I know that many of you have already started, and some have finished Dani Shapiro’s acclaimed new memoir, DEVOTION.  Dani will join us for a live chat about her book which explores her spiritual journey into the “afternoon of life,” on Monday April 5th at 8:00 PM, Eastern.

Just a reminder that this evening, at 8:00 Eastern time, we will be discussing Daphne DuMaurier’s REBECCA.

I’m so looking forward to this.  It’s supposed to be a stormy night here in New England, which will be the perfect atmosphere to discuss this moody tale.

I was going to post a link to a video clip from the Hitchcock film of Rebecca, but decided not to, as some of you have not seen the film.  If you want though, go over to YouTube and look at the clips.  Look at how Hitchcock used shadows so eerily, as he always did, but also the way he made everything at Manderley gigantically overscaled.  Everything of Rebecca’s was HUGE!  Her closets, her room, her brushes. Her house.  The young Mrs. DeWinter had to almost reachup to grab a doorknob, like a young child.

Okay, here’s a link to a clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxO68PacfxE

I hesitate to interrupt all the introductions with a new blog but I encourage people to keep coming out! I don’t want to say welcome, because many of you have been reading all along, but, it’s lovely to hear all the new voices.

I have been insanely busy, this week and so have many people I know. First, my friend Dani Shapiro has a new book coming out on Monday. The book is called Devotion and it’s a beautiful examination of her spiritual journey in what she calls “the afternoon of life.” Click on her link and have a look at her books and blog and introduce yourselves while you’re there.  I’ve already read Devotion and recommend it highly!

I have also been researching animal rescue organizations for my book and would like to call your attention to a wonderful contest that is going on at The Animal Rescue Site.  You can vote for your favorite  rescue organization and the group that receives the most votes will receive lots of $$$$$$$.  But you don’t have to give a penny.  I know everybody is giving whatever they can spare to Haiti relief organizations now, so this is a way you can help by just, literally lifting a finger and clicking on the “vote” link.  If you don’t have a favorite rescue organization, please vote for Hot Water Rescue New England.  This group has saved some of the neediest dogs in New England and could really use the support.  Here’s a gorgeous pup that they have saved and are trying to place:

So get out your vote!  You can vote once a day, every day.

Because so many of you have emailed me and commented here about how much you have loved reading Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply, I decided to ask Mr. Chaon if he would be interested in doing some sort of Q & A with us.  He said that he would be happy to, and then I asked Steve Bennett, who owns AuthorBytes, my web design firm,  if he could find some way that we can do some sort of live chat right here on the blog and he said that he would be happy to.

So, now I’m happy. Very happy!

The chat with Dan Chaon is scheduled for Tuesday, January 12, at 8:00 p.m. (EST).

It will be a “live chat” meaning that you will be able to ask Dan Chaon your questions and he will answer them live, but it will all be in text format.  You won’t be able to see anyone.   But once I have the live chat element up and running, I plan to do chats with all of the authors whose books we read.  And I’ll do occasional chats with performers, dog rescuers, maybe even members of casts of television shows.  In fact, in order to make sure there aren’t any glitches for our author chat, I’m planning to ask Denis if he’ll do a chat with you all next week some time.

Well, that’s the news.  Very excited about our future chattiness!

Okay, I took the liberty of choosing the next book myself (again), and I have chosen Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon.

You may order it here, if you’d like.

Colleen has already read it and has endorsed it for us.

I have this fear that nobody read the book.  But just in case any of you did, this is the day that we had set aside to discuss it, so I’ll start.

I chose this book because it’s a favorite of mine and I hadn’t read it in awhile.  Often when I reread books, I pick up on flaws or contrivances that I missed in the first reading, but this book is better, for me, each time I read it.  First, the manner in which Muriel Spark so effortlessly carries the reader into the future and then into the pasts of the “Brodie set” is quite amazing to me.  This is a very difficult thing for a writer to do well.  Instead of describing the girls when they were little, then following them through high school and then revealing the way that each turned out as adults, we are able to view the girls with a sort of retrospective knowledge.  I also like the way Muriel Spark repeats the facts about each character (Mary died in a hotel fire, Rose was famous for sex) for two reasons.  One is a practical one – it helped me remember who was who in this book with many characters and a lot of jumping around.  But also, this is the way we often think about people in our lives.  If you knew a girl quite well in high school, and later learned that she died, in her 20s, in a hotel fire, you would think about that fire every single time you thought of the girl.  It also gave a sort of rhythm to the narrative, almost like a refrain, when referring to each girl.

Though it’s written from an omniscient point of view, the story is really Sandy’s story.  We never really see any of the characters unless they are with Sandy but we are constantly reminded that Sandy has a very limited perspective with those tiny little eyes that she’s always squinting through. I loved it when, later in the book, Miss Brodie tells Sandy to have her eyes examined, as it seems that she’s not able to see, the way she peers at people.  Sandy responds that it only appears that she can’t see people but she actually sees them quite well.  At this point she is already viewing Miss Brodie with a bit of skepticism.

I’m interested in what you all thought.  Feel free to weigh in even if you didn’t finish it or hated it.  What did you all think about the religious aspects of the story – about Sandy’s conversion to Catholicism, her book “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace” and most importantly, the idea of a woman having a “prime.”  I have always loved the character of Jean Brodie, I just love her, and when I love her the most is when she is describing her prime, as if it is a thing.  I have had a few Miss Brodies in my life – wonderfully charismatic and  lovable narcissists whom I once held in very high regard and then came to see as human, with flaws, like the rest of us.

Yes, we have a new feature here at the blog. If you scroll down a little, you’ll see it on the right.  It’s called “On the Nightstand”.

Originally I was going to just display the books I am reading, but now I have decided to show one book a month, give everybody a chance to read it as well, and at the end of the month, we’ll have a discussion.  Here.  On the blog.  It’s not going to be a live chat. I’ll just start the discussion and you all can weigh in throughout the day, commenting as often as you wish.  I think that’ll work best as we all have different work schedules and live in different time zones.

The first book I have chosen is Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.  It has been brought to my attention that this title is not on Kindle, but it should be available at any library, or you can order it here.

I have marked December 1st on my calendar as the book discussion day.

I would love to hear any suggestions you all might have for future books.

Yes, that’s my sleek nightstand pictured above.  There’s my beautiful bed where I recline in my organic pajamas and read, whilst my hired man Batman massages my feet.

Okay, this is what my nightstand really looks like.  I have photographed it exactly as I found it this morning.

“…and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”    James Joyce, Ulysses

My friend Davyne Verstandig, head of the Litchfield County Writers Project, recently asked me if I would like to attend a lecture about James Joyce, given by author Frank Delaney.

James Joyce? Frank Delaney?  Yes I said yes I will Yes.

I met Frank Delaney at a book signing last summer and have been an admirer of his work, so I was thrilled at the opportunity to hear him speak about Joyce.

In his book, James Joyce’s Odyssey, Frank Delaney describes Ulysses as, “an entertaining, funny, absorbing, exciting, enjoyable novel, a book to get lost in, a book to take to a desert island, a book to keep by your bedside, and discover each day something new, a book to be quoted from, recalled, discussed, contemplated, bequeathed, bestowed, but above all to be relished, savoured, a work of intelligence and delight.’

Author Frank Delaney (photo by Jerry Bauer)

I have found Ulysses to be a puzzling, challenging, difficult and maddening novel, a book to not only get lost in, but to lose one’s mind in, a book to take to a desert island and leave there, motoring off with something lighter, like Paradise Lost, a book to keep, not by my bedside, but prominently displayed on a coffee table, to impress others.   I know Frank must be right when he says it is a work of intelligence and delight, I’m just not intelligent enough to feel all the delight.  But I want to be – wicked bad.

The thing is, I have read and reread Joyce’s Dubliners many times because I love the stories so, and have always wanted to appreciate Ulysses, so I decided to attend Frank Delaney’s talk last night, and  I don’t recall when I’ve had a more enjoyable and enlightening evening.  Frank was once a television and radio personality in Ireland and the UK, so he has a wonderful stage presence and his knowledge of Joyce is seemingly fathomless.

Ireland, death, sex, alcoholism, writing, self-loathing, romantic love, begrudgery – all things Irish – all my favorite things –  were touched upon in Frank’s delightful discourse last night.  One of the many tidbits I took away with me is Frank’s theory that one of the reasons Ireland has produced so many great writers, is because the language they write in, English, was forced upon them by their enemies – the English.  Their inventive and provocative use of the English language is a sort of rebellious and retaliatory one-upmanship.

Having spent a little time in Ireland, I have seen what the people can do to the English language, just in conversation, and it’s impressive, to say the least.  Ireland is the only place I  have heard old men (or any men) use the C word as a vowel in regular conversation.  ”I looked up and there she was, herself, the c*%#ing cow, standing like a fecking statue in the rain, in the fecking rain, in the middle of the fecking road.”

Last night’s lecture was the first in a series of talks given by Mr. Delaney. If you live anywhere near Litchfield County, Connecticut, I urge you to try to attend the others.  The schedule is here.  The series will also be available at the LCWP website, along with many other talks, readings and interviews with authors.

I’m working on a proposal for a book about many animals (and some people) I have known. Part memoir/part profiles of famous people and their animals and famous animals and their people.

I’ve been thinking about my earliest childhood memories and I keep recalling all the books that I have read and loved. The only books I read, as a child, were about animals. I read all the classic animal books – Lassie Come Home, My Friend Flicka, White Fang, Lad, A Dog, all the Black Stallion books – and, working on this proposal, I suddenly had a desire to read these books again.

So I wandered into my town library. I live in a town with a rather small but very useful library. The children/young adult section is tiny, and when I entered it, I doubted very much that they would have room to stock those relics from the 1930s and 40s with all the Harry Potter and Twilight books. But I was wrong! There they were! There they all were! Most were in their original jackets and my hands were actually shaking as I pulled them from the shelves.


The librarian – a lovely woman who seemed to be about my age (but I think everybody is about my age and they’re usually about 20 years younger) had also read all these books as a child and we were both gasping as we reminded each other of the characters and storylines. “Remember how Alec Ramsey got the Black Stallion onto the boat?” “Remember how poor Lassie dragged herself to Joe’s school?” “Remember Merrylegs and Ginger?”
So, I’ve spent the better part of the last 24 hours curled up with all my old friends – Alec Ramsey, Ken McLaughlin, The Black, Flicka, Lassie, Lad, Beauty. And, or course, Sounder.

Why were all the main human characters in these books boys and men? Why didn’t I care?

I am able to check the “stats” on this blog – the number of “Hits” and “Sessions” and “Page Views,” and though I can’t see who exactly is reading the blog, I can see which countries they are reading it from, what time of day most people read, how much time people spend on each page, etc. I really can’t be bothered with stuff like that so I only check the stats every single day. The minute I wake up.

In addition to learning how many people are reading my blog, I can also see what “search terms” people use to find their way here. These are the words that people type into Google or some other search engine. Some of these are very funny. “Ann Leary,” Anne Leary,” “Denis Leary,” are, of course, the most common search terms, but I also, almost daily, get “Lady Chatterley’s crisis.” I blogged about Lady Chatterley’s crisis once, but never dreamed that people actually googled this term. I’m not kidding, it’s a daily thing. Do people not understand what the crisis is all about? Are they looking for some kind of literary erotica site? Lady Chatterley’s Crisis would be a great name for such a site. Hmmmm, I have a sort of fun idea brewing in my head right now….

Today I also saw that “a bat just flew past my head and now I’m afraid I have rabies” was one of the “search terms” that led some poor hapless soul to my blog. I know this person’s pain well, having had bats not only whiz past my head but also clinging to my pajamas. I can understand being so deranged with fright that I might start entering fully formed sentences into search bars, expecting to be linked to the Center for Disease Control or, at least, an “All About Bats” site, and I can also imagine the dismay this poor individual (covered with invisible but deadly, rabies-laden bat spittle) must have felt when he or she landed here.

This week, though, my favorite search term is: “christian novels with clamshell railroad washington coast.” Yes, somebody googled that phrase and found their way here. And, if you’re still with us, my Christian bookworm friend, I too love the clamshell railroad/ Washington Coast book genre, but can’t recall ever blogging about it. Nonetheless, welcome!