Bigness

by Marcus Sakey

As those of you who follow me on Facebook know, I often post questions. Part of the reason is that I find the whole social media thing a little me-me-me oriented, and as a good Midwestern boy, I was raised to find relentlessly talking about myself impolite. But the larger part of the reason is that I'm fascinated by the answers.

Yesterday, my question was this: "What's a book or movie that you've read or watched over and over? Ready, Go."

As of this writing, 49 people have responded. Here are some of the big winners, mentioned multiple times:

• To Kill A Mockingbird (book and film)
• The Star Wars Trilogy (the real one, not the one for the kiddies)
• The Last of the Mohicans (film)
• The Lord of the Rings (films)
• Catcher in the Rye
• North by Northwest
• The Godfather
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Mystic River

This is, at first glance, one weird ass list.

But the more I look at it, the more sense I see. These are all big titles, by which I don’t mean so much that they made a lot of money, though they did, or that they were sweeping in scope, though most of them were.

No, the bigness I mean here is something else. It’s an ineffable sort of bigness. A sense that the story has weight, heft. Something that will endure.

That makes sense, of course, since my question was about books and movies that people have enjoyed multiple times. But as a writer, it’s also an interesting and daunting thing to recognize.

Something made these big. It didn’t just happen. A quality in the idea, or in the telling, or both, took these beyond the norm.

The vast majority of books and movies come out, live their day, and fade into the background. They aren’t lost, but they aren’t likely to get three or four mentions on a list like this. They aren’t likely to haunt the collective imagination of a wide group of people.

If I have a point, I suppose it’s this—I wonder if, as writers, this is a worthwhile test to apply to our own work. It would be a painful one, no question. This is a scary ass hurdle to put before yourself while you’re trying to create something from nothing.

But maybe it’s a good one. Maybe it can help. Maybe, if nothing else, aiming for bigness has value.

Meanwhile, I’d love to see more answers to this question. What book have you read a number of times? What movie can you always watch again?

Ready, go.

Legacy

by Michael Dymmoch

My mother passed away last winter; this week she would have celebrated her 87th birthday. Though my grandmother taught me to read, Mother always kept books in the house. And she never censored my reading. Mom got me a library card and, until I could drive myself, she drove me to the library to satisfy my reading jones. I always got books for Christmas. Mom gave everybody books.

She taught me to recycle before recycling had a name. She let me take days off school to go to the annual Winnetka Rummage sale, which was almost as good as Christmas. Before we had an energy crisis she taught me to conserve energy: Go back and turn off that light! Close the door—are you trying to heat the outdoors?

Mom never said No to a pet in a way that let me know she meant it. If I was a good mother, it’s because my mother gave me a great example and a chance to practice parenting on a variety of creatures with different needs and ways of communicating. She taught empathy by example. She embraced everyone we brought home, notwithstanding reservations she may have had about them. In cases where visitors acted up, Mom just said, Go home. Come back when you can behave.

She taught me to trust in my ability to manage whatever I have to, and to expect the universe to provide—Live horse and you’ll get grass.

Mom insisted that I get a college education. It was never You should go to college, always You’re going to college. But she never suggested I shouldn’t follow my heart in what I studied. When I graduated, she was a whole lot prouder than I, as she was when my first book came out.

Most importantly, Mom gave me a great moral compass—two vital precepts to live by: How would you feel if someone did that to you? and—in case I felt like doing murder—Two wrongs don’t make a right! If I have the courage to say, That’s just wrong! I got it from her.

Mom’s legacy will continue down the generations. She raised her children to follow her example, Now we’re doing our best to model it for our kids.

Palate Cleansing

by Marcus Sakey

So yesterday I sent the draft of my new book to my editor.

This is a very good thing. But it’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about what happens now.

My typical process when I finish a book is to tuck it in a drawer for as long as possible, then read it in one sitting. Then I combine my own notes with feedback from buddies, writer friends, and most particularly my agent and editor, in order to edit the thing.

But while in one sense I'm highly focused on the book, at the same time, something else is happening. I'm beginning to let go of it.

This isn’t a simple process, a flip of a switch. When you’ve lived with a story for a year, it takes time for it to drift from your head, which needs to happen in order to leave space for the next one. So during that time, besides editing, I like to read a lot. I mean a lot.

I read all kinds of books, in every genre. But during these periods I focus on books that will inspire me. Not novels I want to emulate per se, but books that take the broad genre I write in and do something innovative with it. That do more than just present a thrilling tale—they do it in an interesting way, or put a twist on it, or cross the border into other genres.

Novels like these are palate cleansers. They perk up my brain, get it receptive to new ideas and new directions.

For example, yesterday I reread WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sara Gruen. It’s a lovely book, one of those that you can heartily and universally recommend. And it’s a hell of a palate cleanser, because it takes what is at heart a traditional boy-meets-girl and weaves in a wonderfully realized world, some compelling musings on growing old, and healthy doses of cross-genre material. The result is magic.

Thing is, of course, it’s not easy to find books that are at once innovative and commercial. That’s the sweet spot for me during this period: much as I love David Foster Wallace and David Mitchell, much as I dig postmodernism, or the textual play of a book like HOUSE OF LEAVES, it doesn’t work as a palate cleanser. I need books that balance invention and accessibility, that startle and surprise while also seeming familiar.

That, in the Hollywood parlance, do the same thing, only different.

And since I’m part of this wonderful community, I thought I might ask you for some recommendations. What have you read that did this well?

I’m especially interested in books that have a strong commercial appeal, but they don’t need to be straight-ahead thrillers—just a hell of a tale that’s also got something to say. Books like WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, or THE STAND, or THE HUNGER GAMES.

What have you read that you couldn't put down--and couldn't forget?

Best Reads of the Year

by Marcus Sakey

Hard to believe it, but another year has blown by. Time, she passes.

And so in keeping with tradition—it’s tradition if I do it twice, right?—I thought I’d list my favorite reads of this year. This isn’t about books released in 2009, just my personal picks of the 70 or so I’ve read since January 1st. (You can see last year's picks here, if you're interested.)

SAMARITAN, Richard Price
For my money, Price is probably the best “crime” writer working today. He’s got a subtle understanding of humanity, unmatchable style to his prose, and pitch-perfect dialogue.

A MOVABLE FEAST, Ernest Hemingway
I rediscovered Hemingway this year, and I’m thrilled about it. Yes, the complaints about him still ring true, but what he does well, he does amazingly.

IN THE LAKE OF THE WOODS, Tim O’Brien
I’ve never been anything but floored by O’Brien’s work. THE THINGS THEY CARRIED remains my favorite, but this one is a masterpiece.

THE POWER OF THE DOG, Don Winslow
One of the most ambitious and accomplished crime novels I’ve ever read. An epic telling of the war on drugs from every angle.

BAD MONKEYS, Matt Ruff
Matt Ruff is one of this year’s discoveries; I’m actually reading another of his right now, FOOL ON THE HILL. A fantasist with a wonderful sense of play who also has something to say.

THE SONG IS YOU, Arthur Phillips
Phillips continues to dazzle with this novel of music, love, and obsession.

THE HUNGER GAMES, Susan Collins
The most fun I had reading this year. Smart, tense, and entertaining as hell, this one is really is pure pleasure.

SATURDAY, Ian McEwan
It’s Ian McEwan.

MARKET FORCES, Richard K. Morgan
Morgan was last year’s big discovery, and the most exciting sci-fi writer I’ve come across since William Gibson.

THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN’S UNION, Michael Chabon
Chabon can, apparently, do any goddamn thing he pleases, including write a noir fantasy about a Jewish state in Alaska. His style is so adroit and so muscular it leaves me at once thrilled and pissed.

THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO
Junot Diaz
Probably the second most fun I had reading this year. Diaz’s debut novel is charming, wicked smart, and wonderfully nuanced.

If you’re looking for more recommendations, on my website I keep a running list of books I dug. They’re all over the place in genre and style, but all of them entertained, educated, or inspired me.

How about you? What blew your hair back this year?

Lying On the Beach With My Back Burned Rare

By Kevin Guilfoile


It feels like one of those lazy Fridays when everyone is getting ready to blow out for somewhere else, and so it's appropriate that my one time employer and second family, Coudal Partners, has launched a new edition of Field Tested Books where a group of writers and bloggers and otherwise interesting people have written short essays about particular books they read in a particular place. Sometimes the reviews are about the appropriateness of the read (don't miss thriller writer Lori Andrews's story about reading The Journalist and the Murderer while sitting next to an actual murderer in New Orleans). Sometimes the stories are about inappropriate settings. Last time around I wrote about reading Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee's powerful account of the lives of depression-era sharecroppers, while on spring break in South Padre, Texas. In every case, the subject is how the environment in which we read is related to our experience of the book.

Back when I worked there, each of us made a big deal about selecting what books we would bring on vacations. There could have been days and days of debate on the subject and those discussions no doubt led to the project, which is in its fourth incarnation now. A nice feature of the page is that you can sort by reviewer or by book title or by place. And after three editions there are enough of them that you might want to check them out for suggestions before you head to the airport.

But how about you? As we look forward to the official start of summer tomorrow, what memorable experience have you had on the road with a good book?

Happy Mother's Day

by Michael Dymmoch

My Ma was a compulsive reader—not her fault. It’s hereditary. My grandmother was a reader. Her mother got in trouble for reading when she was supposed to be working. Maybe that’s why Ma was such a great school librarian. She’d ask a kid about his interests, then find him a book on the subject. And when he returned the book, she’d ask him to tell her how he liked it. She filled her library with plants and bright posters. I still have one she made herself—a fat green dragon announcing “I need a book.”

I grew up with bookshelves full of books. Kids’ books. Adult books. Science and picture books. And we had The Reader’s Digest in the bathroom. Ma never limited my reading. I guess she figured if I was old enough to decipher the words, I’d figure out what to do with them. I must have been in college before I understood the concept of censorship. (I still don’t think I “get” it.)

Ma made me look things up. She must have understood that you have to spell the word to find it in the dictionary, ‘cause she’d often tell me how to spell words. But she wouldn’t give me definitions. She bought an old encyclopedia at a rummage sale and made me use that, too.

Ma had infinite patience with her embryonic novelist. It may have driven her crazy to listen to dialogs I’d memorized from favorite TV shows, but she never let on. She was inordinately proud when I finally published something.

Ma let me and my sibling have pets but she didn’t let us mistreat them. I grew up with questions like, “How would you feel if someone pulled your ears? (or tail? or hair?)” Even ants got respect. (“How would you feel if a giant stomped on your house and killed your family.”) In spite of her fear of such animals, Ma let me keep a donkey (who taught me to be patient with stubborn individuals). When the donkey died, Ma made peanut butter sandwiches (his favorite) for his funeral.

Ma taught me to cook and sew and be helpful, and to understand irony. And she left me with the observation—framed and on my wall now--“People need love most when they deserve it least.”

Reading is Fundamental

by Libby Hellmann

Every year, one of my new year’s resolutions is to improve my writing. For me, writing is a challenge, and I usually feel unequal to the task. I’m not one of those people who love the process of writing, and I’m jealous of people who do. I’m more the “I-hate-writing-but-loved-that-I’ve-written type. Which begs the question of why I’m writing in the first place.

The answer is I’m not sure, but I have my suspicions. I love stories, and I love characters, and I love it when either the story or the characters surprise me. I wasn’t always a book junkie (although I started out that way as a kid)… I was a film-maker way before I was a writer, and my goal was to be the Lina Wertmuller of the United States.

But somewhere along the way I came back to words. There are so many authors writing such wonderful books -- stories that inspire, that educate, that shock, bring me to tears, cause me to question, or make me fall in love all over again. There is a delight in settling down with a book and knowing I’m going to be taken on an author’s journey – whether physical, metaphysical, or emotional -- and let into their heads for a while. In fact, that joy is one of the most pleasurable activities I can think of.

So it’s probably not a stretch to see how that fueled my desire to write… to create stories and characters that would bring the same delight to others as I’ve always felt.

Sadly, though, (and yes, I’ve blogged about this before), people aren’t reading the way they used to. We all know the statistics about the hours Gen X’ers and Y’ers spend online, visiting social networks, or melding with their Blackberries. It's time they aren’t spending reading. Now, it seems that Baby Boomers are getting into the act too.

Shelf Awareness, a wonderful resource about bookselling btw, cites an article from the New York Times last fall:

"Technology investors and entrepreneurs, long obsessed with connecting to teenagers and 20-somethings, are starting a host of new social networking sites aimed at baby boomers and graying computer users. The sites …look like Facebook--with wrinkles.”

According to the article’s author, Matt Richtel "there are 78 million boomers--roughly three times the number of teenagers--and most of them are Internet users ... Indeed, the number of Internet users who are older than 55 is roughly the same as those who are aged 18 to 34, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a market research firm."

Does that mean Boomers, traditionally the backbone of the buying public, will be reading fewer books as time goes on? As a Baby Boomer myself, I spend more time online these days… time I used to spend reading. But if reading is the activity that inspires me to write, how do I improve my writing by reading less? The simple answer is that I won’t.

Author Elizabeth Berg wrote an incredible essay in the Chicago Tribune Books section last weekend about her resolution to read more. Here's part of what she said:

A lot of people say they don't have time to read, not even an hour a day. Whenever I hear that, I always think of my partner Bill, who says, "Give up 'Wheel of Fortune' in favor of reading, and you can go through 25 books a year, and that's with taking the weekends off!"

In this age of multitasking, of speed for speed's sake, of pop-ups and links exhorting us to go somewhere else when we're not even done with where we are, it is a relief, if not salvation, for us to focus on one dang thing at a time. Instead of being lost for hours in the time-sucking quicksand of the Internet, one sits in dignified, tick-tock, one-blue-mountain silence and reads a page ... turns it ... reads the next page, and so on. Such an elegant act, reading, isn't it? And such an elegant image, a person sitting in a chair, a book resting on a lap, lamplight spilling onto the page. Can't you just feel your blood pressure lowering, contemplating such a thing?

I can, and I've decided to modify my resolution. Like Berg, I’m going to try and read more this year and spend less time online.

What about you? How much time do you spend online? Has your reading declined as a result? What do you think about that?

I’m thankful for my great grandmother. Or was it just a coincidence?

by Michael Dymmoch

Yesterday was Thank You day, and I hope everyone got thanked for something. I was thanked for being a good mom, and for having dinner at my house. I’m thankful to my family and friends for coming. (It was a lot of work to clean the house and cook—which I’d have to do anyway—but the jobs seem more rewarding if you’re sharing.)

Most of what I’m most thankful for, I try to mention as life goes along. My friends—especially the writers (I was an ugly duckling until I discovered other writers—we’re all ugly ducklings. They’ve showed me we’re all something else as well.), my editor, my readers, and all the people who do work for me--door persons, building engineers, cleaning staff, the people at the Book Bin and the Northbrook Post Offfice--Downtown Station. I'm also thankful for great books and great writers, for Charley Rose, Tavis Smiley, Oprah...

I’m thankful my mother taught me that two wrongs don’t make a right. And to keep asking myself, how would you feel if...? And that people need love most when they deserve it least.

I’m thankful my father taught me that if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And for building a floor to ceiling bookshelf for mom’s books before he even finished building our house. (Now that the house is gone, I have the bookshelf to remind me of my dad.)

I’m thankful for my maternal grandmother who read to me every day until I learned to read for myself. And to my maternal great grandmother, who was such a compulsive reader she often got in trouble for reading when she should have been working

I’m thankful to my former husband for a number of things, mostly for our terrific son. Which brings me around to coincidence...

It was just a coincidence that we ever met. I was job hunting, with a list of places I planned to apply. I started with the company closest to my house, got the job, and stopped looking. I wasn’t looking for a husband or even a relationship. I’d planned to earn some money and go back to school. But on the job I met a man...

It was a coincidence that my grandparents ever met—on a cruise ship, going to Europe.

By coincidence (or really good luck), I’ve had some of the best teachers on the planet—even at schools that weren’t known for writing or philosophy or the things those teachers taught me.

Mystery writers are only allowed one coincidence per book. And it better be early on. And the book better be pretty damn compelling or it’ll get reviews like “The solid, sometimes tedious but always believable details of Thinnes’s investigation of a series of arson murders serves as ballast for some heavy coincidences that ground the plot.” ( Publishers Weekly on Incendiary Designs)

But in real life things you could never put in a book happen all the time.

There's Something About Harry

by Marcus Sakey

Fourteen million. That's how many copies of the new Harry Potter were printed. Actually, Scholastic started at 12 million, but within ten days of the book's release went back for two million more.

Two million more.

It's become fashionable to roll your eyes at the series, but I can't go with that. I'm not a fan, either. I've read a couple of the books, and liked them fine. She's a wonderful fantasist and has a lovely touch with the characters. Overall, though, my hair remained forward and my socks stayed on.

Obviously, I'm in the minority. 14,000,000 copies.

Which has me wondering — and I really want to know — what is it about these books that so grabs people? The appeal transcends age, gender, and sophistication. People who read a book a year love 'em; people who read a book a week love 'em. People who don't read fantasy love 'em. People who hate children love 'em.

Is it the universe? The fantasy of empowerment? The fight against ultimate evil? The camaraderie of the characters? A wish for magic? An identification with the misfit kid in all of us? What has drawn so many people into this series, and held their attention through something like 6,000 pages?

I'd really like to know. Partly out of curiosity, and partly because I intend to let the answers inform my own writing. Whatever she's doing, it works, and it's worth learning from.

So those of you who love the series, can you explain what it is that moves you? And while we're at it, you eye-rollers out there, what bugs you?