We started out attending a reading by Andre Dubus (author of House of Sand and Fog.) His new book is a story of a woman who is a stripper, who brings her young daughter to work with her one night because her usual babysitter is sick. The little girl gets kindnapped, and..well, I don't know what happens after that! The book totally drew me in, and the discussion afterwards was interesting and very funny.
Next we went to a reading by JoeAnn Hart. Her book was Addled, which takes place at a posh exclusive country club that has been invaded by a gaggle of geese. In a room of 25 guests, Stacey and I were the only ones who were stonefaced through the reading. The discussion was interesting, though. This woman's approach was completely opposite of Andre's! He said write, write, write--even though you may end up throwing a lot of it away, you never know what you're going to learn about your characters. She had a very narrow view of her characters, and seemed to have them all sketched out in her head before she started writing. He refuses to create an outline because he doesn't know what is going to happen in the story; she knows the beginning, middle, and end, and writes different sections as she goes. Interesting.
After lunch with Bill and Jen, and a relaxing cup of tea, Bill joined us for one more session--Investigating Crimes of the Century.
The panel consisted of two authors. Stephanie Schorow, who wrote about the Brinks Robbery, and Keith Ablow, who wrote about Scott Peterson. Keith was pretty pompous, but he had some really interesting tidbits about Scott's upbringing (his grandfather was murdered, his mother was placed in an orphanage, she gave up 2 children when she got pregnant as a teen, she gave up Scott's brother when he was a teenager, etc.)
I bought the book , and stood in line to get it signed by the author. Some wacko lamo lady cut me in line, and then asked the longest most roundabout question of the author. Whatever! Here's me and Jen trying to act sophisticated.
I read half of it last night, and will probably finish reading the second half tonight.
This morning, I went online and ordered the Andre Dubous book from Amazon.com. Hopefully I'll have it to read for vacation at the end of May. While there, I ordered a few books for Liam, so he'd have some to read on vacation, too. Both books are the first in a series--I'm hoping he gets hooked and we can buy the rest of the series throughout the summer.
The first is Nate the Great, about a young boy who solves mysteries. I have a feeling it might be a little bit like The Great Brain, which I loved when I was younger.I have to remember to tell Liam about "the case of the missing fingernail file" that Auntie wrote when she was younger!
The second is Henry and Mudge, about a young boy who doesn't have any brothers and sisters, and his best friend, his dog Mudge. Sound familiar?
I would bet $1M this is going to be a hit with Liam.
No comments:
Post a Comment