My Library: May 2009

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

This may be the perfect road trip novel. Sarcastic and ironic. Anti-slavery and humanistic.

Link to Amazon: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Dover Thrift Editions)

The Well and the Mine by Gin Philipps

An excellent debut novel, set in depression era northern Alabama. A young girl witnesses a woman throwing a baby in a well, and that inspires the girl's family to ponder the who and the why. The story is told in first person serial, which is a little unusual, but not hard to adapt to.

It may be just a tad too nostalgic. There's a minimal plot and excellent characterization but quite a lot of what I would call nostalgia for 1930s Alabama.

Link to Amazon: The Well and the Mine

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

What Maisie Knew by Henry James

A classic novel, extensively researched, written about, and commented on. Maisie is the first fictional child to be the product of a broken home. Her parents hate each other, and treat Maisie as a weapon, something all to familiar to modern readers. Maisie ends up as a pawn between not only her parents but her stepparents and a governess. An awful mess, but a good read.

Link to Amazon: What Maisie Knew (Penguin Classics)

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Time to Regroup - Yet Again

The three finalists in the ABNA contest were supposed to be notified yesterday. My phone didn't ring with any mysterious area codes. Neither did I get any email from Amazon. So it's not me.

Depression set in quickly. It's difficult not to be hopeful and enthusiastic. I made it to the final 100 entries out of 10,000. I had an all-positive Publishers Weekly review - it was effusive in its praise with nothing negative to say. So I got my hopes up. I had a better chance of geting into the top three of ABNA than of winning the lottery.

But it's not to be. Now what? Time to regroup - yet again. I have regrouped so many times after disappointments that I feel like a veteran of strange and foreign wars. Typically the depression doesn't last that long, though. If I were really depressed I wouldn't be writing this - and the act of typing out my thoughts does help. It's not like I base my whole existence on whether I can get published or not. My value as a human being is not determined by whether you can buy my novel in a bookstore.

I will rework my query letter, including the news about ABNA and my PW review. I'll search out more agents to send it to. I'll look through the short stories again and send some more of them out to literary journals. And I'll continue to work on the next novel. Of course, I have another couple of novels that are in the drawer, so to speak, and that is probably where they will remain for the time being.

Always at the back of my mind lurks the fear that I may never get published. I may never attract the attention of an agent or an editor or a publisher. So be it, but it won't be because I didn't try.

The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber

If anyone ever tells you that thrillers can't be "literary" then point them at this novel. Gruber does an excellent job of developing his oddball characters while at the same time spinning out a tale full of twists and turns as the players attempt to decipher coded documents and track down a long-lost Shakespeare play. Most thrillers read like outlines for a good novel, with all the meaty parts left out. Not so Gruber's book. It's got plenty of meat to chew on.

That's not to say that I didn't see the ending coming. In fact, the plot follows the well worn path of countless thrillers before it. We have the search for a Maguffin, the double and triple cross, the unsuspected villain, the clueless narrator, the chase scene, and so forth and so on. But it's great fun and a wonderful read.

Link to Amazon: The Book of Air and Shadows: A Novel

My Library