What are you reading? seems to be a go-to question among friends and colleagues and family, especially in the summer months when we allow for such rewarding but hard to find time for endeavors. During July and August school children sign up for reading programs, beach novels get traded sand and all between besties, and adults of all degrees become literary critics with ease pronouncing and denouncing across their social media platforms. I too enjoyed a few novels in between the relentless weekly New Yorker. Whatever you are feeling today, joy over Taylor & Travis, excitement about Alcaraz’s buzz and level of excellence, or despair over the latest school shooting, marking over 430 such massacres of children since Columbine, fright over the walk-out of science and medical experts from the C.D.C., terror over Putin’s control of the current US President, anger towards the cowardly GOP dismantling voting rights, citizen rights, or anything that would require a conversation, horror over the wars still raging in Ukraine and the Middle East, in any case you just might find a way out of going crazy by reading a novel. Yes, fiction to start. But history and memoir and art and poetry and on and on through the whole myriad of genres will all guide you through the darkest of days and longest of nights.
Tag Archives: Novels
Next Moves
I spend part of each day wandering, lost in my thoughts while I traipse atop a grand ridge. Sometimes in the cool of the morning mist or later in the sun-drenched heat of afternoon, but my favorite time to walk is when I catch the last burst before a dusky black lays upon the final moments of the day. There have been rattle snakes, coyotes, roadrunners and quail, even a bob cat, with multiple colonies of bunnies and an abundance of ground squirrels all passing along the foot path, but as I often stroll alone, I enjoy the company. Wandering is a common blog topic for me as I suppose like many writers I find the pedestrian occupation goes hand in hand with sorting out troublesome characters or plot lines or next moves.
Wandering
Like most, I am enriched by words. Writing them, reading them, listening to and endlessly speaking them. Words arrive as gifts, born out of my imagination or within the printed material piled up throughout our home. In Kerri Andrews’ book, Wanderers, she wrote, “On foot, Woolf walks out into the fields and into her mind.” The two activities, walking and writing, mesh for me as well. Virginia Woolf cements the idea in her May 11, 1920 diary entry, “Directly one gets to work one is like a person walking, who has seen the country stretching out before.” On my daily wandering, I think endlessly about the characters dancing about in my head, as vividly as I sort out real-life dilemmas that need the same attention to pacing. Walking connects us to all that swirls about before pen hits paper or brush slides over canvas or spice gets sprinkled into the dish. Walking journeys us along the path inside and out. Books do too.
Nine Cent Girl 