Friday, December 26, 2014

My Reading Re-Cap 2014

2014 wound up being an incredibly busy year, so busy in fact that this blog was neglected for most of it. I've been feeling really, really awful about how few books I managed to read and hesitated even writing this post until it dawned on me that I did, in fact, read thousands and thousands of pages this year - and many, many books -- though most of them were my editing clients' and students' unpublished work.

I read (and edited) twenty-one amazing unpublished books this year. I also read, on average, 200-300 pages of student work per week. I taught classes online, in person at Grossmont Community College, in workshops at San Diego Writers, Ink and in my weekly Read & Critique groups. I got to read work that was hot off the press and work that has been toiled over for years and years. I also read drafts of friends' and colleagues' work that will be published next year.

This has, actually, been one of the most literary-focused years of my life. I wrote and revised a new novel (which will be out in 2016). I completed NaNoWriMo with a rough draft of a novel, and am about to finish the first draft of an additional one.

And I did manage to read a few published novels as well. Here are my favorites from this year (in no particular order -- and with links):

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22367526-my-sunshine-away


 
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18112175-remember-me-like-this

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18656036-the-fever

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18528250-orion-s-daughters?from_search=true

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18668231-the-other-side

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17871515-a-life-in-men

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18404194-a-paris-apartment

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18142427-life-drawing?ac=1

I'm half-way through this one -- and am loving it:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18651980-fourth-of-july-creek?ac=1

And these 2 are on my TBR list (but they're both written by friends, so I KNOW they're going to be great!):

https://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/20710718-forest-of-fortune

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23168800-benefit-of-the-doubt?ac=1

Happy New Year (and Happy Reading) to you all in 2015!

Friday, April 04, 2014

A Life in Men by Gina Frangello: A Review

A Life in MenA Life in Men by Gina Frangello
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I had the pleasure of meeting Gina Frangello last month at the Tucson Festival of Books, where we spoke on three separate panels together. We also spent a lot of time between panels chatting in the authors' green room, and so I heard a lot about this book (as well as about her process of writing the book) prior to finally sitting down to read it. Gina was an engaging speaker, as well as a fascinating person, and so I was eager to dive in.

A LIFE IN MEN, is a sweeping story of a woman named Mary Grace who, at seventeen, is diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (a life-shortening pulmonary disease typically diagnosed in early childhood). And so just as her life is about to begin, her life expectancy is suddenly abbreviated to an unfathomable six years.

The novel is not about illness, however. Nor is it about dying. It is, instead, about living. About embracing life, embracing the world, and all of the people in it.

There is an urgency to everything about this book, despite its epic scope. We travel with Mary from Greece to London, Africa to Mexico, Amsterdam to Morocco. We watch as she struggles to compress a lifetime of experience into these few precious years, to ignore her illness even as it incites this manic sort of approach to living. Book-ended by two tragedies: the Lockerbie disaster and 9/11, Mary's life becomes a sort of luminous, shimmery thing in between.

The story is told to us in a meandering omniscience, her character revealed via the various men in her life (as well as by her vibrant best friend, whose death sets the story into motion). The cumulative effect of this is the understanding that an individual's life is not a solitary thing, but something which has far-reaching trajectories. It also suggests that perception and truth are not mutually exclusive: "There is never only one Truth," Frangello writes. "There is only one truth at a time."

I really loved this book.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Coming Up for Air

Gasp. That is me, coming up for air. For a moment.

And those are first three sentences I have written in months that haven't been in response to someone else's writing. And that makes me sad. I have been teaching and editing so much in the last three months, that I am not even sure I remember how to write anymore. Two online classes, a Saturday workshop at San Diego Writer's Ink, a Tuesday evening class at Grossmont College, volunteering at The Monarch School every other week, two weekly Read and Critiques, and back to back to back editing jobs. At one point last month I was reading (and commenting on) almost a thousand pages a week. Don't get me wrong - I love my editing work, and I really, really enjoy teaching, but my own words seem to have gotten lost somewhere along the way.

By all accounts, I should be feeling great. I recently optioned the film rights for Bodies of Water to an amazing actress who is, at this very moment, turning it into a beautiful screenplay. Bodies also was just named a finalist for a Lambda award. I am doing an interview with Brad Listi for my favorite podcast, Other People, later this month. And I am headed to Tucson this weekend for the Tucson Festival of Books where I will get to see my friend, Jillian Cantor, and have dinner with Alice Hoffman (one of my literary idols). But instead of feeling awesome, I am feeling both anxious and somewhat melancholy.

I am waiting to get the edits of my next book back -- trying not to think too much about it (otherwise I go into panic mode that it's not nearly as strong as I hope it is). I finished a draft of a book during NaNoWriMo that I KNOW stinks.  I have an idea for a different book that is distracting me, luring me away from that really crappy draft of what is supposed to be the next book -- due in OCTOBER, and I can't decide if I should just follow the shiny new thing (squirrel!) or muscle up and tackle the clean-up of that steaming pile of ca-ca I made in November. I am also waiting (always waiting) for some other things to pan out. But they're not panning, and I'm getting sick of waiting.

Anyway.

And now a brief dispatch from the Mermama front:

1. I made an eel costume today. Esmee is Flotsam in "The Little Mermaid" next week.
2. We signed the girls up for a week at Camp Downer -- the sleepaway camp both my mother and I went to.
3. This means Patrick and I get a whole week alone at the pond in Vermont.
4. Had to enact some tough love when Esmee stole money from her savings to buy herself Candy-Grams for Valentine's Day.
5. Allowing Kick to go to Starbuck's with a friend after school today...sounds small but feels really big.
6. Kick's middle school jazz band kind of rocks.

And now, holding my breath, and diving back in.