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Scheming
October's been a crazy-busy month for me, and it's not even close to over! Will November be different? I'm not sure. I'll be working the usual weekend days at the library. I'll be taking a trip to Michigan for my dad's retirement and my oldest friend's wedding reception. And there's that whole Thanksgiving thing.
And even though after doing National Novel Writing Month in 2006 I resolved never, ever to do it again because of how exhausting and stressful it was, in the past week I've begun to reconsider. "Wouldn't it be a marvelous way," I'm asking myself, "to jump-start this new idea I've got?" The jury is still out, but if I succumb, I'm going to reel the blogging back.
I've also been thinking for a while that I'd like to take a break from reading children's and YA lit in my free time. I'm thinking November would be a good month for that, too. A couple of months ago I bought two of my favorite "adult" books, My Name Is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok, and The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan, with the intention of rereading them. And half a million people have recommended I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith. And at some point I wrote down Little, Big, by John Crowley, because I heard about it somewhere. Any other grown-up books I should add to that list?
And getting waaaay ahead of myself, I've started thinking ahead to maybe road tripping through the North Central U.S. next spring. Before we got sidetracked by our trip to England (which was lovely and novel, and I absolutely don't regret it), I had my heart set on driving across North Dakota and visiting Teddy Roosevelt National Park, dipping into eastern Montana and Wyoming, and circling back through South Dakota. Or the other way around, I'm not picky. The Crazy Horse Volksmarch coincides with my birthday, which seems just too perfect to pass up. Hmmm...
Doooo NaNoWriMo... you know you want to... all the cool kids are doing it... dooo iiiit....!
Ha ha, Abby, are you trying to tell me (in your own subtle way) that you're doing it?
I have discovered your roadtripping scheme, and I approve.
It's something to keep in the backs of our minds, anyway. Don't tell Carly.
I love My Name is Asher Lev! I recently reread The Chosen, and was blown away by it--much more so than when I read it at 14.
My current favorite "adult" authors are Jasper Fforde, Vikram Chandra, Michel Faber, and Jhumpa Lahiri. In the "oldies but goodies" category, I favor Mary Stewart and Rex Stout.
The Chosen and The Promise are two of my all-time favorites. I've read them each about half a dozen times! Potok's got a very slow, dense style that I think is best appreciated by rereading.
I've read a little Jasper Fforde and Mary Stewart, but none of the others. Any particular titles that I absolutely shouldn't miss?
Vikram Chandra has a huge book called Sacred Games (900+ pages) that's about policemen and gangsters and life in Mumbai that's awesome. He has two other books which I also love: Red Earth and Pouring Rain (parallel stories in the contemporary US and the tail end of the Raj in India), and Love and Longing in Bombay, which is a short story collection. He's my current author boyfriend. (Jasper Fforde was my author boyfriend, and I even got to meet him once! But Vikram has replaced him. We'll see who's next.)
Michel Faber wrote another big fat book called The Crimson Petal and the White; Sugar, a prostitute, tries to make a better life for herself in Victorian England. He also has several excellent short story collections: Some Rain Must Fall, The Courage Consort, and Vanilla Bright Like Eminem. He also wrote a sci-fi book called Under the Skin, which was kind of weird. But good.
Jhumpa Lahiri has two faaaaaaaaaabulous short story collections: The Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth. She also wrote The Namesake, which was made into a movie recently.
Rex Stout wrote detective stories featuring Nero Wolfe and his sidekick Archie Goodwin. They take place in NCY from the 1930s through to the late 1960s/early 1970s. Classic American detective fiction. Not quite hard boiled, but lots of action and good stories. And the food! Wolfe is a gourmand, so there's lots of incredible food.
Er. I think I'm done now. Can you tell I'm a librarian??? Good lord...
Holy smokes! Thanks, Lush! The 900-pager scares me off, but I'll take a look at the others. Rex Stout sounds especially interesting to me. I love a good detective story. If he's not quite hard-boiled, does that mean he's soft-boiled? Not over-easy, anyway. ;-)
I like to think of him as "lite" boiled, myself. ;)
Oh! Asher Lev is one of my all-time favorites.
Other adult books to add to the list if you haven't read them yet:
Bel Canto by Patchett
The Sparrow by Russell
Peace Like a River by Enger
Lisey's Story by Stephen King (really, no kidding)
I've done Nanowrimo twice. Both times trying to extract the same adult novel from my brain. Someday it's going to grow up and be a real book, but it hasn't yet.
Good luck with it...
Thanks for the suggestions, Pat! I haven't read any of those, except for The Sparrow, which I started earlier this year and really got bogged down by. But I am definitely not a snob when it comes to Stephen King (Carrie and The Green Mile are my faves). I'll check 'em out!