to the conclusion that while America’s relationship to violence is indeed unique, America is not inescapably violent. Even as he details the reasons we’ve tolerated so much bloodshed for so long, he explains that we have the power to change. Murphy takes on the familiar arguments, obliterates the stale talking points, and charts the way to a fresh, less polarized conversation about violence and the weapons that enable it—a conversation we urgently need in order to transform the national dialogue and save lives.