What have I been reading lately?

So much on this blog has been about writing, obviously, but a huge part of my writing life is reading—or what I like to call "research." (Mostly I read because I like it, but sometimes I do it to learn.)

Lately, it seems like my interests have been kind of random, but I've had a good run over the last few months and have read several I could easily recommend.

Crispin by Avi. A three-book YA series set in medieval England about a poor, orphaned peasant boy who's on the run. Much of the story happens with him running and hiding in the forest—several forests—starving and cold. After reading this for a while, I got so I was loudly encouraging him to steal and plunder. I just felt so sympathetic. And I slept so much better the night I read that he found a brand new set of clothes on a dead man and stole them. He was finally warm. Avi had me at The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, which I haven't read since I was maybe 12, but I remember absolutely loving it then, and Crispin was fun too.

Extraordinary Knowing by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Ph.D. My dad handed me this book one day and told me I should read it, in case there was anything in it I could use for my book, and I totally appropriated a line from the prologue soon thereafter. I did tweak it, so I don't feel as guilty... But the whole book is fascinating. It's about "anomolous knowing," or knowing something but not having any rational reason why. It discusses ESP, telepathy, government "remote-viewing" experiments (where they had people with these special gifts legitimately finding out classified information for them), and how scientists grapple with these ideas when there is real proof. Some of the medical accounts were especially interesting—doctors who knew special ways to help people but were scared to tell anyone about it because it wasn't "scientific." So interesting to read about this from a scientist's perspective. I really liked the writing—it was indeed sciency but still very readable.

The Summer I Learned to Fly by Dana Reinhardt. This was a fun story about teenage adventure and friendship. The main character's father had passed away and she finds an old journal of his, a book of lists, and one of my favorite parts is how this is the way she comes to know him. Very fun. It was clever and a quick, enjoyable read.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave. This one was great. Some heavy themes and some offensive language, but the writing was especially amazing and made me envious on several occasions  It was one of those where you say, "That's such a cool way to say that!" on nearly every page. I learned a lot about dual perspective (and a lot from the author interview in the back, actually), and it has one of the craziest non-linear but sort of linear timelines ever. The way the story unfolds is as clever as the story itself.

East by Edith Pattou. I'm not normally a huge fantasy reader—and, honestly,  I think of it as more of a fairy tale rather than fantasy—but I LOVED this book! It's a retelling of the Norse version of Beauty and the Beast, where a girl falls in love with a polar bear. *** Disclaimer: Whatever you do, do not watch a film version of the fairy tale because it is free on Netflix and you have read the book (The Polar Bear King) to your daughter because it is WEIRD. And campy and dubbed and pretty awful. *** But back to the book. I just thought it was a fun story and quite a page turner. A serious page turner. And those are just good fun, sometimes.

So what have YOU been reading lately?

Writing gets harder

This quote from author Keith Ridgway (via Nathan Bransford) has been on my mind, lately:

I’ve written six books now, but instead of making it easier, it has complicated matters to the point of absurdity. I have no idea what I’m doing. All the decisions I appear to have made—about plots and characters and where to start and when to stop—are not decisions at all. They are compromises. A book is whittled down from hope, and when I start to cut my fingers I push it away from me to see what others make of it. And I wait in terror for the judgements of those others—judgements that seem, whether positive or negative, unjust, because they are about something that I didn’t really do. They are about something that happened to me. It’s a little like crawling from a car crash to be greeted by a panel of strangers holding up score cards.

When I was finally finished with the first real draft of LITTLE SUN, this is pretty much how I felt.  The part about how a book is something "whittled down from hope," the part about how a book just happens, the part about feeling like you're emerging from a car crash—basically everything. He nailed it.

And knowing that Ridgway said this after he had written six books doesn't make me feel that much better, frankly, since I've only written 1.3 books. (A draft of a children's book + semi-begun plans for a middle grade novel = .3, by the way, in case you were unfamiliar with literary math.) So Book 1 was hard, but learning that it only gets harder? Awesome.

But for some reason, it's worth it. For some reason, I feel compelled, even driven, to continue to write books. I don't know all of the reasons why. I know some of them, but not all. Much of the whole thing still remains a mystery. And I guess that's one of the reasons that continue to drive me—a need to solve this mystery. So that I will do: continue.