Tag Archives: Fiction

A Year in Books/Day 118: The Garden Party and Other Stories

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  • Title: The Garden Party and Other Stories
  • Author: Katherine Mansfield
  • Year Published: 1922/This Edition: 1997 (Constable & Co./Penguin Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2003/2004
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: It’s almost enough to state that “Katherine Mansfield wrote short stories. The end.” It’s fitting that the genre she helped make a singularly modern medium was, largely, her only medium. If you require action (fast-paced or otherwise) from your fiction, then her quiet, introspective, internal and often plotless stories aren’t for you. The book is just long enough to help pass a lonely afternoon; its perhaps best read with a cup of tea to hand and feet up, on a languorously rainy Saturday. You probably won’t walk away any happier, but you’ll be richer for the experience.
  • Motivation: I’m that rarest of creatures: a fiction writer with no real ambition to write the Great American Novel-or any novel. Short stories are my talent’s natural home. Katherine Mansfield should be respected by any writer of short fiction.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 114: “On her way home she usually bought a slice of honey-cake at the baker’s. It was her Sunday treat. Sometimes there was an almond in her slice, sometimes not. It made a great difference. If there was an almond it was like carrying home a tiny present-a surprise-something that might very well not have been there. She hurried on the almond Sundays and struck the match for the kettle in quite a dashing way.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9
    Alumna, Katherine Mansfield

    Katherine Mansfield (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 116: The Thin Man

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  • Title: The Thin Man
  • Author: Dashiell Hammett
  • Year Published: 1933/This Edition: 1989 (Alfred A. Knopf/Vintage Books Edition)
  • Year Purchased: 1990
  • Source: Doubleday Book Shops
  • About: Oh, Hammett. Hammett. Dashiell Hammett. I had such a teenage crush on you. This book, right here, this exact volume, started it all. This is where phrases like ‘hard-boiled’ and ‘tough as nails’ usually come into play. His characters are certainly that, but Nick and Nora Charles are so much more besides: sly, witty, elegant, sophisticated, sexy, bewitching. His prose is streamlined, sleek, purposeful, entertaining; as you would expect from a good crime story, there is not one unnecessary word or action to be found. He was a master of dialogue, real-world, genuine, fresh dialogue. Hammett was a very fine writer-and not just for a detective novelist. The Thin Man is a quick read in the best sense: it’s intelligent and fast-paced, with a smart plot and interesting characters. He knew how to hook you and, just as importantly, he knew when to let you go.
  • Motivation: The 1934 film version. I like to read books before seeing film adaptations but I was introduced to The Thin Man in reverse order; I caught it on television when I was 14 or 15. Instant love, of course. Who can resist William Powell and Myrna Loy? No one I’ve ever met.
  • Times Read: 4 or 5
  • Random Excerpt/Page 12: “That afternoon I took Asta for a walk, explained to two people that she was a Schnauzer and not a cross between a Scottie and an Irish terrier, stopped at Jim’s for a couple of drinks, ran into Larry Crowley, and brought him back to the Normandie with me. Nora was pouring cocktails for the Quinns, Margot Innes, a man whose name I did not catch, and Dorothy Wynant. Dorothy said she wanted to talk to me, so we carried our cocktails into the bedroom.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10
    Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961)

    Dashiell Hammett, teen idol (1894-1961). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 106: Observatory Mansions

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  • Title: Observatory Mansions A Novel
  • Author: Edward Carey
  • Year Published: 2000 (Crown Publishers)
  • Year Purchased: 2001/2002
  • Source: Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller Company
  • About: Eccentric, engaging fiction at its best! The bizarre world at the center of the novel is oddly, disturbingly irresistible. What happens when a thirty-something street performer who has never left the nest mixes with his lonely neighbors, when not amassing stolen pieces for his ‘museum of significant objects’?
  • Motivation: I’m picky when it comes to fiction, especially contemporary fiction. I don’t like most of it, for a variety of convoluted reasons. I happily make exceptions for works of great imagination or originality guided by strong, firm voices. I could tell from a one paragraph blurb that I would love, love, love this book.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 32: “The new resident would be encouraged to leave the next day. Everything would be as it was. No one was going to touch my glove diary.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9

 

My Love of All That is Bizarre

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“I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life.”-Sherlock Holmes, The Red-Headed League (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).

Sherlock

Sherlock

Yes, I know that Sherlock is a surname here. That doesn’t stop me from giggling every time I walk by this grave at my favourite hiking spot. I’m such a hopeless LitGeek.

A Year in Books/Day 85: Shopgirl

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  • Title: Shopgirl
  • Author: Steve Martin
  • Year Published: 2000 (Hyperion)
  • Year Purchased: 2002
  • Source: A bookstore in Buffalo, New York.
  • About: Yes, this is a novella by that Steve Martin. It’s a surprisingly quiet, well-written and effective story about a young Neiman Marcus employee making her way delicately through the post-collegiate world of adult dating and responsibilities. By the time she becomes involved with an older man, you are invested in the heroine and her choices. Martin makes her world intriguing and inviting, even though nothing much happens there. The ability to transform every day emotions, via imagination, into something fresh yet realistic, requires a solid and subtle skill. Although it’s now well-known how multi-talented the comic truly is (banjo, anyone?), twelve years ago this slim little volume was an eye-opener.
  • Motivation: I was curious. It was on sale. I needed a quick read for the car ride home.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 21: “But that night, the voice does not come, and she quietly folds herself up and leaves the bar. The voice is to come on Tuesday.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8

A Year in Books/Day 82: The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction

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  • Title: The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction Inspiration and Discipline
  • Editors: Susan Burmeister-Brown and Linda B. Swanson-Davies
  • Year Published: 2007 (Glimmer Train Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2007/2008
  • Source: Writer’s Digest Book Club
  • About: This thick little volume offers some of the best writing advice I’ve ever read. Presented in the form of interviews, it captures disparate writers’ unique yet universal passion for the craft; mixed with sound, structured and common-sense, been-there-done-that advice, it completely lives up to its cover promise. It is one of the few inspirational resources that I have ever repeatedly consulted. Worth every penny, and then some.
  • Motivation: I think that I was sent this when I was too distracted  to mail in the monthly card and too lazy to return the book. I’m glad I didn’t, as I probably would never have chosen it otherwise. The writing gods fortuitously intervened.
  • Times Read: Cover-to-cover/1; as reference: countless.
  • Random Excerpt/Page 43: “When I was in college, I began to read Faulkner and Hemingway, two writers that changed my life. I hadn’t read anything so shockingly wonderful as those two writers, and what they could do on the page stunned me. I’ve never gotten over that shock, and don’t want to.”-Kent Haruf
  • Happiness Scale: 10+++

A Year in Books/Day 73: The Wit and Wisdom of Jane Austen

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  • Title: The Wit and Wisdom of Jane Austen
  • Compiled by: Dominique Enright
  • Year Published: 2002 (Barnes & Noble, Inc. by arrangement with Michael O’Mara Books Limited)
  • Year Purchased: 2002-2004
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: Excerpts from her fiction and personal letters are featured in this slim but potent volume.
  • Motivation: Jane Austen! Quotes!
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 63: “Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of the mouths of other people.” (Letter to Anna Austen, 28 September 1814)
  • Happiness Scale: 10
    Jane Austen, Watercolour and pencil portrait b...

    One Witty Brit-Image via Wikipedia

     

A Year in Books/Day 59: Jailbird

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  • Title: Jailbird
  • Author: Kurt Vonnegut
  • Year Published: 1979 (Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence)
  • Year Found: 2009
  • Source: It was on the giveaway table in our apartment building.
  • About: It’s Vonnegut, and it’s awesome. Walter F. Starbuck is a classic character and this novel makes for a wonderful albeit quick (as is the Vonnegut way) read. Of course, it is always better to read Vonnegut than to try to explain his work. So, you should go do that now.
  • Motivation: I love Vonnegut-the-writer and adore Vonnegut-the-person. He made it look easy and it is never easy. The book was also free. The back cover photo of the writer, taken by his wife Jill Krementz, is one of my favorites.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 127: “About the young man and his radio. I decided that he had bought the thing as a prosthetic device, as an artificial enthusiasm for the planet. He paid as little attention to it as I paid to my false front tooth. I have since seen several young men like that in groups-with their radios tuned to different stations, with their radios engaged in a spirited conversation. The young men themselves, perhaps having been told nothing but “shut up” all their lives, had nothing to say.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9

A Year in Books/Day 55: Girl in Hyacinth Blue

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Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid (1658–1660)

Image via Wikipedia

  • Title: Girl in Hyacinth Blue
  • Author: Susan Vreeland
  • Year Published: 1999 (Penguin Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2006
  • Source: A bookstore in Buffalo, New York
  • About: Another book revolving around the Dutch painter, Vermeer. This is a lovely, intimate novel with a surprisingly large, sweeping historical scope. It is, more than anything, the story of a single painting as seen through the eyes of its creator and subsequent owners. It jumps through time yet is seamless, never jarring.
  • Motivation: Jan Vermeer is one of my favourite painters. I was looking for a brief, well-written novel to read while on vacation.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 82: “Now, it’s not wise to be shocked. It makes one’s face blotchy and you don’t want that. I wouldn’t tell just anybody, because there are parts, there are parts-but since you asked for counsel in such matters, I will tell you. The truth, that I did not love the husband my father chose for me, I had concealed more carefully than a breast.”
  • Happiness Scale: 7 1/2