Stephen King says writers need to do two things.
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010
The first is write a lot, which I am trying very hard to do, though not all of what I am writing is what I necessarily want to be writing — whatever works to keep the chops up, I think, is enough for now.
The second is read a lot, which is something I have been good at for a very long time. My mother used to dread when the Scholastic and Troll catalogs would get given out in class, when I was in grammar school; I suspect her wallet might actually have shrunk in fear those days. I would try to control myself, I would, but I just couldn’t help circling nearly every book in the thin paper catalogs, unless they were about sports. Sports I didn’t do, but every other genre was fair game. To my mother’s – and my family’s – credit, I usually managed to get most of what I circled. By the time the next catalog came out, I’d have devoured every single title and was ready for more.
It hasn’t changed much. I can spend hours in a bookstore, especially used bookstores, and book catalogs will still end up folded and marked with all the titles I want. Now that it’s my wallet shrinking in fear, I do exercise some control, at least when it comes to full-priced books. Clearance tables, garage sale boxes and library sales are fair game, however, and will usually result in my coming home with at least a dozen more to add to the stacks and piles that litter every room in my house. I have also become quite adept at culling the stacks and shelves on a regular basis, more so now that I’ve discovered a local used bookstore that deals in trades and credits. So the house is not as covered with books as it could be, a fact of which I remind my husband on a regular basis.
I tend to read three books at a time. One book is the car book. It lives in the car and is there for me when I find myself in need of a book — stuck in line at DMV, for example, or in need or reading material when someone else is driving. There is the purse book, which occasional does double duty as the office book; the latter part is pretty self-explanatory and the former means I always have a book when I am eating in a restaurant by myself (something I actually quite enjoy doing). Then there is the house book, which is the book I read in the house. Three books, at any given time, save those times when one book holds my complete attention, which does happen from time to time.
So I’ve got the reading a lot thing covered, at least. Here is the list of my current three books.
The car book: The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton — I’ve been working on this one for a while; car books tend to take the longest, since they live in the car. It’s reasonably entertaining and fluffy, with some real moments of emotional candor and wisdom. I will be interested to see how it ends.
The purse book: A Fistful of Charms by Kim Harrison — This is the fourth book in an urban fantasy series known as The Hollows; there are eight books so far. These are my beach read fluff books. They are not, so far anyway, what I would consider the height of the genre. The main character is not a favorite and I often want to reach into the pages and slap her around a little bit. But the secondary characters are interesting and I am enjoying the strange politics of The Hollows itself.
The house book: The Naming of the Beasts by Mike Carey — I am nearly done with this, the fifth Felix Castor novel. This book and series is definitely up in the heights of urban fantasy. This latest installment is gripping and tense, and I have been forcing myself to read slowly since I have no idea when book 6 is coming. And book 6 will end the series! The heartbreak. Good thing I plan to reread this series. Often.
I am also lucky enough to do book reviews for Horror Web (www.horror-web.com), where I am known as Penny Dreadful. The books currently waiting reviews – all of which I will get to before the end of the week – are FEED (Mira Grant), Bite Me (Christopher Moore) and Felix Castor 4 & 5 (Thicker Than Water and the aforementioned Naming of the Beasts). Please do go to Horror Web and read some of my reviews, and poke around the site, too. It’s a fantastic resource for horror fans.
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