I read Kelly Corrigan's memoir, The Middle Place, years ago, a book which made me a fan. This very short video of Corrigan reading from her newest book, Glitter and Glue, will speak to you parents (of kids of all ages). Take the time to listen. I think you can relate. She brought tears to my eyes and made me laugh. I expect you'll have a similar experience.

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On the Pleasure of Reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Carel Fabritius. The Goldfinch, 1654, oil on panel, 13 inches tall by 9 inches wide.

Book Summary
Theo Decker, a young boy in New York City, miraculously survives an act of terrorism at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art that takes the life of his mother. Alone and determined to avoid being lost in the city's foster care system as an orphan, Theo is first taken in by a wealthy family, then by his absent father, and finally by someone he meets as a result of an incident in the museum. He becomes enamored by the one thing that reminds him of his mother, a small, mysteriously captivating painting, The Goldfinch, the painting displayed at the top of this post, that eventually draws Theo into the art underworld.

On the Pleasure of Reading The Goldfinch
It's been decades since I've had the leisure to read a book as long as Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. Closing in on 800 pages (in the e-book version), the book was an investment I wasn't sure I wanted to make; it was a 'maybe' selection on my weekly trip to the library.  Its opening sentence captured me:

While I was still in Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years.

With that first sentence, and the intriguing paragraphs that follow it,  "drawn in" hardly describes the engagement I felt with this book.  I was pulled along by the artistry of its language, the mystery that shocks the mid-20s-aged Theo into telling the story of his adolescence, the tragedy that haunts him throughout his life, the fully drawn characters he meets, and the talisman that led him to the life he currently leads.

I kept the library book for the week I'd been allowed to have it, long enough to help me understand that this was a book I'd probably want to savor. Because the library waiting list indicated that 30 others waited for the same pleasure, I was forced to return it.  And then my dilemma:  should I purchase the physical or the e-book?  I couldn't wait to get back to it.  The e-book version won for its immediate delivery.

Now that I have spent the better part of two weeks with The Goldfinch, the reviews that call the book "Dickensian", a well-worn cliché, honestly use that metaphor. It's a book full of quirky well-rounded characters, a tale of an orphan drawn into unfamiliar and aptly illustrated worlds, and an increasingly disturbing plotline that depicts art crime in thriller terms.  And once I had finished reading it, I returned to its beginning, in order to appreciate how deftly Tartt had closed the loop.  Then I went further.  I returned to enjoy the beauty of Tartt's language through some of the passages I'd highlighted, because her skillful descriptions often made me pause, with their artistry and their close observation of place and character.  Such as this rich description of a significant character I eventually wished I could know in real life:

He was six foot four or six five, at least: haggard, noble-jawed, heavy, something about him suggesting the antique photos of Irish poets and pugilists that hung in the midtown pub where my father liked to drink. His hair was mostly gray, and needed cutting, and his skin an unhealthy white, with such deep purple shadows around his eyes that it was almost as if his nose had been broken. Over his clothes, a rich paisley robe with satin lapels fell almost to his ankles and flowed massively around him, like something a leading man might wear in a 1930s movie: worn, but still impressive.

If you're looking for a long read that builds slowly and artistically to a nail-biting conclusion, you might want to consider The Goldfinch. It's a classic Bildungsroman that asks some of the bigger questions about adversity, art, meaning, and love.

Donna Tartt. The Goldfinch. New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2013. 755 pp.

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NaNoWriMo - A Personal Retrospective

I had participated in NaNoWriMo every year from 2005 through 2011, enjoying the exhilaration of rapid writing each time.  A few of those years, I blogged about my experiences, and once even wrote with friends in Second Life.

As a result I have seven drafts of novels I would never have written had I not participated. And I learned more from those experiences about the benefits of rapid writing than I care to recount in this post.

But all seven of those novels languished in the months (and years) following NaNo. Not only did I do nothing with them, but reviewing, completing, and editing them daunted and pained me beyond my tolerance. Perhaps I will find the courage to rebirth and nurture one of them toward publication at some point.

Writing during the years since, I've learned that, at this point in my life, my style lends itself much better to writing slowly. I've returned to the paper journals and notebooks I'd long ago abandoned in favor of the "faster, better" laptop and tablet.  Keeping the hand moving, writing until the fingers cramp and the wrist requires shaking out, synchronizes my body with the fluid dream I'm trying to bring to life on the page.  Blogging seems to yield to technology; but then I'd made my living for decades from writing non-fiction prose.

My days of NaNo may be over, but my appreciation for the pure joy of writing that NaNoWriMo gave me continues to shine in memory.  Good luck to those of you who are immersed in it this month.  May you all become NaNoWriMo Winners!

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Neil Gaiman on Writing: From The Nerdist Podcast

Great advice in this short (4:53) video of film "writers" struggling and Neil Gaiman's podcast voiceover.

If you’re only going to write when you’re inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you will never be a novelist — because you’re going to have to make your word count today, and those words aren’t going to wait for you, whether you’re inspired or not. So you have to write when you’re not “inspired.” -- Neil Gaiman

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Kindle First - New Books, at No Cost to Prime Members

Amazon's approach to combining publishing with sales, marketing, and merchandising sometimes surprises.  With its new Kindle First, the company once again innovates and leaves traditional publishing in the dust.

Kindle First, a new program announced by the company on Friday, offers Amazon Prime members access to a few selected new books completely free, ahead of their official publication dates.

Here's how it works, according to Amazon:
Each month, editors at Amazon Publishing select books from among the retailer's most popular categories. Those books are available one month ahead of their official release. Along with each title are a note of recommendation and a behind-the-scenes view of the book and its author. Just choose the title you want to download, and it's added to your Kindle library.

Prime members can sign up to receive an e-mail each month that details the new titles available at no cost. As with all other Kindle titles, the book you select can be read on any device equipped with Amazon's free Kindle app.

The first titles available to Prime members can be viewed here.

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