February 2007 Update
February’s snow and cold weather offered more time for reading. I tried Charles Frazier’s Thirteen Moons, but gave it up at page 148. Like in Cold Mountain, Frazier’s style is slow and full of lengthy descriptions. Set in North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains, Thirteen Moons takes place in the 1800s and is narrated by Will Cooper, an orphaned literate “bound boy” who is dispatched to run a trading post at the edge of the Cherokee Nation. The first hundred pages held my interest, but I found myself drifting away from the story, wanting to skim the long descriptions, and that is certainly not the way to read Frazier. So I put the book away, and may try it again later when I have more time to read. Being a big Alice Hoffman fan, I devoured Skylight Confessions and her young adult book Incantation. Ah, if only I could write prose like she does. For my birthday, I received a copy of Lynda Barry’s The Good Times are Killing Me. I’m looking forward to a quiet evening and a warm fire. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate my birthday. Anita Shreve has a new book out this spring, Body Surfing. Look for it in April, or preorder your copy now. While you’re at it, check out The Weight of Water and Fortune’s Rocks, two of my favorite Shreve novels.
January 2007 Update
Margaret Atwood just keeps getting better. I didn’t have a lot of time to read in the fall of 2006, but one of the books I did read was delightful. The Penelopiad, is a retelling of Homer’s Odyssey from Penelope’s and the twelve hanged maids’ points of view. Deliciously funny, it sent me in search of Andrei Konchalovsky’s movie The Odyssey starring Armand Assante and Greta Scacchi. Weighing in at a mere 192 pages, this was a fast read and came at just the right time since my current work in progress, The Secret of Aspen Grove aka The Waiting Game, is a story about three generations of Foster women who define themselves by the men they love. Another book I enjoyed reading is Cruddy, an illustrated novel by Lynda Barry my college professor son Trevor Dodge introduced me to last fall. Trevor uses it in some of his classes. I enjoyed Barry’s style and wit, and will definitely look at more books by this author. Alice Hoffman’s latest book, Skylight Confessions is now available and at the top of my To Read List, as well as Charles Frazier’s Thirteen Moons .
Writing workshop
Magic Valley columnist, Bonnie Dodge, will present her workshop, Writing the
Personal Column at the Idaho Writers’ League’s state conference to be held
September 29 & 30 in Boise, Idaho. In her workshop, Dodge will cover topics
such as why write a column, what kind of column do you want to write,
marketing your column, getting ideas for your column, structuring your
column and how to write for your market or audience. Dodge has been writing
her column, Life in this Magic Valley for AG Weekly, a Lee Agri-Media
publication with a circulation of 14,000 farms and homes in Idaho,
Washington, Oregon, Montana, Nevada and Utah since May, 2001.
- ← Previous
- 1
- …
- 7
- 8
