Wednesday, January 16, 2008

oh, she's good

I already can't, for the life of me, recall the particular web-surfing trail that landed me at Cheryl Klein's website and blog. Glad I found her, though. This article/outline/speech is just one of the many gems I've come across via a casual browse through her website archives. Good, nutritious stuff for writerly types.

Here's a snippet of the talk, wherein she writes about falling in love with a book:

"Last year I had a mad passionate affair with an adult novel called The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger—I read it on my lunch breaks, I rushed home from work to be with it, and once we stayed in bed together all weekend."

It made me think of the last book that made me feel this way (Water for Elephants), and why it is that the capricious muse of magical storytelling seems to alight on one author and not another.

What's the last book that either made you stay in bed all weekend or made you wish you could (bearing in mind, of course, that this is a family-friendly blog - lol)?

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:22 PM

    Oh my goodness! I can't believe it. The Time Traveller's Wife is my favorite book. I have read it five times in the last year. It is magical, happy, sad, imaginative, totally engrossing. The other books that have held me in their thrall would be The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Notebook, The Red Tent, The Last Days of Dogtown and The Mermaid's Chair.

    Jane

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  2. the book was The Mists of Avalon.

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  3. Jane, I started to read TTTW last year, but I had too much going on at the time and had to set it aside. Between your review and Ms. Klein's, I think I'll have to pick it up again.

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  4. Maiden, I remember when Mists came out, and it was HUGE. Didn't they end up making a movie or a mini-series out of it?

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  5. I read it last summer. It really is incredible! I kept trying to figure out how she kept track of everything and how she made it so plausible...but I knew it was good when I realized that I wasn't analyzing it anymore but just reading.

    Yesterday I finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman which is absolutely disturbing and horrifying and magical. I couldn't stay away from it. I'll have to re-read it. There are themes in it a mile deep. Not for everybody... but ultimately hopeful. I always wished I could write something fantastical but I end up with just plain old uncomfortable...

    (Okay, back into lurk-work mode for me.)

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  6. Heidi, I need to give Neil Gaiman another shot. I struggled with Ananzi Boys, and think I just wasn't in the right place psychologically to be reading that book at the time.

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