All the books I read in 2014

Here's the list, in chronological order, starting back in January:

1. The Quiet American by Graham Greene
2. Someone by Alice McDermott *
3. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel *
4. The Boy Who Went Away by Eli Gottlieb
5. The Execution of Noa P. Singleton by Elizabeth Silver
6. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Store
7. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles *
8. Little Failure by Gary Schteyngart *
9. Straight Man by Richard Russo
10. The Reef by Edith Wharton
11. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger *
12. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson *
13. Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger *
14. Citizens of London by Lynne OIson
15. Dr. Wortle’s School by Anthony Trollope
16. Zoli by Column McCann
17. The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud *
18. Longbourn by Jo Baker *
19. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote *
20. Time and Again by Jack Finney
21. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
22. The Book of Salt by Monica Truong
23. How to Be Good by Nick Hornby
24. Whose Body? By Dorothy Sayers *
25. Lady Susan by Jane Austen
26. Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner *
27. Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett
28. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier *
29. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
30. Roman Fever and Other Stories by Edith Wharton (also Omicidio alla Moda)
31. A Guilty Thing Surprised by Ruth Rendell
32. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
33. ½ of The Luminaries by Elinor Catton
34. The Emperor’s Children by Clair Messud
35. The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer
36. Bartleby the Scrivener * and Benito Cerino by Herman Melville
37. When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson
38. What Maisie Knew by Henry James
39. What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
40. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
41. Colorless Tsukuru Tasaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruka Murakami *
42. The Hypnotist’s Love Story by Liane Moriarty
43. Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
44. We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas *
45. The Steppe and The Duel* by Anton Chekhov
46. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel *
47. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters * and Seymour an Introduction by J.D. Salinger
48. My Brilliant Friend by Elana Ferrante
49. The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
50. The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty
51. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
52. Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty
53. Offcomer by Jo Baker

The ones with asterisks are those I particularly liked. My favorites? We Are Not Ourselves, Station Eleven, In Cold Blood, and Crossing to Safety. Two old, two new. How tidy. All quite different -- a post-apocolypic adventure, a rich family saga, a non-fiction crime novel, and a powerful story of friendship and marriage. But all have compelling characters, fascinating narratives, and beautiful, moving language. It was a good year. Onward!

Did it!

I said that I would do it and indeed I did. 

Says Henry Higgens and me.

Of course, he created a lady. I just read 52 books. Plus one extra for good measure. And there are still two days left. Who knows what I can do if I hurry (and do nothing else for 48 hours).

#52 Three Wishes, by Liane Moriarty

Another accomplishment this year -- I've read the complete oeuvre of Liane Moriarty, Australia's hot chick lit author. It's good chick lit (she protests), well written, often insightful, with interesting characters and compelling narratives that keep you turning pages. Her more recent books are much better than her earlier ones; you can actually see her learning from book to book. This is one of the earlier books, so it feels thinner than the later ones like Big Little Lies and The Husband's Secret (still my favorite). It's the story of three sisters, triplets in fact, who are celebrating their 33rd birthday against a rather tumultuous background. They fight, they suffer, they make up, they meet men, they lose men... the usual stuff. It's good entertainment, but not nearly as good as her later novels.


#53 Offcomer, by Jo Baker
I picked this up because I liked her latest, Longbourn, so much. This book was published here because of Longbourn's success, and it doesn't do Baker's reputation any good.
   
Offcomer is Baker's first novel, and it is also the Lancashire dialect's word for "newcomer." It's a slim story of a young woman who is lost in the world, caught in a sad, empty relationship with a pompous academic, nearly friendless, living in a strange city, working a dead-end job. To say that Claire suffers from low self-esteem would be putting it mildly. She cuts herself, bites her lips, pulls at her cuticles until they bleed, describes herself as ugly...she is so unkind to herself you want to call the cops to come take her away for cruelty.
 
The back-cover blurb says that it's set against the "backdrop of The Troubles in Northern Ireland." But there is literally not one mention of those Troubles. It also says she is "stunned by the recent emergence of secrets from her mother's past." The secrets are fairly lame, and in fact I had a hard time seeing why they were of any importance at all. It also says the book is "an honest and affecting work of real and quiet power." No way. It's rather dull and very depressing. There's a sense of repetition that becomes drone-like: "Claire knew she was a freak. She'd been born and grown up and lived her life so far without a skin. There didn't seem to be a line where she stopped and everything else began. Her surface was smudged and pulpy, too permeable." We get it. We get it.
 
Or check this out for unvarying sentence structure: "She heaved herself up off the bed, bent down again, slid her hand under a heap of clothes and crushed them up against her chest. She walked stiffly over to the chest of drawers. She opened each drawer in turn, then closed each of them again. Every one of them was full. Slowly, she turned to the wardrobe...She looked back across the room at the dark open mouth of her rucksack...She pushed the rucksack back into the corner. She picked up her mug..." I think I missed something because I was lulled to sleep.
 
Repetition can sometimes be powerful, it can build, it can ratchet up tension and emotion. In this case it's more like endless reportage. She did this, she did that, she did that again. Someone wake me up, please.
 
The book, like Claire, starts to seem trite. It feels like the same growing up all of us do, the same insecurities we conquer, the same low self worth we battle. Nothing pulls it out of the ordinary or makes it worth reading. Thank goodness Baker's talents grew.

The next-to-the-last-one four

I think I might actually make it. 52 books in 52 weeks. I’m on the last one now, and it’s a quickie (you’ll see why shortly). I might even get a head start on 2015, although I don’t think I’ll be trying for a book a week again (more about that later). In the meantime, before the grand finale, here’s a quick rundown of the latest:

#48 My Brilliant Friend, by Elana Ferrante

There’s been a lot of fuss about this book, the first in Ferrante’s Neopolitan trilogy. Critics love the books, which all came out in the US in the last couple of years. Part of the fascination is Ferrante’s anonymity. She uses a pen name, doesn’t give interviews, doesn’t promote her books. There is even some speculation that she’s not a she. The press just eats that up. But the book itself, for me, was not especially gripping. I found the stories of growing up in Naples in the 1950s – still  desperate postwar years in southern Italy – very interesting. But her writing style feels monochromatic, rhythmically bland, and the cast of characters is vast, too vast for me to connect with. She doesn’t give as much flavor or texture to her characters as she does to their living situations, and since I primarily read for interesting character, I found myself not caring a great deal about what happened. I don’t think I will read the second two books in the trilogy, but we’ll see. It’s hard to let go of the story of these two women’s lives when it’s ended so early. I might need to see how things turn out.

#49 The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald

Speaking of fuss, Penelope Fitzgerald, an author I never heard of until the last month, has been everywhere lately, even though she died in 2000. In fact, if you type the letters “p-e-n” into Google, she’s the first thing to come up – she's even ahead of Penelope Cruz! That’s some level of fame. It’s mostly due to the new autobiography by Hermione Lee that came out a couple of months ago and received all sorts of plaudits. But there also seems to be a resurgence of respect for an author who didn’t publish her first book until she was nearly 60 and then wrote one acclaimed book after another until she died at the age of 83. The Blue Flower is the fictionalized story of the poet Novalis, set in eighteenth-century Germany, and his love for Sophie, a twelve-year-old girl. He not only adores a child, she's a particularly dull, unattractive little girl. I didn’t find the delight in the story that so many readers and critics have; for me, it was as dull and unappealing as Sophie herself. I don’t think I’ll be visiting more of Ms. Fitzgerald’s work.

#50 The Last Anniversary, by Liane Moriarty

I guess that in addition to vowing to read a book a week, I should have also vowed to read the entire oeuvre of Australia’s Moriarty. Her books are perfect palate-cleansers after something more twisty and dense. This one centers on a long-ago mystery (a particularly easy one to unravel -- if I can solve it, you know it's easy) on a small island off of Sydney, and the family living there. It’s not as much fun as some of her others, but perfectly pleasant, like a nice light salad in between more elaborate feasts. 

#51 The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

Apparently another vow I made this year, unbeknownst to myself, was to re-read the complete works of J.D. Salinger. It was a bit of a rollercoaster ride. Loved some (Franny and Zooey!), liked a few, not crazy about some, bored to tears by one (Seymour, an Introduction). Catcher in the Rye generated a middling response. I can certainly see why it was a groundbreaking novel. And I can also see why I loved it so when I first read it in high school. I remember feeling that Holden spoke for me – all that angst, all that anger, all that disaffection. But reading it again fortysomething years later generates a different reaction. Salinger brilliantly captures the tortured mind of an intelligent adolescent. But it’s so damn hard to hang out in the mind of that adolescent, who is, in addition to being intelligent, insufferable. Holden is me at 16. And maybe I just found out that, at 16, I was a prick. 

Too busy to write, but not to read

Birthdays, Thanksgiving, celebrations…all of it getting in the way of reading, not to say writing about reading. It’s going to be a real nail-biter to see if I can fulfill my vow of reading a book a week for 2014. Remind me not to do this again. It’s made me look at books completely differently. I weigh them first. Check out the font size. Look at the number of pages. Can I spare the time for a Trollope? Shouldn’t I do another Liane Moriarty? For the most part I’ve read what I wanted to read without regard for length and girth. But I have avoided a biography of Caravaggio that I picked up a while back because it’s 600 densely written pages. Same for another Dickens I’ve had sitting on the bedside table. Next year: War and Peace. And Dickens. And Trollope. Always more Trollope.

So, in the interest of squeezing more reading into the little time I have left, here are my two-sentence reviews of the last six books to date:

#42 The Hypnotist’s Love Story by Liane Moriarty. Yes, another Liane Moriarty. Fun read, not as compelling as the others. She hadn’t quite gotten her groove on with this one.

#43 Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson. Excellent read, similar to Life After Life in its playing with time, but more complex, many more characters, and therefore not as absorbing as her later book, and occasionally even confusing. She may just have bitten off a bit more than she could chew.

#44 We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas. A really old-fashioned, wonderful first novel. The story of one woman’s life, nothing remarkable or exceptional other than the amazing eye for detail and humanity. And many scenes in New York City and Bronxville, right next door to where I grew up made it fun. 

#45 Two novellas by Anton Chekhov: The Steppe and The Duel. Loved The Duel, particularly the debate between natural selection (promoted by the Germanic Von Koren) and the futility of life (embodied by Laevsky, a lazy, self-indulgent government employee). Didn’t much like The Steppe, a picaresque tale of a young boy traveling across, you guessed it, the Russian steppe.

#46 Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Wow! A literary post-apocalyptic novel, about what happens after a virus kills 99% of the world’s population, which I was reading the week Ebola came to New York City in the person of Dr. Craig Spencer. Talk about timely. And what an excellent read, a real look at how people survive, how the world goes on, and what it means to be human. I hope someone is making this into a movie.

#47 Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction by J.D. Salinger. Two more stories in the Glass family saga. Carpenters is Buddy writing about Seymour’s wedding, and it’s wonderful, like so many of his stories are wonderful. I want to say I loved Seymour just as much, because it’s a much more “difficult” story (and in fact, really isn’t a “story” at all) but I found it rough going.

Post-vacation catch-up #36-41

Been away on a wonderful visit to the old country (at least the old country I wish I had). Much catching up to do, so have to be brief:

#36 Time to count Herman Melville's duo. I finished Bartleby the Scrivener a few books back, but finally read Benito Cerino so can count the book as an entry. Loved Bartleby and want to read it again already. Such a spell it casts! But stories of the sea generally leave me cold, and Benito was not an exception. Half a great book -- does that mean 5 stars for half or half of five stars?

#37 When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson. Another of her Jackson Brodie mysteries, although Brodie at times seem almost an incidental character. Lots of story lines, lots of different voices, all of them well defined. But maybe too many different characters to really grab my interest? Not sure, but I wasn't gripped, although I wanted to be.

#38 What Maisie Knew by Henry James. To be honest, I bought the book because it was a charming little secondhand paperback with a cover illustration by Edward Gorey. And it looked like a relatively short, relatively digestible James, more along the lines of Washington Square (love) than The Golden Bowl (huh?). It turned out to be longer than it looked, and required slow, careful reading to pull apart the thickets of James's many-claused sentences. It tells a fairly small story -- a period (of unclear length) in the life of a young girl (of unclear age) whose divorced parents use and abuse her as a weapon in their battle. She observes their intrigues and involvements with each other and subsequent stepparents and lovers with a keen eye that is above moral judgements, because she has not learned morality, at least conventional morality. A challenging book to get through, but satisfying.

#39 What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty. Put this and the prior book together and maybe what Maisie knew is what Alice forgot. Or vice versa. Another fun read from the bestselling author of The Husband's Secret. Read it on the plane going to Paris and if a book can keep you turning pages on a crowded, uncomfortable plane, it must be good. Moriarty is chick lit at its highest form, or maybe calling it chick lit is an insult. She's a skilled writer who creates fascinating, believable characters, and compelling, unusual situations. These are the kind of books that keep you up late turning pages and -- bonus -- you don't feel dirty afterwards. In this one, a 39-year-old woman hits her head falling off her bike in spin class and wakes up without any memory of the last ten years -- years in which she had three children, her marriage ended, and she went from being a gentle childlike naif to a uber-competent soccer mom. Now wouldn't you want to see how that story evolves?

#40 Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty. I liked Alice so much, I picked up Moriarty's current bestseller. If she were writing less grabby storylines, she would be considered literary fiction, or at least close. Her characters are believable, and her understanding of the motivations and urges of ordinary woman is precise and complex. In this one, three different women's stories are intertwined, and each is shadowed by lies from the past. I can't imagine another writer juggling story lines of abuse and rape without being cheesy, but she manages. She also deeply understands the less charming sides of women -- competitiveness, envy, jealousy -- without being cynical or bitchy. Couldn't put this one down either, and look forward to the next.

#41 Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami. I'd never read any Murakami before -- been put off by talk of magical realism and meta-fictional narrative. But this book was fascinating. The entire story -- of a 36-year-old man whose life was changed by the rejection of his closest friends when he was in college -- felt like a spell, like a dream. In fact, there were many times when I thought the entire book was going to be a dream, and Colorless Tsukuru would turn out to be a spirit. There are many mysteries in the story -- why his friends rejected him, what happened to them, why another friend also vanished from his life, and what's in the little bag that the pianist holds. But only some of the questions are answered, yet the book did not leave me unsatisfied. There's a lot to it, despite its simple, direct language. It's a book I already plan to read again.

Bits and pieces

 My reading has been odd lately. I read half of a novel, which was strange for me. It's pretty rare that I don't finish a book I start. But in this case, I read about two hundred pages of Eleanor Cattan's Booker Prize-winning The Luminaries and I was only a quarter of the way through the 850-page novel. Every page (and they were crowded pages, with small type and minimal margins, design decisions I'm sure were made in order not to have to print a 1,000-page book) was like slogging through mud. I didn't care about the story (set in the 1860's New Zealand gold rush), or the characters, or her writing style. Finally, after realizing that after 200-something pages, I still wasn't sure what the book was about, I put it down. Sorry Ms. Catton. This is not a book for me.

But, since I did read at least 200 pages, I'm counting it as #33. Because it took so much time, and because I really did try again and again. And because I'm not going to count the two Italian easy reader murder mysteries that I read to keep my Italian going while class is not in session: Omicidio alla Moda (Murder in Style) and its sequel, Omicidio alla Passarella (Murder on the Runway). Despite being fairly simplistic (written for i stranieri--foreigners--at an advanced beginner or early intermediate level), they were both far more entertaining than those unilluminating Luminaries. 

#34 was a better choice, Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children. I had enjoyed her book, The Woman Upstairs, a while back. This one has a similar appeal. There's something deceptive about Messud's writing, I've decided on the basis of these two books. Her style is simple, direct and detailed. Her characters, although often unlikable, are relatable (maybe that says something about me). The story moves along and holds your interest and then, bam! something comes out of left field and knocks you over the head. I like that element of surprise, and I like both books. This one was particularly appealing to me, being set in New York. It's the story of three young people of a certain amount of privilege, intelligence, and ability. They are friends, and their lives intertwine. And then there's a fourth, who lacks the gifts the other three often take for granted. He also weaves into and out of their worlds. The ending left me screaming (internally) but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.

For #35 I again revisited a writer I'd read recently. I had loved Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings a while back, and wanted to read more by her. And the concept of The Uncoupling interested me--a modern take on Aristophenes' classic play, Lysistrata, in which the women of Athens go on a sex strike until their men end the war against Sparta that has been going on for more than 20 years. But in Wolitzer's book, the strike isn't caused by a protest or an uprising. It's because of a magical spell. Magic is not one of my favorite themes--it always seems like a cheap way for an author to get characters to do something out of character, or to make an interesting story out of an uninteresting one. And this was no exception. The happily married people become less happy. The unhappy ones become even more unhappy. Stuff happens, none of it all that compelling. And then the spell ends. There are some wonderful observations and interesting moments, but overall The Uncoupling feels like Wolitzer learning her way around novel-writing. Stick with The Interestings if you want a walk down Wolitzer way. 

I also read Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville, but it was only one-half of a book of two long short stories (short novellas?) by Melville, so I'm not going to count it until I read the other half. And I will. Promise. 

Passing the time...

After the heft of Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, I needed something a bit more light – in weight if not in content. So I tripped lightly over to re-read some of my favorite Edith Wharton short stories in Roman Fever and Other Stories (#30). “Roman Fever” itself is one of my favorite short stories ever – marvelous characters created in just a few sentences, a beautiful setting, delicate yet powerful emotional value, and even a gasp of surprise at the ending. I don’t adore all the stories in the book as much as the title one, but they are all great reading.

I followed Edith up with a murder mystery for #31, Ruth Rendell’s A Guilty Thing Surprised. I don’t think I’ve ever read one of hers before, at least not in the last few years during which I’ve kept my book list. It had a great setting – a wealthy couple in their grand country home – and even though the book is set in 1970, it feels remarkably like an Agatha Christie manor house mystery. It’s well written, definitely a cut above many mysteries I’ve read, and Chief Inspector Wexford, her recurring hero, is a decent enough fellow to spend a murder investigation with. Not sure I’ll read too many more of hers, but maybe just one to say I’ve given her a real chance. 

#32 was a not-very-good Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. The story is fairly interesting, set in Seattle in 1986 with flashbacks to the main story set in the years of World War II. The main character is a middle-aged Chinese-American man who is looking back on his first love, a Japanese-American girl he met in school when he was 12, in 1942. She and her family are interned during the war, and learning some more about the Japanese internment was interesting. But Ford’s writing is pedestrian and his characters are not compelling. They walk through emotions like puppets, and repeat the same words and actions. Henry, our main character, is emotionally constipated, formal and constrained. Keiko, his love, has almost no personality, just a collection of traits. Henry and his grown son Marty have the same stiff, formal relationship that Henry had with his own – surprise – distant father. It’s all pretty predictable and pretty dull, but easy enough to read. I wouldn’t pick up anything else by this author, though. 

So long, Anthony, so long

#29 definitely took longer than any book I've read for a while. I've been keeping fairly successfully to my book-a-week schedule, with the occasional one taking slightly less and the less occasional one taking slightly more. But book #29, The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope, was a monster, a massive, heavy, 825-page, 100-chaptered, tiny-type killer of a book. Fortunately it was also wonderfully entertaining, so I don't regret getting slightly off schedule because of it.

If you overlook the Victorian language and references, The Way We Live Now could have been published this year. It's the Victorian version of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, which in itself refers back to the serialized satirical novels of the Victorian era. (Round and round and round we go.) The book is a story of financial scandals, Madoff-like frauds, greedy society swells and social climbers, amid a general atmosphere of scandal, dishonesty, and moral decline. See what I mean about it being published yesterday?

Trollope wanted to make a moral point by satirizing what he saw as a society in moral ruin. He said, "If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel."

David Suchet as the great Augustus Melmotte

There are multiple plots and sub-plots, and while much of the action revolves around the great financial wizard Augustus Melmotte, the man himself doesn't make much of an appearance until the final third of the book. Melmotte has a shady background (he might be--horrors!--a Jew), lax moral behavior, and a very modern way of doing business. He invests in an American railway concern without actually putting any money into it, then sells the shares that increase rapidly in value simply because the great Melmotte has invested in it. He buys an elegant London home from a desperate and nearly penniless Lord, takes title, then turns around and mortgages it for more money than its worth. He's a powerful character, compellingly ugly and low. Unfortunately for Trollope, but lucky for the reader, it's a low characters in the book who are far more interesting. The moral points of view belong to only a few, and they are a rather dull bunch. I found Melmotte's daughter Marie, who he is assiduously trying to marry off to a future Marquis, a wonderful character. She goes from being in love with a simpleton, just because he's pretty, to standing her ground against her strong-willed, abusive father, and marrying finally, the man she chooses.

Trollope apparently agreed about his immoral characters being of greater appeal to the reader. "The interest of the story," he once wrote, "lies among the wicked and foolish people."

Melmotte is a low scoundrel, but he's an entertaining, vivid, low scoundrel. He's a man with juice, and I'd rather read a story about a juicy low scoundrel than a dull and proper man of morals.

I'm looking forward to watching the 2001 BBC mini-series made of the novel, with a great cast (David Suchet, Cillian Murphy, Matthew Macfayden (Mr. Darcy!), and Miranda Otto, among many others).

The Writing Process Blog Tour Q&A

Jackie Clark Mancuso, the uber-talented author and illustrator of Paris-Chien, Adventures of an Expat Dog and the upcoming Hudson’s French Vacation: Paris-Chien in Provence invited me to join the Writing Process Blog Tour. It’s my turn this week, next week you can check out another mega-talented friend and author Amy Kathleen Ryan (the Sky Chasers trilogy—Glow, Spark, and Flame—as well as Vibes, Zen and Xander Undone, and other books), on her blog, amykathleenryan.blogspot.com.

Since I’m still reading book #29 (it’s 800 pages, thank you very much, and I’ve had a lot of company lately) (thank goodness I built in some extra days), I’m glad to have something to write about in between booking and cooking posts. Stay tuned for the recipe for the super-simple and super-delicious clams with escarole and bacon that I made a couple of nights ago. And another book soon, I promise.

What am I currently working on?

I think it’s a jinx to talk about anything I’m working on, so I won’t be specific. Also, since it took me 10 years to get my first book written and published, I’ve got a rather loose definition of “upcoming.” Suffice it to say that I write occasional poetry (which no one but me reads), blog posts, and I’m working on a novel loosely based on real life.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Jessica Lost, my memoir, differs greatly from most of its genre because it is two stories, intertwined, by two authors. Written in alternating chapters by my birth mother and me, the book tells her story of how she found herself at 20, alone and frightened, pregnant with a baby she could not keep. It also tells my story of finding her four decades later, and what it meant to both of us to lose and then regain these missing pieces of ourselves.

Why do I write what I write?

I have to give an answer appropriate to a blog about books. I write what I write for the same reason I read what I read: to understand the world and learn how to live in it better. I choose books based mainly on strong, compelling, well-crafted characters, and that is what I hope to write. I also like to be moved—to laughter, tears, anger, any emotion, really—and look for vivid emotions in books I read and books I write.

How does my writing process work?

Slowly. There are always so many better, more interesting things to do, like reading, or Candy Crush, or washing my hair. I struggle with narrative, with character development, and with endings. Beginnings are easy, middles somewhat less so. But endings…endings are misery. I try to write every day, even if just a diary entry, but I don’t always achieve it. The world calls…I must answer. 

Remember to visit Amy's website next week for her responses to the questions at amykathleenryan.blogspot.com. And check out her terrifically entertaining books. 

The Sky Chasers trilogy by Amy Kathleen Ryan

Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again…

That’s one of the most famous opening lines in all of literature, the first sentence of book #28, Rebecca, by British author Daphne du Maurier. In fact, that great opening line (so rhythmic, so melodious, so pull-you-in creepy) is on this website’s list of the top 20 opening lines in literature, sandwiched between The Hobbit and 1984. But Rebecca is so much more than just an opening line. It’s deep and mysterious, dark and passionate, a tale of secrets and hauntings. The rich, handsome, and haunted estate of Manderley is as much a character as its owner, the rich, handsome, and haunted Maximillian de Winter. Manderley is filled with the ghost of its former mistress, the perfectly elegant, accomplished, stunningly beautiful Rebecca, a woman beloved by all, admired by all. She’s dead, but her spirit lives on in the house, its beautiful grounds, and, most of all, the memory of the hostile, evil housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers. The unnamed second wife, the narrator of the tale, walks timidly into this dark, twisted world, and we walk with her, the tension building as we compulsively turn the pages. I’ve seen the movie many times (Hitchcock did a terrific job translating the spirit of the book into celluloid) but even though I knew every reveal, every surprise, and the ending, I couldn’t put the book down. What a story, what a writer. Read the book, see the movie.

Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier in Rebecca

Judith Anderson as the creepy Mrs. Danvers