Reading With Robin: 5 New Books + What Authors are Reading Now
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Here are 5 new books that I’m very excited about. I checked in with each of the authors to find out what excites them about their own books. As always I love to hear what everyone is reading and the authors are no exception. Dive right in and happy reading!!
Marisa de los Santos – The Precious One
For me, the characters are always the most exciting part of any book I write. It's how I think about a book launch, actually: my characters going out into the world for the first time! It's both exciting and nerve-wracking. Taisy and Willow mean so much to me. I can't wait for readers to meet them!
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTI have a bookseller friend in Bryn Mawr who always makes wonderful and unexpected recommendations to me. The last time I was there, she pressed A REUNION OF GHOSTS by Judith Claire Mitchell into my hands and said, "Marisa, you really, really have to read this," and she was right. It's about three sisters in New York City, and it's hilarious, moving, full of wonderful wordplay, and just plain captivating.
When I told my lawyer the story of my difficult relationship with my acid-head-turned-wannabe-mystic-dad, as I planned to recount it in my memoir, Good Girl, he said, "I keep waiting for the part where he burns you with cigarettes." Luckily for me, I never experienced anything that traumatic. Most of us don't. I've read incredible memoirs by women who have suffered truly harrowing events. But I think the more common experience is something like mine, where my father's compulsive gambling, resulting shame and spiritual seeking, made him largely absent from my life. My book is an attempt to explore the more subtle damage done to a young girl's self-esteem and sense of worth when her dad is absent. Why daughters need dads and what happens when they don't have them
Katherine Heiny's wonderful new collection, Single, Carefree, Mellow, made me realize how rare it is to read a book that is laugh out loud funny. She has a great, observant wit. I can't wait to read my writing partner Amelia Gray's new collection Gutshot. She just had a short story from it in The New Yorker, which is like the holy grail of short fiction. And my friend Jillian Lauren wrote a new memoir that promises to be beautiful and real, just like her. It's called Everything You Ever Wanted, and it's about adopting her son from Africa. Her memoir Some Girls inspired me greatly while I was writing Good Girl.
(Deb Walsh of the Living Room and Reading With Robin are hosting Sarah Tomlinson for a very special Pop-Up Lit event on 4/22. Click here for details)
ALICE EVE COHEN – The Year My Mother Came Back
Writing the book helped me realize that I had to walk in my mother’s shoes before I could understand her. It allowed me, finally, to make peace with her. Ultimately, my book is a love story—for my mother and my daughters.
My mother was a left-wing intellectual, a sociologist, a college professor, a civil rights advocate. When I was a child, she was a devoted mom who absolutely adored me and my two sisters—dedicated, warm, nurturing, protective to a fault. At the same time, she was trying to build her career, and was frustrated by the conflicting demands of being a wife and mother. She was a woman of her times and ahead of her time; an early feminist caught in that classic, pre-women’s movement dilemma. My mother’s struggles feel very relevant today.
I’m re-reading the fascinating novel, A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING by Ruth Ozeki. It’s a novel that reads like a memoir. Reading it gave me courage to write a memoir that reads like a novel.
Charles Dubow – Girl In The Moonlight
In many ways GIRL IN THE MOONLIGHT is about themes of love and redemption. How do we understand the powerful hold that love--or being loved--can have on our lives and alter our fate? What can we do when we realize that the lives we have led have been for nothing? It is possible to change our stars? To make up for the pain we have caused and the time we have wasted? I believe we can. It is never too late to do something good with our lives and to atone for our past sins.
I am currently reading several books: "The Boys in the Boat," by Daniel James Brown, a terrific book about the American crew that won at the 1936 Berlin Olympics; rereading Tolstoy's short stories; Jean Renoir's "Renoir, My Father," the biography of the painter Renoir by his son; "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak, which both my kids have now read in school and I thought I should find out why it's so popular, and was greatly impressed by the writing; and also rereading John Dos Passos' "USA" trilogy, one of my favorite books of all time and a masterpiece that not enough people seem to remember these days. I am waiting to read next "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr and "Winesburg, Ohio," by Sherwood Anderson.
(Charles Dubow is one of the five NY Times Bestselling authors who will be here to celebrate Summer Reading With Robin on June 24th at The Dunes Club in Narragansett, RI ) Sign up by 4/15 for your Swag Bag Surprise! This event will sell out.
Judith Claire Mitchell – A Reunion Of Ghosts
My novel, A Reunion of Ghosts, is the story of three sisters who intend to end their lives on the last day of the 20th century. First, though, they want to write their collective suicide note explaining their motivations. The novel is that suicide note, and it tells the stories not only of the three sisters, but of the generations proceeding theirs, all the way back to their great grandfather, the German-Jewish chemist who synthesized the first poison gas used in warfare. Weaving historical figures with invented characters, the novel examines the ills of the 20th century through the eyes of three women who, despite their sorrows, love each other fiercely and have wicked senses of humor.
I am currently reading Melissa Falcon Field’s first novel, What Burns Away, which is a sharply observed domestic drama about an unhappy wife who risks her marriage when her first love gets back in touch. That description doesn’t capture the tension and electric energy that keeps me turning the pages. I’m loving it!
I have lots of fabulous author experiences happening in the upcoming months. Check the events page of Reading With Robin for all information.
ROBIN KALL is Rhode Island’s own book maven. From author interviews to events with best-selling authors, Robin shares her love of books wherever and whenever possible. You can connect with Robin on Facebook and follow her on Twitter, or her website, which is updated constantly with all new author interviews and bookish information. Reading With Robin is on AM790 Fridays from 4-5pm and on I Heart Radio.
Coming up this Friday, April 17thth Robin’s guests will be: Holly Robinson author of Haven Lake and Ron Lieber NY Times Bestselling author of The Opposite of Spoiled
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