Dear friends,
Over the last few months, I did a lot of reading. I even read when I should have been writing my new book, but it’s so easy to get caught up in a brilliant novel or a riveting piece of non-fiction.
I was working on a mystery, so I avoided reading them for the most part. Like many authors, I steer clear of reading books in my genre while writing to prevent absorbing other cadences and tones. So no Elizabeth George or Laura Lippman for me this past season. But some wonderful books in new areas that energized my mind and soothed my soul.
Here are a few of my recommended reads:
The Nine
Author, Jeffrey Toobin whom you’ve probably seen on CNN, provides an intriguing look at the modern US Supreme Court delving into the personalities of the justices and the dynamics of group interaction on the bench. Honestly, this is nonfiction that reads like fiction. It speeds along, provides fascinating character studies and juicy personal tidbits, but also skillfully presents a history of the modern court and the issues that confront it. The portrait of Sandra Day O’Connor alone is worth the price of the book. And who would think she and Antonin Scalia were good buds off the bench. See, you didn’t know that, did you? This one’s a page-turner.
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
What’s better on a night table than something even more gentling than hot chocolate? All of Alexander McCall Smith’s Botswana–based mysteries are luscious, lulling tales that combine a wonderfully realized sense of place with unforgettable characters. Start with the first in the series The No.1 Ladies'’s Detective Agency featuring ace detective Precious Ramotswe and work your way through the series. The prose is beguiling, the stories charming and the mysteries won’t keep you up all night twisting in the sheets thinking them through.
Marie Antoinette
Truth is stranger than fiction as this finely wrought biography proves. Antonia Fraser writes the compelling story of Marie Antoinette so it glitters like a chandelier in Versailles. Sofia Coppola made the movie starring Kristen Dunst. A pretty picture heavy on the fashionista angle, but not nearly as delicious as the book. Even the most vehement egalitarians and libertarians will dig up some sympathy for the fourteen year old girl wrenched from her home in Austria and shunted to the grand, gossipy and dangerous French court and the less-than-virle Louis XVI. We all know the ending—off with her head—but the beginning and middle will surprise you.
The Year of Living Biblically
What a clever conceit. What an intriguing idea. What a hilarious, touching, profound and fascinating book A.J. Jacobs has constructed from a year of living strictly according to the tenants of both the Old Testament and the New. The subtitle to this splendidly Good Book is “One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible” and Jacobs really gets into it from loving his neighbor to stoning him, from playing a ten-string harp to avoiding wearing garments of mixed fabrics (one of the 613 precepts contained in the Torah) as he walks with a staff through Manhattan streets. Jacobs begins as an atheist and ends as a …. Nope, not going to tell you. Read it.
And while you’re in the Biblical mood, see if you can find:
Mercy, Lord, My Husband’s in the Kitchen
(and Other Equal Opportunity Conversations with God)
This was my first book, published decades ago, but more relevant now than ever. It’s a collection of poem/prayers written especially for women from “The Three Deadly Sins (which should be enough for anyone)” to “Fidelity,” from “Tupperware” to “What Noah Knows.” Inspired by passages in the Bible, Mercy, Lord has a healthy dose of humor, but there are some touching moments as well. Published by Doubleday in hardcover and Avon in soft, it’s available through Amazon and other online dealers as a previously owned (AKA used) book and it pops up occasionally on eBay. I hadn’t looked at it in years and reading it from a fresh perspective, I’m still happy I wrote it. |
