April Reads

Every Breath You Take by Judith McNaught: I’ve been a fan of Judith McNaught since her book Whitney, My Love. This story was about Kate Donovan a Chicago restaurateur, and Mitchell Wyatt a wealthy businessman. McNaught is wonderful at characterization. A good romantic suspense.

A Lion Called Christian by Anthony Bourke and John Randall: Almost everyone has seen either on YouTube in 2008 or on the news the story of Christian the Lion. This book was originally published in 1971. It’s been revised and updated. So much has changed since them about the way we look and understand animals and the way the world works. Think about just how these two men got this lion-a department story for Blue’s sake. The story is very touching. The lion endearing, but for me the contrast between the way we look at animals now, compared to that time is both encouraging and depressing. We’ve come so far, but lost so much.

Anyway, I have always loved books about animals and had the best of that genre.

Blue Smoke and Murder by Elizabeth Lowell: I’ve been looking for an Elizabeth Lowell book for some time. It seemed to me as if it’s been too long, or, at least, longer than usual since a new one has hit the book shelves. This was typical for Lowell. Jill Breck saves the life of the son of two of St. Kilda Consulting’s operators. Soon after her great aunt is killed in a suspicious fire and Jill finds herself in the middle of a mystery.

The St. Kilda Consulting operators jump in to help Jill, sending Zach Balfour to help Jill with the dangers Jill’s been pushed into. Fine mystery.

The Third Circle by Amanda Quick: I just like the Amanda Quick books. Love her dialogue, her push-pull of the relationships Quick creates, love her characters. The character’s Quick creates are always intelligent, witty, and sexy. This story, a new Arcane Society novel, is about Leona Hewitt, a woman with a gift to work crystals and Thaddeus Ware a mesmerist and member of the secretive Arcane Society. Mystery, romance and face-paced, this story grabs you and keeps you reading.

Writing Life Stories, How to Make Memories into Memoirs, ideas into Essays, and Life into Literature by Bill Roorbach: This book inspired me. Originally, I started reading it and treating it as a workshop for writing my memoirs about the last several years—my mother’s breast cancer, my time as her primary caregiver and my own illness-MPGN.

At the time I was struggling to write anything and feeling the loss of not writing so profoundly, I was desperate to find anything to write. As I got more and more deeply into this book, I began writing everything–short stories, poems, essays(not novels, I couldn’t wrap my mind around all the pieces of a novel that you have to juggle and keep track of. It was just too big, overwhelming for me. In the middle of being sickest, overwhelmed was such a constant feeling I couldn’t deal with any more of it. Sadly, I still haven’t tried to tackle anything to do with a novel-Not a new one, not any of the old ones, not editing, not even re-reading them.)

Roorbach gives wonderful prompts, great encouragement and great ideas. His down to earth way is just the friend a writer needs-supportive, but not about to let you off the hook.

New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver: I’ve tried to read a few poems each day for the month of April in honor of National Poetry Month. I picked Mary Oliver’s New and Selected Poems because I enjoyed other poem books by her. I like her emphasis and use of nature. She has a unique way of looking at things and saying things. I wanted to read poetry to inspire my own poems and this did. Still, I must say and to my surprise the book that has haunted me, made me excited to write poetry again and to seek out more of the same is Leaning into the Wind, Women Writing From the Heart of the West, edited by Linda Hasselstrom, Gaydell Collier and Nancy Curtis. I am still haunted by those poems and stories.