Writers Writing and Reading!

Dear Reader,

Even though I'm trying my very best to keep the obsessive-irrelevant-fiction-reading to a minimum, I've still managed to find myself just-about half-way through The Reading Group by Elizabeth Noble. I felt it started a bit slowly, when I was completely clueless of what the characters were like, but that turned out to be fun part; discovering the people these characters were, guessing where they were going and where they were coming from, 'who is the one with the "straying husband"? and who's looking for a "new lover"?' But reading this book has left me in emotional turmoil. For example, right now I'm...:

1) hating Harriet, for having the perfect "Mr. bloody Darcy" husband and being completely unable to appreciate him,

2) intensly angry with Nicole for being a coward and not leaving the worthless Gavin who doesn't even deserve to stand in her shadow (in my opinion),

3) greatly happy for Polly for having found Jack (with all the romance of a new love),

4) sympathising and loving Susan for her devotion to her mother,

5) anxious and excited with Cressida over ther pregnancy

6) and, most of all, I can't help wanting to cry everytime I read about Clare.

All this in the space of the first four chapters. How is anyone suppose to handle this sort of rollercoaster, even someone like me who is well known for her 180-degree-mood-swings-per-hour (just ask my brothers; they  will willingly testify to this claim)?

I think that all this (the emotional turmoil stated above) is because I believe that Elizabethe Noble has done exactly what she said (through Harriet's mouth) makes a good, no, great book: "I realise that it is because I care so much more about the characters..." And I haven't even come to the best part of the book yet, which happens to be the parts when they are all sitting together disscussing the books that are on their reading list. It's intriguing to read the often-overlapping, detailed, (anonymous?) conversations trying to guess who made what comment and seeing how I could relate it to their different stories.

And this brings me not-so-neatly onto the main topic of this weeks post: writers reading and writing about other writer's writing. A few weeks ago I came across this Link to a post about "Author Bashing" - in the wise words of Robin Mckinley. It's about what some really-famous authors have said about other really-famous authors. Some of those quotes I already knew about but I never really realised how harsh and critical writers can be (which is quite strange coming from a person who's written a number of "harsh and critical" reviews herself). For example, here is Mark Twain's opinion on our beloved Jane Austen, "Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice,' I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone." For reasons beyond my understanding, I found this quote the funniest of the lot, maybe because the image in my head remined me so much of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a book that made me both laugh out loud (ROFLMAO-style) and feel quite queasy, at the same time! Ah, but Mark Twain himself has been called a "hack writer" by William Faulkner, who then goes on to say that he [Twain] "tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy." I guess we should all believe in karma then!  

 

But despair not, my dear Reader. Not all of what writers say about each other is hateful. Just yesterday a read such a wonderful review by Robin McKinley - a favourite author - on one of my favourite books, Lament by Maggie Stiefvater. BTW, having read all of Maggie Stiefvater's released books, I am now eagerly anticipating Linger, the sequel to Shiver (can't wait!). 

As far as writers' "supposed egos" go I've even found, unsurprisingly, that some writers are fans of other writers. Follow this Link if you want to know what happened when one writer/fan, Lucy Coats, met with the writer of the exceptionally brilliant Books of Pellinor Series, Alison Croggan.  

Anyway, thats about all I have to babble about this week. I must now return to my pot of yohgurt and berries. 

Nida

P.S. - Have you noticed how almost all the writers I've typed about today are female? Not deliberately done on my part, I just noticed it myself right now. BTW, I have nothing against male writers, in fact, many of my favourite books and poems have been written by men ... but this seems like a discussion for another post so I'll just leave it at this, for now.