Monday, May 29, 2006

Newsletter # 84

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers

BOOKS FOR READERS is a free, independent newsletter written and produced by Meredith Sue Willis, copyright Meredith Sue Willis 2006. To have this Newsletter sent to you by e-mail, send a blank email to Readerbooks-subscribe@topica.com. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to Readerbooks-unsubscribe @topica.com. Write to Meredith Sue Willis at MeredithSueWillis@gmail.com. Unless you specifically request otherwise, your responses or selections from them may be included in future Newsletters.

For a list of back issues, click here

Newsletter # 84
May 29, 2006
Memorial Day


DEADLINE FOR ONLINE WRITING CLASS APPROACHES!

My online summer writing class, Techniques from Film for Fiction and Memoir Writers, still has a few places left, but apply soon. Learn more at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/techniques2006.html or http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/mswclasses.html .

I feel like I’ve been working on web pages more than reading lately, but I have gobbled several books for entertainment and information, and these are all recommended. That is, they are worth your time in reading them, although I do have my reservations.

First is a highly praised recent historical novel about an English town that quarantines itself when the Bubonic Plague strikes. Year of Wonders is by Geraldine Brooks, an accomplished journalist and nonfiction writer, was engrossing and entertaining and with lots of dramatic arc. It probably has too many events, though: not only are there all possible varieties of plague but it also has the lynching of a witch, some zealous self-flagellants, lots of child birth, murder, etc. This is also another decent book with (to my taste) the wrong ending. The ending has the narrator– a 17th century working class woman– escaping to a kind of Moslem Eden where she is taken into a harem and trained to be a doctor. It strains credulity, but that bothers me less than that I think it devalues the more likely outcome: that Anna would have married the widowed rector and lived quietly, appreciated for her local skills as a midwife and housewife. I have this feeling that Brooks drew back with feminine and post modern scorn from the ordinary obviousness of the most likely. It’s a good read, though, terrifically researched. I’ve always been a sucker for the Plague, ever since my high school discovery of the risqué Forever Amber and, later, Daniel Defoe’s Journal of a Plague Year .

I also read with considerable admiration the artful Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. This is my first Winterson book, and I hear that each of her books is quite different from the next. This one has some outstanding writing, witty, humorous, sexy: “It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. A precise emotion seeks a precise expression. If what I feel is not precise then should I call it love? It is so terrifying, love, that all I can do is shove it under a dump bin of pink cuddly toys and send myself a greetings card saying ‘Congratulations on you Engagement....’”

The writing is humorous and exploratory and lovely, but the story line sometimes seems heavy handed . Winterson, of course, knows what she’s doing– I guess the question is, does knowing it mean it works? This in reference to plot, especially the ending again, not to the writing page by page.

Then there was A Summons to Memphis by the late great Peter Taylor. The novel is an indirectly told story whose climax is a couple of elderly men embracing. There’s a delightful confidence to the curling indirection of the narrative. I expected it to straighten itself out eventually into a broad Mississippi of a book, but it stayed narrow: the curtailed aspirations of the narrator and the twisted father-love of his two big sisters. I totally believe that the father ruined everyone’s life, but on the other hand, here in the 21st century in the northeast, it feels like it would take more than moving the family from Nashville to Memphis. I had this odd reaction of both loving the book and also being repelled by a certain curdled quality of the end. A Wikipedia article insists that everyone is reconciled at the end. I think they are just all shrunken and frustrated. See for yourself at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Summons_to_Memphis .

Finally, a brief but enthusiastic recommendation for two nonfiction books, Islam, by Karen Armstrong, a little work of genius that tells you incredibly much in a short space about the youngest of the great monotheisms. It’s only 187 pages in an extra small sized book, but it brought me immeasurably closer to understanding the difference between Sunni and Shia (the Shias are the ones who have a thing for Great Leaders, going back to Ali and Hussein, the descendants of Muhammad who were cruelly murdered by bad leaders.) Armstrong is also very good on the egalitarian roots of Islam.

Also highly recommended: Leaving Mother Lake by Yang Erche Namu & Christine Mathieu. This describes a matrilineal society in which sex is recreation and family is centered around a female-led household economy that requires male participation but not sexual exclusivity. Each adult woman has a private “flower” room where she entertains whoever she pleases, changing men often or rarely.

Does this sound like fun?

Meredith Sue Willis

Solicitations

I’m in the final stages of a summer reading list, and I earnestly solicit your favorite books that are of any genre but (a) published by small presses or (b) under-published by big presses (that is, essentially given no publicity, (3) out-of-print, or (d) otherwise in need of a small boost. Feel free to include your own books.

Thirty Great Years for Hanging Loose Press!

Speaking of small presses– since 1976 Hanging Loose Press has been publishing poetry, stories, novels, and a magazine that includes work by both adults and teens. Hanging Loose Press has published Sherman Alexie, Robert Hershon, Bill Zavatsky, Ha Jin, Mark Pawlak, Jeni Olin, Joanna Fuhrman, Charles Wyatt, Steven Schrader, Bill Zavatsky– the list goes on and on. They deserve your support– and you deserve their great books! Website is http://www.hangingloosepress.com .

Fred First's Slow Road Home: A Blue Ridge Book of Days

Fred First, biologist and naturalist, has collected the best of his newspaper column and blog about his life on a small property in Floyd County, Virginia. He and his wife chose this property in this location after much thought, and his life in these southwestern Virginia mountains is a conscious, indeed ideological choice– that is to say, he is attempting to live in a way that is exemplary and instructive to others. He believes that it is a good thing to garden in the summer and a good thing to chop wood and tend the wood stove in the winter. In particular, he believes that a meditative observation of nature is a good thing, and some of his paragraphs of description are as powerful as any I’ve ever read about nature.

These passages represent a very simple but very profound observing and opening to the world we live in, and even if there were only three instead of dozens, First’s book would be a valuable project: “Snow falls onto the creases of my parka,” he writes, “and does not melt. What had looked through the windows like falling flakes are not flakes but aggregations– light loose thatches of tiny ice needles, linear and sharp-tipped–loose feathers of filamentous crystal down There is no sight of a six-sided lacy flake in any of it. The locks fall from the shoulders of my jacket onto my arms, white against the dark of my coat like my hair short from barber’s shears, slivers of gray and white, they tumble softly to the ground.”

Of a meteor shower he writes, “The light of a setting full moon and the wet haze in the predawn air washed out the weakest stars. But it was dark enough. In thirty minutes, I saw perhaps 200 meteors. Most were zips at the edge of vision. Some were spectacular, lighting up the valley in less than a blink, like a photographic flash. Others left persistent trails across the sky in the way an artist would lightly dash a perfectly straight line on black canvas with a luminescent pale blue pigment with a fine-tipped brush. One split into two, each fragment sizzling off to die dark death, extinguished in the protective shield of atmosphere.”

For more on SLOW ROAD HOME, including excerpts and how to order, go to http://goosecreekpress.pbwiki.com/FrontPage.


Ellen Bass Recommends

Ellen Bass writes, “Dan Gottlieb is my oldest friend. I've known him since I was five years old when we both lived on Main St. in Pleasantville, NJ– he in the apartment above his family's Army and Navy store and I above my family's liquor store. Dan is one of two people who I consider to be my spiritual teachers. Whenever I see him, something important shifts inside me. I wish each of you could have Dan for an old friend--and his book makes that just a little bit possible....I'm so happy to be able to introduce you to him through this book. It was published in April and is available at bookstores, online, and from Dan's website http://letterstosam.com.” The book is Letters To Sam , by Daniel Gottlieb. A Grandfather's Lessons on Love, Loss, and the Gifts of Life For more information on Dan & Letters to Sam, visit http://www.letterstosam.com. The author's royalties will benefit Cure Autism Now and other children's charities.

Jack Wills Recommends...

Professor of Literature emeritus and restorer of old mills Jack Wills recommends Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat. Jack writes, “Friedman's book is about how the earth has been ‘flattened’ by computer and other technologies and how this flattening has, along with a newly trained work force (in India, China, and elsewhere) and significant political changes (fall of the Berlin Wall, move to a capitalistic economy, etc.), created a ‘triple convergence’ which is offering unprecedented opportunities for people all over the world but also (with al-Quaeda and other angry, alienated groups) new perils. I consider this book a must for anybody who truly wants to understand the world of the twenty-first century; it might even shake up one's long-held political beliefs.”

Lee Maynard Recommends:

Lee Maynard writes of Piers Paul Read’s book The Templars: The Dramatic History of the Knights Templar, the Most Powerful Military Order of the Crusades. “I've waded through the first third of the book and am totally overdosed on names of characters who somehow figured into the history of the Templars. I enjoy such information, but enough is enough, already. And, his style doesn't exactly sing. I find myself aching for a Templar book written by Barbara Tuchman. I'm just now to the actual founding of the order. A very strange bunch of guys. (Yep, all guys. They weren't allowed to "consort" with women. A Templar knight, by rule, could not "touch, embrace, kiss, or otherwise 'know' a woman." Hmmmm, I was never cut out to be a Templar.)”

Writing Workshop for Young People

The Fifth annual Gull Lake Conference for Young Writers (aged 16-22) will be held July 24-28, 2006 at Kellogg Biological Station and Conference Center in Michigan. The conference offers young writers a week to live a monk’s existence, to devote themselves to their craft while living on beautiful Gull Lake. For information, get in touch with John Rybicki,7546 S. Crooked Lake, Delton, MI 49046, 269-623-3099, email: jjrybick@yahoo.com.

Writing Workshops for Everyone:

With Roberta Allen:
(1) New York City: Her new Tuesday night workshop starts June 7, 2006 from 7:30-10 PM. It meets twice monthly for 8 sessions (4 months) and costs $400. (2) Woodstock, NY: The new Monday night workshop starts June 12 from 7-9:30 PM.. It meets twice monthly for 8 sessions (4 months) and with the special $50 discount only costs $350. Trial class for first timers costs $50. Write to Roberta Allen at Roall@aol.com or see her website at http://www.robertaallen.com .
With Ellen Bass:
WRITING AND KNOWING. A Poetry Workshop with Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux, and Joseph Millar August 20-25, 2006 at Esalen, Big Sur, California. “We will write poems, share our writing, and hear what our work touches in others. We'll also read model poems by contemporary poets and discuss aspects of the craft. But mainly this will be a writing retreat-- time to explore and create in a supportive community. Though we'll focus on poetry, prose writers who want to enrich their language will find it a fertile environment.” Esalen fees cover tuition, food and lodging and vary according to accommodations--ranging from $475 to $1060. The least expensive rate is for sleeping bag space which can be very comfortable, but it's limited. All arrangements and registration must be made directly with Esalen. Please register directly with Esalen at 831-667-3005 or visit http://www.esalen.org .

Writers Conference for Women

Shelley Ettinger points us to what sounds like an excellent writers’ conference for women: http://www.flanked.org/conference.html .

Dee Rimbaud Leaving for the Itinerant Life-- Free Books

Dee Rimbaud is relocating to Spain where he’ll be living with his family in a camper without regular internet access. He is presently giving away PDF copies of his novel STEALING HEAVEN FROM THE LIPS OF GOD as well as his award-winning poetry collection, DROPPING ECSTASY WITH THE ANGELS. If you would like to order a free PDF copy of either book (or both) email him at dee@thunderburst.co.uk . Follow his progress at his website and blogs at
http://www.thunderburst.co.uk/ , http://aaron-aardvark.blogspot.com/ , and http://deerimbaud.blogspot.com/ .

Adam Sexton's Novel-in-Progress

Adam Sexton is blogging a satiric novel, and invites responses from potential readers:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1ZM4UT77J4BXU/ref=cm_blog_dp_pdp/102-8945424-3852952 .

Events for Folks in Virginia (That's the Old Dominion State, not to be confused with West-By-Gosh-Virginia)

Here’s a calendar of literary events in Old Virginia: http://www.vabook.org/calendar/index.cfm.

Site for Online Book Comparison Shopping

Booksprice at http://www.booksprice.com bills itself as a “free innovative service of finding the best price on a purchase of several books together.” It has the advantage of showing what the price WITH shipping will be a the store you choose, plus you are able to create a “comparison cart” to see what the total cost of books with shipping will be in various combinations of online stores.
BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS NEWSLETTER with no associated website are available from your public library and your local independent bookstore as well as online and at the mall. Online, I often go first to Alibis at http://www.alibris.com. For other online shopping, try Bookfinder at http://www.bookfinder.com; http://www.cheapbooks.info/ ; and http://www.allbookstores.com. An especially good source for used and out-of-print books is Advanced Book Exchange at http://www.abebooks.com. To buy online through independent booksellers, try http://www.booksense.com. You can also, of course, get almost any book from http://www.amazon.com or http://www.bn.com, but keep in mind that both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble avoid unionization and are responsible for the demise of many independent booksellers.

RESPONSES
Please send responses and suggestions directly to me. Unless you request otherwise, your responses may be edited and published in this newsletter. Please e-mail Meredith Sue Willis at MeredithSueWillis@gmail.com. (Note different email for this newsletter correspondence).




Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Green days and CSS

We've finally been getting some rain, and when it stops, I go down to the garden and dig and put in the tomatoes. ALso sowed cucumbers today, laid out some salt hay. I have this love of my garden being without straight lines-- that is, a plant a corner and then dig up another part for plants to set out, and then I tear up the overwintered lettuce, and sow fall greens there. I like the way one thing leads to another with salt hay paths where I find myself walking. Plus the whole thing is covered with deer netting, strung from posts from the old swing set-- my little dirt beds and salt hay paths under the great spider web of Anti-Bambi.

And the other thing fascinating me is CSS, which I am suddenly using on my web pages, with encouragement from Joel. For those who really understand it, there is a kind of magic, viz. The Zen Garden examples. Digging in the dirt, paths just big enough for me, squatting at the edges because the netting overhead hangs low, and borrowing code for web pages-- these seem to be my obsessions this month.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Anniversaries, reunions, tap dance performances

May 9

It’s our anniversary today, Andy and me, 24 years married, twelve before that living together. Our first date, April 15, 1965, Joel born twenty years to the day later.

Last night, Carol, Robin, Burt and I made a Powerpoint Presentation to the South Orange trustees. We had already made it to Maplewood. A little glitch with getting the PP started (I had never done it before!) but Trustee Stacey Jennings came down to help out. Lots of compliments. That was my third Coalition meeting of the day yesterday: 7:30 a.m. at the high school, 2:45 with a reporter, the 7:30 p.m. Today, I go to New York for a Hamilton Stone Editions co-operative meeting, but I've pretty much cleared the next three days for advancing on Melisandre. Three days with gardening and writing the main center, that would be a delight. I’ll have to take the phone off the hook to do it.


May 8

This is what I see when I take the train in to New York. Andy took it on the way to the Cousins' party on Sunday, much fun with Berliners, Rabins, Weinbergers, and Nickelsbergs: the children and other descendents of Mary and Hymie: Lennie, Roslyn, Sherry and Irene.

May 6

This is from last week-end, "What's On Tap?" Joel's tap dance group at Brown. Joel the standing guy. They were all totally excellent.

May 5

This is Cinco de Mayo, not a holiday I celebrate, but it feels like a good day to have be special. I've got an entire day with no meetings, which doens't mean there is nothing on my mind or nothing I have to do. In particular I have to get an article drafted for the Coalition Newsletter, but I'm trying to get deep enough into Melisandre to feel really in touch.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Books for Readers Newsletter #83

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers

BOOKS FOR READERS is a free, independent newsletter written and produced by Meredith Sue Willis, copyright Meredith Sue Willis 2006. To have this Newsletter sent to you by e-mail, send a blank email to Readerbooks-subscribe@topica.com. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to Readerbooks-unsubscribe @topica.com. Write to Meredith Sue Willis at MeredithSueWillis@gmail.com. Unless you specifically request otherwise, your responses or selections from them may be included in future Newsletters.

For a list of back issues, click here

Newsletter # 83
May 6, 2006

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

1. I’M TEACHING A SUMMER ONLINE CLASS CALLED TECHNIQUES FROM FILM
FOR FICTION AND MEMOIR WRITERS See http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/techniques2006.html or http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/mswclasses.html .

2. FOR THOSE IN THE NEW YORK AREA, I’M TEACHING ADVANCED NOVEL WRITING THIS SUMMER AT NYU STARTING MAY 24 . SEE THE CATALOG AT http://www.scps.nyu.edu/docs/pdf/SCPS_Writing.pdf .

3. IF YOU”RE IN NEW JERSEY ON MAY 13 THE DAY BEFORE MOTHER’S DAY, COME TO MY SPECIAL READING FOR KIDS AND ADULTS AT THE GOAT CAFÉ AT 4:00 P.M. 21 SOUTH ORANGE AVENUE IN SOUTH ORANGE.

4. THERE’S AN INTERVIEW OF ME BY NATHAN LESLIE IN THE NEWEST ISSUE OF MAIN STREET RAG.

And now, a little less about my activities and a little more about books and reading. I think I am reading with less and less skill, or is it less and less attention? I was aware (21 years ago, to be exact) that I was reading less when my son was born and I was pressed for time. But I think there are more pressures on reading than mere time management. There are the other media, of course: television never particularly bothered me, or movies. But the Internet has affected how I read, especially as I have become a small-time web master. I think I’ve developed a nervous eye–as if the physiology of reading had changed. I also find myself sometimes wanting to “click” on a phrase in a book to get more information. Obviously I DO read, although not a lot compared to some of my friends and colleagues. Indeed, one of the reasons I began this newsletter was to get suggestions that would help me choose my reading better. From my personal point of view, the newsletter has been highly successful: a lot of my reading now comes directly from what people suggest to me here.

Meanwhile, I’ve been engaged in conversations in my two spring writing classes at NYU about what is literature– including the inevitable discussion about whether the Da Vinci Code is readable (no one really claims it is worth reading!) The problem seems to me to be that literary art and entertaining reading have become ever-more-separated. Some writers, centered often but not always around university writing programs, seem to write challenging work that demands to be studied. This kind of writing is not for relaxing at the end of a long day. What is valued most is a kind of beautiful, thickly layered, self-conscious language that often makes heavy, indirect references to other literature. At the opposite end of the continuum is entertaining schlock, written for nothing but relaxation and sensation and easy transference to the movies. In the old days, when novels were the major entertainment game in town, there was more opportunity for work that was both entertaining and literary as well as perhaps striving for an ethical apprehension of life.

Here’s where I reveal myself: I yearn to read and write like a twenty-first century George Eliot– to be at once layered and dense but also readable by the many. I find myself impatient with some of our finest writing, especially when I realize that all the complexities and carefully balanced sentences often center on the experiences (here comes Madame Curmudgeon) of brilliant young people whose sharpest adult experiences are about sex and alcohol and drugs. Where is the great literature that also tells me how to live my next thirty or forty years? Some recent popular literature that comes close, in my opinion, to being all these things includes MIDDLESEX and ATONEMENT, a lot of Pat Barker’s work, occasional work of Phillip Roth. Toni Morrison does the balancing act. You’ll send me more, I hope.

Meanwhile, I made the sacrifice and read the DA VINCI CODE, a book that is WAY over at the fast food end of the book buffet. A lot of people I know who take literature seriously couldn’t finish it, and the people who did are apologetic: “I know it’s really badly written but...” I rationalized my ability to finish it by deciding it isn’t a novel at all but a puzzle. That is to say, it’s more like one of the elaborate Role Playing Game computer programs in which you pick a “role” to be and then go through many adventures trying to figure out the path to the prize. The only person who is remotely like a character in the DA VINCI CODE is the albino monk, who has a backstory and wears a leather strap with spikes aimed in at his flesh of his thigh. If he feels a little low, he tightens the strap. The rest of the alleged characters simply say the lines that take us one step closer to solving the puzzle. There are chases and mild surprises and red herrings, but everything is superficial, and the fun is simply what happens. Period. The trick is to read it very, very rapidly.

And now for something completely different: I read THE THREE CORNERED WORLD by Natsume Sōseki because my sister Christine Willis told me that my nephew Alex Kato-Willis, a musician and composition major in college, admires it enormously. He says of the novel, “THE THREE CORNERED WORLD represents the epitome of gestalt. Its aesthetic is based on an objective purity and makes no effort to coerce the reader into feeling or understanding. THE THREE CORNERED WORLD is the pinnacle of literature and exists in an effortless conversation with those open to experiencing it.”

Also of interest, says my sister, is that THE THREE CORNERED WORLD was one of Glenn Gould's favorite books. According to Peter Ostwald's GLENN GOULD: THE ECSTASY AND TRAGEDY OF GENIUS, Gould in 1981 devoted a radio program to reading passages from the book.

I too admired the book, but I had my own reading experience with it. I thought there was irony and humor going on – a distance between the author and the narrator’s views. The premise is that a young man leaves the city hoping to live as an artist, to be cool and distant and dispassionate. He goes to an isolated inn, where there is a mysterious divorced woman who fascinates him. She seems to be reaching out to him. There is also a lot of quite wonderful writing about spring and mist and flowers, which the narrator sometimes criticizes for being too colorful and thus vulgar, just as he would criticize a painting (that HAS to be ironic, doesn’t it?). People appear and disappear in the dim night light and mist and behind screens. The narrator does not respond to the woman, he continues to keep his distance, thinking he might paint her, except that a particular quality is missing from her face. This is where I can’t tell how much distance there is between the writer and the narrator– to me, it is funny that the guy is trying so hard to be an objective artist, but never quite makes his painting. What is missing, it turns out, is that most Buddhist of qualities, compassion. At the end, all the main characters go to the train to see a young man off to war, and suddenly, in the narrator’s mind. thoughts of war become paramount, and simultaneously, he finally sees compassion in the woman’s face as her husband leaves on the train too. So, one realizes, the narrator, is also feeling compassion. Is he now really an artist? It’s a most interesting, book. I wish the translation was better– and that it had good notes.

Maybe hyperlinks?

Meredith Sue Willis

SOLICITATIONS
I’m working on a summer reading list. I am earnestly soliciting examples of good books of any genre that are (a) published by small presses, (b) under-published by big presses (that is, essentially given no publicity, (3) out-of-print, or (d)otherwise in need of a small boost. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO INCLUDE YOUR OWN BOOKS, although I especially like little notes of recommendation for the books.

MORE RECOMMENDATIONS
Kasumu Salawu recommends THE FAMISHED ROAD by Ben Okri as a powerful example of non-Aristotelean magical realism with reference to the Yoruba culture of Nigeria. You may read Dr. Salawu’s very interesting full review of the book at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0385425139 .
Students in my Spring 2006 “Making Your Novel Happen” course at NYU suggested two Booker Prize winners as having a lot of narrative drive– that is, their stories grab you and don’t let you go: IF NOBODY SPEAKS OF REMARKABLE THINGS by Jon McGregor and VERNON GOD LITTLE by DBC Pierre.
THE WHITE by Deborah Larsen is a fictionalized version of one of the endlessly fascinating narratives of the female captives of native Americans. This one fictionalizes the story of Mary Jemison, who eventually chose to marry into and stay with the Seneca tribe of New York. It’s a part of American history that I’d like to know more about: especially the realization by some of the captive women that being a woman in the Iroquois federation is probably a better state than living European style. This book didn’t give me the information I wanted– it is small and more poetical than historical, but it is quite lovely by its own lights.
IRIS SCHWARTZ NEWS
Iris Schwartz is half of a new book of poetry, AWAKENED: POETRY BY MADELINE ARTENBERG, POETRY BY IRIS N. SCHWARTZ. The book is now available from Rogue Scholars Press. See http://www.roguescholars.com . There will be a book party—with musical accompaniment & special guests for AWAKENED on Sunday, June 18, 2006, 6 p.m., at the Cornelia St. Café. Also, Iris’s poems “Insufficient” and “More than the Sum” will be forthcoming in the September 2006 issue of MOBIUS.
THE LITERARY SCENE IN BROOKLYN:
The almost-independent state of Brooklyn has a lot going on. First, there is The Stain Bar, an arts lounge dedicated to local products and talent at 766 Grand Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211 – http://www.stainbar.com 718/387-7840 . The owner is novelist Krista Madsen.
Night and Day Bar has an excellent reading series, especially Sunday, May 21, 2006, at 6 p.m. when readers are Pamela Harrison, Gary Lenhart, and Steven Schrader will be presenting. NIGHT AND DAY is at 230 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn. Fine food & fine writing from the folks who bring you The Cornelia Street Café. Take the M or R Train to Union Street.

WRITERS CONFERENCE FOR WOMEN
Shelley Ettinger points us to what sounds like an interesting upcoming writers’ conference for women: http://www.flanked.org/conference.html .
DEE RIMBAUD LEAVING FOR THE ITINERANT LIFE! FREE BOOKS
Dee Rimbaud is relocating to Spain where he’ll be living with his family in a camper without regular internet access. He is presently giving away PDF copies of his novel STEALING HEAVEN FROM THE LIPS OF GOD as well as his award-winning poetry collection, DROPPING ECSTASY WITH THE ANGELS. If you would like to order a free PDF copy of either book (or both) email him at dee@thunderburst.co.uk . Follow his progress at his website and blogs at
http://aaron-aardvark.blogspot.com/ , and http://deerimbaud.blogspot.com/ .
ADAM SEXTON”S NOVEL-IN-PROGRESS
Adam Sexton is blogging a satiric novel, and invites responses from potential readers:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1ZM4UT77J4BXU/ref=cm_blog_dp_pdp/102-8945424-3852952 .
EVENTS FOR FOLKS IN VIRGINIA (THAT’S THE OLD DOMINION STATE, NOT TO BE MISTAKEN FOR WEST-BY-GOSH-VIRGINIA)
Here’s a calendar of literary events in Old Virginia: http://www.vabook.org/calendar/index.cfm.
WRITERS CONFERENCE FOR WOMEN
Shelley Ettinger points us to what sounds like an interesting upcoming writers’ conference for women: http://www.flanked.org/conference.html .
DEE RIMBAUD LEAVING FOR THE ITINERANT LIFE! FREE BOOKS
Dee Rimbaud is relocating to Spain where he’ll be living with his family in a camper without regular internet access. He is presently giving away PDF copies of his novel STEALING HEAVEN FROM THE LIPS OF GOD as well as his award-winning poetry collection, DROPPING ECSTASY WITH THE ANGELS. If you would like to order a free PDF copy of either book (or both) email him at dee@thunderburst.co.uk . Follow his progress at his website and blogs at
http://aaron-aardvark.blogspot.com/ , and http://deerimbaud.blogspot.com/ .
ADAM SEXTON”S NOVEL-IN-PROGRESS
Adam Sexton is blogging a satiric novel, and invites responses from potential readers:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1ZM4UT77J4BXU/ref=cm_blog_dp_pdp/102-8945424-3852952 .
EVENTS FOR FOLKS IN VIRGINIA (THAT’S THE OLD DOMINION STATE, NOT TO BE MISTAKEN FOR WEST-BY-GOSH-VIRGINIA)
Here’s a calendar of literary events in Old Virginia: http://www.vabook.org/calendar/index.cfm.

BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS NEWSLETTER with no associated website are available from your public library and your local independent bookstore as well as online and at the mall. Online, I often go first to Alibis at http://www.alibris.com. For other online shopping, try Bookfinder at http://www.bookfinder.com; http://www.cheapbooks.info/ ; and http://www.allbookstores.com. An especially good source for used and out-of-print books is Advanced Book Exchange at http://www.abebooks.com. To buy online through independent booksellers, try http://www.booksense.com. You can also, of course, get almost any book from http://www.amazon.com or http://www.bn.com, but keep in mind that both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble avoid unionization and are responsible for the demise of many independent booksellers.


RESPONSES
Please send responses and suggestions directly to me. Unless you request otherwise, your responses may be edited and published in this newsletter. Please e-mail Meredith Sue Willis at MeredithSueWillis@gmail.com. (Note different email for this newsletter correspondence).




BACK ISSUES:

#82 The Eustace Diamonds, Strapless, Empire Falls
#81 Philip Roth, Paola Corso
#80 Joanne Greenberg, Ed Davis, more Murdoch
#79 Adam Sexton, Iris Murdoch, Hemingway
#78 The Hills at Home; Tess of the D'Urbervilles; Jean Stafford
#77 On children's books--guest editor Carol Brodtrick
#76 Mary Lee Settle, Mary McCarthy
#75 The Makioka Sisters
#74 In Our Hearts We Were Giants
#73 Joyce Dyer
#72 Bill Robinson WWII story
#71 Eva Kollisch on G.W. Sebald
#70 On Reading
#69 Nella Larsen, Romola
#68 P.D.James
#67 The Medici
#66 Curious Incident,Temple Grandin
#65
--Ingrid Hughes on Memoir
#64
--Boyle, Worlds of Fiction
#63--Affinity, Namesame
#62--Honorary Consul; The Idiot
#61
--Lauren's Line
#60--Prince of Providence
#59--Mutual Friend,Red Water
#58--AkÉ,
Season of Delight
#57--Screaming with Cannibals

#56
--Benita Eisler's Byron
#55
Addie, Hottentot Venus, Ake
#54 Scott Oglesby, James, Rule
#53 Nafisi,Chesnutt, LeGuin
#52 Keith Maillard, Lee Maynard
#51 Gregory Michie, Carter Seaton

#50 Atonement, VIctoria Woodhull
#49 Caucasia
#48 Richard Price, Phillip Pullman
#47 Mid. East Islamic World Reader
#46 Invitation to a Beheading
#45
The Princess of Cleves
#44
Ettinger:Not Great Books
#43 Woolfe, Terrorist Next Door
#42 John Sanford
#41 Isabelle Allende
#40 Ed Myers on John Williams
#39 Faulkner
#38 Steven Bloom No New Jokes
#37 James Webb's Fields of Fire
#36 Middlemarch!
#35 Conrad, Furbee, Silas House
#34
Ciabattari, Emshwiller
#33 Pullman,Daughter of the Elm
#32 More Lesbian lit; Nostromo
#31
Lesbian fiction
#30 Carol Shields, Colson Whitehead
#29 More William Styron!
#28 William Styron
#27
Daniel Gioseffi
#26 Phyllis Moore
#25
On Libraries....
#24 Tales of the City
#23
Nonfiction, poetry, and fiction
#22 More on Why This Newsletter

#21 Salinger, Sarah Waters, Next of Kin
#20 Jane Lazarre
#19 Artemisia Gentileschi
#18 Ozick, Coetzee, Joanna Torrey
#17
Arthur Kinoy
#16 Mrs. Gaskell and lots of other suggestions
#15 George Dennison, Pat Barker, George Eliot
#14 Small Presses
#13 Gap Creek, Crum
#12 Reading after 9-11
#11 Political Novels
#10 Summer Reading ideas
#9 Shelley Ettinger picks
#8
Harriette Arnow's Hunter's Horn
#7 About this newsletter
#6 Maria Edgeworth
#5 T ales of Good and Evil; Moon Tiger
#4 Homer Hickam and The Chosen
# 3
J.T. LeRoy and Tale of Genji
#2 Chick Lit

#1 About this newsletter