Coachamatic

When I finish reading a really good book, I sometimes write a note or send an email to the author to say thank you. I am so grateful to writers who stick with it and publish. I cannot imagine what this world would be like without, say, To Kill a Mockingbird or The Lord of the Rings trilogy. What if Carolyn Keene had decided the world did not need Nancy Drew or if J.K. Rowling had been too overwhelmed by single motherhood to write the Harry Potter books? But let’s go even deeper: what if (cue scary music) Shakespeare had been a fish monger instead of a poet/playwright? E-E-E-E-E-eeeeeekkkkk!!!

As Sharon Sarmiento pointed out in her blog, E-Soup, October is National Book Month. She recently posted about how to get started reading, and she mentioned one or two of my favorite books and made some excellent recommendations for finding good books. I’d like to add a few recommendations of my own.

People who read love to share recommendations for a good books. We all have different tastes of course, but find someone who has similar tastes in books and get ready for a nice long conversation. Make sure you have a pen and a notebook handy to write down titles.

Say you’re looking for a really good mystery that is strong on character and low on blood and gore, and you see someone in the Mystery section of a bookstore who is walking along with her head bent at an angle to read book spines. Just get your courage up and say, “Excuse me. I’m looking for a book…..” and next thing you know, you’re up to your eyebrows in book recommendations.

I was in the Writing section of a local bookstore last week with a couple of friends who are also writers, and a young woman came along looking at books and taking some off the shelf and checking a list she carried and looking, well, frustrated. So Doug asked her if we could help. Turns out she’s a journalism student at CU and wants to start a writing practice to stay in shape, so we steered her away from Writers’ Market books and nudged her toward Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones) and over to The Artist’s Way (Julia Cameron) and suggested that she also read some good essays (Philip Lopate’s The Art of the Personal Essay is excellent!).

Another good approach is to find books on lists of book awards, like the Pulitzer, the Man Booker Prize, the National Book Award, and others. This page from Powells.com lists a bunch of literary awards.
One of my brothers has never been much of a reader, but his job often has long stretches of nothing to do, so one night he found a John Grisham book in the employee lounge and he’s been reading ever since. I send him some of my favorites that aligned with the kind of reading he finds interesting, so now he’s read The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis and The Eight by Katherine Neville.

It isn’t so much what we read as that we read, and most of the readers I know will tell you that they can’t imagine a life without books. It makes me feel so darned happy that my brother, at 58 years old, has started reading books because I know what joy books give me and I want the people I love to know such joy.

In fact, Sharon and I want you to know that joy, too, so if you read any books we’ve recommended, please let us know so we can feel tickled about it. With that in mind, here’s my book recommendation to readers regardless of the genre you typically read: The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. This book blew me away. I told a friend about it and she wrote a review on her blog Life’s Weirder Than Fiction. Read the review, try the book; let me know what you think. And if you love it, as I did and as everyone I’ve recommended it to did, there’s a sequel that’s quite good, too.
So what are you reading now? What do you recommend to others?

And finally, a note to the writers out there: If you believe you have something to say that matters, then you do; if you get bogged down, remember how much it means to you when other writers publish a book or a story you love or that touched you or made you laugh, remember . . . and keep writing.

Posted on Oct 13th 06 by Verna Wilder.

Verna's joy is helping people find and refine their writing voice, and she does that by coaching, editing, and leading writing workshops. She's a writer and a reader and a lover of good books, good music, good movies, good food. For the past 25 years, Verna has given her best energy to working in a cube; now she's taking that experience and giving her best energy to her clients. Life finally makes a little more sense. http://vernawilder.typepad.com/out_of_the_cube/

Other posts on Coachamatic by Verna Wilder.