Olive Kitteridge

I just finished reading Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, and it was one of my favorite reads in recent years. I read Strout's debut novel, Amy and Isabelle, years ago, and found it breathtaking.

Olive Kitteridge is a novel in stories, mostly centered around the oafish and oblivious Olive, a schoolteacher and pharmacist's wife, but also the folks who live in her small Maine town. I love character-driven stories and this book is all about character. Each short story has its own story arc, and is beautiful independently.

But through the collection of stories, the reader follows Olive wading through life with oblivion, anger, and sadness. Yet it's her brief moments of self-awareness -- she is very observant, but about everyone else and rarely herself -- that are startling in their simplicity.

Strout won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for this beautiful book. I think it's a must-read for writers who want to study the art of characterization.

Books on the Beach

I was in Mexico for a beach vacation last week, and I'd say the number of books rivaled the number of bikinis. To my delight, everyone was reading! Because we all know the publishing industry isn't quite at the top of its game these days, (I do so love the idea of giving books as Christmas presents this year -- help an author out!) it was so refreshing to see books doing their thing: helping people relax and taking them into another world.

At one point when I was walking on the beach, I decided I wanted some stats on how many people were reading. It could've been the strawberry daiquiri-induced haze, but it seemed like all I saw were books. So I started to pay attention to just how many.

There is nothing sweeter really, than a couple reading side by side under a beach umbrella. Well, perhaps it could've been Tommy, who was reading one of the Twilight tomes on the flight home. Tommy, who wears boxers with green shamrocks and carries his wife's purple polka-dot Kate Spade shoulder bag. Tommy, who wore a T-Shirt with parrots on the back that read "Meet the Squawkers." Tommy, who's wife, I assumed, wrote the long, curvy, swirly inscription to him on the inside of his book. I'm going to take a leap of faith and say that wasn't Stephanie Meyer's handwriting.

But back to the beach: me walking along, searching out readers, starting to deduce that at least a third of the people had books on their bellies. Then I wanted to know who they were reading. I could spot some covers in an instant: Picolt, Brown, Meyer, Weiner, Irving. I felt foiled when I saw books in foreign languages. I stared harder at everyone, trying to distinguish the covers I didn't recognize. And suddenly I was staring right at a woman's bare breasts. Sorry lady, I was really looking at your book, I swear. At that point I gave up on data collection and focused on the surf.

Beach: relaxing. Frozen drinks: relaxing. Books: relaxing. By my little survey in the Riviera Maya, the publishing industry is doing just fine.

The Lost Girls Book Review

Travel junkies, hop on over to the The Lost Girls to see my book review of The New Age of Adventure: Ten Years of Great Writing, a collection of travel articles from National Geographic Adventure magazine.

FTC, I don't even know what to do about you since all the book review fuss you made has kinda died down. But yes, I got this book for free. It was delicious.

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson is now available on paperback. I know Joshilyn from her so-hilarious-you-will-spit-Diet-Coke-out-of-your-eye-socket blog, Faster Than Kudzu. Joshilyn doesn't blog so much about writing, but a lot about funny things that go on in her household and I would definitely say that she has a higher ratio of funny to non-funny than the average household. Maybe this is because she has kids.

Anyway, she also is very talented at using all caps for emphasis instead of italics and NOT making it sound like she's screaming at you. I think this is very interesting skill and I'm not sure how she pulls it off.

I have a copy of her book Between, Georgia here in the living room. It's in my "To Read" queue, and if the book I'm supposed to be reading next for book club doesn't come in from the library soon, I am going to have to dig into this thing. I was excited that I read Joshilyn's blog, went to my local library branch (yes, I'm in Chicago but the branch near my house is just teeny) and there was her book on the shelf. I felt famous just for checking it out.

I feel bad that I didn't buy her book, since that's what authors really like you to do. But with the economy and all, I imposed a no book buying rule at the start of this year, and let me tell you that I am reading more books than ever.
Courtesy of the fabulous Chicago Public Library (and likely any library near you), you can request any book you like online and the library will send you a nice email when it arrives at your local branch.

So even though I haven't started Between, Georgia (okay, I read the first page when I checked it out and I was hooked and it also made me laugh) and I've never read The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, I can still heartily recommend Joshilyn's books solely by the quality and high level of fun in her blog.

Because we all know a good blog means a good book.

P.S. Joshilyn is hosting a little contest where if you visit her blog and make a comment, you'll be entered into a drawing for a free book. And if you post about The Girl Who Stopped Swimming on your blog or Facebook or MySpace, you'll be entered twice. Check out her blog for the details. And spread the word about a nice and funny lady who writes books for a living.

Update: The Girl Who Stopped Swimming just made the 7/7/09 New York Times Bestseller list!